"...Who knows. Perhaps NSA saw what Intel was up to and simply decided to let them get on with it, knowing that they'd fsck it up badly to NSA's advantage.
Why bother coercing / cajoling Intel into slipping in a hidden backdoor when you know they'll build in aircraft hangar sized doors through sheer incompetence... So long as Intel stick to this idea of an ME, there's code there that will likely have flaws..."
I think this is exactly it, and that's why the NSA asked for a "High Assurance" firmware option be made available that is part of all secure system orders - which disables the whole suite of Intel ME functionality. The same guys who found these bugs have been following the breadcrumbs left by the NSA for this research.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
