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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

Non-verifiable by what standards?

Modern GPU's often have on device firmware, secure boot chains, microcontrollers, etc. If you don't control silicon design, firmware signing and update pipelines you can't meaningfully attest to what the advice is doing.

But for most of us, that's already the case, isn't it?

For the average paranoid person who is wasting their life on it, sure

But large organizations like defense are all about distributed trust anyway - even if you could verify the hardware, the guy you order to do it is going to be a whole command chain removed and likely a contractor with a clearance in the civilian world.

Whereas your high level political and military leadership having direct contact with managers and designers in production facilities is extremely valuable.

What if my high level political and military leadership are the threat scenario?

Remember Snowden.

You're screwed. An individual is completely powerless against the combined might of the entire country they live in. Nothing you touch and nobody you talk to can be trusted.

But realistically, they'll just bring out the wrench[0].

[0]: https://xkcd.com/538/

Or more likely you're just not that important and will be imprisoned without cause because close enough is good enough.

People always seem to imagine tyranny worries about a standard of evidence. Tyranny has arrest quotas, evidence optional.

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