I think that’s in essence what the author is arguing, at least the outcomes are the same. The only difference is maybe none of the 3-letter agencies had to come

I think that’s in essence what the author is arguing, at least the outcomes are the same. The only difference is maybe none of the 3-letter agencies had to come out and explicitly say it, when Apple is perfectly competent at spotting a bone to toss. In other words, the author thinks with Apple’s back to a wall, they only needed to make the announcement of this feature for the government to see there are advantages to apple having tight control as well. Now they’ll be able to make that very same argument in court in a public sense, but there’s always a behind the scenes sense with 3-letter agencies as well. Granted all of that is speculation and who knows what is really driving any of this. The author does have a point that if this first step causes bad guys to move on from these services then that will be future justification to move the scanning further and further upstream to the point where it’s baked into the API’s or something. At that level, Apple would really need a “monopoly” to accomplish such a feat. It’s certainly an interesting and creative perspective.