Russia And Its Not So Quiet Desperation

Its Achilles heel is simply put the future that somehow passed it by.

While the world is watching and mourning every tragic moment unfolding in Ukraine through the hands of Russian forces, my thoughts as a software engineer are veering slightly off into a territory that I’ve been keeping an eye on since the North-Korean crisis a few years ago — namely technology. This story is actually a culmination of various notes and drafts collected over time that I now feel have ripened enough to be shared with the world. While I am relying on facts and evidence, I must highlight that these are my personal views and observations, and I would find it highly educational if others would share their views on the matter in the comments.

As someone born in the Soviet era, just outside the Soviet Union, in Romania, I remember more of its shortcomings than benefits. While Romania itself was never an actual part of the Soviet Union, its influence was tangible in every way. Half the things I remember seeing as a child, are also eternalised in a Phaidon book called “Designed in the USSR”.

But I remember more than just day-to-day objects. While barely 5 years old, I remember clearly how people felt about the Communist regime, what the hush-hush topics were and what propaganda people were told. The general sentiment was that everything in the West was better, tastier, lasted longer and was worth more and there was more of. Heck, we often had to sit in the cold dark because Ceausescu had a fetish for absolute energy independence and zero national debt. The latter he actually achieved, the former he was about to, before they knocked his brains out in 1989.

All this, of course, reminded me of yet another country — North Korea. It just so happens I have another Phaidon book covering graphics from everyday life in the DPRK. Another fascinating “read”, if you’re into design like I am, and the similarities between it, the USSR and Communist Romanian era designs are quite telling.

But why am I going through a list of communist countries and decades old memories? Well, looking at pre 90s Romania, current Russia, DPRK and China (not an entirely exhaustive list of communist/authoritarian regimes), you’ll start noticing something — a pattern of isolation, indoctrinated notions of superiority ironically combined with an acute narcissistic victim syndrome, and it’s funny because it’s both true and completely false at the same time.

• Indeed, communist countries do tend to be isolated, think Berlin Wall, Iron Curtain, current DPRK, etc.
• Notions of superiority, which while exist cannot be proven with facts.
• Narcissistic victim syndrome is the most hilarious one because it contradicts the notions of superiority. You can’t complain that everyone is out to get you while you also think you’re better than everyone else.

What this pattern of existence and rule results in every single time, yes, even in China, is an overall lesser quality of life. No matter what the propaganda says, it is by now common knowledge that all communist countries are behind, often time by decades in quality of life and/or technology. Here I am going to focus on the technology aspect and on Russia alone, with occasional examples from other countries.

Russia’s present is in the wrong century

And that is largely because the way it isolated itself from the rest of the world. On paper not a communist country, but as the saying goes “show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are” it created an almost fictitious context for itself where oil and gas are the main money-makers, aka resources that were in fairness vital in the 20th century, however in the 21st, they’re losing their value and the rest of the world is trying — albeit not fast enough — to move away from them entirely.

Where Russia is incredibly spot on, is the fact that energy is important. Heck, it’s more than that. It is the source of everything else. Energy spins the planet around (and love) and enough of it can make anything happen. Without it, everything stops, and we’re back in the days of The Flintstones. What Russia forgot however is that cleaner sources of energy are getting increasingly popular and attractive for more and more economies. It’s not just the cleanliness of it, but it also presents an opportunity for countries to become more and more self-sufficient when it comes to the core of every activity people and businesses do. To be fair, this was Ceausescu’s dream too. Make Romania entirely independent from an energy perspective. That dream, I have to give it to the man, wasn’t a terrible idea. How it was put in motion though and executed, now that, that was a shit-show, and he managed to get himself in front of a firing squad for it.

Russia seems to have bet most of its questionable success as an economy on energy. But oil and gas aren’t the only “oil” in the 21st century and the UAE for instance realised that reality already. For those who didn’t get the memo, we live in an increasingly digitised world. I mean Elon Musk is putting an entire constellation of satellites out there to blanket the planet into the World Wide Web! We have wires thicker than Godzilla’s dick running across seas and oceans sending and receiving data by the gazillions every millisecond. Quantum computers are an actual reality and TSMC is already planning to manufacture 2 nm node chips!

Russia in the meanwhile is still running Cold War trams in Siberia, and their silicon manufacturing process has just reached a whopping 65 nm! That puts an entire country, spanning two continents twenty years behind everyone else! And guess who isn’t doing much better either? China. The best I could find that China can currently manufacture is 28 nm, and even that at super low capacities. Want to guess about North Korea? Well, they don’t have a single foundry! How about Cuba? Laos? Vietnam? Ze-ro! See the pattern? Turns out countries governed by communist regimes or fake democracies rooted in Soviet ideologies are particularly bad at recognising the value of technology.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have any, they’re just incredibly behind on making it themselves and/or decide to buy it from the West and other countries like South Korea or Taiwan, who are much better at it. But that’s a terrible strategy.

It boggles the mind how a supposedly superior nation’s leadership can miscalculate their future so badly, they essentially end up in the past! Welcome to the time-machine…

But, forget that. As it stands, they’re technologically inept. They’re also single-handedly carving into stone their Achilles heel. Sanctions as we see right now, can get very harsh, instant, and they have an immediate effect. When a country the size of Russia can’t even build proper airplanes at scale, so they end up leasing from the West only to have them seized when they misbehave, and the same is also true about the DPRK, who have been so badly sanctioned, they simply cannot build airplanes, period, you’ve got to ask yourself what the hell are these regimes setting out to achieve?!? With every single passing year, they seem to get behind another five!

And of course, I am not the only one who sees this. Over the years the amount of brain-drain Russia had (but same goes for every other communist country too) is staggering. In the last few weeks alone, thousands of Russians fled their home-country in search for a place where their skills and expertise is appreciated. And this isn’t new. Plenty of people did this — even while risking their own life — in Romania too. A regime that doesn’t allow freedom of thought, is shooting itself in the foot with every person who decides to leave, just like a company that doesn’t appreciate its loyal employees.

So, let’s recap…

Russia has oil and gas, but the world wants to move to renewables. While right this moment it’s still selling a precious commodity, if the world really wants to cut Russia out entirely and move on without their oil and gas, knowing how resilient and inventive humans can be in the face of challenge, I think it could be done, though certainly not overnight.

Russia is decades behind on silicon manufacturing, and it has faced brain-drain since the Cold War. Its so-called friends like China or the DPRK either aren’t doing much better or are in a worse position than Russia itself!

In an increasingly digital world both Russia and the DPRK are falling behind at an unaffordable speed. The outlier is China that seems to be conducting a “state-capitalist” inside a framework of Communist party rule, and trying not to piss anyone off too much. Having said that, the commonality in their poor technological advancement — and that includes Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos too — is their political regime.

I am no politician, but I am a very passionate software engineer and technologist. While I see the dangers of it, I also see the benefits and how it can stand at the very core of a prosperous and peaceful civilisation for thousands of years to come. But perhaps this is why I am baffled by the seemingly illogical path totalitarian regimes take when it comes to technology. Instead of focusing on that, they focus on things that most of the world has either already buried and forgot, or tries very hard to do so. The actions Russia has been taking technologically over the last few decades are akin to draining your only lake in the Sahara right before you know a draught is coming. It’s suicidal, it makes no sense and it’s a sign of anything but superior leadership.

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!