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> defends against any access by the owner of the machine, even though that is not necessary to achieve application security

Sure it is. Why shouldn't a laptop be able to protect itself against a nation-state the way an iPhone can? The only real way to do that is to make the enclave keys write-only. Anything less (e.g. giving the user master recovery codes) is vulnerable to the nation-state's favorite tactic—rubber-hose cryptanalysis.

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> The only real way to do that is to make the enclave keys write-only.

That's where you are wrong.

You could install a pubkey in the bios that allowed decryption (by making the symmetric key of enclaves available through encryption with the pubkey). Then the user can choose whether he wants debuggability (by keeping the private key) or security against rubberhose-cryptanalysis (by discarding the key)

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