The #1 problem when technical people consider politics and law: they expect it to follow <i>any</i> sense of <i>logic</i>.<p>That is a <i>threat</i> to the tech industry, as part of the ongoing campaign to paint tech companies as &quot;selfish and unreasonable&quot; or even &quot;aiding terrorists&quot; in the public eye. At no point is any kind of &quot;Manhattan project&quot; actually intended. That&#x27;s just a clever talking point used to frame encryption for the general public.<p>The long-term message for tech companies is <i>&quot;stop challenging our power and authority&quot;</i>. Encryption represents a power shift, which is something the people used to having that power cannot allow. Their traditional weapon is the power to control the framing of any topic.<p>The end game isn&#x27;t breaking encryption. If the tech industry doesn&#x27;t submit to the demands for a backdoor, <i>the tech industry will be declared the enemy</i>. If the economy related to the internet and encryption <i>crashed</i> (which can always be accomplished with punitive regulation), the power situation is improved form the perspective of traditional politicians.<p>If they want to survive in anything like their current form, internet corporations should be fighting this <i>hard</i> to counter the framing in the public eye. Spending a few hundred million (or even a few billion) spent on media campaigns to make people want encryption is preferable to being forced to implement backdoors and watching entire markets dry up.