And I agree, those are some pretty impressive feats. Whenever your threat model includes state actors, it's probably not a bad idea to be paranoid. Let's not carry that paranoia to ridiculous extremes though.

_Could_ the NSA have the ability to utilize IME somehow as a means to infect computers? Certainly. Do they _actually_ have that capability? We have no idea. Same goes for your motherboard's firmware, your hard drive's hardware, and any number of other possible vectors. They _could_ be compromised somehow, yes, but let's not claim that any specific motherboard firmware, HDD model, or CPU processor brand definitely _is_ compromised without evidence.