Hmmm..."wildly implausible"? That's pretty strong wording. "They might not want to do it this way", I could believe. But that the individual(s) in the government concerned with a particular intelligence hack might not have thought through all the consequences for China's chip manufacturing industry, is not so far out there as to be "wildly implausible", I think. Which doesn't mean, of course, that it did in fact happen (this way).