The fun part is they don't know the extent of the comprise or how long it has been going on.
What happened is that CISA recently published a report stating that they think a lot of US telecommunications equipment has been compromised. It isn't a one time breach. They know that China has control over a unspecified amount of critical components. The malware China is using is extremely complex and very hard if not completely impossible to detect. China is very good at covering there tracks so even getting a sample of Malware is hard.
Because of all this, CISA is now recommending that people use encrypted messagers.
That seems very unlikely. The people working at the NSA and CIA are fucking geniuses. Like bonafide, real-life, literal geniuses.
And they didn't build the telecom network
Their management however...
True, ultimately the politicians pull the strings of these agencies, and that's quite the mixed bag.
I HIGHLY doubt that
My best friend's, dad's, friend is a retired CIA agent. He knows everything about everything. Seriously. I've never had a conversation with him where he wasn't highly knowledgeable about the subject. The guy has a memory like a steel trap. The NSA is full of guys like Snowden, and even smarter guys lead those guys. They know what they're doing.