They just rolled out millions in new fiber lines in my area. I had them for internet since 2018, moved out of their area, and now I am in their area getting their service again.
You are incorrect about that stagnation. Google has breathed new life into fiber offerings.
His point, which seems pedantic, but isn’t, is to illustrate the specific attack vector.
Breaking encryption would mean that the cryptographic process is something that an attacker can directly exploit. This is as close to impossible as it gets in that line of work.
While you can compromise the effectiveness of encryption by subverting it using other attack vectors like man in the middle or phishing or the good old fashioned physical device access, these don’t break the algorithm used in a way that it makes it vulnerable to decrypting other data.
None of those mean an algorithm used like say the ole Two fish encryption is “broken”.
Blowfish Triple DES Twofish RC4 Etc. All are fine and not currently broken. All however cannot protect your data if some other attack vector companies you or your site’s security.