Not sorry about Sam, first off I'm not assuming we know everything and second I'm more inclined to trust the board. Also it seems he was trying to do a secret hardware venture on the side, which would be several kinds of unethical. Again: good.
It's simple: He who wins first place writes the rules, for everyone.
If Microsoft gets the first place win, they (and more broadly the USA) are who get to write the rulebook.
We are already witnessing this with "AI", it's OpenAI/Microsoft and the USA who dragged the rest of the west into the rules that they wrote because they got past the finish line first.