[pdkl95]

Crypto is math. Nobody can monopolize math.

edit:

On the subject of trying to keep powerful and/or dangerous knowledge locked away from the general public, one of my older HN comments[1] was about the larger, long-term problem our species' rapid access to new knowledge and powerful technology.

We need to figure out how to safely integrate new technologies into society asap.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033

[trhway]

it is like any scientific knowledge - ultimately it can't be monopolized/stopped, yet a lot of people can be burned at the stake in the process. It isn't just about Middle Ages - just 60 years ago cybernetics and genetic biology were "false sciences" (with people lives destroyed in various ways [1]) in a nuclear superpower who sent the first satellite&human into space just few years later.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism : "More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were sent to prison or fired or executed as a part of this campaign instigated by Lysenko to suppress his scientific opponents."

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov... : "Law of large numbers or the idea of random deviation were decreed as "false theories". Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world-renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov or Eugen Slutsky abandoned statistical research."

[koolba]

> Crypto is math. Nobody can monopolize math.

This is pretty damn close though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime

[smacktoward]

Governments were plenty able to monopolize math when computing power was scarce and expensive. That monopoly slipped as computer power got cheaper and more widely accessible. Now everybody has a computer in their pocket that's as fast as the world's fastest supercomputers were in 1990, so the monopoly is well and truly dead.

[pdkl95]

They monopolized the people that knew the math, written records that described the math, and the hardware that implemented the math. The actual crypto itself cannot be controlled, and in some cases was found by other through cryptanalysis or independently re-discovered.

That distinction is important - physical things like people or papers or computers can be controlled and hidden. It's much harder to keep knowledge itself bottled up, because there is always a risk that someone clever will discover it on their own.