[Cryptography] [IP] 'We cannot trust' Intel and Via's chip-based crypto, FreeBSD developers say

[dan at geer.org]

Bill Cox writes, in part:
 |
 | Anyway, it's a nice thought that RISC CPUs might provide more trust
 | due to their simplicity, but given the complexity of modern RISC
 | architectures like ARM, forget it.  There's no modern CPU of any
 | reasonable performance that isn't too complicated to easily audit.
 | There's a lot of room for back doors that no one would ever find,
 | RISC or CISC, IMO.

No doubt true.  No doubt.

There must be a {rule of thumb, nomogram, proportionality constant}
relating the build-up of complexity and the build-up of occult risk,
mustn't there?  Machines beat human chess (and other game) players
not by being smarter but by grinding a solution out.  One wonders
if AI doesn't eventually have the power to find back doors that no
human could ever find.  Then what?

--dan