With the gravity of a man who has seen the future and found it wanting, Buterin argues that open source code, verifiable hardware, and privacy-preserving cryptography (ZKāSNARKs, FHE, and the ever-elusive differential privacy) are the bulwarks against the twin specters of centralization and baked-in backdoors. šµļøāāļø He cites, with the precision of a naturalist cataloging species, the lessons of COVID vaccine inequalities, the threats posed by proprietary health systems and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), and the risks inherent in electronic voting and forensic evidence. These, he declares, are the battlefields where civic, commercial, and public-safety technologies must be as transparent as a St. Petersburg summer day-inspectable, verifiable, and free from the taint of hidden agendas.