I fear the American government's totalitarian/police state leanings far more than I fear the PRoC.

Though the Chinese government is undoubtedly an enthusiastic squasher of political dissent, and their secret police are surely quite brutal, and I hate commies with a passion, I am hardly ever likely to have a conflict with the Chinese state.

An Unconstitutional American surveillance state is a far more immediate problem. The NSA can break down my door tomorrow after reading my politically unpalatable text messages, and there's nothing I can do to stop them. So if I had to pick someone to have the keys to my phone's backdoor, I'd pick a "hostile" foreign power any day. Though of course it would be better to have no backdoors at all :)

> The chip is probably manufactured in China

Available info indicates that the A8 is fabbed on a 20nm process by both Samsung and TSMC [1]. For Samsung, that would indicate production in either the US or South Korea [2]; for TSMC, that would indicate production is in Taiwan [3].

[1] http://recode.net/2014/09/23/teardown-shows-apples-iphone-6-...

[2] http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/foundry...

[3] http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov...

1-4 from the original article are based on the premise that the iPhone is in fact as secure as Apple claims it is, and tries to reverse engineer how that could be done. Your point #5 is a possible way that the phone could in fact be insecure despite 1-4. My point is that unless you have your own silicon foundry you have no choice but to trust someone, or resign yourself to the possibility that your iPhone may not be secure despite what Apple says.