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