It seems to me that the alternate vendor argument does not make sense. If we do not trust Intel, then there is no reason at all to trust any of the other vendor

It seems to me that the alternate vendor argument does not make sense. If we do not trust Intel, then there is no reason at all to trust any of the other vendors. Intel might actually require infiltration or an order; most of your smaller chip would add backdoors for cash (and in contrast to intel, a little cash would make a huge difference in their bottom lines).