Electronics: I see only one way for electronics to progeress in Paklands and that is incorporation of dual use tech for the purposes of production of items. My reasoning is there is not enough demand for electrical items for purely defence related items for there to be a defence related industry. So incorporation of defnece related industry along the lines of dual use tech might be a much better bet .
When I was active duty and going thru the usual Professional Military Education (PME), in one session, we had a 1/2 hr long debate (competitive discussion) on the concept of dual role technology. Half of the class was assigned 'pro' and the other half 'against'.
To be 'pro' means to be supportive. The opposites of 'pro' are 'con' and 'against'. How could this be? Are not 'con' and 'against' the same? No, it is not. The 'con' is to simply list the negative aspects of an issue, if you know the positive and negative attributes, you could still buy the item and make adjustments in usage, but to be 'against' is to be antagonistic, meaning hostile altogether. You do not want it.
My half of the class was to be 'against'. I and three other students were tasked to research on the negative aspects of adapting civilian technologies to military uses and the group would formulate an argument hostile to the idea. In other words, the military should finance technologies that are --
FROM CONCEPTION -- unique for military missions.
The idea is not as absurd as one might think -- low radar observability, aka 'stealth'.
When you think about it, 'stealth' is antagonistic to everything we know of radar usage. Is not radar supposed to be convenient and even life saving at times? So why are we working to evade radar?
Another example -- the aircraft carrier.
There is no civilian application of the concept. The aircraft carrier and in-flight refueling are purely military applications. How many civilians would be willing to suffer many hrs in a Boeing 737 with in-flight refueling?
The exercise was eye opening. The point is that one must incorporate national security issues and goals into the debate. It does not matter the size of the country as much as the scope of its national security issues and goals. Germany is much smaller than the US but had expansive national goals and the result was WW II. Same for Japan of the same era.
Why was it that the Soviet Union was always behind the US, and Western allies, in terms of technologies (plural) during the Cold War yrs? Because there were little to no civilian opportunities in relevant fields of STEM. If everything has to go thru military review -- and everything must -- then what incentives are there for me to innovate? On the other hand, the Soviets beat US to space with the first artificial satellite -- Sputnik -- and long duration human zero gravity knowledge with their space stations.
Quite often, adapting a civilian technology for military usage comes with additional cost that in hindsight, the military would have been better off developing the technology itself. Global Positioning System (GPS) was a hybrid of civilian and military ideas.
Dual role technologies are not bad in ideas and execution. The problem for the military lies in adaptations. You cannot stop the progress of the civilian sectors of STEM. But you must be vigilant on that progress in order to quickly adapt just that one point in that progress for military use.