[scrupulusalbion]

> Recent Intel x86 processors implement a secret, powerful control mechanism...

Recent is overflowingly unhelpful, considering AMT (a part of IME) popped up in ICH7 back in mid-2005 [0]. It is unfortunate that Doctorow is associated with this rubbish journalism.

For what its worth, anything that has DMA can takeover a CPU that is reading instructions from RAM. AMT/IME are just explicitly intended to do that.

For those concerned, and probably rightly so, about AMT/IME, the simplest solution is to use a non-Intel NIC [1]

[0] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I/O_Controller_Hub#ICH7

[1] = https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-vpro-technol... ["Intel Active Management Technology communicates only through the onboard network interface of Intel vPro technology. Additional wired network interface cards are not supported and are ignored by Intel AMT."]