> Interestingly, I had booted into recovery mode, and I found I could mount the SSD
I was under the impression that Apple Silicon Macbooks had disk encryption enabled by default and that this wouldn't be possible. Turns out while that is technically true, it's only relevant in the case of the SSD somehow being removed from the device and installed in another. In the case of real disk encryption FileVault needs to be enabled. Apparently it's easy to miss that step during setup, especially if you setup the Macbook without an Apple ID/iCloud.
I was under the impression that Apple Silicon Macbooks had disk encryption enabled by default and that this wouldn't be possible. Turns out while that is technically true, it's only relevant in the case of the SSD somehow being removed from the device and installed in another. In the case of real disk encryption FileVault needs to be enabled. Apparently it's easy to miss that step during setup, especially if you setup the Macbook without an Apple ID/iCloud.