And if it's one with a Snapdragon CPU, the NSA probably knows too. And while China is rather authoritarian, and I'd be worried if I lived there, currently I'm more worried about surveillance by a government that has more influence on the country I live in, and likely shares data with my countries intelligence services.
Which of course doesn't mean I like the thought they might be doing mass surveillance of people.
Yeah this is exactly how I feel. Like sure I don't want China to spy on me but I don't plan to go to China so it doesn't really matter. What matters more is the USA spying on me cause I live there and that could mean actual consequences if people like Trump get in power and try to go after people that don't agree with them.
I think CPU backdoors are just a theoratically possible thing with almost zero chance of happening or succeeding without anyone noticing or having massive consequences and would bring massive changes to the industry like open source makers sprouting up (because it would open up a market where the open aourc chips could be profitable) because if snapdragon really could do that i don't think china will make phones with them . Also its not worth it because everything you could ever want could be scooped from users os/apps/sites and is far much easy/profitable/easier to get out scot free etc . Anyways i could be wrong about everything so take it with a grain of salt and feel free to correct me .
Why should this even matter? Every android has a proprietary parts of code that need to be included even in custom roms. In case of ios devices, the entire OS is proprietary. I would much rather use a Chinese android phone with an unlocked bootloader than an american iphone.