[TLS] Re: WG Last Call: draft-ietf-tls-mlkem-08 (Ends 2026-07-08)

[Kevin Milner <[e-mail]>]

Hi Andrew,

I appreciate your enthusiasm to respond but I interpreted Jonathan's statement to say that they plan to recommend the use of ML-KEM independently of whether there is an RFC, perhaps he can confirm one way or another. 

This would seem to lend credence to the suggestion that publishing the RFC itself is irrelevant to the recommendations of national security agencies, and indeed perhaps that (should consensus indicate it) publishing an RFC with Recommended=N would be an excellent way to communicate to the wider community that our collective stance is to recommend against its use, rather than having no specification one way or another and leaving only the perspective of national security agencies represented in published documents.

Cheers,
Kevin

> On 5 Jul 2026, at 17:32, Andrew Lee <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Dear Jonathan,
> 
>> On Jul 5, 2026, at 9:06 AM, Hammell, Jonathan F - [he/il] <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> Yes, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security plans to recommend the use of ML-KEM for TLS in our guidance for configuring network security protocols (ITSP.40.062 [3]).  We hope it will be published as an RFC.
>> 
> 
> Thank you for confirming, on the record, that the Canadian government plans to recommend solo ML-KEM for TLS despite the document carrying a RECOMMENDED=N flag. This is the single most important piece of evidence in this entire debate, because it proves that RECOMMENDED=N is meaningless in practice.
> 
> To make matters worse, X25519MLKEM768 is already flagged RECOMMENDED=Y in the IETF TLS registry. Yet, the Cyber Centre plans to treat both equally. You are explicitly overriding the IETF's own recommendation to present a downgrade as equivalent to the recommended option.
> 
> This is precisely what Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Tanja Lange, Dr. Nadim Kobeissi, Dr. Orr Dunkelman, and many other highly credentialed and deeply involved participants have been warning about [1]. The "Not Recommended" flag was supposed to be the safeguard that made publication acceptable.
> 
> You proved it is not.
> 
> Critically, I would ask the chairs to take note of this statement when evaluating consensus.
> 
> The core argument for publication was that RECOMMENDED=N protects against misuse. A Five Eyes government, mind you, just told us on this mailing list, that it does not.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Andrew
> 
> [1] If I didn't name you by name, I humbly apologize deeply.
> 
>