Based on the facts of how this problem has played out, I think it is an empirical fact that the major processor and operating system producers were blindsided b

Based on the facts of how this problem has played out, I think it is an empirical fact that the major processor and operating system producers were blindsided by this issue, even though there were some people, such as Philip Guenther from OpenBSD, saying there is probably an exploit here. There seems to be a certain amount of after-the-fact analysis to the claim that no-one should have been surprised by this, and even that was, in fact, the case, the broader concern simply becomes one of why the situation was allowed to develop. In retrospect, we can say that people were making decisions that favored convenience over security, but were they aware at the time what specific compromises they were making? Either way, there is an important issue here that does not go away by saying they should or could have known.