I disagree with you, but you're not wrong. Taking the pragmatic approach to trust is perfectly valid, and the only short to medium term option at present. I per

I disagree with you, but you're not wrong. Taking the pragmatic approach to trust is perfectly valid, and the only short to medium term option at present. I personally find it distasteful, but that's my academic bias showing. However, Thompson's essay is both a practical attack and an abstract idea; I find the notion of trust with self referential systems more interesting than the specifics of how to detect a backdoored compiler.