[szc]

Thanks.

This can be entirely explained if the NSA had already performed a "solar winds" supply chain attack on the vendor that supplied the TLS encrypt / decrypt endpoints. Is the vendor of that hardware known or discoverable?

Google would have no idea the traffic could be intercepted. The NSA could use the Smiley face, perhaps with a nudge, nudge, wink, they are now a "supplier of data" on slides.