I&#x27;m not sure this means much.<p>Several popular encryption schemes have been developed by or heavily influenced by the NSA (including algorithms mandated by FIPS and other government organizations), and there has been a lot of speculation that they added backdoors to AES and other algorithms.<p>So in reality they&#x27;ve had the ability to add backdoors all along, and it&#x27;s in their best interest to keep it a secret whether they&#x27;ve added one, so it makes complete sense that their chief would say this.