Intel ME is not connected to the network. Intel AMT (vPro) is. You have to pay extra to get it, and there are extra conditions to be fulfilled (LAN or Wifi must

Intel ME is not connected to the network. Intel AMT (vPro) is. You have to pay extra to get it, and there are extra conditions to be fulfilled (LAN or Wifi must be Intel). The difference wrt. Apple Silicon is, that AS firmware blobs run on separate chips and 1) cannot access the main memory freely; they are gated behind IOMMU and 2) there's no SMM equivalent for any of them, so the main CPU time cannot be stolen by firmware.