Microsoft clarifies Windows is not being rewritten in Rust after viral job post sparks rumors

Microsoft

A Microsoft engineer’s LinkedIn job post recently went viral and set parts of the tech world on fire. The post, written by Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt, sounded bold and ambitious, and many people interpreted it as Microsoft’s new master plan for Windows. Some even thought the company was preparing to rewrite the entire operating system using Rust and AI. That speculation triggered heated debates, outrage, and a lot of online noise. Now, Microsoft and Hunt himself have stepped in to shut the rumors down.

So, what did the original post actually say?

Hunt was hiring a Principal Software Engineer for his team in Redmond, and one line in the job description grabbed everyone’s attention. He said his goal was to remove every line of C and C++ code from Microsoft by 2030, replacing it with Rust. He also talked about using AI and algorithms to refactor huge codebases at an almost unbelievable scale, using a guiding motto: one engineer, one month, one million lines of code. The idea was not about rewriting Windows 11 or future versions, but about evolving a code-processing system that could eventually help migrate large C and C++ systems to Rust.

The post included phrases like “eliminating technical debt at scale” and “pioneering new tools and techniques,” which many readers took to mean a sudden and major strategy shift. But that was not the intent.

After the backlash, Hunt issued a public update titled ‘Update’, saying the post received far more attention than he expected, and that people were reading too much into it. His clarification was direct and simple: Windows is NOT being rewritten in Rust using AI. His team’s project is a research initiative, focused on building technology that makes language-to-language migration possible, not replacing the foundation of Windows 11 or future consumer operating systems.

The outrage also opened up a bigger discussion. Both Google and Microsoft’s internal research has shown that around 70% of software security vulnerabilities come from memory-safety issues, often linked to C and C++ code. This has pushed many organizations to explore safer alternatives like Rust, Go, Swift, Python, and others that reduce the risk of these bugs.

This trend is not new. In late 2023, the NSA, CISA, and international agencies released a report titled ‘The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps’, encouraging software companies to build plans to adopt memory-safe languages, including Rust. The agencies also advised companies to evaluate multiple safe languages before choosing one.

In short, Microsoft is experimenting with Rust migration tools, but it is not rewriting Windows itself. The job post was about finding engineers who want to solve large-scale migration problems, not announcing a new direction for Windows 11 or beyond.