It sounds like bullshit

ComputingPolitics

Statement from DHS Press Secretary on Recent Media Reports of Potential Supply Chain Compromise

The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise. Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story.

Gruber

For me, having the current U.S. government weighing in publicly on this issue does not fill me with any sense of confidence or reassurance on either side of this story

That DHS statement does sounds like bullshit. As does the report from GCHQ, who never do press statements normally.

I believe what Bloomberg states is so doable at a technological level that if Chinese Intelligence were not doing it, they would be incompetent. Who needs a chip the size of a grain of rice … people have been talking about the potential of embedded spy code in the microcode of CPUs for years now.

The only possible response for Western Intelligence agencies who found out about something like this, would be to pretend they did not know, and then use it to feed false Intel to the Chinese.

It’s all gone a bit ham fisted and I imagine the Chinese don’t believe any of what they pick up any more but it is clear why Apple and Amazon would lie if this were the case … US Counter Intelligence would insist.

There is probably a server farm somewhere, where a collection of these machines, discovered in Apple, Amazon, the US Navy, who knows … is drip feeding carefully crafted lies to the Chinese, in the hope they are still bothering to listen.

Maybe the nature of the lies says something.