[kragen]

Bernstein being "involved in never-ending drama" is the reason it's legal to export strong cryptography from the US today and the reason much of this PQC work got done at all. He's clearly a person who often fights in cases where almost everyone else surrendered instead, which is presumably what you mean by "the problem is him," but I don't see why you describe it as a "problem". His inclination to tell hard truths, even when faced with corruption and intimidation, has frequently served the public interest.

It was often a huge problem for the people who he was fighting with, though. Are you one of them?

[tptacek]

It doesn't seem reasonable to say that Bernstein is the reason much of this PQC work got done at all.

He was one of the earliest PQC popularizers and probably coined the term. But asserting that he enabled everyone else's work is a little like saying that the person who coined "misuse-resistant authenticated encryption" enabled all the different misuse-resistant schemes; the underlying issue was plainly evident, and people were obviously going to work on it.

Your last sentence falls afoul of the HN guidelines, and your comment would be far stronger without it. Which is unfortunate, since there's an interesting and curious conversation to be had about the significance of Bernstein's role in PQC.

[chasil]

Bernstein's original lawsuit in the 90s resulted in the lift of ITAR restrictions on strong cryptography.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein#Bernstei...

"The ruling in the case declared that software was protected speech under the First Amendment, which contributed to regulatory changes reducing controls on encryption."

[tptacek]

I'm talking about PQC, not his suit against the government.