In Conversation with Eric "Ekr" Rescorla, CTO @ Firefox at Mozilla

Eric, it's great to have you join. Eric is the CTO at Firefox and I've been a huge fan of Eric's for a long time.

Eric, thank you for coming on on Cloudflare TV today. Well, thanks for having me on.

Are you, so first of all, are you and your family all safe and healthy and sheltered in place somewhere?

Yeah, we are. We're in Palo Alto, so I've been hanging out in my house except for, you know, leaving the house like once a day to go running and that's about it.

Well, that's, well, I appreciate it.

So we scheduled this a couple weeks back and yesterday you at Mozilla had some announcement around layoffs and I reached out to say, hey, like that's tough time.

Do you want to reschedule it?

And you said, no, no, let's talk about it. But, you know, I think before we kind of get into this, you know, what can you tell us about the news and what's going on?

Yeah, I mean, it's a tough week, obviously. And the first thing I want to do is like, you know, extend like thanks to my colleagues here at Mozilla, the ones who are staying, the ones who are leaving, you know, they've all made these huge contributions to Mozilla and making the Internet a better place.

And so we all owe them like a real debt. And I think, you know, most of what I should say is like in Mitchell's blog post, really, you know, the reality is Mozilla wasn't sustainable at its current size.

And so we looked at a lot of options.

But ultimately, you know, I mean, we're a mission driven organization and we have this mission to fix the Internet.

And like, that's like not a mission that's going to end like anytime soon, because the Internet's pretty broken.

And, you know, that requires to be a size where we can, you know, continue to do that work.

And so we're using that as an opportunity to focus on what's essential in the areas where we think we can make the biggest impact.

I mean, at the same time, though, there was like a realization that Firefox, we can't do this alone, and Mozilla can't do it alone either.

And so part of what we're doing is we're trying to like restructure the organization.

So, you know, we've been met and I think that in collaboration with other people, and actually, I think brings us to this conversation, because one of the things, you know, the way I know you is that, you know, we've been partnering with Cloudflare in a bunch of ways to improve Internet.

And I think that's a template for some of the things I'm hoping we'll be able to do going forward, in addition to Firefox, which is obviously critically important, which is, you know, partner with other organizations, which have the same values that we do, and try to work together to fix the Internet, rather than just feeling like we have to carry that weight ourselves.

If so, you know, before we before we talked about some of that, and other things, if I mean, I've always really admired the team at Mozilla, I mean, across the board, you know, from the technologists, the public policymakers, and everyone else, if there are if there are people listening in that are looking for really talented, talented folks, is there, is there somewhere that you sort of point them to say for the because, because I know a lot of the people who unfortunately you had to let go are really are really great.

Yeah, I mean, so we're starting to put together some resources, I don't think they're quite baked in on anybody who wants to, on the moment can just email me on EKR at Mozilla.

And I'll keep a list or, or depending on when I get it, I'll either put you in touch with the right people, or I'll put keep a list and then put in touch with the right people.

Well, I again, I really appreciate you still coming on, even though it has been a tough week.

And I'm sure that, you know, we're actively talking to a lot of people who left and we'd be excited to have them on our team and really appreciate it.

You know, how did you, you know, how did you get in?

What's your background? How'd you get into this? And what first interested you in technology?

I mean, so I have this sort of weird personal story, actually, um, my training in chemistry, and, and I was, you know, a young kid in chemistry undergrad, and, and I applied to grad schools and whatever, and, and sort of like, um, and I looked at my advisor is doing and like, you know, and I was like, this guy spends all his time, like, like, basically, you know, managing the lab, like writing papers and like, or I mean, writing grants, really not papers.

I was like, I want to like a job where I'm going to like do like individual work.

And, and I was complaining to one of my, one of my friends at college, and, and, and he's like, well, when you go out to visit Stanford, because I was visiting Stanford, go like, talk to, you know, my dad, who like runs a startup on Palo Alto.

And, you know, he knew I was like, you know, I program computers, and he's like, and so I go in and like, inexplicably, they decided I was smart and like, made me some kind of like very introductory job offer.

What was that company? It was called Enterprise Integration Technologies.

They did a bunch of, you know, government contracting and stuff.

So this was 1992. So back when the just getting going, you know, there was an acceptable use policy.

And so, you know, I and I was just lucky enough to be they were people there, you know, especially J.

Weber and Alan Shiffman, who like, really thought the Internet was important and, and thought security was important.

And they gave me a bunch of opportunities to work on Internet security and like, you know, working very early Internet security stuff.

And that's how I got into this. It was just really coincidence, coincidence and like great luck and timing.

And what were some of the steps between there and Mozilla that were that were kind of formative in in in your career?

Yeah, I mean, so we so I guess we worked on, you know, something which is now defunct called secure HTTP, which is one of the first attempts to build like a secure protocol for the web.

And then, and then Netscape, you know, did SSL and SSL really killed the entire market for anything like that.

And so we, the company is working for did a, you know, like a toolkits for like secure Internet commerce.

And I mean, the idea was, it was supposed to be like secure HTTP and SSL, but like, very quickly, it was just SSL.

And, and then at some point during that I was, I was like, offered by Allison Wesley to write a book on SSL.

And I was like, well, and they sort of like, they had in mind, like, 50 or 100 pages, and I turned out like 500 pages.

And, and I started to do that. And then I sort of gradually, like, you know, I got I was doing consulting, and I did a bunch of things like consulting and startups and some jobs and stuff like that.

And then around, I want to say, like, 2012, I started, like, really looking at, like, where the Internet was, and being kind of depressed that I spent, like, so much of my life trying to, like, do crypto, and, like, how little of it there actually was.

And, and so, you know, I started thinking, what's like a long term plan we can do to, like, encrypt the whole Internet?

And, and so, you know, I had this idea for Let's Encrypt, which wasn't called Let's Encrypt then, it was called, like, you know, let's make a CA by somebody.

And, and so I talked to a bunch of places, and one of those places was Mozilla, and I came to the conclusion Mozilla was the right place to do it.

And so I came to Mozilla, you know, largely do that, although spent a bunch of time doing other stuff at the same time.

And, and during that time period, it turned out other people had the same idea.

So there was a guy named Josh, who's worked at Mozilla and had the same idea.

And then the University of Michigan, and EFF also had the same idea.

And we all kind of joined forces and along with Cisco and Akamai, and like, did Ellie and Sergio.

So in the process, like, you know, you kind of work at a place and you get kind of embedded and do other things at the same time.

And so I got involved in lots of stuff, including, you know, WebRTC, and a bunch of things in Mozilla.

And so, you know, and so like, when initially, when I came here, I was like, well, I want to do my one thing.

And then after a while, you're kind of like, well, no, this is like, actually a pretty good mission.

And so, you know, I've stayed because like, you know, it's doing Mozilla is doing things that are important.

And I get an opportunity to work on those things and like, change the world.

Do you do you look at like the growth in Let's Encrypt and just, I mean, almost look like as a proud father of what's come because I mean, that's such a, it's been such a transformative project.

I do look at that graph, and I feel good. I don't think, you know, I don't think Ellie's the only thing that made that happen.

You know, you know, one thing I think is really important to tell people is, you know, this is a, this is like an effort, like this whole thing is effort about encrypting the Internet is, you know, it's, it's not just one company.

It's not just one set of people. It's like, it's us, it's you, it's, it's Google, it's, it's Apple.

It's like, you know, it's Cisco, it's like a whole pile of companies, you know, who are coming together to do this one, this, this thing.

And it's, and so like, there's a lot of levers that have pushed that.

But yeah, I mean, it's gratifying to look at that graph and feel like you have something to do with it.

Absolutely. It was, you know, I remember a number of years ago, back in the early days of Cloudflare, we, we went to our board and Michelle and I were like, you know, the board was like, you should come up with what your mission is.

And we, we, we had sort of, we came to that sort of through the process.

We didn't really start with it. And we went in and we said, our mission is to build a better Internet.

And we were really like proud of that. And I remember Brad Burnham, who, you know, is, has, has, has been around the Internet a bunch.

He had this just really negative kind of reaction at the time. And we were in a, we were in a car later that day and he said, I have a bone to pick with you about the build a better Internet.

That sounds like you're building a new Internet.

And I've spent a lot of my career building the Internet. It is. And it, and it, and it really is a collaboration and that's what's magical about it.

And, you know, it hit, it hit both me and Michelle, just like a ton of bricks where it was like, well, we're not trying to build a better Internet.

We're trying to help build a better Internet.

And we're one of many people that are doing that.

And I think that, you know, that's always one of the things that's really resonated with, with Mozilla's overall mission.

And it's been a lot really aligned with, with us.

And I think it's one of the things that's made, made it so easy to partner with you over, over, over the, over the last, last little bit.

Has, you know, when you, when you think about encryption, did you, when did, when did you, when did you become really conscious about sort of the privacy aspects of that versus just the sort of the security aspects or what, like which came first in that, in that evolution for you?

I mean, definitely security, because I think, you know, if you think about the original, you know, you know, the original work, like, you know, SSL, like it was just totally like, how do we send credit card numbers over the Internet so we can buy stuff, right?

And so I think it took, you know, a long time.

And I think if you look at the very early, all the very early concept designs, they're really oriented towards, towards just like security.

And I think it just took a, I think it was really only when we were doing like Tails 1.3 that we started to actually be much more conscious of like, oh, the metadata leak, it's really an issue.

And I think that the person who frankly deserves a lot of credit for that is Daniel Kahn Gilmore at ACLU, who sort of showed up at the very beginning.

He was like, well, why, why is SMI in the clear? I'm like, you know, what about padding?

I'm like, you know, what, like, why, why are you not like protecting, you know, this metadata?

I was thinking actually, as you were talking about building a better Internet, you know, we, we, we were like maybe two months away from launching ELE and you guys rolled out Universal SSL.

And, and I, and like, it was funny, because like, I had this freakout.

I was like, oh, man, we just been scooped.

And, and, you know, and I, and I, and I called the guy who I'm doing was our VP, Kevin Dickinson.

No, you're crazy. Like, this is like, this validates what you're doing.

This is like, you know, this proves that the world wants this.

So I, so I was like, so and then of course, I was excited about it once I realized that.

Yeah, no, it was of all And it was for us internally, you know, it was a really scary decision, because the the primary difference at the time between sort of the free version of Cloudflare and the paid version of Cloudflare was encryption.

And, and, and I just kept making the case that, like the in the future, it's not, it can't be a world where you have to pay to be more secure.

Like that, that should just be by default.

Yeah. And, and, but it was, but, you know, there were lots of people on our team were like, yes, but if we take away the one reason why people upgrade, then there are going to be fewer people who upgrade.

And, and at some point, I just sort of said, guys, we just have to do this and pulled the trigger on it.

And I wish, I wish Let's Encrypt existed at the time, because the negotiations that we had to do with existing vendors and everything else was, was so hard.

But I mean, I, but I think now, I mean, with that, with what we've done, the fact that, you know, it's bizarre if you sign up for a service and it's not encrypted.

I mean, I, that's, that's one of the things that when people ask me what I'm most proud of, you know, that I've done, it's, it's, it's certainly, that feels like we've, you know, moved, moved the, the Internet together.

And again, I think it's a really collaborative effort. It's not, it's not something where, where, where we're, again, we're trying to, we're trying to scoop each other.

And, and again, it's, it's something where we've, we've provided tons of support for Let's Encrypt over the years and very technical things.

And, and, you know, hopefully we'll, we'll be able to continue to do that.

What's, what, you know, we, one of the other things we partnered on that, that I just thought was a no brainer was, was DOH.

And, and, and I remember when you guys, you know, we launched 1.1.1 and you reached out and said, Hey, can we, can we use this?

And we were like, yeah, sure, we'll do that.

And, and did you, and, and it's like, of course DNS should be encrypted.

I mean, duh. Did you have any, did you have a sense that it was going to be as, as controversial in certain circles as it seems to have become?

No. I mean, I think we anticipated the, we anticipated the complaining about sending, about having one provider.

We didn't think it was going to be like it was, but we, you know, we knew that like, you know, that, that like sending it, sending it, you know, to Cloudflare by default was going to annoy some people.

But like, I guess, you know, we knew at some level that DNS was so widely used as a control point, but I think we just didn't realize that it was going to be like this much of a hot button.

And I mean, it's, it's too bad because I think, you know, we're, it is making the world better.

And, and it's just not like, you know, I mean, Martin Thompson gave this talk at ITF a year or two ago, where he's like, look, you know, these control points that people are using are just like, they're, they're taking advantage of like basically legacy vulnerabilities in the Internet.

And like, we just can't keep the we can't have the Internet continue to be insecure just so like people can continue to disable control points.

So, you know, but it's, yes, it's been, it's been a much longer road.

Like if you told me, like we still be rolling out Go today, I would not have, you know, I believe that.

It was, you know, and I think that I remember when you called and we're like, hey, would you mind if, if there, if there are other providers?

I was like, no, there definitely should be other, I mean, we have, we have no need to be, to be the only, but, but somebody has to be the first.

And, you know, I think that one of the things that I've come to realize over the last 10 years is how, you know, the Internet is just a series of chicken and egg problems.

And like the browser guys don't do something because the server guys don't want to do it.

And the server guys don't want to do something because the browser guys aren't doing it.

And, you know, part of part of like, just our, our way of thinking of the world is let's just be early on, on everything.

And so whenever you call us and say, Hey, will you guys support X, Y, or Z?

Our default answer is sure. Absolutely. Let's do it. I mean, unless it, unless it's not technically possible.

And, and then whenever you've called us and said, Hey, is it, is it possible for you to do something else?

And, and I think that that's, you know, that's, that's the spirit that was, that, that all of this was meant in.

And again, it's, it is that we're arguing over DNS and in the halls of parliament is, is just bizarre to me.

So I don't know.

That's it. Here we are. Anything we, we should have done differently if we, if we could do it over again.

Um, I mean, I, uh, I mean, I, I guess, I, I guess I wish, I think I wish like, and I wish we'd roll out with two providers.

I think that would make you a lot happier. Um, I mean, even if it was just, you know, you and like Cloudflare too, um, you know, um, uh, you know, but you know, that would have made it like a lot harder.

Um, I mean, I think, you know, so I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, about oblivious, oblivious dough, which is this idea of like proxying the traffic.

Right. And like people are like, well, why didn't you roll out with oblivious jokes?

And it wasn't like, we didn't know you could do this.

Right. Um, and it's like, well now we would need two people to like, we wanted to do it.

And, um, I think, you know, you hit on something really important, which is like when I got into this biz, you know, um, like, like you, I imagine, um, you know, it just took forever to do anything.

Like you have to get the standards and you'd have to like, you know, and you'd have, and then you get ready to do it.

And what's really happened as far as I can tell over the past five years is two things, right?

One is the rate at which software can be deployed. It's gotten so much faster.

So, you know, you know, like, you know, we, we can roll something out, you know, in the, in the browser, like in four or five weeks, like the worst case scenario once it's written.

And like, you know, I've had, I've worked with Cloudflare engineers and you're like, Hey, could you roll this out?

And it's like, well, I just did like five minutes ago.

Um, and so now, you know, you actually still have client software, which is different.

So, um, and so, you know, when you add that up and they, and then, and then the other thing that's happened is, um, you know, there's been a real kind of like the community of people that like knows how to do this stuff and like, wants to do this has gotten much more cohesive.

And so, you know, um, you know, I spent a lot of time like on, on IM with the Chrome engineers who work on, who work on security or the Cloudflare engineers work on security.

Um, and you know, I think a lot of that's been, so now, you know, we want to do something.

It's like, well, we'll just, we'll just get the people in a room and we'll like write it, write the specification and submit it to the ITF and we can start implementing like right away.

Um, and that's, that's a real thing that's changed, I think.

Um, and I think actually to be honest, the person who really deserves credit for that, a lot of that credit is Nixel, um, um, for, you know, really pushing for TLS 1.3 to have interop like in the very beginning.

And, um, you know, cause we, you know, we were, we were still in the mode of like, we were like using GitHub, but we're still in the mode of like, well, we're at the standard and eventually people implement it.

And Nick's like, no, like we've got to have server interop topic right away.

So I think that's a really like, that's, that's like, and you just see them quick.

Like it's even more like that where people are just like, there's like real time, real time feedback and real time implementation.

No, I remember when you were, you were in our office, um, before, before the pandemic and, and we were, we were chatting and you said, you know, it's amazing how much better the Internet's going to get really quickly because there's a small group of individuals that really matter in terms of, you know, in terms of implementing it.

And we all know each other and you pointed out to, you know, how long it took to go from HDB one to HDB 1.1, and now you go to HDB two and now we're all over HDB three.

And it's just, the time is getting compressed between that.

And I remember thinking, first of all, it was, it really struck me because I was like, whoa, like we're one of the, we're one of the companies that matters, which was, which is, which was a strange thing to wake up and realize.

But the other thing was I thought, God, if I weren't the CEO of Cloudflare, that's kind of a scary statement because you know, the, the Internet's supposed to be this massively decentralized thing and that it has become, you know, it's gone from, I remember when I was playing with the Internet back in, you know, the, the early nineties and anyone could put up a website, you know, in, in, in the mid nineties and, and, and you didn't have to worry about the security risks and you didn't have sort of all of this technical complexity, which is on top of it.

And now we've moved to a place where it's gone from kind of almost being like, you know, the Caribbean to being like the North sea where you do have to have all of, all of these things.

Does that like, and, and I, I mean, I think that Mozilla at some level is, you know, really sort of fighting for the kind of independent web at, at some level.

How does that, like, as you look forward, like what, how does that develop and how do we protect kind of the best aspects of that decentralized nature?

This is something we debate a lot internally, actually.

You know, we've been trying to figure out when we've been sort of writing this document about like what we think about the web.

And, you know, so, and so, so I think, you know, and this is actually something that we feel is real tension here.

It's like, I remember, you know, when it used to be, when you want to stand up a website, like, I mean, when there were 10 people on the web, it was easy and you could just get up your server.

And there was a long period where if you wanted to have like a real site that had a lot of people, you know, you had to like actually invest in like real iron, because like, if you know, and then one day, you know, slash dot, if you remember slash dot, just point at you and like blow out your Internet connection.

And so, you know, and so in some, in some respects, things like CDNs, like Cloudflare and things like AWS have made that so much easier.

You know, all you have to do is like, you know, like there's a credit card and, and many, and many of the sort of flashcard services are basically free.

So that's like a big, that's a big improvement.

And so in that respect, and it's also just gotten much, it's never been easier to like stand up your own content, but the cost of that has been sort of this narrow centralization of the number of people who actually, you know, the ability to pull the plug on you.

And, and that does worry us a lot. And we're not quite sure how to, how to thread that needle while preserving that ease of standing something up while also, you know, not having centralization.

And one place I would actually, I worry about even more than the content thing, payment thing, and the ad thing, where there's a very small number of people who like control that, those ecosystems.

And, you know, you see this, if you stand up, if you stand up a site, you know, the certain kinds of sites have trouble operating because they can't get, because they can't get payment to cover them.

Yeah, no, it's, you know, and it's interesting the way, because again, I think if I weren't the CEO of Cloudflare, I was looking in, I would be worried.

I'd be worried about us. What, what, what we saw though, when we were starting the company was it, it felt like there was so much momentum behind some of the, you know, true walled gardens, the Facebooks of, of the world that were sucking so much of the Internet onto it.

And that's, I mean, make no mistake, that's Facebook's business model is recreate AOL, but on a global scale.

And, and, and so, you know, I, I've always sort of thought, you know, if there's a whole bunch of infrastructure that if we can provide that, and then let people innovate on top of that, that's sort of better than if everyone just gets sucked into Facebook or the, or the imperfect analogy that I use.

I like Toby at, at Shopify, when he says that, you know, he, he sort of, you know, arms the rebels.

And so I always think that, you know, Shopify is to Amazon, sort of as Cloudflare is to Facebook, that hopefully we can provide the DDoS mitigation and the performance and all of those things.

So that's, you know, people can still compete and create their own brands and not get sucked into whatever it is, but it's still, I mean, it's still tough because, you know, and we struggle with, you know, the pressure from all sorts of different things to be the choke point on the Internet.

And, and you don't, you don't make a lot of friends by not, by not, by not, not sort of, you know, giving into some of that pressure from time to time.

That's my understanding. How does, so you, you talked about a document that you guys are writing internally, like what's, like, what's the process of, do you guys just all sit down and say, hey, let's write a document about the future, future of the web, or like, give us a sense of, like, what it's like to, to work, you know, inside, inside Mozilla.

Well, first my team is going to kill me because like, this is not like ready for prime time.

And I'm like, now there's all this pressure.

Yeah, yeah, quiet. I mean, so we really, I mean, I think we, I think we felt like we had these principles that were ad hoc principles that we all understood, but that we didn't, no one had ever written down.

And that it was just hard to explain, you know, to people both inside and outside the company, like why we, why we were doing certain things and why we didn't want to do other things.

And so we, and so, and so we spent actually quite a while on this.

And, you know, several members of our team were taking cuts, you know, we had like a first cut and then we did it.

We like, weren't that happy. We took another rewrite.

And then now we spent the past, like, I don't know, probably two or three months, like honing the rewrite and it's starting to like go out for comment to people now.

And so it's, you know, it's like a typical thing where you kind of like, you know, you widen the circle of, you know, you send it out to a bunch of people and you get their feedback and you try to fold it in and then you like widen the circle.

And, you know, partly this is a matter of, you know, socialization, but it's also a matter of just like rate control in terms of if you send it, you know, the first document is in great shape.

And so if you send it to like a zillion people and you get like this feedback, that's like, like 87 people tell you the same thing about it.

But you know, it's like, probably like, probably like what you guys do, you know, you sort of write it up and it's a team effort you circulate.

And what's the, so for that or a project like that, what's the, like, what's the motivating force?

What's the, what's the, what's the spark that makes you feel like you've got to create, you know, a document like that?

I mean, I send that thing in this case, I mean, there's always a company, a company, which is a culture of kind of like the manifesto, right?

I mean, if you look at the, you know, there's like this, this 10 point now 14 point manifesto on our site that says, you know, what the thing is all about.

And so I think we felt like that was something that, you know, if we wanted to be, to say, we're building a better web and a better Internet, that's something we should be willing to say in some detail, as opposed to just sort of handwaving about it.

So I think, you know, I think I was the, I was the person who said we should do it.

But in response to people asking me, like, what, you know, what our vision was, and it's like, you know, and I sort of say stuff, right?

And I'd be like, well, okay, maybe I should write this stuff down instead of just like, just like spouting.

The, what are, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is that, you know, is as we, as an Internet community, as we encrypt, you know, the, the traffic that's going across, across the web, kind of the, the actual content itself, as we encrypt a lot of the metadata, with DNS, with with SNI, and as we make it much more difficult for the people who want to control the Internet, to control it, some of those people have tanks and guns, right?

And, and some of them have, you know, real legitimate reasons for wanting to control it.

What do you, how do you see this playing out, like, over over time?

And where, where the right plates is that that technology should give versus where do we where do we need to hold hold really firm?

And that's, yeah, I'm just a spoiler alert.

Um, you know, one of the principles, one of the principles in this document is like encrypt everything.

So, I mean, I think, you know, so I think we've spent some time thinking about this in the context, less of, I think, control than a surveillance.

And, you know, we wrote a document made four or five years ago, called, like, Missile Surveillance Principles.

Again, you're getting the idea with these, like, manifestos. And, um, and one of the things we said was that governments should act to, you know, protect the Internet and make it stronger, rather than we can encrypt encryption.

And I think our, you know, I think I think one of the things that, you know, I think that is becoming really apparent now is how much we all depend on these, on these, on secure communications and privacy in order to do our jobs.

And I mean, you know, you know, I haven't seen anybody from Mozilla in person in like six months now.

And so, you know, the idea that, like, that we're going to have insecure communications, you know, under those circumstances just seems like shockingly, you know, reckless.

And it's not just us.

I mean, like, you know, the government also depends on secure communications.

And, you know, the idea that the government is going to have their own, like, all their own private secure communication stuff, like, is like, that's not, like, also not really viable, right?

So, you know, I mean, the government depends on the web every bit the same way we do.

So I think, you know, we're gonna have to find, as a society, you're gonna have to find ways of adapting to, like, you know, the control, find control points where they're appropriate for secure Internet.

But I think that not having a secure Internet is not the answer. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, I think it, I sort of look at the same way, though, although, and there's an irony that we're all depending on the Internet right now more than we ever have.

And yet, as you look around, you know, Belarus shutting the Internet down over the last few days, you know, that it feels like the world is sort of shifting away from, from sort of one model that was secure to what was a more, you know, got the controlled model, it sometimes feels like, it feels like that, that, you know, when I when I'm in San Francisco, and when we're chatting, it feels like that, that's the way it is.

But when I go almost anywhere else, it feels like we're sort of running up uphill.

Yeah, I mean, and that worries us not just, I think, for security reasons, but also for, you know, you know, for the more for the content reason, as well, you know, you know, results about building a better net for everyone.

And if, you know, big chunks of the cup of the world, like are not able to access the Internet, or able to access only some very censored version in that that's not really compatible with like, what we're trying to achieve here.

Yeah, we have about one minute left.

And the curse of live TV is they'll cut us off, right at the end.

What's up? What's something in inside of Firefox or inside of Mozilla more generally, that you're just extremely excited about, and people should be on the lookout for?

Okay, I'm gonna actually give you, I'm gonna give you one thing that is a, that is a feat that is a feature.

And one thing that is, that is internal, the feature is encrypted client alone, which is the next step in encrypting metadata.

People aren't gonna see this, but it's gonna make them safer. The, as we're talking security, the other thing is this thing called Wasm boxing, which is basically about taking pieces of the browser that we're not sure secure and putting them in a Wasm sandbox.

So you can take existing C and C++ code and run it safely without having to like rewrite it.

And you and the sandbox is really cheap. Is that a new process?

So I'm really excited about that. That's some nice work out of UCSD and you to Austin that we're incorporating.

Well, that's well, we're, we're excited to whenever we can partner with you guys to help build a secure, more accessible, more available Internet.

It's, it's always, it's always one of the things that our whole team is really rallies behind.

Eric, I really didn't, you didn't have to do this today and I really appreciate you, you taking the time and, and anything that we can ever do to help.

Don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks for having me on.

Appreciate it. Thanks. Take care.