Well, gpg2 is an implementation of openpgp and is GnuPG the tool correct? So are you saying that when I `gpg2 --symmetric myfile` I'm doing something harmful rather than useful?

The expectation is that anybody who ends up with the encrypted copy would have an impossible time trying to decrypt it without, I don't know, millions of dollars worth of compute per year for decades to throw at it or something like that.