[falleng0d]

Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? Of course this can happen. and not only I support it but I think they should do it more and use it to get a shot on any criminal or foreign power.

We can do it, but we shouldn’t expose ourselves for the possibility of our opponents doing it. That simple

[bayindirh]

Who is "we" in this context?

I'm neither from US nor from China, so I don't belong to either "we". So in my case no hardware is safer unless I design the board and develop the firmware on top of it.

Even then, I'm not sure whether there are hardware vulnerabilities baked in.

[falleng0d]

I think it’s safe to say that by “We” we can assume it would be your country and its allies.

War and spying has been a thing for a long time now. I think it’s unreasonable to expect countries to not make use of their respective industries and enterprises to get an edge on each other.

The fact is that this kind of hardware is just very good for that so as I a costumer, I feel you and I think the best we can do is buy a custom hardware and install a custom OS. Like open-wrt.

But I will not complain of my country doing that because when I see adversaries doing it, it’s completely reasonable that it also do. In fact, game theory, mandates it.

[bayindirh]

> I think it’s safe to say that by “We” we can assume it would be your country and its allies.

I live in a country which has been spied on for years by its closest "ally". See Crypto AG scandal for more details. So in my case there's no "we".

Yeah, the most realistic trade-off might be installing OpenWRT and some tripwires to see whether anyone is trying to do something nefarious remotely.

In spying, there's no "we".

[graemep]

> In spying, there's no "we".

Sometimes your own government is the most likely to spy on you.

> Yeah, the most realistic trade-off might be installing OpenWRT and some tripwires to see whether anyone is trying to do something nefarious remotely.

I agree with that, but its beyond the reach of most people.

I think zero trust or low trust within your LAN is also a good idea. So is firewalling ISP supplied routers.

[falleng0d]

Thats also fair. I agree.

[severino]

There are no allies in this world. There are opponents, and opponents who say that they are your allies.

[Cthulhu_]

If a government has a backdoor it can be exploited. What if your US made router's backdoor is discovered and abused by a Chinese party? No backdoor can be made to only exclusively be unlocked by its creator.