> removing and replacing the nand storage.

But... with this kind of removal, what would these government agents gain besides a free blank phone?

We know, from multiple leaks, that clandestine services from multiple countries, including the US and China, have supply chain attacks, where they intercept computing equipment and install hardware backdoors into it.

Intercept an iPhone, replace the 128GB storage with a 128GB storage and some extra rootkit. Or anything else really.

If you can bypass Apple's secure boot, you probably don't need to do a complete swap of the physical storage medium to get that rootkit installed.

Replace it in the box with hardware-level malware installed.

Why pin point a single individual? They can just boobie trap a whole shipment of iPhones and let them hit the markets. Terror's a numbers game! /s

To evade detection of payload.

Reality sadly goes much further than your imagination.

Dumping without desoldering, reflashing in place, generally speaking if you think it's theorically possible, someone probably have tried. If they have your device, you have already lost.

Supply chain attacks to computers have been documented in various countries. I don't think attacking the iPhone's NAND is practical, though, as it would also need to somehow bypass the signature verification system of the CPU, and even then everything on the chip would be encrypted before it hits the flash.

It's possible that there are bootloader exploits, but fortunately you can't beat these devices as easily as you can on PC.

Pretty hard to find free space inside an iphone to put explosives like they did with the pagers.

Is it? A slightly smaller battery would make room.

But then the counterfeit battery wouldn't be usable in a modern iphone due to lacking the cryptographic signature.