MPAA and friends has turned their eye on Kodi since a while ago, like Sauron on the little hobbitses. Could this be a submarine piece?
I also hope that Android TV integration for VLC gets better, there are a few things for SMB/CIFS shares that require you hookup a mouse to get through.
Considering that Wired is a legacy media (Condé Nast) publication, it's not inconceivable.
Edit: For clarification - I'm not saying it's impossible. I just personally can't see any obvious beneficiary. Would welcome any suggestions though.
Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) in the UK commissioned a report claiming as much as a million of them have been sold in the UK alone - while I'd take that number with a large pinch of salt given the source, It's pretty clear these things are being sold preconfigured for piracy in substantial numbers in the UK. Several cases concerning individuals have found the individual sellers to have had revenues well in excess of £100,000.
To be clear, I'm in no way advocating banning Kodi just because it has the potential for questionable use, but I think it's also silly to feel frustrated that people only talk about what is probably its most common use case: watching content you haven’t paid for.
If we reduce Kodi to piracy related use cases, we might as well throw in VLC.