I'm not sure what you're calling conspiracy theories since it looks like the GP edited his content, but if you think China is not exfiltrating data from hardware, let me know. I'll provide you with copious references from the recent past. Sure, the US is doing it, too.

I certainly think they do for businesses, but worrying about state actors attacking your home network is kind of pretentious until they actually do it. Are you that special?

The comment was something about how if you get the FBI mad they'll fabricate a drug case against you which somehow involves hacking into your home router or possibly subpoenaing your ISP.

If the favorite color of hat for you happens to be black, then sure, why wouldn't the state actors being looking for you? If you've done some stuff that involved using credit cards that didn't belong to you or any other of a myriad of things on the FBI's list of things you should not do, then they will be looking for you.

Please do provide the references.

Here are just a few. There are more if you dig deeper:

https://cybernews.com/security/walmart-exclusive-routers-oth...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/easte...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/multiple-backdoors-and-vulnera...

Even Cisco was doing it: https://www.zdnet.com/article/cisco-removed-its-seventh-back...

And the NSA was known to be intercepting router shipments to international customers, injecting their backdoors, then re-shipping the modified hardware:

https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p... (this is documented all of the place; infoworld may not be the best source but it is just one)

For every example that is exposed, it is safe to assume there are others that have not been found.