I don't follow. If anything it makes the parallel story easier to publish as a sort of "me too" (no disrespect.)
Maybe it takes away from the firmware hacking version of the story because now folks are looking at components as being the source of hacks and not the firmware on the components, leading to a false sense of security when they invest mightily in analyzing components with X-rays? I could see that outcome as being plausible. If the ultimate outcome is simply to change corporate priority towards futile component verification and away from firmware verification then indeed the firmware verification vector remains safe for the attacker.
More like "Oh look, another story about extra components inserted by a big state actor. Bloomberg just got burned for this, I'm not going to risk my/my organization's reputation on the slight chance that this one is real"
Or, "Extra chips on the motherboard? You're about a month behind the news cycle and didn't you hear it was all BS anyway"
But the false sense of security interpretation is plausible too.
I wonder who holds conferences on the cutting edge research of manipulating media
Maybe it takes away from the firmware hacking version of the story because now folks are looking at components as being the source of hacks and not the firmware on the components, leading to a false sense of security when they invest mightily in analyzing components with X-rays? I could see that outcome as being plausible. If the ultimate outcome is simply to change corporate priority towards futile component verification and away from firmware verification then indeed the firmware verification vector remains safe for the attacker.