Trade and Dictatorship Promotion

The story is in The Wall Street Journal it shows the dictator’s trade-offs and benefits. It shows that it is not easy to be a dictator, how his country cannot innovate and become rich, and how it is not pleasant to live there even for someone who enjoys serving the state (Ann M. Simmons, “Spy Mania Sows Fear among Russian Scientists,” October 2).

This image focuses on Russian President Vladimir Putin. A dictator needs a strong army, a fortiori if he intends to attack foreign countries. A powerful army has always needed modern technology that is now based on advanced science. Remember the cool video from 2018 where Putin showed off his new hypersonic missiles with an animation of orbiting the earth to deliver a nuclear bomb to what looked like Florida. Hypersonic missiles, traveling at five times the speed of sound—Putin even said 20 times, which is even more impressive if you don’t know that the cost of lying to a dictator is low. Hypersonic missiles have since been used in Ukraine. They do not appear to be available to the US armed forces at this time. Their development requires advanced physics in the field of fast aerodynamics or hypersonics. At the beginning of Putin’s rule, his regime funded research in this field and encouraged its scientists to participate in scientific conferences related to Western countries.

The dictatorship now says that its scientific progress may have been partially leaked during these international conferences, although this fear is probably part of two signals that it wants to convey: first, to its external enemies, real and possible, the Russian government has. new missiles that work better than any other in the world; second, for its scientists and apparatchiks, that any leak will be severely punished.

The cheapness of individuals and the absence of law, the easiest way for a dictator to achieve all these goals is to accuse the very scientists and academics who do what the dictator wanted to do treason. Since 2018 and especially since the invasion of Ukraine, a number of scientists and academics who were involved in hypersonic research, even at a theoretical level, have been arrested. Two accompanying images The WSJ The story features two old men in prison: physicist Anatoly Maslov, now 78 and recently sentenced to 14 years in prison, watches in horror as the Russian emperor manipulates his handcuffs; and physicist Victor Kudryavstev looks dejected after the prisoners at a “court” hearing in 2019. Some written cases were cited in court The WSJ. Trials of rebellion are kept secret and their results are unpleasant.

I The Wall Street Journal and reports another reason why a dictator can imprison innocent people:

The allegation among some observers is that Russian security agencies are pursuing these arrests in part “to convince themselves, and to convince Putin, that Russia has really achieved a scientific breakthrough and that spies from all over the world are trying to steal,” Putin said. [Russian lawyer] Smirnov said.

Within the deep state (the the original deep state) of a totalitarian state, information is unreliable and misinformation is an important part of the game.

But note the result of this persecution. Russian scientists are now afraid and have a strong incentive to avoid meaningful research in areas related to defense. In other words, future advances in science and technology are very unlikely to help Putin or his successor strengthen their military, keep “their” citizens enslaved, and invade foreign countries. If the world can avoid nuclear war, future Russian dictators, like Stalin, may rule over poor and depressed subjects.

******************************