though it’s important to note that that technique was developed at IBM, and then given to the NSA, and not developed internally at the NSA.
So I think this is actually a really important point. I think by default the NSA can contract out various tasks to industry professionals and academics and on average get results back from them that are better than what they could have done internally. The differential cryptoanalysis situation is a key example of that. IBM could have instead been contracted by some random other group and developed the technology for them instead, which means that the NSA had basically no lead in cryptography over IBM.
So I think this is actually a really important point. I think by default the NSA can contract out various tasks to industry professionals and academics and on average get results back from them that are better than what they could have done internally. The differential cryptoanalysis situation is a key example of that. IBM could have instead been contracted by some random other group and developed the technology for them instead, which means that the NSA had basically no lead in cryptography over IBM.