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My $0.02, as a latecomer to this tech industry (really only been in it for 6-8 years) I don't understand the reverance around Schneier. I first saw him give a talk in 2009, and it was an 'insert town name here' speech about stuff that was blazingly obvious to people who should already know (topic: social engineering and passwords). Yet people were fawning over the talk. It really struck me as a guy who was once great, but is now resting on his laurels - that halo effect you mention. I get exactly the same feeling from this article. There is nothing in it that we don't already know. What, there are state actors in Russia and China that are effectively at cyberwar with us? Quelle surprise! DDoS attacks are getting more sophisticated? Quelle surprise again! He takes one issue in tech that actually has filtered through to the general public, and makes it sound like he has the inside story. DDoS attacks pick up where they left off last time? Must be the work of an evil genius - no mere mortal could think of that! I also get that the article is for a general audience, but in that case, the "oo, I can't share details!" bit is just populism. In short, I find his writing on tech to be lots of fluff and little meat. Perhaps I'd have a different opinion if I grew up with him in his glory days, or if I was more interested in crypto and read his more technical papers, but while I've been on HN, I've never been enlightened by a linked article of his. This is all, of course, personal perception, and he may be a downright top bloke to someone more in the know. |
In retrospect we've learned a lot since them and no one (including the author) would recommend developers read that book first or even at all. Now we've come to the understanding that folks are much better served by opinionated cryptosystem design ("no sharp edges") and texts like "cryptography engineering" that have a better focus on failure modes.
Anyway, he's not the be all, end all expert but he has been thinking about this stuff for a long time and often has perspectives that are worth thinking about. Some of them, like his views on airline security etc are now so mainstream that you wouldn't realise he was a big part of why they are now widely held.
But mainly it's that he has a lot of pretty high level gov and industry connections that I would at least entertain his conjecture here.