Microsoft Terminates VeraCrypt's Signing Account Without Warning, Halting Windows Updates

This is not just an open-source story. This is a platform risk story that every builder should internalize. Microsoft terminated a critical account for one of the most important encryption tools on the planet, and the developer could not reach a human being to find out why. Automated replies. Bots. No appeal. If you are building anything that depends on a platform gatekeeper — app store approval, driver signing, API access, cloud hosting — this is what the failure mode looks like. Not a dramatic conflict. Just a silent termination with no recourse. For the product engineer crowd, the lesson extends to AI platforms too. Your Claude API key, your OpenAI account, your cloud deployment — all of these are one opaque policy decision away from going dark. The VeraCrypt situation is the extreme version, but the pattern is the same: platforms giveth capability and platforms taketh away. Build your contingency plans before you need them.