Cybersecurity Expert Answers the Most Concerning Questions About Your Online Privacy

SUMMARY

Tucker Carlson interviews cybersecurity expert Yannik Schrade, a 25-year-old German founder of Archium, on privacy's role in freedom, encryption's mathematical power, surveillance threats, and building private computation technologies.

STATEMENTS

Privacy is core to freedom, synonymous with protecting one's inner identity from dehumanizing forces.
Forces throughout history seek to reduce humans to slaves or objects, and privacy prevents this dehumanization.
The universe's mathematical asymmetries allow minimal energy to create unbreakable secrets via encryption.
Encryption enables creating secrets that even superpowers cannot recover without permission, baked into reality's fabric.
Cryptography leverages computational asymmetry where decryption requires impossible resources, like continent-sized computers for eons.
Privacy technology draws from the interplay of mathematics and physics, a fundamental property like nuclear weapons.
Humans can move information into an encrypted realm inaccessible without unlimited resources.
Yannik Schrade, born in Germany, studied law, then mathematics and computer science, founding Archium for decentralized privacy tech.
European data laws like GDPR seem protective but are often charades allowing surveillance by tech giants.
Modern digital lives involve sharing data with surveillance devices, but encryption can secure it at rest or in transit.
End-to-end encryption secures messages across untrusted channels, preventing interception due to inherent universal properties.
Current systems fail privacy by requiring decryption for access, exposing data to cloud providers or device operators.
Archium enables private computation where parties compute jointly without revealing inputs, scaling to humanity-wide levels.
Surveillance capitalism builds systems to extract value from user behavior through mass data collection and prediction.
Free apps and services profit by surveilling users, turning them into puppets via behavioral steering.
The internet, once emancipatory, now threatens civilization through pervasive surveillance at the device level.
Tactical surveillance targets individuals like journalists, while strategic surveillance collects all data indefinitely.
End-to-end encryption works, but end devices like phones remain vulnerable due to closed hardware and software flaws.
iPhones offer sandboxed apps for isolation, but complexity invites mistakes and malicious exploits.
Android's open-source OS allows verification, unlike closed systems, enabling custom secure setups like GrapheneOS.
For private communication, use dedicated phones with trusted encrypted messengers, minimizing interactions.
Cryptography's state-of-the-art is secure, relying on open-source verification by global cryptographers.
Randomness in encryption must be truly unpredictable; manipulated randomness undermines security via kleptography.
The NSA's Dual EC DRBG inserted a backdoor into standards, allowing decryption despite sound encryption.
Snowden's revelations exposed NSA efforts to weaken cryptography, harming U.S. security and economy.
Bitcoin provides pseudonymity, not anonymity, with all transactions publicly linked to identities via on-ramps.
Blockchain's censorship resistance ensures transactions proceed via distributed consensus, not single points.
Tornado Cash founders faced arrests for enabling privacy, despite misuse by illicit actors like North Korea.
Cash transactions are increasingly surveilled via serial number tracking in ATMs and registers.
Central bank digital currencies enable programmable money for automatic control, freezing assets based on behavior.
Decentralized systems mitigate risks by distributing computation, reducing single points of failure.
Surveillance infrastructures like chat control invite abuse, eroding oversight and democratic processes.
Privacy tech must enable superior verifiability, allowing confirmation of correct computations in private.

IDEAS

The universe favors encryption through asymmetries that make protection effortless while breaking it cosmically impossible.
Privacy acts as a shield for the human soul against coercive forces, mirroring the Second Amendment's intent.
Humans inadvertently feed surveillance machines by using free services, becoming unwitting subjects for value extraction.
End devices like smartphones are the weak link in privacy, turning secure messages into accessible data upon decryption.
Computational privacy allows collaborative secrets to produce shared outputs without exposure, revolutionizing interactions.
Surveillance capitalism predicts and steers behavior, transforming users from individuals into controllable puppets.
Open-source cryptography thrives on global scrutiny, catching flaws governments embed in standards.
True randomness in encryption mimics shuffling a deck with more permutations than human history's shuffled decks.
Kleptography stealthily undermines encryption by faking randomness, invisible to users following protocols correctly.
Bitcoin's transparency creates a dystopian ledger where every transaction traces back eternally, limiting freedom.
Smart contracts on blockchains execute code as law, unstoppable once deployed, enabling guaranteed actions.
Arresting privacy tool developers for misuse by criminals equates to punishing car makers for bank robberies.
Cash, presumed private, now faces serial tracking, eroding its anonymity in digital-age surveillance.
CBDCs could automate punishment, freezing money for "undesirable" digital activities like dissenting messages.
Decentralized hardware reduces backdoor risks, as security holds if at least one node remains uncompromised.
Client-side scanning censors messages pre-encryption, ostensibly for safety but enabling total oversight.
Wi-Fi routers track home movements without consent, monetized by ISPs in bulk-forced setups.
Ultrasound in ads triggers phone tracking, linking viewing to real-world visits without user awareness.
Unsecured city cameras globally expose lives, from playgrounds to daily routines, via simple searches.
Privacy adoption requires superiority: tech must outperform surveillance models to gain traction.
Verifiable private computation proves outputs correct without revealing inputs, ideal for secure democracies.
Signal's contact discovery relies on trusted hardware, a flaw exploitable for extracting social graphs.
Global cryptographers form a resilient network, identifying backdoors years before official revelations.
Europe's GDPR fines mask growing surveillance pushes, like chat control, prioritizing control over rights.
Tornado Cash sanctioning code as terrorism equates software to sanctioned entities, censoring free speech.

INSIGHTS

Encryption's cosmic asymmetry empowers individuals against empires, embedding freedom in reality's laws.
Surveillance thrives in secrecy, bypassing oversight and turning democratic tools into authoritarian weapons.
Behavioral prediction from data extraction not only profits companies but erodes human autonomy entirely.
True privacy demands holistic security: messages secure in transit fail if devices decrypt vulnerably.
Open-source global collaboration outpaces closed government sabotage, ensuring cryptography's robustness.
Pseudonymous blockchains like Bitcoin enable tracking more pervasive than cash, inverting privacy expectations.
Prosecuting privacy innovators for criminal misuse stifles innovation, punishing tools not intent.
Programmable money in CBDCs fuses finance with surveillance, automating control over thought and action.
Decentralization distributes power, mirroring constitutional designs to prevent concentrated tyranny.
Client-side scanning inverts privacy promises, enforcing censorship under safety guises universally.
Everyday devices like routers and cameras weave invisible surveillance webs, commodifying intimacy.
Superior privacy tech integrates verifiability, rebuilding trust in computations without exposure.
Historical abuses, from crypto wars to modern sanctions, reveal states' fear of uncontrollable freedom.
Randomness manipulation via kleptography shows encryption's strength lies in entropy's unpredictability.
Europe's regulatory facade hides acceleration toward total digital oversight, betraying data protection ideals.
Ultrasound and ad tech illustrate infinite tracking creativity, demanding vigilant privacy defenses.
Unsecured public cameras democratize surveillance inversely, empowering hackers over intended monitors.
Privacy's future hinges on economic incentives: only outperforming surveillance drives widespread adoption.

QUOTES

"Privacy is core to freedom at the end of the day. I would even go as far as saying that it is synonymous with freedom."
"There's this asymmetry baked right into the very fabric that we exist in."
"With a very little amount of energy, a minuscular amount of energy, a laptop, a battery and a few milliseconds of computation, you can create a secret that not even the strongest imaginable superpower on earth is able to without your explicit granting of access are able to recover."
"The universe itself allows for this computational asymmetry where I can create a secret."
"All of those systems are basically built as rent extraction mechanisms where from you as a user, you're not really a user, you're sort of a subject of those platforms you are being used to extract value from you without you noticing."
"Where I can predict your behavior. I can utilize that to in the most simple case do something like serving you ads, right? But in more complex cases, I can do things like I can steer your behavior. I can literally control you."
"End to end encryption allows us to take this information, take a message and lock it securely so that only Tucker and Yanik are able to unlock them and see what's going on and that is a fact."
"Complexity in the kinds of applications that you're running complexity in the underlying operating system that this device has all of that complexity invites mistakes and also malicious security flaws to be installed in those systems."
"True randomness. True entropy. That's what cryptographers I would say spend most of their time on thinking about how can we achieve true randomness."
"If you think about it practically, what that means is let's say we have a deck of cards, 52 playing cards, right? Um and I randomly shuffle this deck of poker cards um we have 52 cards. What it means is that there's so many possible um um ways that a deck could be stacked um that it is very unlikely that for truly randomly shuffled decks there have ever been um two identical decks in the history of humanity."
"Bitcoin specifically is pseudonomy. So you don't see on the blockchain Tucker Carlson um has 10 Bitcoin or whatever and send Yanik one Bitcoin. You instead see ABCD EFG blah blah blah whatever, right?"
"Code is law um which expresses what what has happened with tornado cash I think nicely where um it is the ultimate law sort of when you have this network that nobody controls and there's some piece of software and it just executes whatever is written within that software."
"If I rob a bank and then jump into my Chevrolet and speed away, does the president of General Motors get arrested? Usually he doesn't know."
"Cash already is also um being heavily surveiled. So your bank node has a serial number."
"We're sort of at a crossroads. Do we want our money to enable us freedom, freedom of economical interaction, freedom of thought at the end of the day because whatever we think we do, right? Where we we want to put our money where our mouth is."
"Surveillance does not bring us safety or security. It is in most cases doing the opposite."
"There's an sort of infinite amount of ways you can be tracked."
"Privacy is only going to get adopted if it enables strictly superior technology."

HABITS

Study law alongside mathematics and computer science to grasp privacy's legal and technical intersections.
Collaborate with like-minded individuals to found companies building decentralized privacy technologies.
Question free services by asking why they don't charge users, probing underlying value extraction.
Use dedicated phones solely for secure messaging with trusted encrypted apps to limit exposure.
Install open-source operating systems like GrapheneOS on compatible hardware for verifiable security.
Build custom encrypted messengers, avoiding app stores to eliminate potential malware vectors.
Verify software through open-source code review before deployment in privacy-critical systems.
Maintain family-wide adoption of secure tools like Signal, educating relatives on privacy practices.
Hand-encrypt messages before typing into devices to ensure content security at input.
Distribute computations across multiple devices from varied manufacturers to dilute backdoor risks.
Publish thoughts and articles on platforms like X (Twitter) to advocate privacy without mainstream filters.
Consume English content extensively from a young age to internalize the language for global communication.
Pause conversations to mentally calculate adoption timelines, blending technical and strategic thinking.
Focus on building versatile privacy tech that integrates market fit, avoiding echo-chamber development.
Evolve projects iteratively, pivoting from limited cryptography to comprehensive private computation.
Seek investor backing from privacy-aligned entities like blockchain firms for sustainable growth.
Use pseudonymous wallets carefully, understanding on-ramp links to avoid identity tracing in crypto.
Deface cash serial numbers with markers to counter potential ATM-register tracking mechanisms.

FACTS

Encryption's decryption complexity scales beyond the universe's lifespan for even supercomputers.
GDPR imposes fines on tech giants, yet Europe advances surveillance like the UK's January 8 chat control implementation.
The 1990s crypto wars involved cipher punks fighting for open-source encryption publication rights.
Zero-day exploits in iOS allowed full phone access via auto-downloaded images two years ago.
Dual EC DRBG, an NSA-backdoored random generator, was standardized by NIST in the early 2000s.
Snowden's 2013 Project Bullrun leaks revealed $10 million NSA payment to RSA for backdoor adoption.
Bitcoin's blockchain records all transactions forever, linking pseudonyms to real identities via exchanges.
Tornado Cash founders faced up to 40 years; one got five years for money laundering assistance.
OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash code as a terrorist entity, forcing its removal from platforms despite court reversals.
Cash notes' serial numbers are tracked in European ATMs and merchant registers for surveillance.
40,000 U.S. city surveillance cameras were unsecured, accessible via Google searches last year.
Ultrasound in TV ads triggers phone microphones to track consumer behavior to physical locations.
Wi-Fi routers detect apartment movements for monetization by ISPs, often without user choice.
Intel's trusted execution environments suffered multiple exploits over the past decade.
Client-side scanning in EU proposals targets child exploitation but applies to all messages pre-encryption.
Russians are overrepresented in privacy tech due to historical emphasis on freedom through anonymity.
Archium enables private computation on national-scale data like U.S. healthcare without exposure.
Shoshana Zuboff coined "surveillance capitalism" to describe behavior prediction for profit.

REFERENCES

Second Amendment (U.S. Constitution) as a tool against coercive force.
Shoshana Zuboff's "surveillance capitalism" concept from her Harvard work.
GDPR (European data protection laws).
Signal messaging app for end-to-end encrypted communication.
Crypto wars of the 1990s involving cipher punks.
Dual EC DRBG (NSA's backdoored random bit generator).
NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) standards.
Project Bullrun (Snowden-revealed NSA cryptography undermining effort).
GrapheneOS (secure open-source Android OS).
iPhone and iPad (Apple's sandboxed devices).
Android OS (open-source mobile platform).
Bitcoin (original blockchain for pseudonymous transactions).
Ethereum Virtual Machine (for smart contracts like Tornado Cash).
Zcash (Bitcoin variant with cryptographic privacy).
Tornado Cash (privacy mixer smart contract on Ethereum).
Archium (Yannik Schrade's company for private computation).
Solana (blockchain network with secure phone manufacturing).
Clipper chip (1990s U.S. encryption backdoor attempt).
Edward Snowden's leaks and exile.
Roman Storm, Roman Sevo, Alexey Pertsev (Tornado Cash founders).
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and DeFi Education Fund (defending privacy cases).
Online Safety Act (UK's chat control implementation).
Chat Control (EU proposal for client-side scanning).
Right to Repair movement (advocated by Louis Rossmann).
Ben Jordan's YouTube exposures of unsecured cameras.

HOW TO APPLY

Recognize privacy as essential to freedom by reflecting on how data sharing dehumanizes personal identity daily.
Educate yourself on encryption basics by studying mathematical asymmetries that protect secrets with minimal effort.
Audit free apps you use, questioning their business model to identify hidden surveillance for value extraction.
Switch to end-to-end encrypted messengers like Signal, verifying their open-source code for trustworthiness.
Secure your phone by installing open-source OS like GrapheneOS on supported hardware to enable auditing.
Dedicate a secondary device exclusively for sensitive communications, installing only verified encrypted apps.
Practice hand-encrypting messages before digital input to ensure content remains private at the source.
Distribute sensitive computations across multiple devices from different manufacturers to avoid single backdoors.
Use pseudonymous crypto wallets cautiously, avoiding direct fiat on-ramps to minimize identity linkage.
Deface cash serial numbers with a marker before spending to disrupt potential ATM-merchant tracking.
Monitor privacy policies of ISPs and routers, opting for providers that don't monetize movement data.
Disable unnecessary app permissions, especially microphone and camera, to prevent ultrasound or ambient listening.
Test device security by searching for known exploits in your OS and applying patches immediately.
Build or join decentralized networks for data processing, ensuring no single point controls access.
Advocate publicly on platforms like X against surveillance laws, sharing technical critiques to raise awareness.
Invest in or support privacy-focused companies like Archium to accelerate superior tech adoption.
Verify computations in private systems using built-in proofs to confirm accuracy without data exposure.
Prepare for CBDC threats by diversifying assets into privacy-enhanced cryptos for economic freedom.
Conduct personal audits of smart home devices, removing those that track without explicit consent.
Evolve your privacy setup iteratively, starting simple and scaling to full private computation tools.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Embrace cryptographic privacy as humanity's shield against surveillance, enabling secure, verifiable freedom in digital lives.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Prioritize open-source tools for all communications to enable global cryptographer verification against backdoors.
Build dedicated secure devices minimizing app complexity, focusing solely on essential encrypted functions.
Demand hardware decentralization, sourcing from multiple manufacturers to dilute potential supply-chain flaws.
Educate networks on true randomness needs, avoiding manipulated generators in personal encryption setups.
Integrate private computation into healthcare data use, consenting only to encrypted collaborative analysis.
Push for legal protections classifying privacy code as free speech, shielding developers from misuse charges.
Avoid centralized clouds for storage; opt for distributed networks where data ownership remains user-held.
Test all devices for ultrasound vulnerabilities, disabling microphones during media consumption periods.
Diversify crypto usage with privacy layers like Zcash mixers, steering clear of fully transparent ledgers.
Challenge surveillance narratives by highlighting historical abuses, from crypto wars to modern sanctions.
Adopt verifiability in financial apps, ensuring private transactions prove correctness without revelation.
Counter cash tracking by using small denominations and defacing serials, preserving analog privacy remnants.
Support organizations like EFF in defending privacy innovators, amplifying overlooked cases like Tornado Cash.
Evolve personal habits toward superior privacy tech, rejecting services that profit solely from data extraction.
Prepare for programmable money by advocating bans on surveillance-heavy CBDCs, favoring decentralized alternatives.
Monitor legislative pushes like chat control, voicing opposition to prevent client-side scanning mandates.
Foster global cryptography communities, contributing to protocols that resist national standard manipulations.
Invest in Archium-like platforms for economic transformation, where privacy drives innovation over control.

MEMO

In a world where digital lives eclipse physical ones, privacy emerges not as a luxury but as the bedrock of human freedom. Cybersecurity expert Yannik Schrade, a 25-year-old German innovator and founder of Archium, joined Tucker Carlson to unpack this urgent truth. Born amid Europe's regulatory facades like GDPR—which Schrade dismisses as charades masking surveillance— he pivoted from law to mathematics and computer science, driven by cryptography's intoxicating power. "Privacy is synonymous with freedom," Schrade asserts, echoing the Second Amendment's spirit in shielding souls from coercive forces that seek to commodify individuals into data points.

Schrade illuminates how the universe itself conspires for privacy through mathematical asymmetries: with a laptop's whisper of computation, one can forge secrets unbreakable even by superpowers wielding continent-sized machines for cosmic eons. Yet, this gift is squandered in surveillance capitalism, a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff, where free apps like chatbots extract behavioral data to predict, steer, and puppet users. "You're not a user; you're a subject," Schrade warns, as platforms monetize every interaction, transforming the internet from emancipator to existential threat. End-to-end encryption secures messages in transit, but end devices—closed fortresses like iPhones—betray them upon decryption, riddled with flaws from honest errors or malice.

The interview delves into hardware's betrayal: iPhones sandbox apps for isolation, outperforming Android's openness in some respects, yet both invite exploits through complexity. Schrade, an Apple user himself, recommends custom open-source setups like GrapheneOS for the vigilant. He recounts the NSA's insidious Dual EC DRBG, a backdoored randomness generator standardized via paid influence on RSA, exposed by Edward Snowden's 2013 leaks. Such sabotage not only spies on citizens but erodes national security, as fake cryptography invites global predation. "They undermined the entire security of their nation," Schrade notes, highlighting how open-source global scrutiny ultimately prevails.

Turning to finance, Schrade critiques Bitcoin's pseudonymity as a dystopian ledger, where transactions eternally link to identities via exchanges, enabling freezes like those on Canadian truckers. Blockchain's genius lies in censorship resistance—distributed consensus defies single vetoes—but privacy add-ons like Tornado Cash expose developers to peril. Founders Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev faced decades in prison for code misused by North Korean hackers, their software sanctioned as "terrorism" by U.S. authorities, despite court rulings deeming it unlawful. Cash, too, succumbs to serial tracking in ATMs, while central bank digital currencies loom as programmable panopticons, automating asset freezes for "undesirable" speech.

Archium represents Schrade's antidote: a platform for private computation, where parties collaborate on secrets—healthcare data, elections—yielding verifiable outputs without exposure. "Your data never leaves ownership," he explains, enabling cancer cures from encrypted national datasets. This verifiability, proving computations correct in secrecy, reimagines economies beyond extraction, fostering innovation rooted in trust. Yet risks abound; Schrade dismisses personal safety concerns, viewing threats as innovation's rite, akin to horseless carriages upending guilds.

Surveillance's creep manifests in Wi-Fi routers mapping home movements for profit, ultrasound ads pinging dormant microphones, and 40,000 unsecured U.S. cameras streaming playgrounds to any searcher. Europe's chat control, rebranded voluntary yet coercively enforced via risk assessments, scans messages client-side under child-safety pretexts—a tactic cynically rotated since 1999 EU transcripts. "Censorship is surveillance's byproduct," Schrade observes, warning of abuse in unchecked infrastructures.

Optimistically, Schrade envisions a utopian fork: privacy as superior tech, adopted not from fear but efficacy. At 45, he imagines a world where Archium's tools restructure democracies, verifiable and private. For now, individuals must audit devices, embrace decentralization, and champion innovators like Storm. As control grids gallop forward, Schrade's mission underscores a poignant irony: the very asymmetries preserving freedom demand vigilant defense against those who would encrypt obedience itself.