Re: he was unaware of the "defeat device"
@dropbear
I'll take your bollocks and raise you a scrotal sack.
A CEO needs to know about the finances, the strategy and the general functioning of the company at a high level - he may have needed know how exposed they were - however I suspect there are 4 or 5 layer of mgt below him that also didn't know, probably a couple of them may have gone out of their way to not know.
At best I cant see this having got much higher that the head of engine development and the various regional product heads, unless someone had actually flagged that the legal/regulatory risk of doing it in big enough CAPS that someone paid attention.
I don't believe there will be a smoking gun memo from a senior executive for this. The decision will be buried in the detail.
Grikath has summed it up very well indeed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
