I read once that when America refurbishes an embassy somewhere in the world they bring in their own construction company. Otherwise you end up with mics in the walls.

Used to think the Chinese were paranoid with their bans on iPhones and Tesla's...

Kind of. They’re required (or agree to?) to use local labor at least in part, but there American companies that manage the construction. My grandfather (a U.S. citizen) does security inspections for embassy construction, verifying that it’s built to plan, that all materials are traceable to point of origin, etc.

iPhones and Teslas would be overkill anyway: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/thing/

Yeah, that seems completely unavoidable otherwise.

I've always seen it as pretty strange to carry around other people's computers or using external services-- so I've always seen things like phones, Google Maps, etc. as things that it is strange that any country that isn't the US allows people to use.

I don't think one absolutely needs to make everything oneself, but I can't imagine that it's sensible that everybody use external services, so that so much information ends up in one place.