Don't forget all of this was discovered because ssh was running 0.5 seconds slower

Is that from the Microsoft engineer or did he start from this observation?

From what I read it was this observation that led him to investigate the cause. But this is the first time I read that he’s employed by Microsoft.

I’ve seen that claim a couple of places and would like a source. It very well may be since Microsoft prefers Debian based systems for WSL and for azure, but its not something I would have assumed by default