> I don't think it works that way.
Sure it does. With new mathematical discoveries, there come direct and immediate consequences to the technologies built using previous assumptions - which will now either be validated or invalidated.
If, for example, prime factorization is proven to be not computationally difficult, invalidating the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_RSA_assumption, and somebody publishes a practical method, then most of the world's cryptography systems utilizing RSA would be hacked immediately.
