> Yes, of course people usually trust the US government. We do so every time we get on a plane, keep money in USD, or run Windows, MacOS, etc.
Trust isn't binary, nor does it exist on a single dimension. I might use the products and services of US companies, I might conditionally trust the judgement of some US government bodies, but there's always a heavy set of caveats.
I wouldn't trust a drug that had been approved by the FDA until it had also been approved by the European Medicines Agency. I would trust a NIST standard for metrology, but I certainly wouldn't trust a NIST standard for cryptography. I wouldn't ever allow a European customer's data to be stored in the US, or to transit US networks in plaintext. I trust US-made hardware and software about as much as Chinese-made hardware and software, which is to say I assume it's heavily backdoored. I haven't ever trusted the words of a US administration, red or blue; I do broadly trust that Merkel or Macron will mostly keep their word and mostly honour international law.
Trust isn't binary, nor does it exist on a single dimension. I might use the products and services of US companies, I might conditionally trust the judgement of some US government bodies, but there's always a heavy set of caveats.
I wouldn't trust a drug that had been approved by the FDA until it had also been approved by the European Medicines Agency. I would trust a NIST standard for metrology, but I certainly wouldn't trust a NIST standard for cryptography. I wouldn't ever allow a European customer's data to be stored in the US, or to transit US networks in plaintext. I trust US-made hardware and software about as much as Chinese-made hardware and software, which is to say I assume it's heavily backdoored. I haven't ever trusted the words of a US administration, red or blue; I do broadly trust that Merkel or Macron will mostly keep their word and mostly honour international law.