Even if all this true, there’s unlikely to be a mass switch campaign until an alternative with better privacy and security gains the smoothness, flexibility, and platform coverage that Telegram has. Most people I know who use it do so because it runs everywhere, is nice to use, and isn’t a Facebook product (which while perhaps not being as bad as a foreign government, is a more prominently perceived threat for most people).

we aren't playing that game anymore

Why I’m not surprised you’re downvoted to hell? Yet your post provides plenty of evidence for those who happen to not know all this for some reason.

I really don't get the sentiment of everything Russia. Russia has the GDP of a province of China. Russia does not have a thriving manufacturing sector. Russia has increasingly less influence or power over the world. Why would powerful people in the US succumb to to Russia's influence? That just does not make sense. If anything, maybe the Lenin-loving Stalin-admiring Marxists would love Russia, like half of the university professors in the 50s loving the Soviet Union, to the point that they'd rather leak all kinds of information, including how to build atom bombs, to the Soviet Union. Oh, and New York Times even won a Pulitzer for praising the Soviet Union by the great Walter Duranty in the 1930s.