Not sure I understand your point. The source the article refers to claims Windows XP is ~45 million LOC, not me. I myself didn't give any specific numbers about the size of the codebase.

Now, I don't think anyone would come for my head if I did give you a number -- what harm could it do, after all? But, personally, the line I draw is that I don't get too specific about internal data beyond a general order of magnitude, because I'm not here to speak for the company.

That figure is common knowledge, not new information that antics is sharing with us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code#Example