[cyphar]

I think the main reason is that powering off a device (for their hardware kill switches) connected via USB is more reliable than powering off a device connected via PCIe.

There's also just more layers of security when using USB as opposed to a single layer with PCIe (IOMMU -- which is secure as far as I know but I'd prefer to be safe rather than sorry in this case).

[joshumax]

Besides IOMMU bugs, which silicon vendors often subtly add to their errata too much for my comfort; an IOMMU adds security against DMA attacks in theory. I specifically say in theory because oftentimes vendors either don't configure it correctly or leave it totally unconfigured. Additionally, things like multiplexing on the same bus further complicates things

[Aissen]

It depends on the board design. It costs more, but you can have controlled power line for a single device, controllable with a gpio.

Edit: it has a "radio hardware killswitch" ; so it's well designed.

[conradev]

That makes sense.

I thought of the kill switch thing after commenting… eGPUs (necessarily) have the ability to be unplugged while running, but I think it was a lot of work on the part of the OSes to make that work well.

[jsjohnst]

What would be a benefit to putting the modems on PCIe bus? I don’t see any positives, only drawbacks.