[nickpsecurity]

"But the hardware design, how the chips are connected, isn't really a secret as such and is easy to reverse engineer and recreate. It's just not very complex."

Hardware design is a combo of how the chips are connected, the firmware, and getting it to users. Your link supports my assertion that they should put in whatever obstacles they can.

"Companies therefor try to protect their IP as much as possible by making reverse engineering harder and by "owning the ecosystem"."

Point 1 in my original comment.