Then that's a product of bias, a bias which unfortunately has become widespread. I've not seen any evidence of Intel taking "security shortcuts".
A shortcut would imply a conscious decision, while the Spectre family is caused by an oversight, an oversight done by numerous companies implementing their own microarchitectures.
Not bias, I'm just presuming that AMD pass a minium low bar for common sense and business survival, the same low bar I'd apply to Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, or Google.
If you understand Spec-ex attacks then you know it affects Intel because they skipped privilege checks on stuff that had passed checks earlier in the pipeline as implied trust, in order to speed up the pipeline. Call it a shortcut, call it an optimisation - it doesn't matter. AMD checks privileges at every stage rather than assuming implied trust. That's a gross oversimplification but the TL;DR is that Intel chose speed over security, and AMD chose security over speed.
AMD's decision to choose security over speed has been vindicated publicly and presumably ratified internally at AMD, possibly making them even more security-cautious than they were previously. That basic decision of security over speed saved their bacon and they got to see what might have happened if they'd made the same shortcut/optimisations as Intel. Call it a free lesson at Intel's expense. That's not bias, that's just how
any competent company should be run.
So no, presuming AMD won't take shortcuts isn't pro-AMD bias. It's based on historic empirical data.
I am now assuming that
everyone takes spec-ex and pipeline privilege checks more seriously, not just Intel.
