It's complex. There might be different views on this matter within the same company, and even different executions. If this is presented as a national security

It's complex. There might be different views on this matter within the same company, and even different executions. If this is presented as a national security issue not even the CxO team might be fully informed. It is not just PR. You actually want the 'bad actors' to believe your platform is not compromised or even not compromizable, because otherwise they wouldn't use it and your backdoor would be useless. So fighting openly for backdoors by 5e+2 would, if not a ruse, be entirely self defeating. So you can vehemently protest or deny even the potential for backdoors, while at the same time having it in your product already. As always the agencies potential for acting on information gained is not straightforward, as doing so would compromise the secrecy of the infrastructure. So second sourcing would be strickly required, and you would only nudge official enquiries in the right direction under very high stakes circumstances.