Well, the problem with that is then you have to deal with the legalities of the USA. What you do instead is have the UK (and a couple other eyes, up to five or eighteen) do the spying on Americans, and in exchange, the Americans will spy on the UK. All perfectly extra-legal.
The end of Covid in China is interesting. Even the CCP, and their level of surveillance and control, were unable to maintain control of an entire population fed up with sheltering in place. If there aren't fair and open elections in 2028, it will no longer be the United States of America.
Why not just lie? The white lie is the most expedient thing to get the results you want, which is getting the app into the app store. It's not a slippery slope into a total moral decay of you as a human being. If a friend is hiding from an abusive partner, and that partner asks where your friend is, telling the truth would put your friend in danger, so lying is an important skill to have. The lie in this case gets past a pointless requirement.
Does all that administration and licensing magically happen for free and take zero time? It's stupid extra overhead for something as fundamental as toluene that Chinese labs don't have to follow. You're right that it's not insurmountable, but it's still stupid extra work, and the threat of randomly being investigated for doing science is hardly "nothing too worry about". Just always have every one of your papers in order or else you go to jail is hardly a way to encourage people to want to go into science.
Will we? Opiates leading to a homeless population not being productive, just looking to get high and be high all day and not do anything other than be a zombie, hits different compared to stimulants that makes people work harder and clean things.
There's apps for that these days. Not going to names them, but if you're still downloading a torrent file on a computer, you're behind the times. It's as easy as Netflix on an Android TV with a remote these days.
Turn on Advanced Data protection, which encrypts it so Apple can give them the data, but they don't have the keys to decrypt it. Doesn't help if the other person you're talking to doesn't have it turned on though.
The thing that cocaine users have noticed, is that using cocaine raises their heart-rate. Noticeably. So the government getting heart rate data means they know when those users are doing coke. Wouldn't the DEA like to know where all the cocaine users with Oura rings in the US are?