Re: Paranoid AF
Key size is not a measure of crypto strength when the algorithms are different. Enigma had fundamental flaws. It doesn't mean AES doesn't. But we currently don't know of any real ones.
Just to further confuse the issue, AES-128 is stronger than AES-256. AES-256 refers to the key size and not the block size. Bruce Schneider and others pointed out that the number of rounds were too few.
Finally:
Look up Dan Bernstein's ChaCha, Salsa and Poly series of ciphers and MAC. They have been adopted by many non-government related entities like Google, are being proposed for various RFC's etc.
You are right to be paranoid for a different reason ... quantum crypto attacks are coming.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crypto-armageddon-nsa-says-current-asymmetric-key-quantum-kanungo/
And badly implemented crypto can lead to side channel attacks. The simplest one is a timing attack ...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-ecc-implementations-approach-side-channel-attacks-kanungo/