Plausible deniability where people can look is a huge thing. Even where people can’t Easily look - e.g. Intel ME “firmware”, it’s likely done as shoddy/buggy coding, so Intel can just look incompetent (and not downright malicious) when it does come out.
Russia and China aren’t buying any of this, and are fabricating their own chips. 5-Eyes are likely in on the thing so no reason for them to set up their own fab facilities.
But setting up your own software ecosystem is much easier (especially given Linux / BSD), even though it’s still expensive - so intelligence agencies would rather not give countries incentive to do so just because there’s a back door.
Russia and China aren’t buying any of this, and are fabricating their own chips. 5-Eyes are likely in on the thing so no reason for them to set up their own fab facilities.
But setting up your own software ecosystem is much easier (especially given Linux / BSD), even though it’s still expensive - so intelligence agencies would rather not give countries incentive to do so just because there’s a back door.