"Reflections on Trusting Trust"[1] (Ken Thompson, 1984) is up there - it's a brief read, with high information density, and fairly profound implications.<p>[1] - <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/358198.358210" rel="nofollow">https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/358198.358210</a>
I really like the Raft paper, just because it was one of the first papers I read out of curiosity.<p>Also, not what you asked, bur there's a fellow on YouTube who reads many classic CS papers while providing context. Great content! <a href="https://youtube.com/c/VivekHaldar" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/c/VivekHaldar</a>