This article is an opinion held by a subset of members about the potential plan from Microsoft about their enforcement of a TPM to use Windows 11 and various features. This article will not go into great detail about all the good and bad of a TPM; there will be links at the end for you to continue your research, but it will go into the issues we see with enforcement. If you’re unfamiliar with what a TPM is or its general function we recommend taking a look at these links: What is a TPM?; TPM and Attestation.

As you may or may not have already noticed, many people are wondering about Microsoft’s new mandatory TPM 2.0 hardware requirement for Windows 11. If you look around the press releases, shallow technical documentation, and the myriad of buzzwords like “security,” “device health,” “firmware vulnerabilities,” and “malware,” you still haven’t received a straightforward answer as to why exactly you need this tech.

Many of you reading this article may have machines around the house or office you built from silicon that isn’t even seven years old. These still play today’s latest games without hiccup or issue, and unless you let your Grandma or 6-year old nephew on the machine recently, you likely don’t have malware either.

So, why do I suddenly need a TPM 2.0 device on my machine, then you ask? Well, the answer is quite simple. It’s not about you; it’s about them.

You see, the PC (emphasis on personal here) is in a way the last bastion of digital freedom you have, and that door is slowly closing. You need to only look at highly locked and controlled systems like consoles and phones to see the disparity.

Political affiliations aside, one can take the Wikileaks app removal from both the Apple store and Google play store as an excellent example of what the world looks like when your device controls you, instead of you controlling the device.

How does a TPM on my PC advance this agenda?

Twenty years ago, Microsoft set forth a goal of “trusted” computing called Palladium. While this technical goal has slowly but surely crept into Windows over the years, it has laid chiefly dormant because of critical missing infrastructure. This being that until recently, quite a large majority of consumer machines did not have a TPM, which you’ll learn later is a critical component to making Palladium work. And while we won’t deny that Bitlocker is excellent for if your device ever gets stolen, we will remind