Schneier was clearly able to reason about what NSA was up to, and told everyone in 2007 not to use Dual-EC, 6 years before the Snowden revelations.
I believe you have admitted that you thought that “Dual-EC has a backdoor” was a wild conspiracy theory until the Snowden revelations? Which makes the “impossible (apparently)” part a classic case of projection.
(I thought nobody should use Dual EC! But that was my reason for thinking it wasn't an NSA backdoor, because it was too dumb to be one. I underestimated the industry's capacity for "dumb". Also: I was dumb! I am dumb a lot.)
Thankfully we found a better way that ensures cryptographic security, which is to get former NSA interns to write the PQC standards, instead of proper NSA employees.
A better question: why do you think so many of your cryptographic feline friendz were so excited about isogenies for the past decade? Where do you think they all obtained that identical enthusiasm from? Why do you think SIKE made it so far in the contest and only got eliminated through luck?
I'm guessing this isn't a conversation that's going to take us into Richelot isogenies.
Is Dual-EC-DRBG fine because we never saw the FVEY Python exploit that breaks it?
I think my theory here is that NSA coordinated an action whereby they figured no one was reading obscure algebraic geometry papers from 1997. In our low-attention-span world, it’s not the worst plan.
(Hell, folks didn’t realize TAOSSA contained 0day for a long time. Simply putting something in front of the public doesn’t mean they’ll read or comprehend it.)
Dual EC isn't broken by an exploit script. It's broken with a secret key.
No, it leaves every SIKE-protected system in the world exposed to _everybody who reads obscure algebraic geometry papers from 1997._ We got really lucky that the two dorks who do read those papers decided to share their insights.
For all you know, there’s a paper sitting at the Institute For Advanced Study that would let you write a marvelous pq-crystals-shattering Python script, but they’ll never tell you the combination to the safe.
(Again: TAOSSA contained 0day exploits, and few noticed for a decade.)
However in this context the debate is just over the PQ scheme (not the overall system). Also, NSA are not planning to mandate a hybrid system for government use. Others may do the same.