Its always been like this, but I don't think their target demographic cares. I remember 10 years ago I heard something like: "Iphone, the phone your mom uses." Not that its accurate. Blows my mind VIPs use iphones after Pegasus.. How could these people be so unaware?
Apple responded to Pegasus with Lockdown Mode, which is probably the most hardcore security modality that's ever shipped in mass produced consumer hardware.
Induction says, its dangerous to have an iphone. There is no deduction based answer here that has been validated by experiment.
GrapheneOS (which, FWIW, I do trust at least as much as ADP) has a web-installer IIRC, making it similarly easy to enable, but a little harder to disable for normal users. Moreover, it's not built-in to the Pixel. It's entirely third-party, and did not ship on mass-market hardware
Being an option on the default OS, with OEM support, can make all the difference sometimes
[0] https://www.securityweek.com/paragon-graphite-spyware-linked...
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/09/eff-statement-ice-use-...
Are androids getting "a nation state" to hack their phone? No.
Its objectively worse security to have an iphone.