Did the "Chinese spy chip" reported by Bloomberg ever exist?
21
169
580
2030
28%
chance

In 2018 Bloomberg, generally known for high accuracy standards published a story about Chinese spy chips allegedly found in Super Micro servers: https://archive.is/n3X0v

Pretty much every major party named, from Amazon and Apple to government organizations, denied there is any truth to those claims.

In 2021 Bloomberg acknowledged the denials but doubled down on the claims and even expanded them: https://archive.is/ztLIr

This market resolves to YES or NO if I consider either answer more than 95% probable by the end of 2030, otherwise to my estimated probability then.

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What is your current p(exists)? I was under the impression it was pretty well debunked, but have not kept up.

@RobertCousineau I notice I am confused:

  • literally everybody denied it, no solid evidence was ever presented

  • as described the chip is somewhat possible but a weird place to put it

  • Bloomberg generally does not make stuff up and their claimed sources are extensive

  • they seem to have gotten some factual details like infrastructure organization at Apple verifiably wrong

  • their claims are all over the place with different vectors, levels of sophistication and so on, some lesser claims seem very plausible

  • NSA, Apple and friends have lied about simmilar stuff before

  • servers naturally reach second hand markets, if that was true it's likely somebody would have found one of those chips and done a Defcon talk on it

My best guess would be buy at 20 sell at 50, I think