Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
I predict that hardware attestation will in 10-30 years become a requirement to maintain an internet connection.<p>Given Microsoft&#x27;s push to make their OS support hardware attestation as well as Google&#x27;s push for technologies which use hardware attestation in broader and broader scopes (Android and iOS has supported this for apps for a long time), the technology to make this possible is increasingly becoming widespread.<p>Hardware which supports hardware attestation is expensive and some people who can&#x27;t afford it would therefore be excluded. But I don&#x27;t think this matters.<p>If Google forces you to see all their ads then they can sell the ad space for more money. This can make it increasingly profitable to sell devices at an ever increasing loss. Likewise for Microsoft.<p>As a side note, this will make it incredibly difficult for anyone to compete in the hardware space. Why would someone spend even £500 on a phone or computer from a non adtech company when the adtech company can sell the same device for £100 or £50 or maybe even give it away for free?<p>By making hardware attestation more mainstream, it will become increasingly difficult to argue that enabling it for things would cut off customers.<p>I think it&#x27;s easy to argue in favor of requiring hardware attestation for internet connections from the point of view of a government or an ISP. After all, if your customers can only use a limited set of hardware which is known and tested for security, it decreases the chance of security problems. For a police state like the UK it also seems even easier to justify too.<p>Even if things don&#x27;t go that far, in a few years you will become a second class citizen for refusing to allow this on your devices. I can easily imagine banks requiring WEI for their online banking portals (they already do it for all their apps). Likewise I can also imagine my water, gas and electricity companies, or really any company which handles payments, considering this technology.<p>The worst part is, I don&#x27;t think most people will care as long as it keeps working seamlessly on their devices. Likewise I don&#x27;t think governments or the EU will do anything about it. I am not even sure what I can do about it.