Digital Social Hour
Matt Kim: OpenAI Created a Monster. Now It’s Learning Alone | DSH #1580
21 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Privacy is freedom.
Chapter 2: Why did Matt Kim start a VPN company?
Privacy is your right to selectively reveal yourself to the world. Your information and your data and everything belongs to you. It's about who you are.
Chapter 3: How often is our data being sold?
You should be able to choose what information you share. And we're in this upside down world where the technology companies and the governments, they take all your information and then they allow you to keep certain things about yourself. And that's actually backwards.
Chapter 4: Is AI data collection dangerous for privacy?
The government has access to all that information about you. We see things about like, oh, Palantir, they're gathering all your data all this time. And the reality is that it's your responsibility to be a keeper of your information now because we can no longer trust these big tech companies to protect you. All right, guys, got fellow podcast host Matt Kim here.
He's also working on a VPN company now. Thanks for coming on today, man. Hey Sean, thank you for having me. And yeah, it's Vegas. It's hot. It's very hot. It was like 105 degrees or something when I got here.
Chapter 5: What are the current challenges facing the middle class?
And that's normal. That's so crazy. I don't know how you guys live in this heat. We don't live outside. Yeah, we don't go outside. Locals just stay inside as much as possible. You have to, man. It's way too hot. But I want to learn more about the VPN company and why you started it and what makes it different from other VPN companies. Well, privacy is freedom.
You know, the privacy, there's this cypherpunk quote from the Cypherpunk Manifesto that I think about a lot. And the quote is, privacy is your right to selectively reveal yourself to the world. Your information and your data and everything belongs to you. It's about who you are and you should be able to choose what information you share.
And we're in this upside down world where the technology companies and the governments, they take all your information and then they allow you to keep certain things about yourself. And that's actually backwards. So we built a VPN company and a VPN that operates differently than other VPN providers. Your traditional VPN, we call them legacy VPNs, are trust-based models.
meaning that this VPN company based overseas in Romania or Israel or Lithuania or Panama, you're trusting that these companies who have access to all of your data, that they will never lose, sell, compromise, or backdoor your information. And 2025, that idea is crazy because every time that a technology company has the ability to protect your data, they mess up. They just lose it.
Chapter 6: How can individuals protect their data in a digital age?
And sometimes it's not even intentional. They don't...
Chapter 7: What are the implications of off-grid living?
They don't try to lose your data. It just happens. So what we did was we developed a VPN where it is impossible for us as a VPN provider or anyone who were to ever gain root access to the servers for them to see your traffic. It's the first zero trust VPN in the world. And we really like the idea because if we can't lose your data, we can't sell your data, we can't give up your data to...
agencies throughout the world if we ourselves don't know what you're doing online. And I think that's going to change how VPN and privacies are done in the future. I think it's the first true technological innovation in the VPN space in the last 15 years. And I'm super blessed to have just like the most amazing team around me to make this a possibility.
Chapter 8: How can grassroots community building enhance privacy?
You got a rock star team. I don't know if you publicly announced them yet, have you? Yeah, I mean, I have three partners in this. One is Andrew Lee. He is the original founder of Private Internet Access. It's one of the largest VPNs in the world. So he understands the space extremely well. He actually sold Private Internet Access to Cape, who owns ExpressVPN and CyberGhost and a few others.
And they own all the review sites also, which is kind of shady. So when you say best VPN, then it's the same company that owns the VPNs that owns that site. Side note. So Andrew Lee is one of my co-founders. Another one is Roger Ver, who is known as Bitcoin Jesus. He's the original Bitcoin evangelist. He was trying to convince people to buy Bitcoin when it was a dollar.
And then our CTO is probably one of the smartest software engineers in the world, Mark Karpeles. He was the CEO of Mt. Gox, which was the very first and largest Bitcoin exchange in the world. So he was like 23 years old. He was doing a Bitcoin exchange in 2023. Crazy. So these are my co-founders.
And it's people that have a history of being for people's freedom, having the vision and mission of liberty, and developing tools to give people their freedom back. And that's really what it is. We consider VPNet a freedom tool. Avengers. Let's go. I love what you said about data because I wonder how often our data is being sold because we're on hundreds of apps.
They have all sorts of information on us. Yeah, I mean, it's really scary, isn't it? Because, you know, your information and what you do online is probably the most private thing you own. So if I know what you do on the Internet, if I know what you browse. I know what you like to eat. I know where you like to shop. I know who you're hanging out with. I know what your side chick does.
I know what business you do. I know what business you want to get into. I know everything about you. I know what your kinks are. I know you probably better than your best friend if I have your browser history. And the reality is right now that we let everyone have access to it. Your ISPs, your Verizon, your AT&Ts of the world. They have all that data on you.
And here in the United States, the government has access to all that information about you. We see things about like, oh, Palantir, they're gathering all your data all this time. And the reality is that it's your responsibility to be a keeper of your information now because we can no longer trust these big tech companies to protect you. Because again, we've seen it over again. We're in Vegas.
When Caesar's MGM got hacked and they lost all their player data, they weren't hoping, like, man, I hope someone comes in and hacks us and steals our data. Like, that's not their goal, but it happens. You can't trust them to do that any longer. You have to protect yourself. And in 2025, into this kind of dystopian digital future that we're moving into, It's the only solution.
You know, you have to take privacy seriously. It seems like almost every major company has dealt with a hack at this point, right? I mean, Coinbase recently lost people's driver's licenses. I don't think they intended on doing that. Adidas lost their user data. You have the experience of the credit monitoring companies losing your information. All the SSNs. Everywhere. 23andMe losing your DNA.
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