When hardware security is managed by the impenetrable bot

This will be our situation with smart card.  The hard keys are masked and burned onto the chip, and the actual key is never known by humans.

The bot on the assembly line making keys monitors verification reports as new cards find their spot in the secure  card chain.  That bot at the foundry will slow down the production when the sequence in is too variant from the sequence out.  That bot has the right to shut down a smart card technology line.  That is what makes smart card pure cash, it is the knowing that humans cannot rig up the security.