it does suck, but this has always been the biggest realistic threat to GrapheneOS's long term survival.

this is what you would generally call, a critical supply chain vulnerability. I'm not saying Graphene didn't try, but you always want to eliminate or minimize these types of vulnerabilities. Graphene has spoken for years about thinking about partnering with other vendors, potentially developing their own phone in collaboration with someone, etc... but perhaps those efforts fell through or it was decided not to pursue them.

life comes at ya fast sometimes. google becoming more evil shouldn't surprise any of us.