[smaudet]

> The bones he's picking are with the entire field of cryptography

Isn't that how you advance a field, though?

It has been a couple hundred years, but we used to think that disease was primarily caused by "bad humors".

Fields can and do advance. I'm not versed enough to say whether his criticisms are legitimate, but this doesn't sound like a problem, but part of the process, to me (and his article is documenting how some bureaucrats/illegitimate interests are blocking that advancement).

The "area adminstrator" being unable or unwilling to do basic math is both worrying, and undermines the idea that the standards that are being produced are worth anything, which is bad for the entire field.

If the standards are chock full of nonsense, then how does that reflect upon the field?

[tptacek]

The standards people have problems with weren't run as open processes the way AES, SHA3, and MLKEM were. As for the rest of it: I don't know what to tell you. Sounds like a compelling argument if you think Daniel Bernstein is literally the most competent living cryptographer, or, alternately, if Bernstein and Schneier are the only cryptographers one can name.

[tankenmate]

In a lot of ways this seems, from the outside, to be similar to "Planck's principle"; e.g. physics advances one funeral at a time.

[tptacek]

In exactly what sense? Who is the "old guard" you're thinking of here? Peter Schwabe got his doctorate 16 years after Bernstein. Peikert got his 10 years after.