[SAI_Peregrinus]

OTP is perfectly secure, but (for many cases) perfectly useless. Transmitting the key safely is exactly as hard as transmitting the message safely.

They're useful in exactly one situation: when you have a temporary secure communication channel, and a long-term insecure channel. Then you can use the temporary channel to pre-share a lot of key material (say, a 1TB micro SD card carried covertly) and then use that for future messages. But that scenario is very rare.

[int_19h]

The rarity of that scenario is dictated by there rarely being a need for the security it offers. But that, in turn, is a function of our knowledge of cryptography, and may change over time. Who knows; perhaps someday we'll see something like what Vinge described in AFutD:

"Our main cargo is a one-time cryptographic pad. The source is Commercial Security at Sjandra Kei; the destination is the certificants' High colony. It was the usual arrangement: We're carrying a one-third xor of the pad. Independent shippers are carrying the others. At the destination, the three parts would be xor'd together. The result could supply a dozen worlds' crypto needs on the Net for ..."

[generalizations]

Yup, that bit from Fire Upon the Deep is exactly what I was thinking of when I mentioned that bit about industries to safely transmit OTP data.

I don't really think the parent comment understands that there are creative ways around the difficulty of sharing secure pads. We don't need it for all data; but I think Vinge does hint at a totally viable means of sharing, and scenario in which it's practical.