i think there are two different qualities to entertainment/art:
-one is the structural quality, which remains with every repetition.
-another is the novel quality, which is basically the (un)pleasant surprise of something new or unexpected, which obviously is heavily diminished by repetition. i believe aristotle's catharsis to be based on this quality.
i agree with you that entertainment/art that only possesses the latter quality is poor quality entertainment. it does not follow that entertainment/art with both qualities does not lose at least some of its value when the spectator is exposed to spoilers.
1) they have found/introduced a bug in encryption standards
2) they have solved a fiendishly hard math problem to which no known solution exists and on which solution there is a price of 1 mio $
working in dev i assume (1) is several orders of magnitude more likely.
as far as i understand it, ciphertext is indistinguishable from random text. and, afaik, this is true of all modern algos. so, how do you notice they switched? you don't.
you only notice once they call upon the more public parts of gov to switch to another 'secure' algo. also, NSA themselves probably use the Suite A algos that we know batshit about.
but, reality check: THIS IS ALL SPECULATION. there is no evidence that they have broken anything.
i agree with you that entertainment/art that only possesses the latter quality is poor quality entertainment. it does not follow that entertainment/art with both qualities does not lose at least some of its value when the spectator is exposed to spoilers.