Yeah, that was a decade+ long running cluster of epic proportions… There had to be ulterior motive, like gaining insight into the products in the market or something. Also, the language of the encryption blockade did encourage a lot of products to just use insecure encryption instead of cranking up the “bits” of security to impossible to crack and tangling with the export controls people.

It’s not like the blockade stopped a single copy of anything from moving out of the country, but it did shape the mass marketplace to be less secure.