> It speaks a lot to the power of financial incentives

Also, to the power of modern-day cryptography that rubber-hose and evil maid (backdoors) are the only viable (even if expensive) alternatives.

> the government disappears, there are really only two fundamental technologies needed to reboot everything: money and contracts

Both of which require "governance", but post-collapse, it may be of form that may not benefit the collective.

It doesn't demonstrate the security of cryptography, just that entities exist with sufficient skill and knowledge for supply chain attacks but lacking cryptographically relevant mathematics.

It doesn't prove the hardness assumption, if it did we could trot forward any toddler and ask if it knows the factors to some RSA product, and "prove" hardness assumption for factoring integers...