Also, who decides which entities are adversaries? I don't personally consider "China" my adversary. As an American who has to deal with US companies, many of them are far more antagonistic to me than a foreign country 10K km away.

If "China" decides it doesn't like me, my life really isn't going to change much. If my electric company decides it doesn't like me, I'm in big trouble.

If you are an American company US backdoors are annoying but hard to avoid given the government will find ways to compell access anyway. Adding potential avoidable foreign back doors does not improve your security.

I wouldn't tell a Chinese company to buy from Cisco. I wouldn't tell an American one to buy from Huawei.

Exactly. This is not a question of whether you get spied on, it is a question of who gets the monopoly for spying on you. Between extortion groups, cybercrime syndicates, foreign governments and last but not least my own government, there's not much room for real privacy online these days.

>> 1. As a practical matter, no one can audit systems so thoroughly to determine a system built by an adversary won't act adversarially.

> Can we audit American corporations?

What's your point? Did you even read what I wrote? The five words of your comment seem to be pretty sloppy:

1. If you're taking about their products, which is probably what you meant: if you think they're your adversary, then the answer is no, it's pointless.

2. But your comment as written reads as if you're talking about auditing the corporations themselves, which does in fact happen (for tax and financial reporting purposes).