You just need ONE board to be able to prove it. Surely Bloomberg or their sources can get their hand on a single piece?
The informant may have perfectly accurate information but be completely unable to provide physical evidence. For instance: they could have been briefed on the matter, but still have no physical access to the datacenter or to the location where the compromised servers were taken to.
A lot of the demands for physical proof make the false assumption that someone who knew about the spy chips and talked to Bloomberg would have had physical access to an example. That's simply not the case. How many of us work as software engineers in Fortune 500 companies, and how many of us could walk into one of our employer's datacenters and take a photo of the motherboard of a particular machine that we frequently work with? Not many, I'd imagine.
See: Joseph Nacchio and Qwest
What if it's the Chinese government that's putting pressure on Apple and Amazon? What would Tim Cook do if he was told on no uncertain terms that Apple would be kicked out of China and its iPhone production lines shuttered if it confirmed this story? Even if the chance they'd go through with their threats is small, it's an enormous risk to Apple and taking it would be hard to justify to its shareholders. FAANG companies are clamoring for access to the Chinese market, and that gives the Chinese government a lot of leverage.
I don't think it likely though because such a nuclear option from the CN government would have the effect of basically destroying their position in the global supply chain.
I could believe it if the denials so far felt incomplete or ambiguously worded as if they were tiptoeing around something that they were not allowed to disclose. I could believe it if all we had coming from Apple and Amazon was the usual lawyer-speak "I won't confirm of deny" bullshit. Instead we've had completely unambiguous "this is completely false and never happened". If it turns out to be a lie it's going to be devastating for the trust in Apple or Amazon.
I mean think about it, if for some reason the US or Chinese agencies wanted to downplay or shift the blame they had so many easier ways to do it that would put them in an awkward position if somebody manages to prove the existence of these backdoored mobos. If the best spin they could come up with was "just deny everything and make sure to do so at a regular interval so people are constantly aware of our denial" they really need better PR people.
Well, at this point everybody is watching for weasel words, so a categorical denial is the only thing the government can demand that wouldn't provoke suspicion.
> If it turns out to be a lie it's going to be devastating for the trust in Apple or Amazon.
Oh, please. Companies have had millions of credit card numbers stolen, and nothing happens.
Apple and Amazon would get a bit of bad press. The tech folks wouldn't trust them any less than they already do. And it would blow over in a couple weeks at worst.
At this point, my Bayesian priors are lowering on Bloomberg, but they are not necessarily going up on Amazon or Apple.
since when taking a photo of the claimed motherboard with a foreign spy chip on it is considered as "dismantle" company property?
> discredit your employer knowing that it's likely to damage them and ruin you
I thought those huge number AAPL and AMZN investors deserve some truth.
But it doesn't matter - this is happening 100% guaranteed.
'We' do it and China has become far more aggressive in these areas these days ... so if they could be doing it, they would be.
Someone should come up with a bit of proof though.
" this is happening 100% guaranteed."
I don't know what brave new world we have entered where journalists, or even online users for that matter, make confident claims about things for which there is no physical evidence.
I worked at a large high-tech firm with business in the middle east, including content-filtering solutions and we were basically 'required' to work with Western governmental entities of a 'security nature'.
The US has massive clandestine projects in this regard and some of them are not so secret - consider the recent Wikileaks: [1]
"The US intelligence agency has been involved in a concerted effort to write various kinds of malware to spy on just about every piece of electronic equipment that people use. That includes iPhones, Androids and computers running Windows, macOS and Linux."
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
All countries with active spy/clandestine agencies are spying on one another using malware, spyware, hardware hacking, phishing, social engineering, whatever. And many firms are complicit to one degree or another.
That Apple or AWS etc. may have been compromised with a specific attack makes for a really weird story - but that this is happening in general is a non-story - of course it is. It's not about this specific attack really.