Well, a few hours ago we had a thread on HN about eradicating a whole specy of insects. And we had in comments intelligent educated people that though that "it seems like a good idea".

So if mass disruption of the very system that support your life can have supporters among a community composed of smart and actively debating people, "it seemed like a good idea at the time" probably happens every week at gov agencies.

Lots of things are done because there's a broad consensus opinion that it's a good idea. There is nothing intrinsically bad about that, and needless or baseless skepticism is often counterproductive and paralyzing, leading to inaction even in the face of widespread consensus.

What leads to failures, and I suspect happened at Intel, was that they mistook a very localized consensus for a broader one. There's a word for this, it's called "groupthink". A group of people can talk themselves into doing something very stupid (or evil) while still thinking they're doing the right thing, given enough time and motivation.

There was no widespread consensus, outside of Intel, that the IME was a good idea. If they had solicited opinions from outside their organization, they would doubtless have gotten horrified reactions. But they didn't, or if they did they must have dismissed those concerns, because they went through with the bad idea anyway.

The apparent secrecy with which they developed the IME is also a cause for alarm; groups of people who operate in isolation are particularly prone to groupthink, and so even if their motivations are good ones, the fact that they are working without continuous feedback from anyone on the outside raises the chances of a perverse outcome.

People usually won’t do something if they think it’s a bad idea. Tragedies begin with “it seemed like a good idea at the time” because everything does.

Except it never seemed like a good idea to anyone with a clue of IT security.