Tech companies defer to some governments more than others, but I don’t think that’s the issue here.
Browser makers are not telling the Kazakh government it can’t spy on its citizens – they’re in no position to do that, and it’d be shitty if foreign companies could dictate to governments anyway. What they’re saying is that so long as they’re providing TLS in Kazakhstan, they will act against attempts to sabotage it, even if it’s the government doing the sabotage. I think they might well do the same in the US or China.
Bear in mind, they’re being bold about this because the Kazakh government wasn’t willing to make this spying official policy, but rather used trickery. If a nation legislates that you can’t use encryption, then the most you could expect from any tech company is that they’d refuse to do business there. More likely, they’d object but then comply. They certainly wouldn’t risk shareholders’ money by operating in the open as a criminal enterprise.
