Until I read this article, I thought Thunderbolt was an Apple thing and USB was sombody else’s thing which was used by Apple and others. For folks who want to know about Thunderbolt this is almost painfully complete.
My short version If you want to avoid all the pain of having “Thunderbolt appearing/style” cables & ports that do connect, but for some unknown reason won’t transfer signal/data and/or seem to lack power or bandwidth there is hope. Ditch any cables that are not Thunderbolt 4 or later.