If you want to use the OS to ban a book or program or whatever, you don't need fancy hardware features, just a database of hashes pushed down via a software update. Apple wanted to do a version of this for CSAM images, it only didn't happen because they chose to tell users about it and got massive backlash. The implication that governments need more powerful DRM features to do something similar just obscures the fact that they could do it tomorrow if the US government gave up their free speech stances.
Chip manufacturers could even decide that nothing good happens on open source operating systems, so you're now only allowed to run Mac or Windows operating systems.
The point is really that they're taking full ownership of the chips from you.
They could, but not with the new Pluton stuff. That would be enforced with secure boot, which has been around for a while already. Again, the capabilities already exist. The barrier for a would-be censor is political not technological.
The EU just mandated chats to be scanned for content. Of course just for CSAM just as the meta data collection is only used for terrorism. Problem is that the latter is also used for parking tickets. They really try to hit the definition of a totalitarian state by the letter.
I doubt backlash will do anything. Regardless, the EU also mass collected personal data and made this behavior legal retroactively for authorities like Europol. The course for ever increasing surveillance has long been chosen. Government often disavows such decisions but that is exactly their strategy to implement such laws while evading criticism themselves.
Wider E2EE adoption was the only hope for clawing back some privacy for users who do everything on cloud services. If the EU bans E2EE and starts mandating all kinds of scanning of data stored on third party servers, it would be a massive loss.
I think it may have also been problematic legally for Apple. The US laws for CSAM are very strict and Apple wanted to do some sort of confirmation that the images are indeed CSAM which would have meant moving the images from the device to Apple servers.
