I apologize for not being clearer about NSA's motivations. I did not mean to imply that there was any malicious intent when it comes to weakening federal IT standards. (It seems that NSA would be aware of the negative side effects of their recommendations.)
Could NSA's hardware centric recommendations be motivated by an interest in leveraging economies of scale (due to the size of federal IT procurement) and purchasing COTS hardware that was optimized for AES?
It's possible (although they're already procuring hardware at GSA-approved rates, so I'm not sure if there's the same economies of scale that you see in the commercial realm).
Could NSA's hardware centric recommendations be motivated by an interest in leveraging economies of scale (due to the size of federal IT procurement) and purchasing COTS hardware that was optimized for AES?