Comment by dist-epoch
8 months ago
> If you throw enough cryptographers at the problem are you guaranteed a quick solution to breaking modern encryption primitives at the theoretical level?
We have very strong reasons to believe this is not possible, no matter how much resources you spend on this problem. In fact the whole of modern cryptography kind of relies on this assumption, that the problem is unsolvable.
I agree with your general point, but I don't think it applies to the worm problem. We know hundreds of millions were not spent on that problem.
Right but my point there is that it might be possible to break a particular encryption primitive. But throwing more money at the problem is almost certainly not going to get you an answer one way or the other any time soon. Whereas waiting 50 years (ie performing more fundamental research in general) might. Or might not.
The worm problem is similar. If our current theories were "good enough" we would be able to simulate them. I see no reason to believe (and many to doubt) that throwing more money at the problem would solve it much faster. For that to be true we would among other things need to be capable of articulating where precisely the current shortfalls are to begin with.