Sorry, as I might be old and crusty with my outdated knowledge of how networking works... How does this work if both users are behind a NAT/firewall?

Yes, this is the Story of Stuff - everyone should watch the Youtube series hosted by Annie Leonard if they haven't already. So many times I've bought USB cables or chargers that simply are designed to fail or use such cheap components they don't last a month - and I doubt anyone wants to try to take the time and salvage the metals out of them. I wonder if my old Tandy 1000 we got rid of in 1993 is sitting compacted some 27 meters below the upper surface of the county landfill, or that old Nutribullet blender that leaked out of the blade attachment and ruined the motor... I imagine there's quite a bit of valuable metals deep down in the landfills - and one day if we have a materials shortage that we'll design an automated drilling machine that burrows into the landfills to mine and recover precious metals. Right now it doesn't seem economical or worth the return on it. A lot of the stuff that goes in the trashcan gets incinerated and I would imagine that puts out a lot of toxic carcinogens into the air, but they probably are able to salvage metals from the burned remains a lot easier than the stuff that goes straight to the landfill. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things and it's more complex than that, and more metal stuff is recovered before it heads to the dump.

And, on top of that, the manufacturers will have liability protection from the government, so if something goes sideways with the shots, they are "immune" from lawsuits.

Back in the day the USA used to be a superpower. Nearly every community was linked by interurbans and railroads, many of which operated at higher speed than some of today's modern highways. Then the automobile came along, and people desired convenience. The automobile required billions and billions of square miles of pavement to be deployed everywhere. It was a huge economic boom, and created millions of jobs and businesses. The jobs required to upkeep all that pavement became a big part of the economy. Not to mention the secondary economies generated by automobile repair, insurance, etc. But now we are realizing how expensive all that pavement is. And it's a huuuuuuge chunk of our economy. The maintenance and upkeep budget is far higher than the budget for new infrastructure. Are cars really worth their huge hidden price tag? Convenience killed sustainability. But the railroads are dead, and it's too late to go back.