Dr. Andy Farnell on Microsoft Silencing or Deplatforming Opposition in the UK and Elsewhere
Last night Dr. Andy Farnell published this long piece which towards the end mentions Microsoft as a king or a kind of "religion" one cannot question:
Take Microsoft. Everyone in computing knows about Microsoft products. Especially their Windows series of operating systems. No serious computer security person would ever willingly deploy Microsoft. But they do. If you're an IT professional in the UK you know… "But you can't say that!!". For laughs, you can say Bill Gates should have used Kaspersky instead of Windows antivirus before inserting his USB stick in a Russian model. But make any serious, rational, evidenced criticism of Microsoft and the room falls silent.
That's been going on for decades. Everybody knows. Not just Leonard Cohen. Yet Microsoft are also masters of presentation and press management. Like all US Big Tech that run rings around CEOs and politicians, they have the ability to prop-up confidence using almost limitless money to throw at influence (including bribery and threats). In the UK, Microsoft are anointed as "preferred suppliers" and take government contracts hands-down. The AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park was a sham where the UK government got into bed with the likes of OpenAI, Google and Palantir, a company whose co-founder thinks Greta Thurnberg is literally the Anti-Christ 1!
But you can't say that?
Well now you can.
While institutions around Britain are still sleeping, still insisting on using Microsoft because it's entrenched into civic infrastructure, last week cyber experts at the US federal government's digital security team broke rank and openly described Microsoft as a "pile of shit". Never have truer words been spoken.
Does that mean we're ready to have the Jimmy Savile conversation about Microsoft Cloud yet? About BigTech in general? Or will it continue to be buried like the Newsnight Report was? Not if UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski has anything to say about it.
The punchline is that those same US cyber experts then went on to say they were "signing-off on Microsoft Cloud anyway! They know it's shit, but their "hands are tied" even though it's their job to evaluate fitness and security!
Read on this article. Remember that people from Microsoft have long tried to silence our site. They're still trying. █