As usual, Pakistan makes another stupid attempt to reel in US technology companies under their control. These attempts aren't coming out of left field, rather a

As usual, Pakistan makes another stupid attempt to reel in US technology companies under their control. These attempts aren't coming out of left field, rather are inspired by China, India, Austria, and a few other European powers. As I've told my Pakistani counterparts, this attempt is amusing at the least and ignorable at the worst. They have no merit to make these demands. Of course, technology companies do not want to lose the 85 million customer base, but they realize Pakistan has more to loose than gain by putting a blanket ban on these platforms. They realize any ban would be reversed under public pressure. I'll share what I told Amin-ul-Haque (who doesn't know the difference between right-click and left-click): Pakistan's play should be to determine impact to GDP associated with these platform companies (past, present, & future). It should use that to make a case for these companies to open product-development led offices in Pakistan, not just sales that we have today. Over a span of 10 years, Pakistan needs to gain this knowledge and begin innovating their own products and infrastructure. Eventually, when sufficient infrastructure has been built and cloned over to Pakistan, it should then ban these platform companies and drive traffic through their home-grown solutions. Ultimately, this will allow: 1. Talent to develop and thrive in Pakistan. There's a lot of talent there already, but it's either leaving, working on small problems, or just part of the problem. There is a small pool of incredible research happening there, but unfortunately it is motivated by the need to get out. 2. Increase tax revenue and the technology sector's contribution margin to GDP 3. Output better products that solve Pakistani problems instead of band-aiding US technology to fit into their existing broken ecosystem. I understand this is a controversial opinion. This is most likely not the right path, but the thinking is along the right direction. A lot of people think that the primary motivation is to muzzle free speech. Yes, there are absolutely cases of investigative journalist who have been silenced. But for every 1 case of silencing free speech there are 100s of the fringe right spreading misinformation about religion, government, and foreign powers to the masses there. This problem will not be solved by US technology companies. Solving these problems do not pay bills, they are just decent PR, which again, most of these companies are not interested in since it doesn't impact the bottom line.