Carl Dong on VPN Privacy, Relays and Supply Chain Security
Liam Nelson interviews Carl Dong, founder of Obscura VPN and former Bitcoin Core developer, about his path from the Great Firewall to Blockstream and Chaincode Labs, where his focus was software supply chain security. Carl explains reproducible builds and fuzzing, and describes his view that AI's infinite patience makes theoretical attacks more practical. He outlines how a traditional VPN works and how Obscura's two-party relay with Mullvad is designed to split what each company can see, and he describes disguising VPN traffic as HTTP/3 to work on restrictive networks. Liam and Carl also discuss AI agents and web traffic, connected AI, private and local models, and how recent hardware wallet supply chain security reports bear on the bitcoin industry. Obscura is a third-party product and is discussed as Carl's own project.
Chapters
00:00 - Carl Dong: from the Great Firewall to Bitcoin Core 03:15 - Carl's View on VPN Trust and the Two-Party Relay Idea 06:29 - AI, Patience and Software Supply Chain Security 08:41 - Reproducible builds: verifying Bitcoin Core downloads 11:15 - How a Traditional VPN Works and What It Can See 14:25 - Carl on Trust and Verification in VPNs 15:31 - Beating censorship by looking like normal traffic 18:38 - Mimicking HTTP/3 so VPNs don't get blocked 19:18 - Freedom tech has to be easy to use 22:07 - Carl's View on AI Traffic and the Web 24:59 - AI and Personal Data, and Private AI 29:58 - Local AI models on your phone 30:57 - What's next for Obscura: Linux and automatic protection 32:15 - Hardware Wallet Supply Chain Security and the Bitcoin Industry 34:24 - Where to find Carl and Obscura
