President Putin Addresses The Russian Tech Gap

President Vladimir Putin’s has been speaking out on new constitutional  arrangements that may extend his period in power and at the same time announced various measures meant to foster Russia’s technological efforts.

In a recent parliamentary speech, he  urged the Russian legislature to pass a “technological legislative package” intended to launch a flexible mechanism of experimental legal regimes for the development and implementation of new technologies in Russia. These inlude a focus on artificial intelligence, to establish modern regulation of big data turnover based on the best world standards, as well as establish mechanisms for state support and financing, using both direct and venture instrumnets.

Although offering no details, yet his speech marks a mid-point, of sorts, in national efforts to spur innovation. In the speech, Putin alluded to the difficulties Russian researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs face, particularly in the realm of finance. While Western entrepreneurs can obtain venture capital, miss their goal, and move on to a new project, Russia lacks a similar ecosystem. 

President Putin also called for reshaping legal and financial conditions “so that as many startups and innovative teams as possible can become strong, successful innovative companies.” He also called for an effort to help Russian industry export its products and meet domestic demand.

The day after Putin’s speech, he appointed a replacement for Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, who resigned, apparently, to facilitate the Russian president’s transition plan. The replacement is Mikhail Mishustin, who has a degree in information technology, and who has led national initiatives involving data centers and online services for the national tax collection agency. Among other things, Mishustin will oversee Russia’s “Digital Economy” national project, having an IT-capable technocrat at the highest levels of national power will probably help.

The Russian STEM community was quick to comment on Putin’s speech. Konstantin Vorontsov, who leads the machine intelligence laboratory at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, or MIPT, reiterated the need for a Russia-wide platform where scientists, researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs could share their work and cooperate, and said that the country’s tech drive urgently needed more engineers, researchers, and computer programmers.

In his speech, Putin a;so addresed the worldwide skills shortge, saying, “The ability to work with unique equipment, to take on the most ambitious tasks, is an incentive for young people to enter the science field. This is already happening. It is estimated that by the middle of the decade, every second scientist in Russia will be under 40,” 

In 2019 President Putin  said that his country had "unique" advances in hypersonic weaponry, saying other countries were "trying to catch up with us." He made these remarks at a Russian Defense Ministry board meeting, adding that "not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons," according to a transcript released by the Kremlin. Both the US and China are also working on hypersonic technology and Chian is understood to be testing  a hypersonic aircraft, and the US Air Force has awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to develop a missile.

While Russia and China are the first nations to have announced the operational deployment of hypersonic weapons systems, other nations have had hypersonic programs for decades, and some of those have successfully tested these weapons as early as in 2011.

The Congressional Research Service  reported in September 2019 that at least seven countries have been developing hypersonic weapons technology for over a decade. These include the United States, Russia, China, Australia, India, France and Germany.

CNN:           Defense One:       Polygraph:      OECD: 

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