If your argument is: “assuming the US government wouldn’t be able to make someone act against their will and stay silent about it, the NIST recommendation is trustworthy”, I’m certainly more inclined to distrust this recommendation than I was before this conversation.

Note that the “forcing someone to comply” thing was just meant as one possibility among many, I don’t see why you completely dismiss the idea of someone who’s good at cryptography being in on the US’s mission to intercept people’s communications. I mean the NSA seems to be full of those kinds of people. You also dismiss the possibility that they just … picked the algorithm that they thought they could break after analysing it, with no participant being in on anything. But I get the feeling that you’re not really interested in engaging with this topic anymore, so I’ll leave it at that. It’s already late here.

Why would you use mathematics or computer science to ascertain whether someone has been corrupted by a government agency?