I'm sure Cook believes what he's saying, but the real marketing strategy here isn't "crypto versus plaintext"; it's "consumer product company" versus "online service provider".

Seen through this lens, there's an argument that what Cook is doing is counterproductive. He's making an argument that Google can't sign on to, and using crypto as a wedge to drive the argument home. "Be a consumer product company, because then you can protect users with crypto".

Also: the kind of encryption that Apple is really making a stand for? They do a better job of it than Android, but Android provides the same encryption: what scares the USG about Apple is that iPhones are locked by default, and when they're locked, they can't be imaged easily. That's true of Google's phones as well.

Meanwhile, Google is doing a much better job of securing browser crypto than Apple is; Apple is almost an obstacle to better browser crypto.