Opinion Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. This works well in sane times, less so when "but it's both" is the default. Apply it to Microsoft's decision to make bug reports include not only a working example but a video of the same, and the meter oscillates wildly. What were they thinking? What did they expect?
Happily, and to nobody's surprise but their own, Microsoft's bug response team got pwned. A developer, knocked back for non-compliance, expressed their frustration with a quarter-hour surrealistic banger full of sound and fury signifying nothing more than what was in the original report.
This beautifully illustrates many important insights. Nobody at Microsoft has read The Good Soldier Švejk, quite possibly – as evinced by their need for videos – because none of them can read. This a post-literate era, and we should expect the next demand for bughunters to express proof-of-concept as a TikTok dance short. Also, it is very dangerous to give devs a chance to express their frustration. These people are creative, and Microsoft, you have given them so very much to be frustrated about.
It is unclear, however, what problem the video was intended to fix. Too many bad submissions? That would be better fixed by being much clearer about the information required, in any form. Can you reliably replicate the bug? Can a fellow dev follow your report to replicate the bug? Perhaps there are just too many submissions and this is an attempt to raise the barrier to entry. If so, what we have here is a perfect example of a tariff gone wrong.
However Microsoft intended the video requirement to be seen, it is a tariff on those reporting bugs. It's a tax on their time and resources. However much time you've spent finding and characterizing the bug, you must now spend more time doing the same task, which is the very definition of inefficiency.
You may be more demotivated by the pointlessness of the demand, in which case Microsoft can expect fewer bug reports, an odd way to make software better. You may find more profitable ways to exploit your vuln-sniffing skills. If there are problems with poor quality bug reports, then teach people to do them better, improving productivity, instead of imposing a blanket tax.
This is the problem with tariffs and their big brother, the sanction. Like warfare, they are inherently destructive of value and harm both the supplier and the supplied. They can work, again like warfare, but only if they are rigorously planned, rigorously executed, the consequences thoroughly understood, and, most importantly, with exit strategies thoroughly explored before you start.
Nobody at Microsoft expected to be made to look ridiculous, that much is clear. Otherwise, it's a small silliness in an obscure corner of tech and easily fixed to restore the status quo, or even a better pathway due to lessons learned. Out in the real world, consequences are much scarier. If you want a working example from modern history, the United Kingdom shines like a broken light bulb.
The UK deliberately and comprehensively imposed massive trade restrictions between itself and its biggest market when it left the EU five years ago. Brexit was promised by its populist proponents to create a new golden age of low immigration, promoting local growth, self sufficiency, and a global Britain doing trade deals with whomever she pleased. The result was a 5 percent decrease in the economy. It's hard to sustain vibrant growth when you cut yourself off from your markets, investment and tax revenue go down, and confidence shrinks. As the economy stutters, the need for low-cost labor increases. Immigration has gone up.
There was no plan, no way to create enough new trade deals, and the obvious exit strategy – rejoining the EU's common trade area – is still politically taboo. The UK leadership is forced to proclaim that AI will fill the gap, because there's nothing else. If AI really does improve productivity and competitiveness, it'll do so for everyone, not just the Brits, so the structural disadvantages will remain. And, alas, tariffs seem perfectly capable of harming AI alongside everything else.
Tariffs and sanctions are attempts to impose political will on those you can't control, at the expense of those you can. That can be as entertaining as Microsoft's move to become the MTV of bug hunting, or as consequential as China developing its own EUV lithography tech. Or trying to protect your domestic automakers by denying entry to the world's cheapest EVs, when electrifying transport is an existential necessity.
Where trade restrictions can work, as they did when they helped end apartheid in South Africa and as they still might cripple Russia's economy, it's when the costs, duration, and outcomes are understood beforehand. Used as a short-term political tool, or as a sticking plaster for deeper structural issues, they not only fail but fail in permanently harmful ways. That can't be fixed by making a 15-minute video. ®