> The only way to protect data is to keep it always encrypted on servers, without the servers having the ability to decrypt.

> If FHE is a possible option, people and institutions will demand it.

I don't think that privacy is a technical problem. To take the article's example, why would Google allow you to search without spying on you? Why would chatgpt discard your training data?

GPG has been around for decades. You can relatively easily add a plug-in to use it on top of gmail. Surely the protocol is not perfect, but could have been made better much more easily than it is to improve HPE, since a lot of its clunkiness can be corrected by UX. But people never cared enough that everything they write is read by Google to encrypt it. And since Google loves reading what you write, they'll never introduce something like HPE without overwhelming adoption and requirements by others.