Like others have said, the pushback came from saying it was happening, not that it was plausible. As well as refusing to pull the story or clarify the details.

Like others have said, the pushback came from saying it was happening, not that it was plausible. As well as refusing to pull the story or clarify the details. I also swear I had read articles months/years before that companies like Apple literally photographed motherboards before shipping and compared them after arriving to look out for hardware tampering in transit. That, to me, shows they are not only aware of issues like that, but taking meaningful steps to detect it. Edit: Here's an article from 2016 about it https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-worried-about-spy-tech-in-servers-it-buys-2016-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-worried-about-spy-tech...