I don’t know how this transaction went down, but it’s very likely they didn’t purchase the organization itself, but rather its assets. The surviving organization would then dispose of the resulting cash in a mission-oriented fashion and shutdown thereafter.
I grew up in a poor, rural area of the US and can attest that it's true... if you didn't pay the fee (and affix the requisite metal sign below your mailbox) you were on your own in the event of a fire.
At that time and place, fire protection wasn't considered a public service unless you lived in town. I never heard anyone question the arrangement and there was little appetite in that era for the tax increase that would've been required to provide universal protection.
There is a built-in feature, known as Application Guard, on Windows 10/11 that gives you exactly this out of the box, with minimal configuration. Biggest downside is that it only works with Edge.
I’m confused... other comments reference ME as the root-of-trust for the system, the chip that brings the CPU out of reset. How can a system be operational without that functionality?