In that sense, it might actually be "safer" for an individual American to use a Chinese phone. It may be backdoored, but at least the PLA isn't going to share your vacation pics with the DEA, but the NSA might.
If you're an American and you use services outside of the US, you are in fact enabling - entirely legally - the NSA to do dramatically more aggressive things to target your information / data / email.
It's my first time getting flagged but how is claiming that a Russian resident (national or permanent or otherwise) preferring to use Yandex mail a national/personal attack in any way?
I interpreted it through the filter of the current discourse re trolls, bots, manipulation, meddling, and collusion. If you didn't mean to insinuate about any of that, I'm sorry for misreading you!
I wasn't the only one, though (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16381477). It's sad, but if a comment doesn't include enough information to rule out the most inflammatory interpretations, that's where readers will go.