I don't really care for the reason, why can't we as consumers opt out if it's consumer oriented then? For me it's not even about the egregious security and privacy implications -- I just simply want the (illusion of) choice w/r/t silicon rootkit 'features' that I'll never use.
>>intelV+(OP)
You can, it even says in the article that Lenovo and Dell are shipping with the Pluton chips disabled by default. If they can do it, a user can disable it to (for now at least).