That is fair, but that is by no means an argument for Speck, but instead just an argument for a block mode cipher. What they would need to do would be to find

That is fair, but that is by no means an argument for Speck, but instead just an argument for a block mode cipher. What they would need to do would be to find a different sensible block mode cipher, rolling a cipher-text stealing operation mode like XTS for a stream cipher (which is not that complicated, although one should do their homework first), or using a construct to convert a stream cipher to a block mode cipher so it can use XTS directly (which is possible, but care must be taken). #2 would probably be best. I am not sure if it a trend, but I seem to mostly see new stream ciphers popping up, so this solution is likely more sensible.