> This article isn’t about proving that though

Um the article kinda is:

... so we deemed this information reliable and immediately raised some critical questions: Is there a wireless chipset soldered onto the MacBook Air’s logic board that we didn’t know about? If so, is it not actually possible to properly air gap a MacBook Air?

And their methodology is a bit flawed. This made me shudder:

We took out the Air’s logic board to see if we could pry the chip off with a screwdriver. We quickly decided this was a bad idea. We also considered “disabling” the chip by drilling a few holes through it with a Dremel tool or by melting it a bit with a soldering iron.

Jeezo.

You're judging their methodology by what they chose not to do?

If they considered it for long enough to put in the article then its clear they are amateurs in electronics.

I'm an amateur in electronics, and I would consider using a heat gun to desolder the BGA-looking chip (which basically means I know what a heat gun does and I know what BGA looks like). The article author's skill level is "I saw some electronics once".

Use an RF antenna to see if it is putting out any signal.

Could very well not tx until it receives a wake up message.

True. But you could transmit a variety of RF frequencies at the device and try to detect resonance in the antenna. Unfortunately WiFi uses direct conversion rather than IF demodulation, but there is no reason to assume a covert transmitter would use wifi, which is easily spotted by off the shelf equipment. https://youtu.be/ZxyU_1xUOWc

Micropatch antennas are super hard to detect, even with x-ray, and newer types even harder. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00343-8