It feels like the NSA has the slightest bit of shame compared to China, culturally, about spying and how it's used. I don't like it, I fight it, and I support the EFF, but I still think the US is unequivocally better than the Chinese government.

And why aren't there other sources of the highest tech networking gear? As someone said, what about the Japanese or the Swedes with their telecom?

Or even open source hardware... it will be years before there is FOSS hardware for ISP routing, but oh well.

I wonder if the financial incentives (i.e. bribes) to avoid China also stipulate buying Cisco or Motorola. If not, I wonder if this will backfire and create a great opportunity for Fujitsu/Ericsson/Nokia to advertise their relative safety and independence.

Yes, they are all bad, but at some point you will have to choose the lesser evil.

Yes, because the CCP deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to state sponsored spying.

Is it hard to imagine that this is truly 100% backdoored by China's secret services? Nope. Avoiding it is the smart thing to do. Yes, NSA will try to do the same but China will also ask it's citizens to avoid known NSA backdoored devices.