I think the most likely explanation is that Bloomberg got played by the sources who perhaps wanted to trade on the price action the story would obviously cause.
We don't really know anything about Bloomberg's sources we do know the nature of all the parties denying any of this is true.
I find that highly unlikely. Since Supermicro was kicked out of the NASDAQ, I would expect their trading to be much thinner. It would be trivial for regulators to spot some inside trades. And if the sources are indeed intelligence officials, I'd expect their financials to be under special scrutiny.
Nope. The only named source in the article said on Twitter that the journalist reported speculation about possible attacks as facts. The story was fabricated by the journalist. How it got through fact-checking, I don't know.
When your writers are rewarded for stories that move the market[1], it's going to be tempting to go for the sensational and to omit information that weakens the story.
I think this might just be another case of unintentional consequences from incentives.
I think this is very realistic. These days prices move purely on speculation much more than they do on metrics like P/E. A source could have been in a short position, then after taking profit after the article was released could have bought up cheap shares. Thinking about the readership of Bloomberg, anything they publish will have a much larger market impact than an article in Ars. I think Bloomberg was played like a fiddle.
We don't really know anything about Bloomberg's sources we do know the nature of all the parties denying any of this is true.