Intel ME could have been used as a backdoor in a circumstance where they knew it wouldn't be analyzed, but that is a small percentage of jobs. Really only when

Intel ME could have been used as a backdoor in a circumstance where they knew it wouldn't be analyzed, but that is a small percentage of jobs. Really only when you know a JDAM is coming through the roof soon after, or it's a no fail type of mission, i.e. taking over NK ground control during a missile launch. It isn't going to be wasted trying to hack the Kremlin, where everything gets logged. For baseband chips, I haven't heard of Qualcomm having these types of interfaces at all. Fleet management happens via MDM at the iOS/Android level. I don't think NSA would be able to coerce Qualcomm to introduce a huge feature like ME in secret, and besides that isn't their MO, there would be a standards process etc. I really don't think something like that could be kept completely under wraps, and then as soon as you used it once it would be burnt. Chinese chipsets not so sure. So far Huawei has so many bugs in everything they have implausible deniability. Like dozens of level 10, full RCE exploits. That's a good reason to ban them.