Okay, but would you rather be assassinated by a shot in the head, or a shot in the heart???

Not sure why people need to chose between the US or China, and especially why you started thinking about this when someone seems to just want to share their feeling that they've lost their trust in their government. So what if they trust China more/less, what is that supposed to mean with their relationship with US government? Suddenly they shouldn't actually have a lost it, because some people prefer US over China?

I just don't understand this train of thought, and how it's even relevant here.

The EU in general does have a bit more of a track record of doing domestic spying, but that's balanced out by Germany being very conservative about putting it under legal framework due to remembering the Stasi. The EU and ECHR in general are postwar experiments in constraining the powers of the state for good.

In practice .. for a lot of people, including a lot of Americans, the Chinese surveillance threat is a lot less immediate and a lot less likely to result in negative consequences for them personally than the US one. (Important exception: overseas Chinese! The extraterritorial police stations are really quite alarming)

If the war with Denmark goes hot, then the US companies become an extreme national security threat very quickly.

What is the purpose of saying this? It's being unnecessarily antagonistic towards a genuine sentiment. It's not like you are offering any solution either. Are you proposing nihilism, maybe?

Like, be more weirdly defensive?

I am probably right to say that invading Venezuela would constitute a serious violation of international law. However, I am probably wrong when I say that this closer look analysis from Cloudflare feels very blurry (mostly because my technical skills regarding this article are close to zero, and I cannot clearly explain why). I have read other articles that were more precise and far less “nothing to see here” in tone.

I then find myself speculating (probably wrongly) about the intentions behind writing such an article. This has raised doubts and left me with an uncomfortable feeling, as if I were drifting toward conspiracy-theory thinking. All of this stems from reading that article.

Still, it would make sense to disrupt communications (and collect large amounts of data) prior to invading a country. Ultimately, for me, the core issue is the illegality of such actions when they are carried out by the most influential and powerful country in the world: a country that, increasingly, no one can fully trust anymore.

I am sorry for letting my emotions flow like that. It may not be the adequate spot to do so, but let me be clear: this Cloudflare article smells badly.

Reality isn’t simple or perfect, but pretending you live in utopia is stupidity

Between the USA and China, definitely China. Seems pretty simple. They have much higher standards of living and while it's very bad you can't say Tiananmen Square, that doesn't overrule food and shelter. They have all the job openings for advanced technology work as well - they no longer just manufacture US designs but are rapidly expanding into making better versions of most things, and the main reason we haven't heard about them is that none of the documentation is in English.

They're going to soon find out their stash of dollars is toilet paper, but that won't make too much of a difference with such an advanced economy of their own - the USA will surely have yuan reserves in 30 years.