Eric Schmidt, Ex-Google, Wants a Kill-Switch on Your CPU

How is that workable for a computer that is not online? Even if online, a firewall could interfere with operation of this mechanism. I expect that the check could be subverted too through clever use of network hackery.

Intel must be fairly close to this already.

I’m pretty sure that close to 100% of Purism customers will think that remote disable functionality on “your” CPU is a terrible idea.

Indeed. Something that regular forum participants here are keenly aware of. That doesn’t mean that there are a lot of alternatives at the current time i.e. alternatives to trusting the CPU manufacturer (whether an Intel CPU in your laptop or an ARM CPU in your phone).