" having to " is a weird way of saying if you go out of your way to buy these shoes specifically designed to track how far you walk/run and your cadence. This is extremely optional and definitely won't be something your normal shoe experiences.
I love when people get pissy about stuff like this. If you want it, great. If you don’t, buy other shoes or don’t use it.
What’s it going to do? Stop being a shoe if you don’t connect it to your phone?
Devices that can lock you out with their smart functionality and you don’t have a say in, I get. Things like the Roku TVs forcing new arbitration policies and ovens included with a house that have mandatory firmware updates.
But stuff like this? Who cares? It’s very useful to some people who want advanced gait tracking in the shoe, and it’s completely ignorable for everyone else.
Well there was the story of the three million toothbrushes being used in a DDOS attack but in googling for a link to the story it turned out to be a hoax, so there's at least that good news to back you up.