Granted, this is probably a ragebait take, and I fell for it.
Still, difficult to overemphasize just how crucial VPNs and cryptography are to freedom of speech, especially in authoritarian regimes.
Take on the same level as "we should ban cryptography". VPNs are crucial to providing secure access to an internal network, which is instrumental to allowing work from home (thus clear benefit!). One would think an "information security aficionado" would know this.
VPNs occupy a similar role in society to guns. They cause many significant harms and have no clear benefit, yet their legality is mysteriously correlated with places you want to live.
But assuming this is on public VPNs - they provide privacy and make it more difficult to obtain my IP. Are PO boxes similar to guns? Is wearing a face mask the same as having a gun? You can do bad things with all three, but nobody is campaigning to ban PO boxes nor face masks.