However, while it's relevant as background, the balance of power in the US government isn't what prompted the creation of this thoughtstream. Rather, it was this sad-but-all-too-familiar tale of a corporation descending into the mire of internecine internal bureaucratic warfare.
Microsoft is both a competitor and a partner for my employer (Red Hat). We sell competing systems, but for the sake of our respective customers, we still try to ensure our tools work well together. I've been in the kind of bureaucratic hell described in that article in the past and it's not a particularly pleasant experience (although you can put up with a surprising amount of it if you're well paid and are getting to work on interesting problems with talented people most of the time - my personal limit turned out to be more than a decade).