So it would no longer be so surprising to me if the NSA does in fact have significant knowledge of cryptography beyond the public domain.
I think there are some important differences between the NSA and the (rest of the) military.
Due to Snowden and other leakers, we actually know what NSA’s cutting-edge strategies involve, and most (and probably all) of them are focused on corrupting the public’s crypto, not on inventing better secret crypto.
Building a better algorithm is a lot cheaper than building a better orbital laser satellite (or whatever). The algorithm is just a piece of software. In order to develop and test it, you don’t need physical raw materials, wind tunnels, launch vehicles, or anything else. You just need a computer, and a community of smart people who build upon each other’s ideas. Now, granted, the NSA can afford to build much bigger data centers than anyone else -- but that’s a quantitative advance, not a qualitative one.
Now, granted, I can’t prove that the NSA doesn’t have some sort of secret uber-crypto that no one knows about. However, I also can’t prove that the NSA doesn’t have an alien spacecraft somewhere in Area 52. Until there’s some evidence to the contrary, I’m not prepared to assign a high probability to either proposition.
I do think you’re probably right, and I fully agree about the space lasers and their solid diamond heatsinks being categorically different than a crypto wizard who subsists on oatmeal in the Siberian wilderness on pennies of income. So I am somewhat skeptical of CivilianSvendsen’s claim.
But, for the sake of completeness, did Snowden leak the entirety of the NSA’s secrets? Or just the secret-court-surveillance-conspiracy ones that he felt were violating the constitutional rights of Americans? As far as I can tell (though I haven’t followed the story recently), I think Snowden doesn’t see himself as a saboteur or a foreign double-agent; he felt that the NSA was acting contrary to what the will of an (informed) American public would be. I don’t think he would be so interested in disclosing the NSA’s tech secrets, except maybe as leverage to keep himself safe.
That is to say, there could be a sampling bias here. The leaked information about the NSA might always be about their efforts to corrupt the public’s crypto because the leakers strongly felt the public had a right to know that was going on. I don’t know that anyone would feel quite so strongly about the NSA keeping proprietary some obscure theorem of number theory, and put their neck on the line to leak it.
Right, what you are saying makes some intuitive sense, but I can only update my beliefs based on the evidence I do have, not on the evidence I lack.
In addition, as far as I can tell, cryptography relies much more heavily on innovation than on feats of expensive engineering; and innovation is hard to pull off while working by yourself inside of a secret bunker. To be sure, some very successful technologies were developed exactly this way: the Manhattan project, the early space program and especially the Moon landing, etc. However, these were all one-off, heavily focused projects that required an enormous amount of effort.
When I think of the NSA, I don’t think of the Manhattan project; instead, I see a giant quotidian bureaucracy. They do have a ton of money, but they don’t quite have enough of it to hire every single credible crypto researcher in the world—especially since many of them probably wouldn’t work for the NSA at any price unless their families’ lives were on the line. So, the NSA can’t quite pull off the “community in a bottle” trick, which they’d need to stay one step ahead of all those Siberians.
Yes and I fully agree with you. I am just being pedantic about this point:
I can only update my beliefs based on the evidence I do have, not on the evidence I lack.
I agree with this philosophy, but my argument is that the following is evidence we do not have:
Due to Snowden and other leakers, we actually know what NSA’s cutting-edge strategies involve[...]
Since I have little confidence that, if the NSA had advanced tech, Snowden would have disclosed it; the absence of this evidence should be treated as quite weak evidence of absence and therefore I wouldn’t update my belief about the NSA’s supposed advanced technical knowledge based on Snowden.
I agree that it has a low probability for the other reasons you say, though. (And also that people who think setting other peoples’ mousetraps on fire is a legitimate tactic might not simultaneously be passionate about designing the perfect mousetrap.)
Sorry for not being clear about the argument I was making.
I think there are some important differences between the NSA and the (rest of the) military.
Due to Snowden and other leakers, we actually know what NSA’s cutting-edge strategies involve, and most (and probably all) of them are focused on corrupting the public’s crypto, not on inventing better secret crypto.
Building a better algorithm is a lot cheaper than building a better orbital laser satellite (or whatever). The algorithm is just a piece of software. In order to develop and test it, you don’t need physical raw materials, wind tunnels, launch vehicles, or anything else. You just need a computer, and a community of smart people who build upon each other’s ideas. Now, granted, the NSA can afford to build much bigger data centers than anyone else -- but that’s a quantitative advance, not a qualitative one.
Now, granted, I can’t prove that the NSA doesn’t have some sort of secret uber-crypto that no one knows about. However, I also can’t prove that the NSA doesn’t have an alien spacecraft somewhere in Area 52. Until there’s some evidence to the contrary, I’m not prepared to assign a high probability to either proposition.
I do think you’re probably right, and I fully agree about the space lasers and their solid diamond heatsinks being categorically different than a crypto wizard who subsists on oatmeal in the Siberian wilderness on pennies of income. So I am somewhat skeptical of CivilianSvendsen’s claim.
But, for the sake of completeness, did Snowden leak the entirety of the NSA’s secrets? Or just the secret-court-surveillance-conspiracy ones that he felt were violating the constitutional rights of Americans? As far as I can tell (though I haven’t followed the story recently), I think Snowden doesn’t see himself as a saboteur or a foreign double-agent; he felt that the NSA was acting contrary to what the will of an (informed) American public would be. I don’t think he would be so interested in disclosing the NSA’s tech secrets, except maybe as leverage to keep himself safe.
That is to say, there could be a sampling bias here. The leaked information about the NSA might always be about their efforts to corrupt the public’s crypto because the leakers strongly felt the public had a right to know that was going on. I don’t know that anyone would feel quite so strongly about the NSA keeping proprietary some obscure theorem of number theory, and put their neck on the line to leak it.
Right, what you are saying makes some intuitive sense, but I can only update my beliefs based on the evidence I do have, not on the evidence I lack.
In addition, as far as I can tell, cryptography relies much more heavily on innovation than on feats of expensive engineering; and innovation is hard to pull off while working by yourself inside of a secret bunker. To be sure, some very successful technologies were developed exactly this way: the Manhattan project, the early space program and especially the Moon landing, etc. However, these were all one-off, heavily focused projects that required an enormous amount of effort.
When I think of the NSA, I don’t think of the Manhattan project; instead, I see a giant quotidian bureaucracy. They do have a ton of money, but they don’t quite have enough of it to hire every single credible crypto researcher in the world—especially since many of them probably wouldn’t work for the NSA at any price unless their families’ lives were on the line. So, the NSA can’t quite pull off the “community in a bottle” trick, which they’d need to stay one step ahead of all those Siberians.
Yes and I fully agree with you. I am just being pedantic about this point:
I agree with this philosophy, but my argument is that the following is evidence we do not have:
Since I have little confidence that, if the NSA had advanced tech, Snowden would have disclosed it; the absence of this evidence should be treated as quite weak evidence of absence and therefore I wouldn’t update my belief about the NSA’s supposed advanced technical knowledge based on Snowden.
I agree that it has a low probability for the other reasons you say, though. (And also that people who think setting other peoples’ mousetraps on fire is a legitimate tactic might not simultaneously be passionate about designing the perfect mousetrap.)
Sorry for not being clear about the argument I was making.