Not quite a tablet but if you’d consider a convertible, the Framework 12 is a solid choice.

If you’re looking for outgoing requests, check out OpenSnitch. It should do exactly what you’re looking for.

For me it was

— I’d seen weirder things in Perl scripts —

Just perfect. No notes.

Have you looked at the Starlite? It’s more expensive than an android tablet but might do what you’re looking for.

Heard about this the other day. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks promising.

You can use two separate VPNs if you use a work profile to run the second one. I’m not sure if this would work for your use case though. Check out Shelter if you want to give it a try.

To be fair, arch could look like that after a few days.

If you like the idea of asdf, I would recommend looking at mise. It does all the same things (and more) and is much more performant in my experience.