Meltdown and Spectre are serious. But we need clarity on what they do and do not threaten. To address the widespread confusion on this topic, and to demonstrate a completely different approach to mitigating these, we wrote:
Although we don't know who the specific reviewers were, they were from the Usenix Security program committee, and so from the elite of the field. This rejection captures perfectly the tone of dismissal common in academia at the time. The common wisdom was that capabilities were a failed and unworkable idea that we need not bother further discussing. As you can see from the date on that email, when we got this rejection, we immediately posted it publicly.
My sense is that the paper together with this referee rejection, posted and discussed publicly, caused the initial influence. The embarrassment from that rejection was not on the authors. Within two years, many still thought capabilities were wrong. But the sneer was gone. Arguments could be heard. I dare say it marks the beginning of the capability revival in academia.
https://agoric.com/taxonomy-of-security-issues/ and https://ses-demo.netlify.app/demos/challenge/