- not on any reasonable trans-Asia transport route, so no incentive for outsiders to invest in roads/rail/other transport infrastructure

- politically at least somewhat isolated, so no visa-free travel for most foreigners

- sparsely populated, preventing easy widespread wireless Internet access

- no major exploitable natural resource that would attract a rush of foreign investment

This basically gives us: the Central Asian SSRs (except Kazakhstan which has rich gas resources), Afghanistan, Iran, frontier regions of Pakistan, Myanmar (rapidly changing now), Bhutan and a few others.