Nobody advertises irreparable damage. This testing lab found out the hard way and then had to follow up with the vendors to get an explanation.

This entirely depends on individual's perspective.

As Chris mentioned, this is exactly what Big Corp™ wants. They'll be the ones buying it too, and would likely pay extra for such a feature. They're the target market for these vendors.

Thus, sure, for those looking to buy second hand, this is indeed advertising irreparable damage. But for Big Corp™, this is advertising security (in my opinion quite rightly so), and ensuring their data isn't stolen.

And what happens when old hardware is resold? How can anyone trust any future excorp hardware?

Well you don't. But corportations don't really care about that as much as they care about their data.

Admittedly it feels like AMD could have created something that allows the chip to be reset providing you have the original signing keys.

They should at least disclose to all prospective buyers that a current chip cannot be reset, and how to tell which firmware CA it's stuck on.

> If you don't want a platform-secured CPU, don't buy one.

...the problem is what happens when you buy an unlocked CPU.

It becomes a problem when there's a monopoly or a duopoly of suppliers and there are no suitable alternatives on the market with similar performance characteristics. I believe then the FTC can get involved with antitrust matters if they are abusing their dominant position to prevent reuse/recycling.

AMD has barely 10% server market share, if anything that just shows that Intel is the monopoly.