Bankless Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Is Privacy A Winnable Battle?
Host: Ryan Sean Adams (B)
Guest: Andy Yen, Founder & CEO of Proton (A)
Date: December 15, 2025

Overview

This episode explores the current state and future of digital privacy at the intersection of AI, encryption, and the rapidly changing landscape of big tech. Host Ryan Sean Adams interviews Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton (makers of ProtonMail), about whether privacy is a "winnable battle," especially against the backdrop of surveillance capitalism and AI-driven data collection. They discuss threats, remedies, Proton’s philosophy and business model, the role of regulation, and practical privacy advice for individuals.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

The State of Digital Privacy

• How Bad Is It?

  • The majority of people are "quite screwed" on privacy today. Most users are not aware of how much data is being harvested or what happens to it. (03:49)
  • Technically sophisticated people can improve their privacy, but the landscape is becoming more hostile due to accelerating AI data collection.

• “AI as Data Accelerant”

  • AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini) represent the next stage of surveillance—more intimate, more revealing, and harder to opt out of.
  • AI is making existing extractive business models "5-10x more powerful." (03:49)

    "An AI conversation... is way more intimate. Google can accelerate by a factor of five or ten their existing business model with the advent of AI." — Andy Yen (04:10)

Who Can See Your Data?

• AI Privacy Risks & Data Ownership

  • Everything typed into most AI chatbots is stored, not anonymized, and can be accessed by company employees, law enforcement (via subpoena), private litigants, or even hackers in the event of a breach. (06:21)
  • User inputs can become part of the AI’s training data and may be regurgitated to others through model prompts, making data leaks and re-identification possible.

    "Once you put it into ChatGPT, it is unfortunately no longer your data." — Andy Yen (09:36)

• Data Breach Consequences

  • Breaches to services like Google or ChatGPT could expose deeply intimate data—worse than previous leaks, as chat logs can reveal more than emails or search histories. (12:44)
  • AI chatbots are used for therapy, relationship advice, and more—making the stakes of exposure high.

AI, Manipulation & Power Dynamics

• Addiction by Design

  • AI systems and social media are intentionally designed to be addictive; AI can "know you better than yourself" and exploit your personality weaknesses for engagement. (14:45)

    "AI will actually be able to exploit the weaknesses of personality that even you are not aware of in order to compel you to keep using it." — Andy Yen (14:45) "The purpose... is engagement. They want you to keep using it. It’s a hamster wheel that once you get on they never want you to come off." — Andy Yen (15:12)

• Privacy as Civil Liberty

  • Privacy is a modern civil liberty and a fundamental human right, especially as large corporations grow more powerful than many governments. (17:09)

    "Privacy... is our last defense against the encroachment of surveillance capitalism." — Andy Yen (17:09)

Business Models and Their Impact

• Subscription ≠ Privacy

  • Subscriptions don’t guarantee privacy; profit-driven companies may monetize data in any way possible, including subscriptions and advertising. (21:02)

    "Why wouldn't I do both? This golden optimistic here will actually pay me to abuse his data... I'll also harvest his eyeballs and sell him some ads." — Andy Yen (21:02, 21:32)

• Commoditizing AI & The Race for Profit

  • AI’s costs may decrease exponentially over time, but there’s interim pressure to monetize—leading companies to invade privacy further in the short term. (23:25)

Open-Source & Private AI with Proton Lumo

• Proton’s Approach

  • Lumo (Proton’s AI) guarantees privacy: no chat data is readable by Proton or staff, nothing is used for training, and everything is encrypted with keys Proton does not possess. Open-source models only. (27:21, 29:46)

    "We don’t keep a record of any of your conversations... our staff don’t read your conversations because they can’t." — Andy Yen (27:21)

• Incentives and Structure

  • Proton’s pro-privacy stance is enabled by its non-profit controlling structure. The company operates as a profitable business with the foundation as the majority shareholder, aligning interests with user rights above pure profit. (39:04)

    "The foundation gives the company the freedom to do the right thing." — Andy Yen (42:27)

Broader Digital Privacy Tools

• Product Suite

  • Proton offers encrypted email, calendar, VPN, password manager, Authenticator, Drive (with documents and photos), Bitcoin wallet, and privacy-preserving AI—all interoperable in a secure ecosystem. (48:49)

• On Future Expansion

  • Focus on best-in-class for each product; further crypto support (beyond Bitcoin) will be community-driven. (93:45)

Communication Privacy & Chat Apps

• E2E Chat App Rundown (53:54)
  • Discord: No encryption.
  • Telegram: Encryption not on by default; default is not private.
  • Signal: Fully encrypted, but some usability tradeoffs for group chat.
  • WhatsApp: Encrypted but owned by Meta (data mining of metadata).
  • X/Twitter: Claims encryption, but trust is dubious.
  • Proton: Considering P2P encrypted chat if demand is there.

Browsers and Mobile Stack

• Browsers: Eval & Risks (57:48)

  • Chrome is performant but deeply integrated with Gemini/Google for data collection.
  • Firefox is improving, but has moved to ad/AI-based business models.
  • Brave is good but disliked by some for its basic attention token (BAT) crypto stuff.
  • Andy’s current pick: Vivaldi—Chromium-based, open-source, less "baggage."

• Mobile (iOS vs Android):

  • Apple’s privacy stance is "marketing"—it means only Apple can exploit you. They’re as profit-driven as the others and incentivize surveillance capitalism via pricing structures. (60:26)

    "Apple has a giant ad business... privacy for them is just marketing." — Andy Yen (61:03)

  • Mobile OS market is a duopoly, hard to break except via regulation.

Legislative Threats & Solutions

• EU Chat Control

  • Legislation proposed to require scanning of all encrypted messages for "bad content" before sending—possibly breaking end-to-end encryption. (73:39)
  • Apple previously volunteered a similar solution but retracted after backlash.
  • Current status: Mandatory scanning was removed after public opposition but could return ("a zombie that keeps coming back"). (74:12)

• Legal Protections & The Need for a Digital Bill of Rights

  • Current protections are ad hoc and fragile; strengthening and enshrining the right to strong encryption (analogous to free speech and constitutional rights) is needed globally. (76:02)

    "I've never seen a backdoor that only lets the good guys in because it doesn't exist." — Andy Yen (80:15)

Ethics, Social Consequences, & Crypto’s Place

• No Perfection, But Necessary Tradeoffs

  • Tools like Proton are sometimes used by criminals, but the overall ratio is lower than believed—far outweighed by societal value.
  • Freedom requires a willingness to accept some risk; a "surveillance society" is a much greater harm. (84:21)

• Financial Privacy

  • Financial freedom is part of liberty: cash and peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions are essential privacy tools and should not be banned. (87:34)

    "If you don’t have financial freedom, I would argue you don’t have actual freedom either." — Andy Yen (87:34)

• Crypto: Promise & Problem

  • Crypto is too scammy (upwards of 30-40% of activity), which taints the sector and limits mainstream adoption. Crypto communities must actively disavow scams and self-police. (89:32)

    "We need to call out scammers for being scammers instead of fetting them at crypto conferences." — Andy Yen (91:36)

Notable Quotes

• "AI will actually be able to exploit the weaknesses of personality that even you are not aware of in order to compel you to keep using it."
  — Andy Yen, 00:00 & 14:45

• "Privacy... is our last defense against the encroachment of surveillance capitalism."
  — Andy Yen, 17:09

• "A subscription doesn’t mean that they will not violate your privacy... why wouldn’t I do both?"
  — Andy Yen, 21:02

• "Once you put it into ChatGPT, it is unfortunately no longer your data."
  — Andy Yen, 09:36

• "The foundation gives [Proton] the freedom to do the right thing but it's also highly profitable... this structure hasn't actually been done before."
  — Andy Yen, 42:27

• "I've never seen a backdoor that only lets the good guys in because it doesn't exist."
  — Andy Yen, 80:15

• "If you don’t have financial freedom, I would argue you don’t have actual freedom either."
  — Andy Yen, 87:34

• "We need to call out scammers for being scammers instead of fetting them at crypto conferences. Maybe they should be blacklisted and not allowed to occupy our public spaces."
  — Andy Yen, 91:36

Useful Timestamps

• 03:21 — How screwed are we on digital privacy?
• 06:21 — Can AI companies, governments, or others access your AI chats?
• 12:44 — Worst-case scenario: AI data breach impact
• 14:45 — AI’s capacity for manipulation and addiction
• 17:09 — Privacy as civil liberty and human right
• 21:02 — “Subscription doesn’t mean privacy”
• 27:21 — How Proton Lumo encrypts and secures data
• 39:04 — Proton’s hybrid foundation/company structure
• 48:49 — Proton’s full product ecosystem rundown
• 53:54 — Chat/IM privacy: Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, Discord, etc.
• 57:48 — Browsers: Privacy, AI integration, recommendations
• 60:26 — Mobile OS privacy, Apple’s role dissected
• 73:39 — EU chat control; ongoing legislative threats
• 76:02 — Need for a digital “Bill of Rights”
• 87:34 — Financial privacy as intrinsic human liberty
• 89:32 — Crypto’s scam problem and how to self-police
• 95:41 — Practical privacy tip: “Switch your email from Gmail to ProtonMail”

Practical Privacy Advice: Where to Start

Andy’s #1 Action Step:
Switch from Gmail to ProtonMail (or an equivalent privacy-respecting email provider).

• Email is not just communication—it's your digital identity and the core of your data profile.
• This severs Google’s linkage across all your activity.

  "Switching from Gmail to ProtonMail is simply saying, I'm going to erase my identity from Google... and you have effectively opted out of the Google system." — Andy Yen (96:12)

Additional Steps:

• Use secure password managers and two-factor authentication (like Proton’s tools, passkeys, Yubikeys).
• Use privacy-preserving browsers (firefox, brave, Vivaldi) and avoid logging in.
• Examine your chat apps’ encryption settings—defaulting to Signal for privacy.
• Use Proton’s wider ecosystem (Drive, Calendar, VPN, AI) as a full privacy stack.
• Be mindful of mobile OS privacy limitations and app store monopolies.

Closing Vision: Two Possible Futures

• Dystopian Track:
  Big tech wipes out privacy-focused firms through anti-competitive practices; governments become subservient to corporate interests—democracy loses.

• Optimistic Track:
  Privacy-focused and crypto-driven alternatives grow, reach critical mass (20-30% market share), and offer viable, user-friendly options. Through collective consumer choices, the next five years could tip the balance.

  "We have the power and we can do this if we want to." — Andy Yen (104:41)

Conclusion

This episode is a comprehensive, candid examination of digital privacy in 2025. Andy Yen pulls the curtain back on how deep data harvesting goes, the real risks of AI-driven surveillance, and how business models and regulation shape your privacy. The message is both a wake-up call and a call to action: Awareness isn’t enough—deliberate choices and collective action can still tip the future toward privacy and self-sovereignty.