The backdoors are law and built into many points of the internet, starlink and all major telecoms and ISP's have to support it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/security-vpn/lawf...

Also remote management cards on servers. That started around 2010 or sooner.

The problem is the law requiring the backdoor. If you build a door, people are going to figure out how to use it.

Anyone could have told you this is an inevitable outcome. Countless, in fact, did, and it was ignored. Reap the God blessed whirlwind at this point I guess.

They would have definitely known this beforehand. This implies it was more important to spy on US citizens than to worry about attacks from foreign governments and cyber criminals.

Quite bizarre really.

But surely there was never any well-known whistleblower who had to seek political asylum after revealing a decades-spanning underground surveillance program deliberately hidden from American citizens to prevent distrust and outcry against the compliant businesses that cooperated with warrantless surveillance.