They are designed in the US, but manufactured and assembled in China. The backdoor can be implemented in hardware, firmware or software - anyone who has physical or logical access to any one of a system's components at any point in time can backdoor it. And they probably do.

I second what @tmalsburg2... please, make a backdoor mandatory. 20 years after that moment no one but americans will care because people will have moved on to more egalitarian products.

when the backdoor is covert and not overtly declared the choice of using the questionable product becomes more economic. the choice gets a lot easier when the government or company clearly states they have a backdoor. for many countries it's not just red flag for using the questioned IT it's a reason to fund industries that compete with a better modal.

Europeans voraciously consume American software with backdoors already (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows), even to the point of destroying their own native systems like Symbian and Nokia.

And they do that, with the full knowledge of the NSA spying programs.

Unfortunately for your theory, most Europeans clearly do not care enough about their privacy. I don't see any vast European protests about the NSA these post-Snowden days, most people have gone back to sleep. European leaders have largely been 'reassured' enough to remain docile about it, after a brief pretend flash of anger and push-back.

Point taken. Most do not care about privacy. I would like to see what happens however when backdoors are transparently and honestly declared or legalized. I do think competitors will form in such a market. Will they succeed is a different question.

I think it's been quite a few years since I bought an assembled piece of gear that was manufactured in the US.

If the iPhone would turn out to be a major vector for Chinese spyware that would indeed be funny. But you know, if the Chinese use these backdoors to prevent terrorist attacks and to catch pedophiles, we should really be thankful to them.