There was an excellent talk related to this that Joanna Rutkowska gave at the 32c3 conference (she talked quite a bit about Intel's ME too, I was completely unaware of its existence up to that point):
https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7352-towards_reasonably_trustwor...
http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/12/23/state_harmful.htm...