[teraflop]

That makes sense from the consumer's point of view. But imagine you're a manufacturer, producing USB device controller chips by the million. Would you really be willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to protect against a failure mode that can only happen due to some other company's extreme negligence?

[mikeash]

Yes, but of course it doesn't matter what I think.

It's not abnormal to add protection that isn't needed when everything works properly. As noted elsewhere, the USB spec already requires resettable overcurrent protection, for example.

[knughit]

Tens of thousands of dollars total is far less than it costs a company just to moot the question.