I'm convinced of two things:

1) Crypto's original sin was not incorporating privacy into its foundation.

2) They'd never have let us get this far if we did.

I don't think it really would have been possible. Considering Zero Knowledge gadgets didn't really exist in production until what? 2021, it would have been way harder to implement programmable cryptography at scale any earlier than today. The math just wasn't there.

Note this is assuming programmable cryptography is necessary for privacy at scale. We did make some privacy systems previously, but it was like moving mass with steam engines.