Ukraine probably has no use for those, as whatever targets they'd want to bomb with those would be impossible to bomb without getting shot down. They're only good against targets without air defenses.
I wonder if the guy that designed autopilot had the same idea. "So when the car detects resistance up ahead in the form of a crowd or wall, it will accelerate to make sure it goes through!"
Not quite everything. The stuff that calls home to their own servers can't be saved by home assistant. If you take care to buy stuff that can be controlled locally, you're more likely to have some longevity out of your devices.
In the last 16 years there's been multiple SSL vulnerabilities, so if someone was motivated enough, they could probably hack it, especially considering they'd have physical access. You could probably even dump out the filesystem and overwrite certificates with your own.
For a thermostat that's built into a house, 16 years doesn't seem long enough, tbh. A 'dumb' thermostat can easily be in use for 30+ years before anyone would even consider replacing it.
But yeah, as you said, if it's connected to the internet you have to worry about software patches, certificates, etc.