If it’s such a concern, the government could just use their money to say buy the firmware rights from Qualcomm and Broadcom or just force their hand (they’re US based) to create a certified firmware to push in a less liberal free OpenWrt approach. Except this is more than not lobbying by Cisco just to pile on the e-waste.
And yes, tp-link firmware is just more poop spat on top of others but it’s the same from all manufacturers that insists on gathering and selling your data, and pushing their branding. Security is an illusion if you’re the product.
Do yourself a favor and check if there is an open source firmware provided by OpenWrt and remember binary blobs are an unfortunate reality.
