A2 · Elementary
11 min
geopoliticscomputingeconomic sanctionsrussia
The Forbidden Computer: Russia Without Technology
La Computadora Prohibida: Rusia Sin Tecnología
Russia is set to restrict supplies of popular computers starting May 27th. Fletcher and Octavio dig into technology, sanctions, and Russia's long, complicated relationship with computing.
Rusia va a limitar las computadoras populares desde el 27 de mayo. Fletcher y Octavio hablan de la tecnología, las sanciones y la historia de Rusia con los ordenadores.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| computadora | computer | Mi computadora es vieja y lenta. |
| tecnología | technology | La tecnología cambia muy rápido. |
| despacio | slowly (conversational) | Por favor, habla más despacio. |
| tienda | store, shop | No hay computadoras en la tienda. |
| ingeniero | engineer | El ingeniero trabaja con computadoras. |
| cara | expensive (also: face) | La tecnología nueva es muy cara. |
buried in the news this week, almost invisible next to oil inventories and navy operations, there was this: Russia is restricting supplies of popular computers starting May 27th.
No fanfare, no major headlines.
Just a ministry announcement.
And I keep thinking about what that actually means for a country of 140 million people.
Sí, es una noticia importante.
Yes, it's an important story.
Rusia necesita computadoras.
Russia needs computers.
Todos necesitan computadoras.
Everyone needs computers.
Right, and that's the thing.
We talk about sanctions like they're abstract economic pressure, some dial you turn in Washington or Brussels.
But at some point the dial connects to a person sitting in front of a screen that won't work.
En Rusia, muchas personas usan computadoras del trabajo.
In Russia, many people use computers for work.
También los estudiantes.
Students too.
Y los médicos.
And doctors.
Walk me through what you understand is actually happening here.
This is the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade.
What does 'restricting supplies' actually mean in practice?
El gobierno dice qué computadoras puedes comprar.
The government decides which computers you can buy.
No todas.
Not all of them.
Solo algunas.
Only some.
Which is a remarkable thing for a government to do, and yet also not surprising at all given where Russia is right now.
Since 2022, Western chipmakers, hardware companies, Microsoft, basically the entire global tech supply chain has been pulling back from Russia.
This May 27th announcement feels like the downstream effect of four years of that.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Rusia no puede comprar tecnología de Europa.
Russia can't buy technology from Europe.
Tampoco de Estados Unidos.
Or from the United States either.
And here's what I think a lot of people don't know: this is not the first time Russia has faced this problem.
Not even close.
The Soviet Union spent decades trying to build its own computing industry while being cut off from Western technology.
And it failed, largely.
The story of why it failed is actually fascinating.
En la Unión Soviética, las computadoras eran muy importantes.
In the Soviet Union, computers were very important.
Para el ejército.
For the military.
Para la ciencia.
For science.
They were.
And in the early days, the Soviets were genuinely competitive.
They had brilliant mathematicians and engineers.
There's a machine called the MESM, built in Kyiv in 1950, which was one of the first operational computers in continental Europe.
The early Soviet computing story is actually one of real achievement.
Sí, pero después, en los años sesenta, algo cambió.
Yes, but later, in the 1960s, something changed.
Rusia copió las computadoras americanas.
Russia copied American computers.
That's exactly the turning point, and it's still debated among historians of technology.
In the late 1960s, Soviet leadership made a decision to essentially clone IBM mainframes rather than continue developing their own architecture.
The series was called ES EVM, the Unified System.
And a lot of Soviet computer scientists thought it was a catastrophic mistake.
Es interesante.
That's interesting.
Si copias, no inventas.
If you copy, you don't invent.
Siempre estás detrás.
You're always behind.
Permanently behind, by definition.
Because you're chasing something that's already moving.
IBM releases a new system, and you're reverse-engineering the old one.
The gap never closes.
It actually widens.
Y en Rusia hoy, es el mismo problema.
And in Russia today, it's the same problem.
La tecnología de China llega.
Technology from China arrives.
Pero no es la mejor.
But it's not the best.
That's the China angle, and it's complicated.
Since Western sanctions bit hard after 2022, China has become Russia's main technology lifeline.
Huawei laptops, Chinese-made chips, Android devices.
But there's a ceiling on that relationship, because China itself is also being squeezed on advanced semiconductors by American export controls.
China vende a Rusia.
China sells to Russia.
Pero no vende los mejores chips.
But it doesn't sell the best chips.
Los mejores son de Taiwan.
The best ones are from Taiwan.
TSMC.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The single most important factory in the world, arguably.
If you want cutting-edge chips, almost everything runs through Taiwan.
And Taiwan is most definitely not selling to Russia.
Entonces Rusia tiene computadoras viejas.
So Russia has old computers.
O computadoras malas.
Or bad computers.
Es un problema grande.
It's a big problem.
And the thing is, Russia has tried to build its own.
There's a domestic processor called Elbrus, developed by a Moscow institute, and there's a Russian Linux-based operating system called Astra Linux that the government has been pushing.
On paper, this is the import substitution strategy.
Build your own, stop depending on the West.
El nombre Elbrus es interesante.
The name Elbrus is interesting.
Elbrus es una montaña en Rusia.
Elbrus is a mountain in Russia.
La más alta.
The highest one.
I did not know that.
That's a very ambitious name for a processor that, by most accounts, runs about a decade behind where Intel and AMD are.
But you're right, there's something very deliberate about naming your domestic chip after the highest peak in Europe.
En Rusia, el nombre es muy importante.
In Russia, the name is very important.
La imagen es muy importante.
The image is very important.
Más que la realidad.
More than reality.
That's a sharp point, actually.
There's a real pattern there.
Soviet space propaganda was extraordinary, genuinely world-class.
But behind the imagery, the civilian economy was starved.
The military got the good chips.
The hospital got the leftovers.
Hoy es igual.
Today it's the same.
El ejército ruso tiene buena tecnología.
The Russian military has good technology.
Los ciudadanos no.
Citizens don't.
Which connects directly to what this May 27th announcement is really about.
The government is deciding who gets the computers that exist.
And when a government starts making those allocation decisions, the military and security services are not going to the back of the queue.
Y los estudiantes sí van al final.
And students do go to the back.
Y los trabajadores normales también.
And ordinary workers too.
Now, I want to ask you something broader, because you've written about digital infrastructure in Europe.
Is there a version of this vulnerability that the West should be worried about for itself?
We depend on TSMC, on a very small number of chokepoints in the global supply chain.
Europa también tiene un problema.
Europe also has a problem.
No hace chips en casa.
It doesn't make chips at home.
Compra de Taiwan y Corea.
It buys from Taiwan and Korea.
The European Chips Act, passed in 2023, was supposed to address exactly that.
The goal was to bring European semiconductor manufacturing up to 20 percent of global production by 2030.
Most analysts think that target is not going to happen on schedule.
These things take decades to build, not years.
Sí.
Yes.
Una fábrica de chips es muy difícil.
A chip factory is very difficult.
Muy cara.
Very expensive.
Y necesita muchos años.
And it needs many years.
The most advanced chip fabrication plant in the world, the TSMC facility in Taiwan, took years to build and requires something like 40,000 different components from suppliers across 30 countries to operate.
It is not a thing you replicate in a hurry.
Russia is learning that in real time.
Y los trabajadores también son importantes.
And workers are important too.
Un chip necesita personas muy inteligentes.
A chip needs very smart people.
Engineers.
And Russia had a lot of very good ones.
The problem is, since February 2022, there have been multiple waves of emigration.
Estimates range from 500,000 to over a million Russians who have left, and a disproportionate number of them were tech workers.
Software engineers, AI researchers, people who'd built careers at companies like Yandex.
Muchos rusos viven ahora en Georgia.
Many Russians live now in Georgia.
En Armenia.
In Armenia.
En Serbia.
In Serbia.
Con sus computadoras.
With their computers.
With their laptops and their VPNs and their Telegram channels.
There's this strange situation where Russia's best tech talent is running Russian software companies from cafes in Yerevan and Belgrade.
The brain drain is real and it's ongoing.
And that's the human element behind this dry Ministry of Industry announcement.
Un país sin buenos ingenieros no puede hacer buenas computadoras.
A country without good engineers can't make good computers.
Es muy simple.
It's very simple.
That's the deepest version of the problem.
You can try to build a chip fab.
You cannot easily rebuild the knowledge base and the human culture of innovation that makes one work.
That takes generations.
The Soviet Union understood this, by the way.
They invested enormously in mathematics education precisely because they couldn't buy the technology, so they needed to grow the minds.
Las matemáticas en Rusia son todavía muy buenas.
Mathematics in Russia is still very good.
Los estudiantes rusos ganan competiciones.
Russian students win competitions.
International math olympiads, yes.
Consistently.
Which makes the brain drain even more painful, because the pipeline is there, but the destination is increasingly not Russia.
A brilliant 22-year-old Russian mathematician today is as likely to be working in Berlin or in a San Francisco startup as in Moscow.
Y el gobierno de Rusia no entiende por qué.
And the Russian government doesn't understand why.
O no quiere entender.
Or doesn't want to understand.
There's a word for that kind of selective blindness.
Anyway.
Where does this leave ordinary Russians by the end of May?
If I'm a teacher in Novosibirsk and my school laptop breaks down, what happens?
Tienes un problema.
You have a problem.
No hay muchas computadoras nuevas en las tiendas.
There aren't many new computers in the stores.
Las viejas cuestan más.
The old ones cost more.
And that's the quiet cruelty of it.
It doesn't make the evening news.
There's no dramatic image.
It's just a teacher in Siberia trying to run a lesson on a machine from 2015 and hoping it doesn't crash.
Multiply that by schools, clinics, small businesses, and you start to get a picture of cumulative degradation.
Las sanciones son lentas.
Sanctions are slow.
No son una bomba.
They're not a bomb.
Son como el agua.
They're like water.
Van muy despacio.
They move very slowly.
Water and stone.
That's actually a perfect image.
The dramatic military story gets all the attention, and meanwhile the structural erosion just keeps going, quietly, every day.
A computer restricted here.
An engineer emigrated there.
A factory that never got built.
Oye, una cosa.
Hey, one thing.
Antes dijiste 'despacio.' Pero también puedes decir 'lentamente.' Son iguales.
Before you said 'slowly.' But you can also say 'lentamente.' They mean the same.
Wait, are they actually interchangeable?
Because I feel like I've been corrected for using one when I should have used the other and I genuinely cannot remember which way it went.
Sí, los dos son correctos.
Yes, both are correct.
'Despacio' es más normal en la conversación.
'Despacio' is more normal in conversation.
'Lentamente' es más formal.
'Lentamente' is more formal.
So 'despacio' is what you'd say to a driver who's going too fast, and 'lentamente' is what goes in a newspaper article.
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Más despacio, por favor' en el coche.
'Más despacio, por favor' in the car.
'Lentamente' en el texto.
'Lentamente' in the text.
Muy bien, Fletcher.
Very good, Fletcher.
I'll take that.
Small victories.
Russia restricts computers, I learn the two Spanish words for slowly.
Not a bad week.