How the CIA Owned an Encryption Company for 50 Years (And Why Your VPN Might Be Next)

For 50 years, 130 governments trusted Crypto AG to protect their most secret communications. Every single message was being read by the CIA and German intelligence. Operation Rubicon was the longest-running espionage operation in history. The CIA secretly bought a Swiss encryption company in 1970, installed backdoors in every device, and sold “secure” communications to governments worldwide. Nobody suspected a thing – until 2020.

Now it’s happening again. But this time, they’re buying your VPN companies. Kape Technologies – an Israeli company founded by former adware criminals with ties to Unit 8200 (Israel’s NSA) – quietly bought ExpressVPN in 2021. They also own CyberGhost, PIA, and Zenmate. Plus all the VPN “review” sites that conveniently rank their products at the top.

In this episode of The OPSEC Podcast, you’ll discover:

• Why Chinese VPNs like Turbo VPN are 51% owned by the Communist Party (and why they target American teenagers on TikTok)
• How Russian VPNs like Kaspersky are legally required to give the FSB access to all your traffic
• Why “free VPNs” turn your computer into a botnet zombie (the Hola VPN scandal)
• What VPNs actually do vs. the anonymity BS they claim in their marketing
• The only 3 VPN companies that pass the trust sniff test: ProtonVPN, Mullvad, and NordVPN

A VPN does not equal automatic privacy. It’s outsourcing trust from one party to another. If you take trust from your ISP and give it to a malicious actor, you’re worse off than having no VPN at all.

Free VPNs make YOU the product. Israeli companies inject adware. Chinese companies feed data to the CCP. Russian companies hand everything to the FSB.

Check who owns the VPN – not just where the servers are located. Because if the CIA launched a VPN service promising “guaranteed privacy,” they’d sell exactly zero subscriptions. So why trust companies with the same intelligence agency connections?

Your privacy is your responsibility. Do your due diligence or accept the consequences. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.