For us that don't live in the US or China, it is just a matter of choosing between two evils. And in being pragmatics, the 90% of the population outside of China and the US does not give a damn if the US or China are spying in their mundane conversations.
You recall incorrectly. By extension of the First Amendment, US companies are protected from being forced to introduce functionality so as to collect or decrypt information (or for any other purpose). Carrying out original work for the government is considered to be speech, and as a result cannot be compelled. If the data is already collected and available in a decrypted form to the company a court order can compel the data to be turned over as evidence, as is the case with any data (or any thing) held by anyone (with narrow exceptions related to the 5th amendment).
This was a topic of national attention several years ago when the FBI tried (and failed) to compel Apple to create and sign a custom software update to unlock an iPhone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
Given the choice, I'd choose Cisco every day of the week. It's not perfect but then again there's no such thing as perfect security.
With an E2E messenger, you can be sure that most likely your communications are not being intercepted. With a Chinese company, your communications are never secure.
Not only are Chinese software products not secure, but they'll lie to you about their security. Zoom claimed to have E2E encryption on calls which turned out to be an egregious fabrication (on top of them exporting calls to Chinese servers).
