Perhaps it's a cynical way to look at it, but in the days of the war on general purpose computing, and locked-down devices, I have to consider the news in terms of how it could be used against the users and device owners. I don't know enough to provide useful analysis so I won't try, but instead pose as questions to the much smarter people who might have some interesting thoughts to share.
There are two, non-exclusive paths I'm thinking at the moment:
1. DRM: Might this enable a next level of DRM?
2. Hardware attestation: Might this enable a deeper level of hardware attestation?
> how it could be used against the users and device owners
Same here.
Can't wait to KYC myself in order to use a CPU.
I don't think it's applicable to DRM because you eventually need the decrypted content: DRM is typically used for books, music, video, etc., you can't enjoy an encrypted video.
I think eGovernment is the main use case: not super high traffic (we're not voting every day), but very high privacy expectations.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323743
It's not related to DRM or trusted computing.
> how it could be used against the users
We are not anymore their clients, we are just another product to sell. So, they do not design chips for us but for the benefit of other corporations.
3. Unskippable ads with data gathering at the CPU level.