It feels like you’re arguing that, technically, GPG _can_ be used to achieve the same level of security as modern messaging platforms. That’s probably true. (I

It feels like you’re arguing that, technically, GPG _can_ be used to achieve the same level of security as modern messaging platforms. That’s probably true. (I say “probably” because I’m not a cryptographer, so I’m not qualified to speak to the cipher algorithms used.) My claim was never that, though. My claim is that in the “normal” usage of PGP, it’s substantially less secure than modern alternatives, and that this is a mostly inherent byproduct of the use cases for which PGP appears to be constructed. Succinctly: it’s hard to use PGP securely. Can you do it? Probably. Could PGP be the default if everyone gave up on the easier to use, more secure alternatives? Well, on this point I am skeptical: before Signal, Wire, Threema, WhatsApp, etc—some of us remember those days!—the “default” was plaintext email. Not PGP. PGP had 30 years to become the norm. During the first twenty or so, it had no real competitors other than S/MIME. And, here we are. There are a lot of areas—fountain pens, for example, or vintage sports cars—where old technology has its own appeal, but encrypted communications isn’t one of them.