Even if they do, the options are basically be spied on by the Chinese or by their own governments. In which case, your own governments can do a lot lore damage to you, personally. So go for Chinese phones - what can they do to you?

Closed source control is scary in general but people only care when it's China.

Sometimes governments aren't completely stupid and realize having your communication network ran by foreign companies beholden to a sort-of enemy country is probably a bad idea. Huawei phones don't matter, but they make a lot of stuff used by telecom networks that a consumer doesn't see, which is the far bigger deal.

This is why China is correct to ban American social media who let the government do whatever they want with that info. Also why national security people are probably right to not be dependent on China for something as critical as telecom network hardware so that they have less to think about when wanting to start a war.

This kind of discourse presents a very stark class divide IMO. For the vast majority of people, the immediate concern is the local government collecting information about you. Municipal cops, county sheriff, state police, FBI/ATF/DEA/etc. The cops can ruin your life. What can China do to you - an average schmuck?

The only people concerned about Chinese surveillance are the ones standing on the other side of the line. The ones with wealth and power. The ones who are protected by the cops. The ones who can sleep in peace knowing the cops will cover up their crimes for them. They are the ones who are threatened by information leaking out of their jurisdiction. They can't stand the mere possibility that records of their malfeasance and graft might exist outside of their control, becoming effectively permanent. Meanwhile they employ every technology at their disposal to ensure records of our contacts, habits, debts, and criminal history will outlive the Sun.

I have absolutely no sympathy for these bastards. These are the fuckers who delivered us the most sophisticated surveillance and propaganda machinery in human history and framed it as a tool which would liberate oppressed people around the globe. The fuckers who tried to gaslight us into thinking privacy was an obsolete concept in a world of social media and digital communications. In articles like this, you get to see clearly how much they squirm it when the same standards are applied to them. How nauseous they become when they are equally powerless to control their data. Scrambling like they and everyone they know are pedophiles.

the year is 2036. PLA paratroopers land in my backyard. my hands up, they lift an optical device up to scan me.
"you know i'm cool," i say. flagged as a communist thanks to Chinese spy systems built into our very CPUs and network infrastructure, the paratroopers toss me a bag with a QBZ-34 helium-fusion initiated rail gun, lightweight powered exoskeleton, and other kit and tell me it's time to get to work.

President Xi keeps texting me asking to spy on the west, but other than that I haven't noticed anything

I don't know of any hard evidence but my philosophy with tech is just to imagine you're being spied on by every major government inthe world no matter what you do. If you don't know enough about how to avoid these things that you need to ask a question, then you probably are known to some degree.

The cool thing about this though is that they don't really give a shit about you that much unless you actually become influential and rock the boat at the same time. Otherwise 99% of the time you're just data on a spreadsheet that will only be seen by actual human eyes for a few seconds as they scroll by.

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It's always projection with westerners.

I mean Huawei may spy i dont know. But I do know the NSA, CIA, FBI do. I mean we have actual. Piles of evidence of that and they barely deny it.

Even MI5 said there isn't any

im sure the private for profit corporation behaves very ethically