They're not special. Cryptographers are mostly (but not exclusively) the products of a few academic programs around the world that teach the specialized math in

They're not special. Cryptographers are mostly (but not exclusively) the products of a few academic programs around the world that teach the specialized math involved in developing and proving (and breaking) crypto algorithms. The standards are either the outcome of competitions the US government (through NIST) has held over the years, or they're de-facto standards because they're provably better for certain use cases than other algorithms.