That would be a more compelling argument if US-defined crypto --- for better and often much worse --- didn't practically define commercial cryptography.

Because there are no restrictions. Once those restrictions are put in place, expect the brain drain. After all, these are a lot of careers we're talking about. Assuming we're talking about crypto restrictions of course.

If we're talking about some other measure, I addressed some of those here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16236105

I think you missed the point: the US defined crypto despite the fact that export restrictions were in place. PGP spread across the world, and the laws against it didn't do a darn thing.

I'm not sure I see the relevance. Export restrictions are silly (I shipped a commercial product in the 1990s for which we needed a "real" Canadian version and a broken US version because of them). I don't support export restrictions, and they're not an important component of what the FBI wants. But see below.

I think what the FBI wants is for the default mode of encryption in commercial phones to be subject to court orders. I don't think that's viable either, though I understand why they want it.

You can sum my take on this up as "something's got to give at some point, and it probably won't be the state; also, don't be smug about this, because it's complicated".

The idea that nobody who understands encryption sympathizes with the FBI is silly. That might be moving the goalposts from the original argument --- nobody understands crypto and supports the FBI --- but I'm not sure people have a clear idea of what the FBI is asking for (vs. what the FBI's ambit claim is).

Later:

I misread the previous comment; I get the argument. I don't think the failure of export controls is a good indication of the capabilities of the state; in a sense, they served their purpose well, by ensuring that commercial products were sold in a default configuration that offered trivially breakable crypto.

> I misread the previous comment; I get the argument. I don't think the failure of export controls is a good indication of the capabilities of the state; in a sense, they served their purpose well, by ensuring that commercial products were sold in a default configuration that offered trivially breakable crypto.

Did they? I seem to recall that it was easy for international users to illegally download the "secure" 128-bit version of Netscape, and that most people did. I could be misremembering, though.