From your tone it sounds like you think such a vulnerability is so obvious that it shouldn't even be mentioned as such. Regardless of how defenseless any device is to an attacker with physical access, the point of Schneier's article was to
>discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on
Do you have a specific issue with this approach to the leak? After all, if such exploits are so obvious and predictable from an attacker like the NSA, it is probably prudent to consider how to defend against them no?