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If there was a secret agreement, the quickness of responses from both implicated parties here reads well. I could definitely see the NSA having contractual language like "Upon suspicion by members of the media, the communications department of Company X should fully deny any and all implications of working with the NSA within 24 hours"

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I think the simplest answer is probably the real answer here. An article had inaccurate information, and all involved parties responded with the same story because they were all responding with the truth.

The alternative is the Chinese government inserted a chip onto boards. Which would have required a modification to the board as well as bypassing all of Apple's own hardware security measures. This sounds like an interesting story, but seems a lot less likely. Would the people planting an additional component not expect a company to inspect their own boards when doing normal checks?

> Would the people planting an additional component not expect a company to inspect their own boards when doing normal checks?

Absolutely.

I often miss assembly errors on boards that I, personally, design and debug.

Unless someone has an automated tester doing optical examination of every single part, it's really easy to miss.

Even moreso if it was just a small batch that had the change.

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