"They want to decrypt data because they want to protect people from threats."
That's "in it for the power".
Power doesn't look the same from the inside. Basically nobody (except college-age Mark Zuckerburg) goes around saying "I'm an evil Machiavellian genius that's going to fuck over the world for my personal benefit." Instead, the feeling of having power, from the inside, is the feeling of being able to make decisions for other people for their own good. It's the ability to deal with people as abstractions who should want things, whether they actually do or not. People can't be trusted to invest their own money, so we need regulations so that only the wealthy can invest. People don't know what they're searching for, so we need to correct their queries for them. People want lower prices, so we'll give it to them by turning the screws on our suppliers. People would collapse into chaos without law and order, so we enforce it.
Sometimes the powerful are even right in their views - after all, very often that's how they got to be in power in the first place. But that doesn't stop them from being resented, because the resentment stems from the fact that they are making decisions for other people that those other people neither consent to nor really want. Someone who is actually "not in it for the power" is someone who says "I trust you to live your own life how you want, as long as it doesn't prevent me from living how I want."
That's "in it for the power".
Power doesn't look the same from the inside. Basically nobody (except college-age Mark Zuckerburg) goes around saying "I'm an evil Machiavellian genius that's going to fuck over the world for my personal benefit." Instead, the feeling of having power, from the inside, is the feeling of being able to make decisions for other people for their own good. It's the ability to deal with people as abstractions who should want things, whether they actually do or not. People can't be trusted to invest their own money, so we need regulations so that only the wealthy can invest. People don't know what they're searching for, so we need to correct their queries for them. People want lower prices, so we'll give it to them by turning the screws on our suppliers. People would collapse into chaos without law and order, so we enforce it.
Sometimes the powerful are even right in their views - after all, very often that's how they got to be in power in the first place. But that doesn't stop them from being resented, because the resentment stems from the fact that they are making decisions for other people that those other people neither consent to nor really want. Someone who is actually "not in it for the power" is someone who says "I trust you to live your own life how you want, as long as it doesn't prevent me from living how I want."