Nothing would hamper the Russian war efforts more than the disconnection of German machines and software on the military plants. Is it possible? It's difficult to prove. What is easy to prove is that Russian industrialists feared such a backstabbing. Fortunately, they were wrong
The debate on a possibility of disconnection started in 2019. It was triggered by the Austrian LMF forcibly turning off their compressors on the Gazprom facility:
"they just turned them off through the satellite and it all turned into the scrap metal"
"Typically contracts for compressor maintenance include the possibility of fixing its malfunctioning or turning it off remotely"
He made it clear that the old American or Swiss produced Gazprom compressors also risk being disconnected
Russian military industry works under a much harder secrecy regime and we don't know details of their contracts with equipment suppliers. But what we do know is that Russian industrialists and academicians fear it. Just one example from 2021 cyberleninka.ru/article/n/prob…
In 2021 the CEO of an Institute for the digital intellectual systems A. Zelensky argued that foreign machine tools might have undocumented capacities such as an option to remotely turn it off, establish its geolocation, get an info about the products made with this machine
In Zelensky's opinion the CNC dependency is a major weak point of the Russian industry. Almost all CNC systems used in Russia are foreign produced. Which made him fear of the undocumented ways of remote control installed there
Do I have direct evidencee that Western, mostly German suppliers could, turn off their equipment on the Russian military plants? That's very difficult to prove. What we do know is that Russian engineers feared that. Fortunately, Germany didn't backstab the Russian army. End of🧵
PS Daily reminder that most of software used on the Russian military plants is either #Siemens or #Heidenhain which are not questioned nearly enough for their role in keeping the Russian military industry afloat
Example from the КБ-1, Almaz-Antey corp. They produce air defense
Where I did take it from? Well, from YouTube. Who did post it? Igor Ashurbeyli, the Director for Science of the said КБ-1 and the CEO of the entire Almaz-Antey corporation
I'm absolutely serious. The (ex)CEO of a massive military Almaz-Antey corporation Ashurbeyli is uploading videos with unblurred tools and CNC from a secret facility to his YouTube for likes
That's a powerful counterpoint for "They are not that dumb to do X/Y" arguments. They are
The funniest thing is that he originally posted this video on his personal website ashurbeyli.ru but then posted in on YouTube, too
So basically he sacrificed any pretence of secrecy and made non sourcing too easy to get more views, likes, and comments. The end of 🧵
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We are releasing our investigation on Roscosmos, covering a nearly exhaustive sample of Russian ICBM producing plants. We have investigated both primary ICBM/SLBM producers in Russia, a major producer of launchers, manufacturers of parts and components.
Each material includes an eclectic collection of sources, ranging from the TV propaganda to public tenders, and from the HR listings to academic dissertations. Combined altogether, they provide a holistic picture of Russian ICBM production base that no single type of source can.
Overall, you can expect tech moguls to have much, much higher level of reasoning abilities compared to the political/administrative class. But this comes at a cost. Their capacities for understanding the Other (masses count as the “Other”) are much poorer.
E.g. Putin is much, much less of an outlier in terms of intelligence compared to Thiel. He is much more average. At the same time, I am positively convinced that Putin understands the masses and works with masses much better.
One problem with that is that too much of the supply chain for drone production is located in China. The thing with drones is that they grew out of toys industry. Cheap plastic & electronic crap that all of a sudden got military significance
That is also the major problem I have with "China supports Russia" argument. China could wreck Ukraine easily, simply obstructing & delaying the drone/drone components shipments. That would be an instant military collapse for Ukraine.
Both Russian and Ukrainian drone industries are totally dependent upon the continuous shipments from China. To a very significant degree, their "production" is assembly from the Chinese components which are non alternative and cannot be substituted with anything else (as cheap).
No, Israel being a republic causes it to be more barbaric towards the conquered population than Russia, and with no escape. There is simply no room and no possibility for any sort of integration whatsoever.
Were Israelis slaves to a Big Man, integration would be conceivable.
Crawling on the knees before your Big Man is Lindy
Scaleable, manageable, robust
Every nation on earth will concede to it, after the sufficient amount of sticks (and may be some carrots, but that is optional). Which makes it very, very scaleable
In contrast, crawling on the knees before an other nation is not Lindy. No people on the earth will ever accept it, no matter the degree of violence applied.
That's why republican dominion over the disenfranchised colonial periphery is always so fragile. Not scaleable at all.
Today I will introduce one more concept critical for understanding of how the manufacturing industry has evolved over the last few decades. It is the shift of technological knowledge from esoteric to exoteric
In the pre-digital era, manufacturing used to be mysterious, esoteric
To visualize how the manufacturing worked in the pre-computer/early computer age, imagine the atmosphere of magic, mysticism, enigma. That would be not very far from truth.
To illustrate the idea, I will give you one simple, straightforward example. The train car production.
Train production is a very, very rare example of a Russian machinery industry that survived through the post-Soviet collapse. Of course, it contracted. Of course, it suffered losses. Still, it made it through, while most of the Soviet machinery sector was simply wiped out.
As I have already pointed out, general audience, analysts, strategists & decision makers included holds unrealistic notions of how the global economy is organised. Now that is because they never see the back end of industrial civilisation
So let me show you some
There is a major delusion of seeing Europe as a sort of retired continent that "lags in tech" or even "doesn't produce anything". To some extent, it is just American hubris.
But there is more in there than just hubris. There is also some honest, sincere ignorance. The thing with most people is that they see only facade of industrial civilisation. They never ever had a chance to look behind the curtains