As an Italian national who grew up in Italy and left as soon as I could to work abroad, I feel I'm in a pretty good position to make the following statements:

1. I've never seen the Italian government move so quickly on anything 2. Now that they have, they've done so for something extremely stupid 3. They haven't exactly halted AI development. They've just widened the productivity gap between Italy and the rest of the world. And Italy wasn't exactly a beaming light of economic productivity beforehand. 4. Within Italy, tech savvy people will just use VPNs. Most people aren't tech savvy though, so you're widening the gap even further within your own borders.