[jka]

Agreed; it's unfortunate to see companies considering acting this way. In this case it seems like GitLab are doing this for a single customer, so I'd bet it's caused by a desire to meet sales quotas and/or financial goals, rather than fundamental company strategy or policy.

Using that lens, this is a short-term financially-motivated attempt to change company hiring/access policy, which in turn provides justification for the anti-Western sentiment you mention.

In my opinion this is a restriction that should be the customer's responsibility to enact, if they choose to - which means that GitLab should pause and build access controls which allow the customer to configure (and ideally audit) who at GitLab has access.

What is excellent and commendable is that GitLab is able to have much of this discussion in the open; because at many other organizations, this would all have happened behind closed doors.