> Protection from the sort of malware OP was hit with is the most commonly cited dire warning against disabling SIP. I just assumed that was also the reason you were against disabling SIP in order to grant permissions to software you intentionally installed.

No. The confusion here is that the Stratechery post combines multiple stories. There was a macOS screen sharing vulnerability, now fixed. The vulnerability existed even with SIP enabled, and that vulnerability is how Ben Thompson's Mac was hacked.

The question was, why did Thompson's Mac have the screen sharing port open to the internet, and that's when Thompson explained that the Mac was running an agent.

Coincidentally, Apple published a developer note on Friday about upcoming changes to Full Disk Access, which mentioned AI agents. Apple did not give any specific reason for this change, but presumably the inspiration was a very recent public controversy initiated by a journalist whose Messages database on macOS was read and uploaded by the Meta Muse app. Muse and similar AI apps request Full Disk Access to access all of the user's information. Without SIP, these apps would be able to suck up all of your data without permission.