> Data breaches occur more often than rootkits because most developers see that this path adding easily-removable encryption does nothing in the long run.

That logic makes no sense. A rootkit is much more valuable than a data breach (because it gives you access to a compromised device), the reason why you don't see more of them is because it's much harder to pull off, not because people don't use e2ee…

(For instance, if you can replace an e-commerce website's code with your own, you get access to the user's payment information, which you can't usually get from their DB since it's generally handled by the payment processor, or to the user's plaintext password…)