Manifestos, Fear, and ‘Loser Thinking’: Inside Proton’s AI Reckoning
404 Media's investigation, based on eight current and one former employees plus Slack chats and internal documents, reports a culture of fear at Proton, where CEO Andy Yen publicly rails against AI but privately pushes engineers to build with it despite security concerns, calling skeptics' views "bullshit and loser thinking" and tracking how much AI code employees generate. Proton's spokesperson acknowledged some employees are unhappy and anxious, and Yen has said 2026 is the last year the company will hire engineers at all.
