And yet I would bet they already do phone home and send shittons of information.

But to use that to self destroy if stoken or the like would likely generate way too much negative PR to nvidia and bring unwanted attention, so they wont.

I know for a fact my drivers do not phone home. The only GPU driver I've used for years is the one that comes in the linux kernel. It's open source, I haven't read all the code, but I know I could and I know the developers wouldn't be phoning home.

I'd bet a large number of linux users are in this situation since nouveau (nvidia), intel, and amdgpu drivers all exist in the linux kernel and work well.

I'd also bet that whoever buys this type of nuclear-powered graphics card does not plan to use a driver that will not allow 3D gaming or bitcoin mining.