A real headscratcher isn't it? And from a government that is supposedly priding itself on small government. How should companies navigate this? What's the framework they should operate within?

Claiming the mantle of "small government" was simply an exercise in marketing to relax regulation meant to prevent bribery and corruption. In practice, the current slate of government officials believes in absolute control of whatever they want whenever they want.

It's a mirror case of the supposed "free speech absolutists" who immediately turned around and silenced, sued, fired or jailed once granted the power to do so.

Small governments don't deploy thousands of military troops into their own cities.

It's only small government when they are trying to not give money to some group they don't like.

It's almost like he expects bribes to release the model, but I'm just being paranoid.