It sounds like the implication is that the politicians are smart enough to know that the backdoors are ultimately not going to happen but that calling for them

It sounds like the implication is that the politicians are smart enough to know that the backdoors are ultimately not going to happen but that calling for them is a way to appease voters who haven't followed this through to its logical conclusion. edit: "not going to happen" could be read as "not going to be effective." I wouldn't actually be surprised if the US ended up passing some law restricting crypto to an approved list of backdoored schemes (surprised: no, dismayed: yes), forcing people into hiding their crypto in deniable ways. What some people don't seem to grasp is that no matter how much you outlaw certain math operations, whether or not the end users comply with those laws is ultimately up to them, and the terrorists simply won't comply.