Yeah, this is a great bit. Of course the good guys would would prioritize protecting their own infrastructure; one of the most important bits of this whole situation isn't about what the good guys would do, it's who is a good guy.
More about the NSA's mission here: https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/press-room/statements/2013...
"NSA's mission is to help protect national security by providing policy makers and military commanders with the intelligence information they need to do their jobs."
For the NSA to hand over information about identified back doors in Windows to Microsoft directly would be clearly outside this mission. That said, the NSA should have informed someone in the government of these back doors, at least in a general sense, so policy makers could have decided whether it would have been better to convey it to Microsoft or to let the NSA continue to keep them secret. Maybe they did. Who knows?
Lol. I'd hate to rebutted by a publisher under any circumstance, but under ignorance would hurt more.
Edit: I think this went over my head while the Guinness was going down.
No, why would they?
Not a single nation in the world is speaking with a united voice; there are groups with different interests. See Clinton vs Trump. Why would either of them help fix the infrastructure belonging to other's clan? Both of them would prefer the exploitable one at the other side.
Because in the prequel, when a whistleblower leaked a trove of secrets regarding the NSA's global spying program, the outrage and backlash from the technical community led to the government issuing assurances that it would do just that.
Yep - way too implausible, even for hacker fiction.
Anyway, sounds like your book was Nostradamus-esque in depicting recent events. Maybe a bit too good :D