They're Microsoft and it's Windows. They always have the ability to fetch the key.

The question is do they ever fetch and transmit it if you opt out?

The expected answer would be no. Has anyone shown otherwise? Because hypotheticals that they could are not useful.

Considering all the shenanigans Microsoft has been up to with windows 11 and various privacy, advertising, etc. stuff?

Hell, all the times they keep enabling one drive despite it being really clear I don’t want it, and then uploading stuff to the cloud that I don’t want?

I have zero trust for Microsoft now, and not much better for them in the past either.