>but if you bootstrapped from the language source itself you are good No, that’s exactly what Ken Thompson was describing in Trusting Trust. You always have to

>but if you bootstrapped from the language source itself you are good No, that’s exactly what Ken Thompson was describing in Trusting Trust. You always have to bootstrap the compiler, but once you do, you use the compiler to compile itself and all future versions. So you use that circularity to hide the evidence of a back door in the compiler. It applies to all bootstrapped languages.