I think American passports have those as well because I remember all the hax0rs making videos showing where to smash the NFC chip with a hammer or to buy wallets with special NFC blocking properties to keep folks from “stealing their identity” from the NFC chip. Personally I never cared but your comment jogged a memory.

Recently I added my passport to my Apple wallet but I’m not sure if that’s used anywhere.

On US passports stealing the identity is a possibility as the chip in US passports do not implement any clone detection mechanism.

Is that still the case? I recall "back in the day" that part of the reason for smashing these NFC chips was because of security failures like this, but I figured over time they'd be addressed.

I'd love to read more about what security features US passports are missing and what they have implemented. Just out of curiosity.