Every encryption library is a dependency. Every dependency is an attack surface. When Heartbleed was disclosed in 2014 , it affected an estimated 17% of all TLS servers on the internet. Not because the underlying cryptographic algorithms were broken, but because of a buffer over-read in a widely imported C library that most projects had never actually audited. Then in 2024, the xz Utils backdoor showed that even a compression utility can become a supply chain weapon when a determined attacker quietly gains commit access over months. For AI agents, the stakes are higher than for typical web services. Agents exchange model parameters, task instructions, training data, and coordination messages. They often run unattended. If the encryption library they depend on is compromised, every message in the fleet is exposed, silently, at scale. This is why Pilot Protocol uses zero external cryptographic dependencies.…