Uncorrectable freedom and security issues on x86 platforms (2016)

Take microcode for example. At one time (as I understand it) microcode was not a signed blob. However companies wishing to hide details of their microarchitecture chose to encrypt it.

My guess is that these encrypted blobs grew first out of corporate closed source culture, which is strong in HW companies. If they are subverted with actively malicious code it was probably by secretive efforts, not the NSA simply propositioning the HW manufacturer.

Finally I'd like to point out that unless you design your CPU chip yourself and oversee the layout of it on the die, it is also possible that the semiconductor manufacturer you hire could embed their own nefarious processor within your design.

In practicality, I think running RISC V on an FPGA would have a very low risk of subversion. Though the FPGA design tools might add nefarious logic too.

Of course the government wants this capability to access anyone's system, so I assume nothing will be done. This has to be one of the worst things that has happened in the history of computing.

EDIT: Handy for CBP use, I imagine.

Is this an accurate description of what is happening? (I don't pay much attention to desktop systems: I spend most of my time concentrating on the ever-worsening mobile arena.) Do these "major distributions" come with a recent version of bash? As someone who develops software under the GPLv3 license, I would not want my software being distributed to these machines via this hack :/.

You can take RISC-V ISA specification or ready Verilog/VHDL and produce working ASIC chip relatively easy, but it's not fast.

If you want fast general purpose chip in that competes toe-to-toe with AMD and INTEL, it will take huge amount of chip and physical design, simulation and verification. AMD has spent tens of millions to get new x86 ISA compatible architecture out. Doing the same for RISC-V without enough demand would be economic suicide.