Re: "This made the decision for me – switching over to Cisco."
That's the thing, if I'm getting monitored by the Chinese it's likely to be less obtrusive than monitoring by a US company. They're less likely to sell my data to advertisers and insurance companies.
So to a significant degree if I must choose to be monitored (since my only non-monitoring option is to do without a router) then is seems Chinese monitoring is less onerous.
I went through the same thought process when I got an Android phone and came to the same conclusion.