You misunderstood what ME is - it's not only a piece of software running in your operating system, but also an entirely separate processor that runs its own fir

You misunderstood what ME is - it's not only a piece of software running in your operating system, but also an entirely separate processor that runs its own firmware. It has its own network stack and entirely bypasses the operating system - you cannot see it listening using netstat, you wouldn't even see the actual communication using Wireshark. It works even when the computer is off (which makes sense for an out-of-band management solution).