If I were in charge of collecting encrypted data at the NSA, I would make sure that whatever keys were used by the CPU's AES instruction set would be copied and saved using the CPU firmware. Then that data could be sent out with the ME, or simply stored in case that computer was ever an object of interest. In that way, anything encrypted (using hardware) could be decrypted. Seems like it would be malpractice by the NSA not to collect AES keys at the hardware level.

Not sure that's correct. If you disable ME then DRM that depends on it just won't work. So it would be like saying that a power button is a DRM circumvention tool.

I'm saying that the ME, by nature of the access to the CPU, memory and IO that it has, is likely capably of circumventing almost all software encryption run on the CPU through surreptitious gathering of information as the system runs encryption/decryption routines. Whether Intel intended to or not, they've built the mother of all circumvention tools, and circumvention is specifically not allowed in the DMCA.

Intel ME is used as a component of DRM (see PAVP), which is what I was referring to. But this is quite an odd argument, by that definition your CPU would be a circumvention measure. And while you can use a CPU to circumvent DRM, just having a CPU isn't enough.

Also, a normal user of a computer cannot do whatever they like with Intel ME, so its the least useful circumvention measure I've ever heard of. GDB is infinitely better.

Not to mention that most DRM depends on the encryption being done outside of the computer's CPU. HDMI's DRM relies on the local computer not being aware of the contents of the stream and the monitor itself does the decryption with burned-in keys.