"The $foo is vulnerable to a physical attack that allows an attacker to gain a root shell..."

This is true for nearly any device, including your cell phone, your MacBook, etc, etc, ad nauseam.

And every time these devices come up there's so many comments on how they would never have one in their home, ostensibly because "it's always listening".

This is sickeningly naive in my opinion. Any device with a microphone is capable of the same thing. You shouldn't be trusting your phone any more than an Alexa device.