Possibly, if they had say, a backdoor in all Intel/AMD processors.

The question is what he meant by "We can plant bugs in machines."

Not even then. I remember reading about how he uses the freest (as in freedomest) setup he can get:

http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

He mentions its a Lemote machine which doesn't look like it uses an AMD/Intel processor, as it uses Longsoon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson

"Unlike processors from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices or VIA Technologies, Loongson does not support the x86 instruction set. The processor's main operating system is Linux, while in theory any OS with MIPS support should also work."

Actually, iirc the Chinese made that processor because they were afraid of the US putting backdoors in Intel and AMD chips

So they put theirs.

Just kidding, obviously. But one can't be sure their hardware's all right, unless they go way beyond what we'd consider reasonable.

"We can plant bugs in machines" to me sounds more like a clue that this guy really doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

I think he meant bug as in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_listening_device

whereas you might be understanding bug as in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug

Weird phrasing for starters. I mean that isn't how one would describe malware or a rootkit. I can't imagine hardware would be worth the effort if you can just as easily compromise the OS with physical access.

I just don't know what to make of this guys story. He has no high school diploma, started out as a security guard and was then given a diplomat cover as a system administrator?

He further claims that his job as a systems administrator gave him access to NSA analyst intercept software which I find difficult to believe. I can't imagine use of the software isn't physically locked to a machine in a secure environment. You wouldn't expect a systems administrator to have access to everything, which he claims he had, everything is compartmentalized.

But unlike a rootkit, some HW listening device is resistant to OS reinstalls which I can imagine are pretty common with people that the NSA would target. And I can also imagine that it might be more 'cross-platform'.

Any experts firmware / low level OS hackers can chime in? I imagine this would be Windows focused, then I guess all bets are off. MS would surely cooperate.

Now what about an Open Source OS. NSA and DoD loves them some RHEL (Redhat Enterprise Linux). Would they pay RHEL enough to produce binaries that have backdoors in them? Yeah, CentOS compiles the sources and that's cool. But most organizations buy RHEL for support.

Well I would say they would be very stupid to do that as if it ever comes out it will immediately destroy their product.

Now, just like PRISM will most likely damage US companies using or offering cloud services, any revelation of an exploit that _could_ have been developed with cooperation form manufacturer would destroy that company's business.

The hardware would have the backdoor, independent of the software. Think magicpacket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN but with a hypervisor rootkit. At least that is what I would do.

He doesn't use an Intel or AMD processor, he uses some kind of MIPS64 processor called Longsoon.