so you moved from startpage because they sold to an advertiser, to ddg, a company whose owner is an advertiser. look at gabriel weinbergs business history.
Funnily enough the language server protocol makes it a charm for all editors (including nvim and emacs) to use the exact same code intelligence as vscode does. And I find the emacs and vim experience even better since I only have to add the lsp and the respective language plugin to a text file and that's it.
Why shouldn't you trust them about such a message?There is no incentive for them to say "Our enemy has used a technically advanced weapon and then tried to destroy it's traces by blowing it up".
It's like people saying China's Corona numbers are fake just because it's China.
Don't know about historic but current is US gov and "lobbying" industries paying massive amounts to have drugs banned. Why should you be allowed to use the safe Cannabis that doesn't have any side effects and is dirt cheap to produce instead of the overpriced overly toxic and overly marketed biochemical agent developed by for profit companies.
Apple is an American company. It does not matter what they say they are required by US to log everything and store it. Never got why people blindly trust those privacy claims.
North Korea seems a more trustworthy source of news than US nowdays.