Even if the US already did it, it's still scandalous.

This is whataboutism in an attempt to distract from moral turpitude of Chinese actions with "what about the US?"

It is bad either way.

Yes, it's bad. But I'm trying to figure out if this is "business as usual" or crossing a line.

I'm not a US citizen so the US spying on me is already scandalous but if the US is doing it, I expect countries that aren't our allies to do the same.

This is the same tired argument that's dragged out anytime people raise concerns about using Chinese hardware.

>I don't care if the Chinese government has my data, I'm not a Chinese citizen

>The US spies as well

>The US did something wrong in the last 100 years, therefore you shouldn't complain that China did it last week

No, the question is this:

The US is doing certain things that seem outrageous.

The US is supposedly an ally of my country.

China is not explicitly an ally (just a trade partner).

So if the US spies on us, that's scandalous but it significantly lowers the bar for what I expect our non-allies to do to us.

It's not whataboutism, it's a precedent by which all future actions are measured. I'm not discounting the news story, I'm asking whether this is just a news story that will be forgotten about in a few weeks or so, or whether this is a total shift in expectations like when we found out what the US was doing to its own allies.