Spectre/Meltdown Pits Transparency Against Liability
The question that needs to be asked is this... were Intel subject to the same products liability laws as auto manufacturers or drug makers, would it make Meldown, Spectre and the ME vulnerabilities less likely? We know from other industries that products liability laws make for safer products, but we refuse to acknowledge that our CPU's are critical to safety because we don't pay much attention to how pervasively they are used, or the 2nd and 3rd order effects of flaws in the chips.<p>Its very possible, perhaps even likely, that Intel may profit more from the replacement of impacted chips, then it will lose settling various class action cases it faces. Its questionable if Intel's competition can or will grow manufacturing capacity such that Intel faces a real competitive threat.<p>It isn't that Intel is too big to be allowed to fail. Its that Intel is actually too big to fail; and that does not provide them the right incentives where product safety and quality is concerned in my opinion.