> Through the mid-1990s, there was a difference between military-grade encryption and consumer-grade encryption. Laws regulated encryption as a munition and lim

> Through the mid-1990s, there was a difference between military-grade encryption and consumer-grade encryption. Laws regulated encryption as a munition and limited what could legally be exported only to key lengths that were easily breakable. That changed with the rise of Internet commerce, because the needs of commercial applications more closely mirrored the needs of the military. The case seems to be that the government and military has almost no special product offerings, so they use consumer tech. Therefore, weakening consumer tech weakens the government and military. This is not a robust argument imo. The stronger argument is about how a whole economy would spring up that would fill office building after office building with full time hackers trying to dox, blackmail, mitm, or steal from every non-banking, non-crypto-approved communication in the world. The interned would eventually just die off as a communications platform as the public completely lost trust in it (though not politicians - they would be approved to use the secure channels and would not understand the issue) edit: typo & wording fix