Abscence of evidence isn't evidence of the abscence thereof.

That it runs cold lodges it firmly in the "we are pointedly not going to talk about it" space, which for me is where the worry even starts. If my little gray hat wearing mind can come up with plausible ways to exploit something like that...

A) I am not that smart

And

B) Someone in a position to pull something like that off has probably already implemented it.

'Who benefits?' Seems to be a relevant question.

Intel has to have spent quite a bit of money to add any feature that you see; so why would they do that without a strong market case...?

Yeah, nobody in this topic has copped to actually using the ME so far. I've never heard of anyone using it.

Most do not use it "directly", but instead use features implemented by it.

E.g. I've used Intel Platform Trust Technology (PTT) to implement system security features, and AFAIK that runs on ME.

I mean, it is the NSA. They're probably pretty good at what they do. I should hope so, tax dollars pay for it.

>trail just seems to stop cold.

There's your evidence.

No, that's the absence of evidence.

Only when your priors are that absence of evidence (in the sense of the trail going cold) is normal. Your parent comment's point is that this is a conspicuous absence of evidence.