Excellent post, like usual with Dhole, but I feel the defense of NIST/NSA push on non-hybrid Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) is weak. I think the author’s arguments boil down to:

1. NSA is pushing to use it themselves, so why would they use a scheme they know it’s unsafe.
2. There’s no mathematical space to leave a NOBUS backdoor.
3. Peter Schwabe, main author of ML-KEM, used to work with Bernstein and was his Ph.D student.

My responses are:

1. They very link they used for 2., says: “[NSA is] using double encryption already.”, so they really wouldn’t be using pure non-hybrid PQC, as opposed to how they intend the rest of us to use.
2. The same could have been said about SIKE (another non-hybrid PQC proposal), yet it was found to be insecure. Furthermore, author of the cited blog with the mathematical argument for 2. works for Google, so she has a conflict of interest in the topic. However, I’m not an expert on the topic, so the mathematical arguments are beyond me.
3. I get it that Bernstein has a toxic attitude, and thus a toxic community that follows him, so I guess this was added to shut up a lot of incoming toxic responses that simply link to Bernstein’s blog. But yet, I can only see this as such an irrelevant tangent to dismiss criticism.

So use post-quantum (PQ) atop classical encryption algorithms, instead of PQ alone? Because using just algorithms that aren’t nearly as battle-tested, purely on the basis of a hypothetical threat (the eternal, decade-away, modern-encryption-standard-breaking quantum computer), seems rather irrational to me; especially in context with recent efforts from the NSA to push a TLS standard which does exactly that.

And how exactly does one seek to independently verify quantum resilience? It’s not like any researcher has a true, cutting-edge quantum computer at their disposal. And among those that do have the resources to do so? Right… ₍ₜₕₑ ₙₛₐ₎. But the NSA said they use the algorithm internally, so it must be secure, right? Which isn’t to say the entire cryptography community is composed of NSA collaborators, but some (key figures) definitely could be (irrespective of their residence); or share the same objective.

But this comment could also be part of the NSA PSYOP, or simply the deranged thoughts of yet another tin-foil-hatted conspiracy theorist.

i’ve run into this person’s blog a couple times now and each time i’ve been impressed with both the writeups and the cute art. this post is no exception, but there’s nearly half as many dislikes as there are likes - is there a valid reason for this or is it just regular old intolerance of furries?

Distracting furry art is distracting.

No, you!!!