One of the features offered by TC is that it transforms trust in entities into trust in components (see here on pp. 644-645 for an explanation). In such an approach, it becomes of utmost importance how these entities (which I will call "trust anchors" in the following, but you could also call them "ultimate Roots of Trust") are designed. In an overview paper by TCG, one can read (on pp. 45-46) the following:"Anybody may assume authority to certify. The objective of certification is to provide credible reference for accreditation, hence customers of certified products determine which organizations are credible. TCG feels credibility may be found among many organizations from ranging from product manufacturers / vendors, product consumers and consultants. The product owner ultimately decides which certifier best contributes to assurance and risk management calculations."
The underlying philosophy seems that trust anchors are identified and established by competition. Demand-side competition will determine which entities can be trusted to what extent and for what purposes. While it is an appealing idea to create trust by competition, this assumes that a well-functioning competition between different potential trust anchors exist. In a networked world full of network effects, path dependencies and information asymmetries, is it realistic to assume that such competition will occur in practice? If, in practice, this is an unrealistic assumption at least in some areas, it becomes all the more important to conceptualize the infrastructure surrounding trusted computing as it could be an infrastructure that would, to some extent, be forced on TC users.