Many of these exploits "we're just learning about now", have been discussed at CCC, Defcon and Blackhat conferences in the past few years. It's just that most people weren't aware of them. NSA, on the other hand, has paid much attention to them.

Here's another one about hardware backdooring from 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV0YqJa-0OA

But when we discover a backdoor on Intel chips (not necessarily put there by Intel) in 5 years, everyone will probably act in shock and awe that it was possible.