As the FBI’s top lawyer, Jim Baker once butted heads with Apple Inc. and CEO Tim Cook over the tech giant’s refusal to help law enforcement unlock the San Bernardino, California, shooter’s iPhone. Now, three years later, Baker has done an apparent about-face—he’s espousing strong encryption as being vital to national security. 

Baker wrote earlier this week in a blog post for Lawfare that he’s had time to reflect and make “efforts to embrace reality with respect to some aspects of several interrelated subject areas that have comprised a substantial part of my career: national security, cybersecurity, counterintelligence, surveillance, encryption and China.