Intel and AMD have put backdoors in their CPUs - Intel with the Management Engine and AMD with the Platform Security Processor. These are separate sub-CPUs req

Intel and AMD have put backdoors in their CPUs - Intel with the Management Engine and AMD with the Platform Security Processor. These are separate sub-CPUs required by both platforms to boot and run. Both of these CPUs run proprietary, encrypted, otherwise-inaccessible and inauditable code that is always running and has full access to everything the CPU has access to. The Intel ME in particular is part of Intel's offerings that allow remote access to a system even if the operating system fails--it's accessible remotely by design, and flaws have already been found in it. Only Intel can update the ME. Only Intel knows what's in the ME and what it's doing, same for AMD and the PSP. I think people want RISC-V to succeed because it gives privacy-conscious individuals a chance to have a truly secure platform not 100% under control of a single company with 100% auditable code from each stage of the boot process.