> the direction that Intel currently wants to take is apparently quite the opposite.
It's not just Intel. It's clear that ARM is also going in the same direction, by allowing newer cores to be 64-bit (AArch64) only, dropping compatibility with the older 32-bit ARM ISA (actually three ISAs: traditional 32-bit ARM, Thumb, and Thumb2), and IIRC some manufacturers of ARM-based chips are already doing that.
Allegedly there are already off list SKUs from both AMD and Intel that don't support 16/32bit code and boot up without the legacy bits. How far they went in that? I don't know. I'd hope they removed LDT etc. and reduced GDT to just ES and GS (or just used an esbase and gsbase MSRs).
It's not just Intel. It's clear that ARM is also going in the same direction, by allowing newer cores to be 64-bit (AArch64) only, dropping compatibility with the older 32-bit ARM ISA (actually three ISAs: traditional 32-bit ARM, Thumb, and Thumb2), and IIRC some manufacturers of ARM-based chips are already doing that.