That is a separate and more targeted activity. It is very different from what the title here suggests; which is that these companies add backdoors to their hardware.
That is blatantly and purposely inaccurate, did you even bother to read it?! they are not "backdooring equipment"; they maintain vulnerability databases which also include firmware bugs. Also non-US companies are also mentioned but just like the Reddit submission they are omitted to make the impression that there was some foul play on the part of these companies.
Again this is not Reddit, don't embilish titles for karma.