Samanth Subramanian

And Meta, therefore, I think, like makes the decisions of, well, which West African countries should we land in?

Now, West African countries and Africa in general, they're very underserved by the Internet.

I mean, this is an Internet deficient population.

And for any economy today, I think the Internet is sort of it's a prerequisite.

You can't develop and grow without being online as much as everybody else is in the West.

And so for the government of West Africa, of Cote d'Ivoire, for example, this presents a real dilemma.

On the one hand, do they welcome Meta in and say, you know, of course, feel free to land a cable on our shores, but we have these kinds of conditions that European countries have.

We want our citizens' data to be stored on servers on our soil.

And this is something that European countries have been able to demand and get quite often.

But unfortunately, the Cote d'Ivoire government has much less leverage than any Western European nation.

And so, for example, if we were to tell Meta that, it runs the risk of Meta saying, well, that's fine.

Maybe we don't want to land in this country after all and loop somewhere else instead.

And so then there's a real dilemma.

I mean, do they sort of look out for the privacy and data security of their citizens, or do they give their citizens expanded internet access, which is really what they're craving?

And I think this is a weakness.

It gives a lie to the old sort of

utopian model of a free, open internet.

And as in many other ways, which we talk about all the time these days, I think this also actually sort of closes off the internet in some sense and kind of suffocates certain people who want to get online.

There is exactly one.

Well, there's two, I think.