> Remember the 2018 accusations of spy chips implanted in supermicro motherboards that everyone denied so strongly

It'd be easy to prove the existence of a pervasive "spy-chip" problem using a camera or a microscope. Unsurprisingly, neither Bloomberg nor it's quoted "experts" ever managed to do so, deapite loudly banging that drum.

Spy chips could be just slightly different firmware for... any number of different things. It could be pretty stealthy, too.

What you describe is a software Advanced Persistent Threat and not a "spy chip" as reported by Bloomberg. People have been reverse engineering firmware since forever, no any evidence of booby-trapped firmware was found or reported.

Us splitting hairs is moot: the claims of subversion - whether by sw or hw - were unsubstantiated and uncorroborated, and remain so to date.

This news doesn't magically make those 2018 accusations true.

2,500,000,000 is a lot of cash