Putting aside the question of &quot;should we break encryption&quot; to look at the Manhattan analogy.  We did not get atomic bombs because the government asked physicists to invent a method of building bombs orders of magnitude larger than what we had before.<p>Instead, physicists hypothesized that atoms might undergo fission, which would lead to a release of energy and neutrons. Then they did further research into this matter and observed fission occur. Once this foundational research happened, not before, Openheimer drew a picture of a bomb.<p>It was only later, that the US spent about 0.2% of GDP on the research and development necessary to construct an atomic bomb.[0]<p>At this point in time, we have no hypotheses that are analogies to fission from which we can build the type of system that Clinton is suggesting. In fact, a solution to this problem would also be a solution to many of the problems that cryptographers have been researching for decades. Consider that under the proposed system, the Government has legitimate access to the encrypted data[1]. Additionally, we would like the system to prevent access to people without legitimate access. It will be a good day for crypto when we solve this weakened version of the problem at scale.<p>At the moment, the best solution to this problem we have is to decentralize all key material, so that any breach is localized. However, this solution is fundamentally contradictory to the proposed system.<p>Additionally, when we say that the Government is an honest actor, we really mean that the Government computer systems are honest actors. We know that this is not the case, because we have seen these systems be compromised by malicious actors.<p>[0] Total cost of the Manhatten project was about 2% of GDP but about ~90% went to construction, which would likely be far more expensive for a bomb than for crypto.<p>[1] With judicial approval, which I will ignore. For the purposes of this security definition, assume that the Government is an honest actor.