I’m not much of a traveler but isn’t entering a country when most searches take place? And sometimes searches are conducted under suspicion and sometimes randomly.
Thanks (not!) for the gratuitous jab at the United States. A world traveler like you knows there are other dangerous places in the world.
Amost always 
But it was a little surprising to me when it happened in that direction. I expect searches for customs violations but I wasn’t expecting to have my devices searched (a practice that makes no sense at all in a world in which encrypted data crosses borders over networks).
I remember driving across the land border into Canada from the United States in the seventies not being any fun at all. Drugs and draft evasion had everyone on high alert. And all I had were canoes and packs to go group camping. 
The “turn your device on” thing makes sense, just to verify that it’s a legit laptop and not something else. But I agree - if I’m intentionally planning to move prohibited data, I don’t know why I’d put it on my laptop. I suppose that if I’m a CIA mole or something I might not trust the cloud - but what are the odds of catching one of those with a purely random search?
Most of this just makes regular peoples’ lives harder, while likely not increasing actual security by any noticeable amount.
I clearly did a poor job conveying what I wanted to convey. I have now edited my post above. The “thing” I was trying to use was sarcasm. Put simply, I was intending to convey the opposite of how you understood my meaning.
The statement “… honestly it seems to have everything to with where you are going IS dangerous: it’s the U.S. Government! Got it. Completley understood now.” was hard for me to imagine as something someone would take seriously at these forums.
Except for COVID era, I regularly and frequently traveled the world. Never experienced as issues which are expressed here as risks. While the impact of these risks coming true could be high, probability of happening is surely low.
I wondered about that. I suggest a snarky emoji as a sign of humor and sarcasm which otherwise can be hard to be sure of in the written word. Sometimes facial expression and voice inflection is everything.
Yes, you are right. Hmm … I wonder which emojis would do the job?
This: 
?
I’m not finding any other obvious sarcasm emojis (and I’m not even sure the scream is obvious). Maybe I’m missing some good/obvious ones. If you have a better suggestion then I’m all 
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This is a tough one as you could have been mixing sarcasm and national politics with an international audience of forum members. I don’t have a good answer for you. 
I grew up with three cousins that were in law enforcement. One of the first things they taught me was “Never argue with the police when they are doing their job. If you have a problem wait and tell it to the judge”. So far it’s working. I’ve had to pay far fewer tickets than I deserved. 
There must be something we could use.
Of course, many of us insure against exactly this kind of thing all the time: house fires, car accidents, serious illness, identity theft. We pay online services to back up our solid-state hard drives, not because we expect major problems anytime soon, but because if something goes badly wrong, we don’t want to lose our data.
And risk tolerances vary, not just by individual, but also by kind of risk and our own perception of the degree of risk. Some people might be perfectly willing to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, but won’t go in the ocean in a place where sharks are ever seen.
This reminds me of a scene from an old Penn & Teller movie. Worth the minute or so.
Then you’ve obviously never heard us use, “I’m sorry” before 
Sensitive sensitive. I was simply playing upon the well-known Tina Fey “take” on Canadians and sarcasm that played a recurring role in her 30 Rock Show.
As for the 2 computer solution: probably that’s the way to go. I’m really not worried about checkpoints going in/out of countries. But damage to my computer due to various unforeseen circumstances … that’s unlikely but definitely possible.
When traveling I always always carry at least 2 SSDs with me. Carbon Copy Cloner has been great for me in 1-2 bad situations. I do have a second computer at home so in case the worst happens it’s just a matter of making the best of things with my iPad and iPhone until I arrive back home.
I never watched the show, and so completely missed the joke 
I always keep an encypted CCC clone SSD of my computer with me when travelling too. If things go really badly then I could at least buy a Mac an carry on from there, though that would have to be an extreme situation.
This is why I keep my beloved MBA 11 around. It’s great for travel; I have all the dongles; and it only carries what I put on it. (It doesn’t sync via iCloud nor DropBox.) But it has the apps I like to use, and the OS I love.
Not beyond saying that it was not allowed. It might have been they were concerned I was going to sell it in Canada, and computers in those days were very expensive. If you are going to leave something in Canada, you have to pay some duty once you get over a certain price. This computer was way over that dollar amount and perhaps they decided just to cut off that possibility.
For years I was continually delayed at internal US airports, many involving strip searches in a private room with a female agent. I had to always allow an extra hour or so to get through airport security and that was before 9/11! I tried never to carry much electronic equipment, usually just an armfull of mag tape reels that had to go around x-ray machines. Random can also mean profiling and somehow I fit a profile so was always questioned.
To me, the concern is warranted and valid no matter where you travel. BTW I’ve also had to produce proper documents at internal US state border crossings, but that’s when moving livestock and usually easier to deal with.
My most recent experience was being refused entry into the US with my flock of Canadian sheep the first time due to inadequate tattoos in said sheep. The Canadian vet who was supposed to do them before export failed to verify the tattoos were readable. Note for others: tattoo ink does not make good tattoos when really cold and a hot box didn’t really help much.I did get them re-tattooed and across the border before my import permits expired.
Following up on this: The outcome of this topic for me was that I sold my 2019 16" MBP and purchased a lovely Midnight M2 Air to act as both my travel computer and as a backup for my primary computer (which was intially the travel/backup computer but is so much better than the 16"MBP was that it became the primary).
As stated above, my main concerns are not confiscation at the border, but loss or damage associated with travel.
The fine folks at Apple thank you all for inspiring me (This post did actually get me thinking about this stuff again though, so I’m glad it happened)