I don't know if I'd thought about it that way. There is so much ambiguity and embellishment that goes into journalism in general, I don't view the output with any sort of authority. Applying the standard of security research, they didn't detail any evidence demonstrating their claim that it was actually being exploited [0]. It seems that difference in perspective is how Bloomberg thought their story was reasonable.

IIRC it was also heavily focused on Supermicro, without any distinction whether Supermicro was specifically targeted or just happened to supply the boards that were bugged and caught.

[0] eg showing a chip, or ideally the whole motherboard system. Does it actually rewrite instructions going by on MISO or was something else more practical? Parasitic energy harvesting? Inquiring minds want to know!!

Oh no, it isn't. Look, I get that you've seen enough to either know the shit is happening or believe it is based on what you've seen happen. I'm in the same boat. I'm just saying you're hurting your already-good credibility saying things like that.

No, it's not acceptable if it's a highly-controversial claim in an industry or topic that normally comes with proof of exploitation. They should've got it even if it was independent party vetting it that most would trust who wouldn't give too many details that would compromise an investigation. They could get money and/or advertising for doing the review. Otherwise, present it like it's information coming from anonymous, unvetted sources who could be full of shit.

Literally some of the most influential journalism of all time has been sourced from anonymous informants that weren't vetted by third parties. We didn't find out who deep throat was until over thirty years later, after he was in a nursing home with dementia.

Remember that anonymous doesn't mean unvetted.

And that leak was over literally millions of lives, so it's not like an intelligence arm of a Nation state doing its job in peace time is so more serious that the standards are higher.

Didn't Deep Throat's testimony activate a government response indicating it was probably true? Or did everyone involved act like they were full of it? Honestly, I can't remember what I read and I wasn't from that time either.

Anonymous certainly doesn't mean unvetted. We should have something come out of the stories if something big is going on, though. If we don't, we have no reason to believe them if the source has other screwups on their record.