Actually it's not the devices themselves the problem, it's that they are controlled by mostly one company.
There was a time when Bitcoin was mined with CPUs and then it started being mined with GPUs, but GPU chips are manufactured by 2 companies and the rest of their parts by many other companies. They are also general purpose hardware mainly used for things-that-are-not-mining, so no single company controls their price or can cripple a coin through their hardware.
If Bitmain wanted, they could add hidden fees to their hardware like they've already done with the 12% mining rewards they burn in secret on their BCH pool (source: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/04/24/bitmain-antpool-artificially-boosting-bitcoin-cash-bch-price). There are many public posts in the internet for shady business practices from them.
For that reason XDNA is fighting against ASICs, but in the end it's up to the whole community to decide if they want to support this move or not.