Various "national security" agencies in the US and Airstrip One are aggressively denying reports that server motherboards assembled in China for their darlings including Amazon and Apple by way of a defense contractor, contained hardware implants allowing for Chinese ownership of the machines (archived). The language of the denials, especially on the part of the afflicted darlings, involves substantial claims and fabrications of ignorace with respect to this particular embarrassing episode. At the same time the denials on the part of the companies are sufficiently slimey to likely evade claims of fraud over the denials when weighed according to the rituals performed by empire courts at a later date.

Given their hallucinations of immunity from claims, denials by "national security" agencies are rarely bounded by such cautions. Given the weight of incentives, hedging by parties that might have problems, and the contrasting boldness by parties imagining themselves to immunity from those problems… The credibility of these denials is very low.