…. computing solutions that would make such knowledge useless because they are so simple in sw and hw to afford and allow for extreme verification of all hw and sw involved at all stages, including manufacturing.
Former NSA chief Alexander, and who knows how many others, can make millions in consulting only because the It industry and experts have not even started working on computing solutions that would make such knowledge useless because they are so extremely simplified in sw and hw, to afford and allow for extreme verification of all hw and sw involved at all stages, including manufacturing and design of any critical components.
Possibly, the main problem is the same that has prevented us to see how far NSA had gone. There is a problem in the dynamics of IT security media and blogs, similar to other sectors, where a range of acceptable opinions are created, out of which all are paranoid.
Experts are still differentiating between mass surveillance and targeted surveillance. Whereas if what the most pessimist day about hardware vulnerabilities is true, than large scale undetectable targeted surveillance may be so low cost to render any encryption tools we are using or improving useless for the masses (or at least for its most active citizenry).