For anyone here who doesn&#x27;t know who the author is, Phil Rogaway is one of the most important academic cryptographers; he&#x27;s responsible for OAEP, PSS, OCB, UMAC, FPE, and the constructions behind XTS, the universal standard for disk encryption.<p>The meat of the paper is in Sections 2 (where the unintended power dynamics of some modern academic crypto research projects is discussed) and 4 (where he provides suggestions for important practical projects academic cryptographers should tackle). Sections 1 and 3 are written for an audience of academics who might be less familiar with the political implications of crypto than the typical HN reader.<p>Essentially, Rogaway is trying to convince mathematicians to embrace the practical and political impact of their work.<p>Colin Percival gets a nice mention towards the end of the paper. I&#x27;d be over the moon if I were him. Congrats, Colin!