[jiggawatts]

The NSA has definitely weakened or back-doored crypto. It’s not a conspiracy or even a secret! It was a matter of (public) law in the 90s, such as “export grade” crypto.

Most recently Dual_EC_DRBG was forced on American vendors by the NSA, but the backdoor private key was replaced by Chinese hackers in some Juniper devices and used by them to spy on westerners.

Look up phrase likes “nobody but us” (NOBUS), which is the aspirational goal of these approaches, but often fails, leaving everyone including Americans and their allies exposed.

[dylan604]

You should look up the phrase "once bitten twice shy" as I think you missed the gist of my comment. We've already been bitten at least once by incidents as you've described. From then on, it will always be in the back of my mind that friendly little suggestions on crypto algos from fedgov will always be received with suspicion. Accepting that, most people that are unawares will assume someone is wearing a tinfoil hat.