One thing though is - knives, fast cars and cash aren't built with deliberate motivation of thwarting the law enforcement and criminal investigations.
GrapheneOS and its systems are - you can walk through history and see that they're deliberately working on systems that defeat law enforcements efforts of collecting data from seized devices and tracking criminal networks.
This is a massive difference - even for knives and cars, you'd get into some hot water (or outright illegal behaviour) if you build them with express purpose to make them hard to find and track by law enforcement. Try making a company that focuses on cars that hide its license plates from the police and you'll see how far that will go.
This is one thing that GrapheneOS, Signal and others will need to at some point reckon with - the fact that they deliberately work at making law enforcements work harder and provide effective cover for criminals will get them into hot water. And I don't think population will stand at their side when they find that they've been helping CSAM traffickers hide their loot.
Having all that anti-governmental rhethoric won't end well for longerm survivability of these projects - which sucks for all of us.