Reading these articles and the history of tradecraft has pushed me in Bloomberg's corner. Even without access to any privileged information, I am highly certain that history will come down on Bloomberg's side. It is simply more likely - from first principles reasoning alone - that Bloomberg's story is true than it is false.

A famous example is Operation GUNMAN. At the height of the Cold War, the KGB bugged typewriters used by the US Consulate in Leningrad. The breach was so significant that it took some time for them to figure out what had happened, but eventually the NSA got involved (as did the NYT). They of course denied that anything like this ever happened (until a few decades had passed), and they tried to reverse it/control what the soviets saw etc.

Here's the NSA's report,

https://cryptome.org/2012/05/nsa-gunman.pdf

Here's a LA Times article published around the same time,

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-04-13-mn-504-st...

Some choice excerpts,

> “He wanted the Soviets to hear 95% of what he had to say--when he briefed a congressman, for example,” the diplomat said. “This was one way he had of getting his ideas across to the Soviets. For the other 5%, you had the secure rooms.”

> The wife of a former security officer at the American Embassy, for instance, recalls complaining long and distinctly to her kitchen walls several years ago about the disappearance of her favorite butcher knife, seemingly purloined by the Soviet maid. She came home from work a few days later to find a lump under the living room rug. It was the knife.

It is difficult to find citations for this, but the NSA knew about the typewriters since at least 1982. However, the State Department "refused comment" on the stories published in '87, and the NSA (which wasn't well known at the time) IIRC denied it,

> Embassy officials have refused comment on a CBS News report last March that the Soviets spied on the U.S. embassy from 1982-84 by slipping eavesdropping devices into typewriters.

https://apnews.com/article/d79106674e3cac8460d3f8035f1e70fc

For a more modern example, there's STUXNET. Sure we know a lot about it, and they've more or less gloated on background, but they still technically deny any involvement. The official line is that it didn't happen. And there is no real confirmation that it was the US or Israel. Just assumptions.

As the decades pass, and the utility and political impact fades, STUXNET will be written about and redacted reports about it will be published. This timeline exists for a success. The timeline for a failure is likely to be longer.

None of the participants involved have the incentive to confirm this story. Apple and other companies will lose face. The NSA and FBI would inadvertently disclose sources and methods. SuperMicro would lose customers.

It is more believable to me that a state that has billions of dollars at its disposal has deployed such methods against major US companies than it is to believe that such an event hasn't happened. It becomes far more believable given the push to bring back foundries etc to the States. Is this a shot across the bow? A way to let most of congress know that this is a real concern? Who knows?

The balance of probabilities falls on the side of this being true rather than false. If you and I could think of this as a method to capture incidental usage data to map out US facilities etc and catch OPSEC fails, then the Chinese security apparatus can do so as well. However, unlike us, they have the ability to print money and throw both capital and labor at the problem until it resolves in their favour.