The nature of FUD is not that it's outright wrong, but that it's largely irrelevant and intentionally missing the point, and you can usually recognize that with

The nature of FUD is not that it's outright wrong, but that it's largely irrelevant and intentionally missing the point, and you can usually recognize that without knowing much about the subject matter. For example, when they write that licensing the ISA is only a small fraction of the total cost of designing a processor, that is correct. But they are simply ignoring the broader implications of a non-free ISA and its financial effects, and the fact that this fact in itself may actually depend heavily on their current business model. Think about how the free availability of Linux has changed how people can build software, and how that has brought down the cost of software considerably, and much more so than the licensing costs of a Windows install per server. Also, their argument is sort-of "you don't need competition because the price isn't that high", even though it obviously would be a lot higher if there were no competition. Similarly, it's not wrong that verification and validation of CPU designs is expensive. But (a) noone suggests that those people who are buying ARM chips now will do their own CPU designs in the future, and (b) ARM chips obviously also require expensive verification and validation, so you end up paying for that regardless where you buy a chip. So, again, simply intentionally missing the point. Also, a lot of it is obviously just speculation, such as "well, what if the new processor is less secure than our product?" Well, yeah, big if, tons of unjustified assumptions: Are their processors really that secure? Couldn't a new processor designed from scratch be much more secure than their accumulated cruft? Again, not factually incorrect, but highly misleading by implying unjustified assertions. That's what the "(U)ncertainty" in FUD refers to.