Edit: finally found it, with some Googling. There are a lot of things with TAO as their TLA leading to a lot of false leads. TAO in this story means "Total Access Operations".
Among vulnerability research people, TAO is practically slang for "the branch of NSA that hacks into Chinese computers". Robert Graham comes from those circles. I think that's what he's trying to evoke by referencing TAO.
I was not aware that the NSA had decided to restrict TAO's operations to China. That must be a very recent thing if so. Can you provide any references to that?
Edit: finally found it, with some Googling. There are a lot of things with TAO as their TLA leading to a lot of false leads. TAO in this story means "Total Access Operations".
Edit 2: "tailored", not "total".