> Your paranoia about the Chinese is equally applicable to Americans, whose NSA has given itself carte-blanche to infiltrate any computing system it desires, for whatever reason, in total secrecy - without recourse for the public to address any wrongs.
Yes, except the China also 'infiltrate' Chinese companies themselves, and can perhaps order them to put in backdoors.
The NSA generally does not order US companies around, as evidenced by the fact it's been documented that they intercept shipments and compromise the systems on their own:
If the NSA had an 'in' into Cisco (or Juniper, or Aruba, etc), they wouldn't need to clandestinely have their own 'compromise factories'.
Yes, both the Chinese and NSA do cyber stuff, but so does every country. At the very least the odds of getting a 'clean' product from an American supplier compared to a Chinese one are higher: the links between Chinese companies and government are often murky.
>Yes, except the China also 'infiltrate' Chinese companies themselves, and can perhaps order them to put in backdoors.
As does the USA's own spy agencies. There is literally no moral authority on this issue that can be claimed by America over China. Did you overlook the multiple NSA backdoors implemented by Microsoft over the years, or just have not caught up to this situation, yet? See also - Intel: TPM.
>The NSA generally does not order US companies around
I believe this to be false on the basis of multiple whistleblower leaks which demonstrate otherwise. Not to mention that American companies have evolved the canary mechanism as a means of bypassing strict secrecy rules around disclosure of this influence by the spooks.
>At the very least the odds of getting a 'clean' product from an American supplier compared to a Chinese one are higher: the links between Chinese companies and government are often murky.
I do not believe this to be true one bit. China and America are equivalent when it comes to trustworthiness, which is to say neither country has the moral authority to claim a more ethical behaviour over the other when it comes to human rights.
China doesn't operate Pine Gap - the worlds biggest, wholesale violator of human rights at massive scale, ever.
Yes, except the China also 'infiltrate' Chinese companies themselves, and can perhaps order them to put in backdoors.
The NSA generally does not order US companies around, as evidenced by the fact it's been documented that they intercept shipments and compromise the systems on their own:
* https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...
If the NSA had an 'in' into Cisco (or Juniper, or Aruba, etc), they wouldn't need to clandestinely have their own 'compromise factories'.
Yes, both the Chinese and NSA do cyber stuff, but so does every country. At the very least the odds of getting a 'clean' product from an American supplier compared to a Chinese one are higher: the links between Chinese companies and government are often murky.