I think it's a worthy retort simply because it's the only other major provider.

The American models are less tied to the government. For now...

If we’re talking about models that people actually use, there’s really only Chinese models and American models. I haven’t heard anything about Mistral in ages.

From that lens, criticism of one is practically implicit support of the other. If I tell you that you can buy from salesman A or B, but B is a bad person, that implies A is not a bad person. Otherwise I would have said “they’re both bad people”.

“But Chinese models are controlled by the government” makes it sound an awful lot like the US ones aren’t, because it wouldn’t be a meaningful criticism if that were true of both.

But nobody made that comparison, salesman A was never mentioned or alluded to until you brought them up as a reason not to agree with OP about salesman B. We weren't comparing salesmen, we were just talking about what a shitty person salesman B is.