The long-term cost of Russia's tech isolation

Russia has been hit hard by sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine. It’s been further hit by companies like Microsoft and Apple that have said they’ll stop doing business with the country.

Computer scientists at the University of Washington say Russia has been preparing for this.

When Microsoft announced it would stop selling products and services in Russia, Pedro Domingos, computer science professor at the University of Washington had some questions. It's one thing to put out a statement. But it's another to implement the policy.

Microsoft, and other tech companies, will have some big decisions ahead, he says. And those decisions will determine if their punishment of Russia has a big impact or a small one.

Today, he says software can involve life and death.

"There are dilemmas, right? What if hospitals are using Microsoft software for something essential? Are you going to let people die because you stopped maintaining the software?”

Domingos says Russia always knew western tech companies could turn their backs on it someday. And so, Russia prepared for it, producing its own versions of Microsoft Office and search engines and social media platforms. But Domingos says Russia did not isolate itself as successfully from the West as China did.

“I think in this respect, China is the envy of Russia. Because [China] did manage to control the internet and cordon themselves off in a way that Putin would love to. But he hasn’t. And it’s going to be more difficult for him because people are already very used to using all these things like YouTube and Facebook and so on and so forth. Whereas in China, they were shut off earlier.”

Now, depending on how long the sanctions remain, Russia may need to expand its tech sector quickly, to replace western tech companies.

China could step in to provide some help. But Russia has a lot less money than China, and Domingos says Russia can't afford the high cost of manually monitoring its citizens' online activities using armies of bureaucrats, as China does.

That’s good news for dissidents inside Russia, according to assistant professor David Kohlbrenner, also at the UW’s computer science school, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

Kohlbrenner says activists in Russia have had the freedom to master tools that help them hide their tracks online, like encrypted messaging services, and networks of routers nested together like layers of an onion (or Russian matryoshka nesting dolls).

“This is classically why a lot of people in security like building these types of services. When there is a crackdown in a country, and when dissidents need access to tools to be able to coordinate, communicate, to you know, spread information to the outside world, these are the tools they turn to. And the fact that they had an open internet prior, means they could prepare for this kind of thing.”

He says the fact that western tech companies are abandoning Russia means the world will separate further into separate technological kingdoms. But Russia’s kingdom is different than China’s. It has fewer resources, and so, its walls will be lower.