There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do. So yes, it's way worse if China does it. Because there not beyond imprisoning or killing people over information gained. Secondly we have no reason to believe the US had implemented backdoors in major processors.
The problem with the OP is it's whataboutism, it's a logical fallacy to say well A does something bad too, so B doing something bad is equivalent. That's a false equivalency.
>There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do.
I am a German citizen living in the UK and I own a Huawei phone. A while ago the American president issued a domestic law and I still don't know whether my phone will be usable in the future or not.
I am not aware of China having any ability or willingness to do the same. As a European citizen I am accustomed to feel the effects of US politics, I can't say the same thing about China.
If anything the loss of US control in the future gives me modest hope for more alternatives and competition.
>Secondly we have no reason to believe the US had implemented backdoors in major processors.
Intel Management Engine has the capability to be a backdoor[1]. Whether the US has keys to it is in question. But it is known that Intel has included features on chips for the NSA[2].
How many US officials were tried, let alone convicted, for their role in torturing people from 2001 to 2014?
Hint: zero.
(The 11 soldiers who were torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib were not tried for torture. Only watered down charges like dereliction of duty, assault, and battery.)
> There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do.
I don't care about the US promising they won't be bad. The fact that their companies can be forced to install surveillance mechanisms is already the worst case scenario for a hardware buyer. Beyond that, I don't care if it's the Americans, the Chinese or the fucking aliens doing the spying.
> There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do.
These limitations and checks are written into laws. These laws can be easily ignored. Remind me as to how many of the 11 soldiers actively torturing people in Abu Gharib and Bagram were actually tried for their crimes?
>There are a lot more limitations and checks on what the US can do
If only those "limitations and checks" were actually followed by the US government and intelligence agencies. Here are some examples I collected during a previous discussion of US vs China surveillance states
>Because there not beyond imprisoning or killing people over information gained
The US government also certainly uses the information gained to kill and/or imprison people, although you could perhaps argue that the scale is not the same
>we have no reason to believe the US had implemented backdoors in major processors.
There is evidence that US intelligence agencies have backdoored products in the past. Personally, that's reason enough to believe that they may have backdoored processors as well
The United States has been executing people overseas for decades without any oversight. Predator drones during the Bush/Obama/Trump eras have only increased in use with no sign of decreasing.
If you read The Dictators Handbook, the author talks about how more democratic nations use foreign aid as a means to prop up autocratic nations in order to extract their resources (autocracy overseas to support the standard of living of those who are your selectorate).
It's like we totally forgot about the 2013 NSA spying revelations, or the 1973 CIA backed coupe in Chile, or the US overthrowing a democratically elected government during the Iranian-Contra crisis...
We should absolutely be concerned that the United States could (and does) inject backdoors to spy on other nations, because causing them to destabilize helps with resource extraction and to keep prices low, pleasing the domestic constituency.
The problem with the OP is it's whataboutism, it's a logical fallacy to say well A does something bad too, so B doing something bad is equivalent. That's a false equivalency.