Russians would often fend this off by saying "the CIA major is farther than the FSB one".

But of course there's little reason to doubt that all public-facing separation between world's secret services is but a spectacle, just like the idependence of CAs.

Not only that, but also all encryption running in OSes that run above lower level, battery-powered SoCs with full network stack like Intel ME, AMD PSP and ARM TrustZone.

Oh, really? That's interesting.

But as they say, the chain is as strong as its weakest link.