30 years ago, my, then-Representative, Mike Pence was going around supporting tariffs on Chinese steel. I thought tariffs were a Bad Idea, prima facie. Pence explained that if we allowed China to decimate our steel industry, we wouldn't be able to make tanks, domestically. Cogito ergo sum, it was a _literal_ national defense issue.

I don't know where the steel issue stands any more, but we've already been at war with China over intellectual property for 20 years. It would make a great deal of sense to subsidize domestic silicon fabs and computer hardware manufacturing, and tariff foreign versions, for the same reason.

It's no secret why Facebook is not allowed in China. They know exactly what it really does, and what its true value is, and they're not willing to allow that leverage to the US, and it's disturbing that their lack of reciprocity doesn't seem to cause much concern.

It's kind of disgusting that we've outsourced so much of our infrastructure to a country which, in another generation, is going to become the world's most powerful. China is playing the long game. We're willingly giving up our lead because we've built our post-70's society on the almighty stock option, and our myopic focus on only the next quarter.

I don’t deny any of that. But where is most of the hardware for just about any network and computing equipment manufactured? Questioning if tplink is made in China is pretty low effort and pointless.

A thoughtful analysis would ask why an onshore supplier would fundamentally be any less vulnerable to political adversaries.

being made in china and being a Chinese company are very different things and the risks are different.

Much like Cisco being exposed to US supply chains leaves them vulnerable to tampering by US intelligence through physical interception, merely being made in China is a security risk.