Quit being naive. It is a legitimate security issue. Imagine telling someone 50 years ago we would have a new peer adversary and we’d allow them to sell us robots that roam our homes and offices with microphones and cameras. You’d seem crazy.

I know it’s inconvenient and on a 1-pass thought pattern it seems oppressive, but in the long term it is better to rip this bandaid off. Same with the routers. This is the ONLY thing I can agree with this admin on.

They aren't MY adversary. The government of the US has been acting pretty adversarial lately. Should I avoid US manufactured goods too?

I'd like to disagree but can't. Letting a foreign power "sell" internet connected microphones and cameras into "our" homes is totally asking for it. I wonder what the rules are around security cameras and similar?

Not sure I mind the routers so much. By the time the traffic is traversing the router it had better be encrypted. OTOH an army of domestic routers can at the very least be made into a quite astounding botnet and if we were to dig deeper I'm sure the data around which hardware address comes online and when could be made extremely useful.

In short: you're right. It's not protectionist bullshit, it's a wide variety of reasonable concerns. It also might be a horse that's bolted.

yes, it's the chinese you should be afraid of! No, not the people shooting it's own citizens under the guise of ethnic cleansing. It's those scary vacuum robots.