This is something I was wondering about. Considering that they have the potential to shutdown hardware I would be surprised if there wasn't the possibility for them to start bricking hardware as well. I hope that Antminer gets this fixed, but it sure as hell might cause issues for a lot of people using their hardware if this doesn't start to get fixed quickly. Constant shutdowns and restarts aren't something that a miner wants to deal with a lot of the time, and a bricked piece of hardware is definitely not something they want.