Correct me if am wrong ... Are we looking at chinese production lines, thereby any cpu manufactured in china is suspect or eventually will be suspect once wild becomes embedded or technically before embedded occurs? Think know the answer and would answer yes ... thereby Mac is screwed, as are all the Sallys (all cpu’s) out there. Too bad we moved our manufacture base outside. Another sideline for those wishing us harm. Matter of time, exponentially.
Naw, they could do that at any time. Hell, they put the ROMs in from the get-go. This is a one-off exploit where someone wants to watch what you do. . . steal data, credit-card numbers, Identifity theft, secret formulas, etc.
If they really wanted to screw with us, they could imbed a time-bomb code in all of our computers set to go off on a specific date. . . and just kill everything from working at a specific time, coordinated for time zones. In the chaos created, walk right on in with the People's Army.