One wonders if NIST can be fixed or if it should simply be abolished with all archives opened in the interest of restoring faith in the government. The damage done by NSA and NIST is much larger than either of those organizations.
You might as well hand a drunk monkey a loaded sub machine gun.
I'm saying some standards body is appropriate for validating/vetting algorithms, and having a standards body advocate for known reasonable ones is... reasonable and desirable.
That NIST has a history of being compromised by the NSA (and other standards bodies would likely similarly be a target), is a problem. But having everyone 'figure it out' on their own is even worse. 'hand a drunk monkey a loaded submachine gun' worse.
It's a disqualifying problem. If you go to a standards body to prevent yourself from making unintentional mistakes, and they have introduced intentional mistakes, any other reasonable option is better.
If you specialize as a cat burglar after all, hitting the ONE PLACE everyone expects you to hit while they're watching goes against the grain.
More likely they're suborning us somewhere else. But hard to say for sure.