The germane question is, can a similar revolution happen for hardware? Can motivated individuals, or small groups of people, reasonably hope to design AND manufacture ALL the hardware for a modern computer? The answer is it's quite beyond the bounds of possibility. The tech is too complex, too closely guarded and manufacturing has HUGE upfront costs.
THAT is why hardware is currently completely dominated by a few big players, which allows them (and any other "agencies") complete control to essentially do as they wish.
We were able to make software creation egalitarian. Unless we can do the same for hardware (from ground-up), we will be ultimately controlled and never be in full control.
We need the manufacturing process to also be opened up just as much as the chip design, but the latter seems an easier goal, though in itself still difficult thanks to IP and economics.
However, speaking of spooks, I heard rumors that either Intel AMT or BIOS or some drivers (don't remember which exactly) is sold to the Chinese market with castrated crypto. Reportedly it's because the Chinese government requires imported crypto to be just strong enough to resist average guy, but not their supercomputers.
Some googling yielded this, for example:
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2331257/lan-wan/encrypti... (2004)
http://www.freshfields.com/en/global/Digital/China_rules_on_...
But this only shows that there are some regulations and licensing required, no details unfortunately.
And, first of all, I'm not even sure if it was the ME firmware or any firmware at all. Might have been some stupid application you install on Windows.
I wouldn't buy security-critical stuff in China. You can bitch all day long about the US, but the fact is, if something like this San Bernadino phone unlock case happened in China, with Chinese phone from Chinese vendor under Chinese jurisdiction, you probably wouldn't even have heard about it.
The win of paranoia over security and privacy.
If it's for enterprise features as 'innocently' suggested that those who do not need or want this feature should be able to put it off simply without drama, debate or discussion.
Its not surprising that both AMD and ARM have it. This is an orchestrated effort signifying the win of paranoia and security over privacy in the western world.
This war is being fought on too many fronts by well resourced and paranoid security agencies with all the tools to influence and the only defense would be individuals and our sense of right and wrong. But it seems individuals have been completely disempowered and reduced to survival mode and are not in a position to stand up for the right thing or even talk about it.
If 'moral' individuals can so easily be quietened in well off economies then one wonders what happens in other economies where basic survival is a day to day fight. Who will fight the privacy war? The silence is deafening. It seems all the activism and racket from media, academics, NGOs and human rights organizations only come into play when a western political or strategic objective needs to be met.
There are many who believe that by working with and supporting security agencies they are somehow in the forefront of a nebulous fight of survival and freedom in a dark world. This 'dark world' is a self created and self serving fantasy and comedy for grown, well adjusted and well read individuals to fall for that push humanity into a negative space.
It can be taken for granted unless conclusively proved otherwise with the burden of evidence swaying the other way that any technology coming out of the USA and Europe is compromised completely and the fight for privacy here has been lost.