Although no state actor would leave in a kernel backdoor that is opened with "rootmydevice" as the magic word.

There is some truth to wha you are saying.

Certain governments are pretty aggressive these days with these things and have an established track record of doing such things.

That said, since it's fully 'open' perhaps it would be more difficult to insert malware than say in a Huwaeii or Cisco router :)