Totally agree. And these "maybe they are backdoors" have not actually been demonstrated in the wild yet (apart from Intel's AMT that most people don't have to worry about). If you want to fearmonger, at least do it with demonstrated issues not just "maybes". So a much bigger security issue is buying a laptop from anyone at all at this point that isn't a Mac or a Surface, i.e. directly from the OS vendor. Lenovo does shit like this: http://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-soft... (which also references the earlier Superfish shit they pulled). Sony has done shit like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... Dell et al: http://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-find-insecure-bios-...

The Intel one has a known technique to disable the ME, the AMD one does not (for the moment).

However, disabling it is not trivial, needing to open your laptop and solding skills, also special equipment to read/write modified firmware.

You don't need soldering skills (at least for the device I use), but I agree it's not trivial. However, a nontrivial fix is still a significant improvement over a nonexistent one.

Apologies I have edited my post to explain Intel have the same likely backdoored system too.