[fencepost]

It's not clear to me how this differs qualitatively from the current situation with equipment manufacturers all doing their own customizations to devices. Quantitatively there's a difference - a smaller pool of devs/maintainers to potentially subvert and a much smaller pool of potential users vs. a much larger manufacturer dev team and a much larger potential pool of users.

How much would it cost to buy off, for example, the entire radio hardware/firmware team at a manufacturer in your own country (meaning pretty much either China or South Korea), and on a governmental scale how reasonable or unreasonable is that number?

[avn2109]

When you put it like that, it seems inconceivable that the alphabet agencies in various countries didn't do this years ago.

[fit2rule]

Ahem Qualcomm.

[bitJericho]

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

[fencepost]

I was thinking just as much as Glenn Greenwald's allegation back in 2013 that the NSA would intercept international shipments of Cisco (and other) equipment, implant backdoors, then send it on its way with factory seals.