Not necessarily of the companies themselves, though; just embedded people at the right hiring level.

> Given how generally ideological the people working in these companies are

History has many examples of truly surprising spies, over the long term. Including in highly ideological environments such as animal rights and eco-campaigning groups. The embedded police spying scandals in the UK make this clear.

It is naïve to think that there are no CIA or NSA employees in some functional role at these two businesses, just as it is naïve to think that they don't have intelligence industry contacts playing them because they are naïve. You only have to look at how the NSA weakened open cryptography to see that two companies staffed by young, absurdly rich people barely out of college with wobbly moral e/acc compasses might be getting played by homegrown spooks.

> I have zero expectation that a similar culture exists inside Chinese companies. If you think these corporate and national cultures are the same, you need to adjust your priors.

I suggested absolutely nothing of the sort — I flatly was not talking about China at all.

FWIW it cuts both ways: in the dim and distant past of the early dot-com era, I remember encountering someone who wafted inexplicably between US and UK multinational companies who I thought was possibly British intelligence. An odd duck for sure.