So are they saying the new NSA supercomputer can't break little old AES?

I find this kinda hard to believe since I would expect government communications and other stuff the NSA would like to know about would be protected with better encryption.

Burning these keys into the silicon ... guarantees that they can be accessed only by the AES engine.

Famous last words? Tell me how this prevents other access to this information. People are resourceful when figuring out how to get to this sort of supposedly protected information. In any case, AES isn't a panacea. It's just a symmetric key algorithm.

"... a glowing tribute to Apple iPhone security according to its author, Simson Garfinkel,"
Except he can't possibly like the sound quality while listening to Simon and Garfunkel.

"A white paper from Apple dated earlier this year about its security features explained that the device's unique ID (UID) and a device group ID (GID) are AES 256-bit keys fused into the application processor during manufacturing. "Burning these keys into the silicon prevents them from being tampered with or bypassed, and guarantees that they can be accessed only by the AES engine.""

This is OUTRAGEOUS!! Burning in any key at manufacture EQUATES to the 'burner people' having records of what they burned!!!!! And it is trivial to associate any such key, therefore, with any purchaser of the device!!!
Are we seen as fools, gullible to this totally unacceptable scheme????