Isn’t the MSRP also 2x of the precious gen Mac Pro? ($6k vs $3k)

Good point. I'd like to see one of the absolute numbers in addition to the ratio; otherwise the cynical interpretation (which is kind of the appropriate interpretation for PR speak) is, "So the American-made portion used to be 1% of the cost and it's now 2.5%, eh?" (Or 1.25% if the MSRP has a constant ratio to the parts cost.)

Yep, intel raised their prices, oh and don't forget the T2 spy chip that's probably also made in the USA.

>T2 spy chip

What are you trying to say here?

He might be referring to the fact it is closed source and there is no way anyone could figure out what it really does.

There's a documented white paper about what it does and you can examine network traffic to determine if it's doing anything claimed. Even today, there are people that have flags and filters set up for traffic coming from these devices. I don't think there's much to worry about here but it's good to see that people are skeptical. People take their data for granted far too often.

In addition to real time encryption, it also handles sound and siri, which presumably involve some form of remote communication. I trust Apple as much as NSA, MacOS is closed but it's pretty controllable, T2 Chip is not.

He/She is just trying to be cute. The T2 is a security chip that, ironically (in the context of the parent,) makes spying more difficult since it's on-device security.