A device with unknown provenance is much more likely to be compromised than one from an organization making good money from a legitimate business model.
Sure, but this is the type of product where trust is not what you want to rely on at all.
Edit: I mean: if it's possible for the manufacturer to compromise their customers, then in the case of crypto wallets, you have to assume that they will screw their customers over. The potential profits for a company like Ledger, running a long scam, waiting for the moment their take hits a high enough sum to be worth doing a runner and relocating to some island paradise under a fake name, are just too great to allow for trust.
Until now, I assumed the whole point of HW wallets was a 100% assurance of trustlessness. Now, it seems maybe that isn't the case.
That sounds like extremist individualism. You have to trust someone. The potentially nice thing about cryptocurrency in this regard is that you have more control and transparency about who you're trusting and what they're doing with that trust. But there's still trust involved.
That's seems a little abstract to me. All I can say is, a hard-learned fact for anyone who's followed the crypto scene from the early days is: strangers will take your money if it is at all possible. You do not have the protections you're used to having from society. Trust is a weakness that will be exploited.
