[antocv]

Not hard at all, in fact FBI or some other letter-agency found their switches and routers had hardware backdoors in them back in 2009 I believe, it was kind of a big deal back then.

Since then US stepped up their cyber-warfare capabilities by forming a cyber-warfare department within Pentagon and such, probably also increasing the sampling rate and testing methods of their procured devices from foreigners.

[fnordfnordfnord]

It's funny to me that they try to get back-doors baked in to all sorts of hardware and software, but somehow appear to believe that nobody else has done the same.

[trotsky]

I'm not sure which they you mean, but I assure you nobody is under the impression that only some people do it. Core routers and core cellular gear is quickly becoming an industry that every nation state that can is looking to jumpstart their own homegrown industrial suppliers.

The number of global intelligence agencies that believe cisco (or Huawei or Alcatel etc) core routers are free of side channel attacks or dodgy opaque asics can be safely assumed to be 0.