GrapheneOS provides massive privacy and security benefits to regular people. That was always important to regular people due to regular devices being nowhere close to good enough to protect people well enough against common threads to their privacy. However, it's far clearer now that exploits have been made so widely available without having expertise. There are many publicly available Android local root exploits on GitHub usable on these devices.

I think it heavily depends. If you are concerned cops or CBP are going to try to take your phone and search it then wanting a phone like GOS is a very reasonable precaution.

Even if you haven't done anything "wrong", you may have engaged in speech or activities that the current US admin has deemed problematic and will try to punish you for if they can find any evidence.

Why would you assume Google, Apple, and defense-oriented agencies like CISA wouldn't also have access to those same models, but using them to fix issues?

Its just raising the bar across the board, I don't see how only attackers would benefit.

Attackers only need to win once, defenders need to win every time. The game is skewed in favor of the attackers, and AI only exarcebates this.

The quote wasn't talking about personal security from governments and corporations. You're warping the meaning into a situation where it doesn't fit at all.

Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open.

It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.