Why do you call them "spy" chips? Have they been found to generally have backdoors?
In an embedded context, a lot of that doesn't matter either way - your dumb coffee maker doesn't have a lot of opportunity to spy on you anyway. Smart devices are a very different story. However, Chinese embedded chips are often very cheap for the capabilities.
And all Intel and AMD processors have "spy" capabilities too with the built-in black-box Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor. And it's only becoming more powerful and commonplace with remote attestation and Microsoft Pluton. In a few years PCs might become just like mobile phones - the bootloader locked down requiring signed images from Microsoft, etc.
Given all of that, China seems like a great option if they produce RISC-V processors.
In a few years PCs might become just like mobile phones - the bootloader locked down requiring signed images from Microsoft, etc.
The number of Windows-exclusive programs are rapidly dwindling. In a few years, it may not be such a big deal to simply avoid that with Linux (or FreeBSD).
In an embedded context, a lot of that doesn't matter either way - your dumb coffee maker doesn't have a lot of opportunity to spy on you anyway. Smart devices are a very different story. However, Chinese embedded chips are often very cheap for the capabilities.