Presumably it'd act as an extension of how it works now - the phone is shipped with a locked bootloader, and has to be unlocked by a computer which wipes the ph

Presumably it'd act as an extension of how it works now - the phone is shipped with a locked bootloader, and has to be unlocked by a computer which wipes the phone in the process. So the bootloader could require a code which is generated by Google to do that unlock, and Google could keep a list of 'killed' phones not to generate unlock codes for. The challenge would be to prevent that expanding into a wider scheme to stop users having control over their devices.