Intel has abused the responsible disclosure process for economic gain. Their Leadership was not interested in a repeat of the spectre and meltdown impact on their stock price and made the (most likely accurate) assessment, that recurring news of intel vulnerabilities would harm their stock more than delay and cumulated release. As a result Academic Researchers were denied some of the credit they would otherwise have rightfully earned, because their individual contributions are buried in a sea of similar publications. Research efforts were thus needlessly duplicated. Research which could have formed the basis for subsequent research was unavailable and (publicly funded) researchers wasted time duplicating results. If two researchers discover the same vulnerabilities independently, there should be no embargo on disclosures because it has to be assumed with a high likelihood that third-parties might already be actively exploiting it. The public has to be warned, even if no effective mitigation is available. If for a subset of the vulnerabilities, AMD and ARM are not affected then security conscious users could have been reducing their exposure by utilizing competitors chips.

In this case the practice of responsible disclosure has been turned on its head. There should no longer be any responsible disclosure with Intel as long as they do not commit to changing their behavior.