Ask HN: What if Microsoft held the country's pcs for ransom?

3 points by xauronx ↗ HN
This is slightly "silly" but I was thinking today about how much of the country runs on Microsoft products, including the government. How much power could they leverage from that? For instance, if Bill Gates made a public announcement "Stop monitoring our shit, or we deactivate all copies of Windows in the country." I know, I know, there are plenty of issues with this, but I wanted to share my thought experiment with you all and see if anyone had any insights/thoughts.

2 comments

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Extortion is a crime, for one thing. And it's a pretty hypocritical threat considering Microsoft has been more than willing to put hooks in it's products to enable law enforcement/intelligence surveillance.
Sounds like a TODO for a desparate Steve Ballmer