Two key words in your comment are both spectrums: trust and privacy.
Most people implicitly trust their hardware more than Snowden does now -- they overestimate the security from the factory and he probably has better expectations of the likelihood of hardware compromise.
On the privacy spectrum, one point is how much privacy you think you have, and the other (unknown) point is how much you actually have. Similarly, I think Snowden's situation and prior experience helps him more accurately understand where those points are; the rest of us are up on the first peak of the Dunning-Kreuger chart.
Two key words in your comment are both spectrums: trust and privacy.
Most people implicitly trust their hardware more than Snowden does now -- they overestimate the security from the factory and he probably has better expectations of the likelihood of hardware compromise.
On the privacy spectrum, one point is how much privacy you think you have, and the other (unknown) point is how much you actually have. Similarly, I think Snowden's situation and prior experience helps him more accurately understand where those points are; the rest of us are up on the first peak of the Dunning-Kreuger chart.