ZachF
Active Member
Mostly I agree but...some fundamental issues.
The vast majority of Russia's IT, analytic, mathematical and physics expertise in post-Soviet Russia came form Akadengorodok , the academic powerhouse city adjacent to Novosibirsk. It is pretty simplistic to minimize those capabilities. Personally, ever competent tech person I ever met from anywhere in the Moscow area came from there. not most-all. The plurality of students there were non-Rus, most had origins in Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova etc, but most had been born in Siberia, usually children of physicist, mathematics or other tech parentage.
Post Soviet many of them have sought citizenship and passports from their ethnic origin, easy to do as a general rule during the 1990's especially, but pretty easy until recently.
What that means is that Russia, as we discuss this, is losing those people in droves. They left beginning a few weeks ago. Many are acutely sensitive to political change, although they tend not to say anything about that unless they REALLY trust their confidants.
As generalities about STEM check out the statistics for Estonia, clear number one in the world.
Education is one part of the process, another one is creating a climate that allows these skills to actually be applied into real world solutions/products/inventions/etc… This is one area where the US excels and Russia performs horrifically.
For instance, I created an estimation of 2022 R&D spending by country, and Russia just barely makes the top 20, and will probably be kicked out after.
$885,176m United States
$407,277m China
$152,160m Japan
$128,142m Germany
$85,346m South Korea
$65,024m France
$59,518m United Kingdom
$32,251m Canada
$30,518m Taiwan
$30,507m Italy
$28,649m Australia
$25,981m Israel
$25,247m Switzerland
$25,075m India
$22,912m Netherlands
$20,838m Brazil
$20,570m Sweden
$20,345m Belgium
$19,772m Spain
$18,455m Russia*(Pre sanctions)
$14,606m Austria
$11,588m Denmark
$10,138m Poland
$9,772m Norway
$8,925m Turkey
$8,354m Finland
$7,268m Thailand
$6,892m Singapore
$6,885m Saudi Arabia
$5,917m Ireland
$5,479m United Arab Emirates
$5,383m Czechia
$4,879m Mexico
$4,548m Malaysia
$4,152m Portugal
$4,032m Indonesia
$3,878m Hong Kong SAR
$3,822m New Zealand
$3,309m South Africa
$3,127m Greece
$3,123m Argentina
Countries with a fraction of Russia’s population are devoting more money to R&D, like Israel, Sweden, Taiwan and Switzerland. This is Dutch disease at work.