I am a „liberal“ German and I really have a hard time to translate that correctly. I am neither conservative, liberal nor libertarian. German „liberalism“ and how it is seen in most countries is a distinct mix of all of them, but not in the extremist sense: while we european liberals like to be conservative in private, we accept and promote civil liberties (including abolishing death penalty and being allowed to smoke marijuana) and still want much less government and taxes (yet we do not hate the government as the libertarians do).
You may still fall under the US definition of libertarian, which is a fairly broad spectrum. There is a split within libertarians, which used to be denoted by so-called "big L" Libertarians (Libertarian Party) and "small l" libertarians, but I haven't seen those terms mentioned as much lately. In general US libertarianism is a spectrum like any other political ideology, and you'll see people who represent extreme versions of it (think "muh roads" meme), some who fall more toward the traditional classical liberal position, and some who are more left leaning (communitarianism and neigboring groups, some Greens as well).
I think because we only have two major parties here, outlying groups tend to mix together more, even when they have substantial disagreements in their philosophy. As a whole, we are also less well-educated about alternative political systems, which makes the discussion more confusing for everyone involved.
The discoverability of a hardware hack as reported makes the whole thing fail to ring true for me.
As Joe alludes to, why do something so discoverable when there are numerous other attack vectors that would preserve plausible deniability?
It appears close to a one-time trick, if you’re China. Once the trust is gone, it’s not coming back. Supply chains are already coming back home due to automation and consequently less reliance on cheap manual labour.
The case would have to be compelling - something that could not be achieved otherwise. That case is yet to be made.
When you ask "why would they?" you can intuit a seemingly good case either way that they would or wouldn't (maybe they would because they're incompetent.)
Instead of relying on intuition, a more to-the-point question is "did they do it?" We have to wait for a definitive answer to this from the authorities.
