I would imagine so, particularly in cryptography, being able to view the source is not the same as being able to (easily) verify it doesn't contain any backdoor

I would imagine so, particularly in cryptography, being able to view the source is not the same as being able to (easily) verify it doesn't contain any backdoors. See ECDSA as good example; we can see the entire standard and yet we can't be sure that it hasn't been weakened/backdoored by its creators despite it looking secure on the surface. See the start of [0], the bit about the standard pushing state leaking through secret dependent operations. [0] https://blog.cr.yp.to/20140323-ecdsa.html https://blog.cr.yp.to/20140323-ecdsa.html Edit: my point here is that America would have to trust that there was no way that the Russians had added backdoors. Given their history and the current political climate I can't see that trust coming soon.