We are an AOSP distribution because of all the security properties it already comes with like the mandatory sandboxing of apps, permission controls, file-based disk encryption, verified boot and more. It compliments what we want out of GrapheneOS. It's an entirely reproducible free and open source project. We don't want to make an operating system using the traditional desktop Linux OS stack which sets us back on all of these things. There's a lot of things we are against when it comes to big companies like Google but we aren't forcing people to see black and white. A lot of things of AOSP and Pixels we like, but we don't want Google to be the only company producing those things either. We don't call ourselves a degoogling project because people can use what they want on GrapheneOS. Influencing you to create an opposition is politician behavior.