My retirement account lets me buy BTC ETF, not real bitcoin.

That's because you're in the US. I'm Europe people will take years to notice you moved in/out.

Mullvad
When I was there, I used NordVPN and ProtonVPN, both worked.

I believe most of them will work, the government don't give a crap as long as you're not talking about politics when you're there.

Looks good!
I would prioritise a locally produced open-source ish coreboot debian. I think you're in the US, so something like puri.sm and system76.com
They seem to be the US version of German tuxedocomputers.com

What about a giant *fuck off, mate*, with a beautiful thick aussie accent?

Any special reason fire using Claude? Gemini, ChatGPT?

Things get a tiny bit better if you use https://njal.la/