For a while there Apple’s Power Macs were classified as weapons because they were capable of a gigaflop youtu.be/XjkoYlpf3EA
adespoton@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
You make it sound like this is the first time it’s happened.
Look up Phil Zimmerman and PGP back in the 1990s.
Such computing power used to be classified under the same category as weapons -grade nuclear materials, and likely will be again.
And most people won’t even notice.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 days ago
adespoton@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
<pedant>The S in GigaFLOPS is for seconds.</pedant>
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Thanks for being the best kind of correct
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Adding some color to this tidbit of history – because I don’t think the OP’s original question can even be meaningfully answered – one of the rationales for American regulations on exporting cryptography was to maintain a military advantage: if American computers are powerful enough to break weak encryption, but everyone else’s computers cannot break strong encryption, then it is a NOBUS capability that the USA and its allies have.
If having been handed such a capability, the most logical thing to do is to hold onto it for as long as possible, and let the adversary struggle for a few decades to reduce the asymmetry. By the time the 2000s came around, computer capabilities were equalized enough that denying strong encryption stopped making much sense, in addition to being unworkable due to internet distribution.
Which is why the tactic changed: with no more asymmetry, the new logical tactic is to actively contribute to making the strongest possible encryption possible, in collaboration with academics from anywhere and everywhere. This is when NIST started hosting competitions to select the next cryptographic algorithms, where the world’s top cryptographers and researchers would get each other’s work, as a supercharged form of peer-review. And as a result, everyone including friend or foe benefits from those cryptographically secure building blocks, as seen in TLS 1.3 or E2EE secure messaging.
No doubt that the NSA or governments will still be paranoid about protecting their top secrets, but defense in depth means they have other methods to keep stuff secure, such as guarding an air-gapped network with armed soldiers. It’s just that the weakness of encryption is no longer a realistic attack vector in the 21st Century.
Time has advanced, and new challenges arise.