Opinion: Bill Laboon, VP of Ecosystem, Web3 Foundation
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently offered a humanizing moment in a world of technology that promises too much and moves too fast. He urged users not to share anything on ChatGPT that they don’t want people to see. The US Department of Homeland Security is already starting to take notice.
His wariness runs into a deeper truth that underpins our entire digital world. In an area where you don’t even know if the other person is human or not., It is clear that software is often communicating with agents rather than humans. This growing uncertainty It’s not just a technical challenge. It threatens to undermine the very foundations of trust that bind society together.
This forces us to think not just about AI, but about something much more fundamental, much older, quieter, and more important in the digital realm: cryptography.
In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and autonomous systems, trust is more important than ever.
Cryptography is our foundation
Encryption is more than just a technology layer. It is the foundation of our digital lives. It secures everything from personal conversations to the global financial system, authenticating identities and enabling trust to extend across borders and institutions.
Importantly, it is not something that can be reproduced through regulation or replaced through policy. When trust is broken, organizations fail, or power is misused, encryption remains. It’s a safety net that ensures your most personal information is protected, even when you don’t trust it.
A cryptographic system is not like a house with doors and windows. It’s a mathematical contract. It means precise, rigorous, and unbreakable. A “backdoor” here is not just a covert intrusion, but a flaw embedded in the logic of a contract, and it only takes one flaw to destroy the entire contract. Vulnerabilities introduced for one purpose can open doors for everyone from cybercriminals to authoritarian regimes. It is built entirely on trust through a strong, unbreakable code, and when that trust is broken, the entire structure begins to crumble. And now that trust is under threat.
Blueprint for digital feudalism
The European Commission’s ProtectEU initiative proposes a mechanism that would force service providers to directly scan private communications on a user’s device before encryption is applied. This effectively turns a personal device into a surveillance tool and destroys the integrity of end-to-end encryption. Although state actors would never allow such vulnerabilities in their own secure systems, this obligation creates a separate and weaker security standard for the public.
On the surface, this seems like a reasonable compromise. The idea is to strengthen encryption for governments and provide so-called “lawful access” to citizens’ data. But what it proposes is a hard-coded imbalance where the state encrypts and the public decrypts.
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This is not a security policy. This is the blueprint for digital feudalism. A future where privacy is not a right guaranteed to everyone, but a privilege reserved for those in power. Two-layer encryption shifts the balance of trust away from democratic responsibility and strengthens governance structures that a free society should not accept. Don’t get me wrong. This discussion is not about safety. It’s about control.
We shouldn’t live in a world where only the powerful can be private.
In an age of ubiquitous AI, state-sponsored hacking, and mass digital surveillance, weakening encryption is not just short-sighted, it is systemic recklessness. As we live in a decentralized world, this is not an abstract discussion. That’s a practical concern. Strong, unbreakable encryption is more than just a technical feature. It is the basis for everything else.
truth through verification
This is why Web3’s mission must be rooted in its core promise: truth. Truth by verification, not truth by authority. This principle of self-enforcing contracts is why truly decentralized systems are built without a key master or key-holding authority. The introduction of backdoors is contradictory. It re-establishes the central point of failure and violates the very premise of a trustless system. Security is a binary situation. Security either exists for everyone or is guaranteed to no one.
Fortunately, these principles are not just theoretical. The cryptographic primitives that emerge from this space, such as zero-knowledge proofs that can verify facts without exposing data, and identity verification systems that resist Sybil attacks without compromising privacy, provide working alternatives and show that we don’t have to choose between security and freedom.
The irony is that the tools needed to build a more secure and open digital future lie in the same areas that are currently under threat. It is based on permissionless innovation, cryptographic trust, and personal dignity, not surveillance or gatekeeping.
If we want a secure, inclusive, and resilient digital world, encryption must be strong and universally standardized for everyone.
Not because we have something to hide, but because we all have something to protect.
Opinion: Bill Laboon, VP of Ecosystems, Web3 Foundation.
This article is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be, and should not be taken as, legal or investment advice. The views, ideas, and opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.