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no bull and the aftermath.

This is one of the hardest subjects to study because obviously decryption capability is

some of the most secret tools in the US government, certainly some of the secret tools in our

adversary governments.

That said, we do have information, again largely from Snowden, but some from other sources,

including computer science research, that suggests the United States has pursued a very

aggressive effort to try to weaken encryption or to otherwise decrypt messages that the

sender and receiver think are secure.

That takes a number of different forms.

It takes the form of spying on cell phone companies and telecom providers to figure out

what kind of encryption they're going to use and try to find weaknesses in it.

It takes the form of trying to introduce vulnerabilities where possible into encryption systems

and it takes the form of using high end supercomputers and math to try to exploit vulnerabilities

that are found.

It's a multi-pronged effort, certainly costing hundreds of millions of dollars a year that

I think the NSA in one single intelligence strategy calls the price of admission to cyberspace.

That this is essential for understanding the secrets of adversaries once they're encrypted.

You need decryption capabilities to figure out what's going on.

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