When Microsoft engineer Galen Hunt posted on LinkedIn that he wanted to “eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,” the internet did what it does best: panic first, read later. Headlines screamed about Windows being rewritten with AI. Developer forums erupted. Five days later, Hunt clarified: it’s a research project, not a Windows rewrite. But here’s the thing – the research itself matters more than the viral drama.
Hunt’s team is building AI-assisted tooling with an audacious productivity target: “1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code” migrated from C/C++ to Rust. That’s not hype. That’s a 20-100x improvement over manual migration, and it signals where enterprise development is heading whether Microsoft ships this exact tool or not.
The Memory Safety Crisis No One Can Ignore
The reason Microsoft is even attempting this comes down to one statistic: roughly 70% of the security vulnerabilities Microsoft assigns a CVE each year are memory safety issues. Google reports the same pattern in Chromium. CISA found that two-thirds of vulnerabilities in compiled code stem from memory safety problems.
The costs are staggering. IBM estimates the average data breach at $4.45 million. The Heartbleed vulnerability alone cost an estimated $500 million. Memory corruption CVEs increased nearly sixfold from 577 in 2013 to 3,420 in 2022.
This isn’t academic anymore. The White House Office of the National Cyber Director set a deadline of January 1, 2026 for organizations to develop roadmaps for mitigating memory safety vulnerabilities. Government mandates are forcing enterprises to act, and C/C++ is the primary culprit.
Google Android Proved Rust Works at Scale
Microsoft’s research isn’t built on speculation. Google Android already ran the experiment and published the results: memory safety vulnerabilities fell below 20% of total vulnerabilities for the first time in 2025, down from 76% in 2019.
The Android team achieved a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density compared to C/C++ code. Rust changes had a 4x lower rollback rate and spent 25% less time in code review. In 2025, for the first time, more lines of Rust code were added to Android than C++ code.
That’s not a pilot program. That’s a fundamental shift in how one of the world’s largest codebases operates. The question for other enterprises isn’t “Should we migrate to Rust?” It’s “How fast can we migrate?”
The “1-1-1M” Benchmark Changes the Economics
Manual code migration is expensive. A skilled engineer might convert 10,000 to 50,000 lines of C++ to Rust per month, carefully preserving functionality while adding Rust’s ownership and lifetime semantics. At that rate, migrating millions of lines becomes economically infeasible for most companies.
Hunt’s “1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code” target represents a different economic reality. If AI-assisted tools can hit even a fraction of that productivity, migrations that were previously impossible become viable.
Microsoft is hiring for this team with compensation between $139,900 and $274,800 – not research intern money. The project sits within Microsoft’s “Future of Scalable Software Engineering” group under CoreAI. Despite the “research project” framing, Microsoft is investing serious resources.
AI Plus Algorithms, Not AI Alone
Hunt’s LinkedIn post emphasized “AI and Algorithms” (italics his). That distinction matters. Pure large language models can’t handle the semantic complexity of translating C++ to Rust. C++ allows low-level memory management that Rust restricts to prevent errors. AI must infer ownership models and lifetimes – concepts that don’t exist in the source language.
Microsoft’s approach builds a scalable graph structure over source code, then applies AI agents guided by algorithms to modify code at scale. It’s a hybrid: machine learning for pattern recognition, algorithmic analysis for correctness guarantees.
This is where AI coding tools are evolving. Not replacing human judgment, but amplifying productivity with algorithmic safety rails. Think less “ChatGPT rewrites your codebase” and more “AI suggests transformations, algorithms verify correctness.”
Research vs Reality: What Actually Happened
The December 24 LinkedIn post ignited a week of headlines. Driver developers, OEMs, and enterprise IT professionals panicked about Windows being rewritten. On December 29, Hunt clarified: “Windows is NOT being rewritten in Rust with AI.” Microsoft’s head of communications Frank X. Shaw confirmed the company has no such plans.
Hunt described his team’s work as a research project building technology to make language-to-language migration possible, not an immediate product roadmap. The gap between Hunt’s personal ambition and Microsoft’s official strategy created the viral moment.
But strip away the drama, and the core research remains legitimate. Whether Microsoft ships this tool or not, the underlying problem – automating complex code migrations at scale – is one the entire industry needs solved.
What Enterprises Should Learn From This
First, memory safety migration isn’t optional anymore. Between government mandates, rising breach costs, and proven Rust results from Google, enterprises need migration plans. The January 1, 2026 deadline is here.
Second, AI-assisted migration tools are maturing. Microsoft’s “1-1-1M” benchmark might be aspirational, but the direction is clear: automated refactoring is moving from simple syntax changes to complex semantic transformations. Tools that understand code structure, dependencies, and language-specific constraints are coming.
Third, the hybrid AI-plus-algorithms approach is the pattern to watch. Pure AI isn’t reliable enough for mission-critical code transformation. Algorithmic verification is essential. The tooling that succeeds will combine both.
Finally, start with security-critical systems. Google prioritized Android’s most vulnerable attack surfaces. Microsoft’s research focuses on eliminating entire categories of bugs. Don’t try to migrate everything at once – focus on where memory safety matters most.
The viral LinkedIn post and subsequent walkback made for entertaining internet drama. But the real story is quieter and more important: AI-assisted code transformation is becoming practical at enterprise scale, driven by security needs that aren’t going away. The tools are improving, the economics are changing, and the regulatory pressure is intensifying.
Microsoft’s research might not rewrite Windows tomorrow. But someone’s tools will help migrate millions of lines of C++ to Rust in the next few years. The “1-1-1M” benchmark gives the industry a target to shoot for.
