> So what about third parties/reports/partners/contractors? Have they found anything and is Apple aware of those findings? Not disclosed here. Are the QC processes in place sufficient to lead us to believe that Apple would/should have found this issue? etc. If not, who cares if they haven't found it.

You’re making up new assertions from whole cloth - the original story claimed Apple found the chips then alerted the FBI. Apple explicitly and clearly denies every single aspect of the BW/Bloomberg story, and your objection to their denial is that they didn’t deny actions never presented in the article?

That’s called a straw man, and it doesn’t pass muster...