While purely speculation, I'd say some state(s) sent labrat some nastygram(s) which required immediately restructuring of the offering to stay on the right side of the law. I'd suspect labrat will be fairly quiet until the final resolution is done. For example, how can he promise you anything if he doesn't know what the end result will be yet? Same goes for the new hardware. When this is all over, I wouldn't be surprised if we get a "Oh by the way, the new hardware arrived and has been mining for a month. He's a back payment of 300 coins!" The "fixed" thing is just to make the suits happy. At the end of the day, labrat will figure out how to ensure we still get the same value while keeping all the suits happy.
And you could very well be somewhere close to reality. I'd rather deal with what is known.
On an aside, none of those questions ask for him to promise anything. They are meant to re-establish trust that LR is properly considering, and has reasonable awareness about, the situation and the decisions he's made on the solution he announced. It's just due diligence within business, not some wild concept.
Edit: also the assertion that this happened suddenly doesn't align with his previous statements, though it is admittedly possible. Another reason for clarification.