[mjb]

> This touches on what I think is one of the more interesting technological problems that we have to worry about right now. As a disclosure, most of the reason I think that is because I'm a PhD student doing research on hardware security.

If you are a PhD student and aren't working on something you consider 'one of the more interesting ... problems' then you are doing it wrong. In my opinion. You seem to be doing it right.

> perhaps because it's not in their best interest to accuse the people designing their ICs of attacking them.

Would you agree that there is some value in having the capability to detect these attacks? Whether you trust the vendors or not, you need them to be aware than you can check their work, at least to encourage them to follow good security practices internally.