For those unaware, from a processing power perspective, hardware can be considered weapons of war. I don't remember which country, but it was forbidden for Sony by the US to sell PS3s to it (maybe Iran?) because at the time its processing power was so incredible, an array of PS3s could be used for things like brute-forcing passwords and decoding encrypted documents pretty efficiently.

This OP here is on another level though: we are talking about a massive Trojan horse, in the form of surveillance, backdoors and data exfiltration disguised as legitimate hardware and software. We are talking putting Troy on fire in the middle of the night and hitting Achilles with pinpoint accuracy.

For those unaware, from a processing power perspective, hardware can be considered weapons of war. I don't remember which country, but it was forbidden for Sony by the US to sell PS3s to it (maybe Iran?) because at the time its processing power was so incredible, an array of PS3s could be used for things like brute-forcing passwords and decoding encrypted documents pretty efficiently.

This OP here is on another level though: we are talking about a massive Trojan horse, in the form of surveillance, backdoors and data exfiltration disguised as legitimate hardware and software.