> by the mere virtue of not being hosted in the USA
I don't know where Telegram is hosted, but whenever I fire the desktop app there is always at least a google DNS request, sometimes some additional connections to google hosts. It certainly does seem to partially rely on the USA.
This is hilariously out of touch. If the telegram team is based out of UAE, then the UAE government can easily force them to hand over data even if it’s stored on foreign servers.
