I mean, DJB does mention NSA has more involvement over NIST than he expected, but that also doesn’t mean their would be collaboration.

In my non-expert reading, NIST made it seem better than it was, DJB disagreed but overestimated how bad it was, and NIST “sort of” said “yea OK we may have bragged.”

Either way, DJB is right to call out something being weaker than it should be. False confidence in encryption is about the worse thing that could happen in the digital age.