Perhaps it's a cynical way to look at it, but in the days of the war on general purpose computing, and locked-down devices, I have to consider the news in terms of how it could be used against the users and device owners. I don't know enough to provide useful analysis so I won't try, but instead pose as questions to the much smarter people who might have some interesting thoughts to share.

There are two, non-exclusive paths I'm thinking at the moment:

1. DRM: Might this enable a next level of DRM?

2. Hardware attestation: Might this enable a deeper level of hardware attestation?

Just to level set here. I think its important to realize this is really focused on allowing things like search to operate on encrypted data. This technique allows you to perform an operation on the data without decrypting it. Think a row in a database with email, first, last, and mailing address. You want to search by email to retrieve the other data, but don't want that data unencrypted since it is PII.

In general, this solution would be expensive and targeted at data lakes, or areas where you want to run computation but not necessarily expose the data.

With regard to DRM, one key thing to remember is that it has to be cheap, and widely deployable. Part of the reason dvds were easily broken is that the algorithm chosen was inexpensive both computationally, so you can install it on as many clients as possible.

> how it could be used against the users and device owners

Same here.

Can't wait to KYC myself in order to use a CPU.

> how it could be used against the users

We are not anymore their clients, we are just another product to sell. So, they do not design chips for us but for the benefit of other corporations.

3. Unskippable ads with data gathering at the CPU level.

When we are at the point where society feels the need that privacy means encryption at compute ... a product like this (or anything else in the supply chain) is not going to save them.

I don't think it's applicable to DRM because you eventually need the decrypted content: DRM is typically used for books, music, video, etc., you can't enjoy an encrypted video.

I think eGovernment is the main use case: not super high traffic (we're not voting every day), but very high privacy expectations.

1. The private key is required to see anything computed under FHE, so DRM is pretty unlikely.

2. No, anyone can run the FHE computations anywhere on any hardware if they have the evaluation key (which would also have to be present in any FHE hardware).

I'm also thinking of what happens when quantum computing becomes available.

But when homomorphic encryption becomes efficient, perhaps governments can force companies to apply it (though they would lose their opportunity for backdooring, but E2EE is a thing too so I wouldn't worry too much).

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323743

It's not related to DRM or trusted computing.

My thought is half cynical. As LLM crawlers seek to mop up absolutely everything, companies themselves start to worry more about keeping their own data secret. Maybe this is a reason for shifts like this; as encrypted and other privacy-preserving products become more in demand across the board.

No, because of the fundamental limitation of DRM. Content must be delivered as plaintext.

Regarding DRM, You could use stream ciphers and other well understood cryptography schemes to use a FHE chip like this to create an effectively tamper-proof and interception proof OS, with the FHE chip supplementing normal processors. You'd basically be setting up e2ee between the streaming server and the display, audio output, or other stream target, and there'd be no way to intercept or inspect unencrypted data without breaking the device. Put in modern tamper detection and you get a very secure setup, with modern performance, and a FHE chip basically just handling keys and encapsulation operations, fairly low compute and bandwidth needs. DRM and attestation both, as well as fairly dystopian manufacturer and corporate controls over devices users should own.

This is quite the opposite, better than we have.

It raises the hurdle for those looking to surveil.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

This is primarily for cloud compute I'd imagine, AI specifically. As it's generally not feasible/possible to run the state of the art models locally. Think GDPR and data sovereignty concerns, many demand privacy and can't use services without it.

Regarding DRM I don't see how it'll survive "Camera in front of the screen" + "AI video upscaling" once the second part is good enough. Can't DRM between the screen and your eyes. Until they put DRM in Neuralink.