In mid-October Dmitry Marinichev, the Kremlin’s Internet Commissioner, made controversial statements concerning Russia’s options for further technological development in the current international context. Initially reported by Russian business daily Kommersant, these statements were widely discussed in Russia in the subsequent weeks.
Speaking to Russian scientists at Russia’s Civic Chamber, Marinichev underlined America’s monopolistic and hegemonic position in the global market.
“The United States hands out technologies to other countries like tinker toys. And all the other countries begin to compete for who can make the best car, or the best airplane. The key, most crucial components in every Chinese product are controlled by the United States,” Kommersant quoted Marinichev as saying.
Russian soldiers vs. US technology?
The import substitution strategy which Russia adopted last year cannot work in this field, believes Marinichev, because Russia’s domestic market is “very small, just like an aquarium compared with the global ocean.”
Moreover, US tech firms are far ahead of any Russian company, “Kaspersky or any other,” Marinichev argued.
In this context, Russia may start producing its own technologies only if the rest of the world will buy them. “But we’ll be able to provide our technologies to other countries only when we have a military presence there, when these countries will have no other choice but to buy our products,” he continued.
Such a strategy would require “passive or active military actions in territories which are now in the USA’s sphere of influence.”
The alternative consists in “following the path of the majority of countries, which have found their place in the global division of work.”
These countries, however, “have accepted a vassal situation in global labor, information and technology market — which [Russia] cannot accept due to [its] historical ambitions, [its] knowledge and capacities,” added Marinichev.
IT education good for the enemy
Referring to a trend which has been growing over the past few years, Marinichev also warned that IT specialists trained in Russia on government funding will nonetheless “pray to find a job in a Western company” and move abroad at the first opportunity.
Thus “there’s no better way to harm the country than training IT specialists,” he said strikingly.
As the controversy stirred up in the days following his statements, Marinichev attempted to clarify his views. He wrote on Facebook that his statements were the expression of his personal opinion and intended for a specific audience — not for media reports, which he claimed were inaccurate.
His purpose, he explained, was to raise the question of whether Russia, while opting for an import substitution strategy, should decide to remain integrated in the global tech market, “or to stand outside of it.”
Elaborating in an exchange with radio channel Ekho Moskvy, Marinichev further underlined that his purpose was not to advocate any autarky strategy but, on the contrary, to alert Russia to the impossibility of isolating itself in the field of technologies, and about the dangerous potential consequences of such a strategy.
Calling for a BRICS alliance
Whatever Marinichev had precisely in mind, his statements and the subsequent controversy illustrate the contradictions and dilemmas of Russia’s current development strategy amidst Western sanctions.
“We are aiming for total IT sovereignty in Russia,” Nikolai Nikiforov, Russia’s Minister of Communications and Mass Media, stated last year in a visit to Crimea. Nikiforov announced that “no quicker” than in three years his ministry plans to develop such a strong IT sector that the country no longer needs foreign software. “This goal is achievable in principle. Russia has always been renowned for its programmers,” he said.
Nikiforov has extended this vision to the BRICS states, in which he sees potential allies against America’s IT monopoly. Speaking in late October in Moscow at the first meeting of the BRICS communications ministers, the Nikiforov called his counterparts to offer the world alternative ICT products and services.
Corruption allegations
Marinichev was appointed Internet Commissioner in the summer of last year 2014. Previously, he founded Radius Group, a Moscow based system integrator.
Last week anti-corruption blogger and Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny claimed that Radius Group had earned billions of rubles on uncontested government IT contracts, and had lobbied illegitimately for Russia’s new legislation on personal data storage.
