Are MPC (Secure Multi-Party Computation), Confidential Computing, and Homomorphic Encryption mutually exclusive?

No — they're complementary and can be layered for defense-in-depth. (MPC = Secure Multi-Party Computation: several parties jointly compute a function over their combined data while each keeps its own inputs private.)

These techniques solve overlapping problems, so combining them adds redundancy: if one layer's assumption fails, another still protects the data. Example layering:

• HE can be one of the cryptographic tools used to implement an MPC protocol.
• Both HE and MPC can run inside a Confidential Computing (TEE) environment, so even the computation's host is shut out.

Key insight: No single technique is a silver bullet. The strongest privacy architectures stack complementary controls rather than betting everything on one mechanism.