The problem with all that is there is ZERO proof of that. It is all assumptions, people "close to", and associations. It is the same stuff that the US government never presented about Huawei and TikTok, which is why I don't believe that about Huawei or TikTok until we see some actual evidence from proper security audit reports.
Mentally, I just switch off from all "could be" reports. Those are the basis of conspiracy theories. I'm waiting to see proper peer reviewed reports of whether Signal has actually shared any data or not.
We all know that any company can be legally subpoenaed in any country to hand over the data they DO have in their possession. So yes Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and many others would have to do that. The question for me is whether Signal would be willingly sharing such data with any 3rd parties - for that, we have no evidence at all.
That type of behaviour has been proven from Facebook for example with their Cambridge Analytica scandal as one example. WhatsApp we know from their T&Cs that they do share the user metadata with upstream (Facebook) and partners. Again, no evidence that Signal does this.
Yes the ideal would be to be completely log-free, phone number-free, etc like Briar, Threema, Session, SimpleX, and others. Then there would be nothing to hand over. But Signal appears to have trodden an ethical line so far, until proven otherwise.