Well, if you follow the news, apparently South Korea is beholden to Samsung, not the other way around ;)
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/27/south-korea-prosecutors-seek...
It may also be relevant that there are no US-manufactured phones. Indeed, even Samsung phones are full of chips from mainland China and Taiwan.
It's notable that Director Wray's response included language about "foreign governments that don't share our values":
> "We're deeply concerned about risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunciations networks."
It was laughable that the Australian Government forbade NBN bids that included Huawei equipment, but happily accepted gear from Cisco.
At it's face value this is indeed true. However, it is interesting there is no mention of Samsung then, right? Why would they be exempt from this recommendation, especially given Samsung phones are hundreds or perhaps thousands of times more prevalent than Huawei and ZTE phones in the US.
Shouldn't the argument from the FBI, CIA, and NSA be that US citizens shouldn't purchase any non-US manufactured phone? I'm skeptical as to the true purpose of the statement. This might possibly indicate that for whatever reason Huawei and ZTE don't play ball with the US when it comes to surveillance and the US intelligence agencies don't like it. If anything, this just raised the probability of me purchasing one of these phones. I'll probably stick with BlackBerry, but I will at least consider these next time I need to buy a new phone.