"by Dave Cutler, who Microsoft hired as the NT team leader."
I think you'll find MS hired quite a few others from his core team.
It's not that this component is visible, it's what ordinary users are allowed to do with it without any special safeguards.
People have looked at NT and noted it's close similarities to VMS in the data structures it uses and even its function call names.
However aren't most of the desktop Windows from a later, not NT code base? Testimony that the core data structures of an OS can long outlive the first implementation of the functions that manage them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
