&gt; How many people are qualified to &quot;verify there&#x27;s no backdoor to your CPU&quot;?<p>More than the manufacturer, if it&#x27;s open, and that&#x27;s the point.<p>The manufacturer has an interest or can be pressured into having an interest in keeping backdoors secret. The point is not that every user will themselves audit the firmware, the point is that everyone in principle could either learn to do it themselves or hire someone with the neccessary knowledge to do the audit for them.<p>Food safety also isn&#x27;t achieved by having everyone test their food in their own labs, but by anyone being able to hire a lab of their choice to do tests they want to have done.<p>&gt;  Allowing the end-user to modify the firmware at all also allows malicious actors to do the same.<p>And allowing the end-user to swap out the lock to their house also allows malicious actors to do the same?<p>Just because you can swap out a flash chip on your mainboard, doesn&#x27;t mean anyone can come into your house and do the same.