Defcon is more of a recreational conference than a professional venue. Black Hat, CanSec... maybe Recon, HITB... those are the professional venues. CRYPTO and ASIACRYPT are major crypto venues.

Nothing is going to happen at any of them. RSAC is an oddity in that it is a conference that cuts across the whole industry that is "owned" by a single vendor.

I'm sure you're aware BH recently shot itself in the head by getting rid of their last connection to the Jeff Moss days; it looks like it's rapidly headed toward "just another RSA".

CT-RSA, RSAC's cryptographic subconference, while not being a flagship conference like CRYPTO, is fairly relevant.

The feds get uninvited: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/07/for-first-time-ever-...

At Defcon, but not at Black Hat (the more important of the two), where Keith Alexander gave a keynote.

Not just any keynote either, it was more or less pro-government propaganda, complete with pre-vetted questions from the audience.

Also happened during the sequester, and when GSA had recently gotten in trouble for Vegas boondoggles, so I think there was a reduction in interest/increase in cancellations, and this was both a cheap way to send a "message", and a face-saving way to help them cancel.