The internet as it’s been experienced by most living westerners is a product of a unipolar post Soviet world. Cryptography is widespread because it allows for transactions over a new medium.

Alternately, if you want to be crazy, https intentionally builds a web of trust too complex for users to interrogate and acme normalizes accepting new certificates without any real scrutiny and tor is only secure if the exit and entry nodes aren’t communicating or storing data.