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!!