Another word to my Russian friends (?)

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

- Ancient Greek saying

In the summer, there’s a significant drop in readers of this blog on weekends. Of course, that’s quite understandable. So, I was surprised on Saturday to see a big increase. I’ve seen unexplained jumps before, and there’s one cause I always suspect. When I checked, I saw my suspicion was correct: my Russian “friends” have suddenly decided they need to read my blog all at once.

Other countries seem to discover the blog, read it intensely for a week, then drop back in the rankings; but there’s always some residual traffic. The Russians seem to jump in wholeheartedly, then in a few days almost totally disappear. The first time this happened was in 2018, right after Rebecca Smith’s Wall Street Journal article on a presentation by the DHS NCCIC (one of the predecessor agencies of CISA) caused a worldwide firestorm. The presentation detailed an extensive supply chain campaign by the Russians against the US power grid. Rebecca’s article led to DHS walking back everything said in the presentation over a couple of months, with four mutually incompatible stories (and even more mutually incompatible stories later, just for good measure, it seems).

BTW, from that time until the SolarWinds attacks were discovered, DHS was completely absent from the Russia beat (and no other agency was taking up the slack). As a result, the 15-month campaign by the Russians against SolarWinds, which Microsoft estimated required 1,000 people to execute and was entirely launched from US-based servers, flew completely under our radar. If DHS hadn’t been forced by higher-ups at 1600 Pennsylvania to cease and desist from all investigation of Russia because of Rebecca’s article (which I’m sure is what happened), maybe we could have averted at least some of the tremendous damage caused by the SolarWinds attack. Such is the cost of political interference with cyber investigations.

Back to our story: During the week and a half after Rebecca’s article and my first post the next day, I had many more Russian readers than American ones. That trend continued (not as pronounced, though) for a few more weeks, but then my Russian readers disappeared again (I wrote at least 10 or 12 posts on this topic, over the next month). However, in December 2018, I got hit with another huge spike of Russian interest, for no apparent reason at all; I wrote about it in this post.

In the post, I chided my “Russian friends” for living docilely under the reign of one Mr. Putin, who – it seemed to me – was completely squandering the tremendous technical talent in Russia (at least it was present in Russia at that time. That’s much less the case today). I’ve since written a number of times about the wonderful Mr. P, as well as about Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of Staff of the Russian army – another wonderful person who just loves to threaten the US with nukes and everything else (as does Mr. P himself). Note there’s another Gen. Gerasimov, of a much lower rank, who was killed in the Ukraine war earlier this year. At first, I got my hopes up that it would be Valery, but no such luck.

Now, to my Russian friends who have been reading my posts: Since you’re reading them, I assume you’re in technology in some way. You’ve probably already seen a lot of your friends leave the country since Mr. P decided it was a great idea to invade Ukraine, thus proving that just because someone talks like a strategic thinker doesn’t mean they act on anything more than blind impulse. Why haven’t you left with them? I hope it’s because you want to stay in Russia and undermine the Putin regime to the best of your ability, although I don’t have to warn you that is dangerous to your health.

But, if you support the Ukraine War (and supposedly 80% of Russians say they support it, although polls in Russia are always suspect. Nobody can be sure their answer won’t find its way to the local officials, who might feel inclined to make their life unpleasant) or at least maintain calculated ignorance about it, I’ll tell you what I compare you to: the man who jumps off the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago. As he passes the 50^th floor, he calls out, “So far, so good!”

It might appear to you that Russia is doing well even now, but you’re being fooled by a Potemkin Village (I assume I don’t have to tell you what that means). Russia has passed at least the 75^th floor and is heading rapidly toward the ground. “Ah, but the ruble’s doing great!,” you say? Exchange rates are primarily determined by the balance of trade and balance of payments. When you’re not importing anything at all because of the embargo, but you’re still selling about a billion dollars a day worth of oil and natural gas to Europe and elsewhere, of course your balance of trade looks great! But soon the exports will be down to zero, since Europe will stop buying oil and – a few years later – natural gas from you. Moreover, you certainly can’t sell anything else to the West other than commodities, since you no longer have access to the chips required to make virtually anything nowadays (that’s not true. My knives and forks don' have chips in them, at least not yet).

But what are all the imports you have suddenly realized you can do without? Chips, for one. Aircraft parts are another. And therein lies a story: Russia has about 200 aircraft (Boeing and Airbus) that are on lease from Western companies. The leases have essentially been terminated for lack of payment, but Putin is holding onto the aircraft. His main use for them seems to be to cannibalize them for parts, to make up for the lack of new parts coming in. Do you think that, no matter what happens in the Ukraine War, the West isn’t going to demand payment for those aircraft?

And more to the point – again, regardless of the outcome of the war – do you think Russia isn’t going to end up paying a hefty part of the cost of rebuilding Ukraine, which of course goes up literally by the minute? Even more to the point, it seems Mr. P has decided that, since the Donbas offensive is at the moment going nowhere (perhaps because the new long-range artillery provided by the US and European countries is having a significant effect on the supply lines for the offensive, since it can hit ammo dumps and fuel sites 40 and 50 miles away), to keep his troops happy, he has to let them unleash literal terror attacks on Ukrainian cities. A hospital here, a shopping center there – all military targets, to be sure. Do you think Russia isn’t going to be held to account in some significant way for the huge civilian deaths, which seem to be the only thing the Russian military is able to achieve?

Did you see the photo of the young girl’s feet protruding from the rubble of an apartment building that was hit by a rocket attack very recently? 3 kids and 20 adults were killed in that attack – undoubtedly, all military personnel. The mother’s legs were lying nearby, but she survived – not that she wanted to survive, having lost her daughter in that way.

And how about the hundreds of citizens of Bucha who were killed by soldiers of the Wagner group, the mercenary organization that carries out civilian atrocities in the service of various murderous dictators in Africa, with Mr. P as their paymaster? They used their wonderful experience with murder to kill citizens of Bucha and other towns. Mr. P made sure to give them medals after Bucha. However, there is some good news in this: The Wagner group seems to be the only Russian company that’s in growth mode now. Killing people is now one of your growth industries. I guess it’s a substitute for chips.

Do you really think that, after all of this is finished, the civilized world (which doesn’t include Russia now, of course) is going to just forgive and forget all these things? Do you really think that, if you decide to stay in Russia and Putin isn’t replaced by an actual democratic government – not just a “government” by one of his sub-thugs – every current Western sanction won’t stay in place for many years, to be followed by many new sanctions (at least, I hope that happens)? Do you really think that you won’t face a living standard that will decline year after year (forecast GDP decline this year: 10%. That’s huge, in case you didn’t know), so that in ten years or so, Russia will be back in the Middle Ages, perhaps with the serfs once again supporting the economy as semi-slaves?

My friends, you’re living in a fool’s paradise. Your only hope is a) to leave the country ASAP or b) do what you can to replace Mr. P and his kleptocratic friends with an actual Western-style democracy. Otherwise, you’re probably condemning yourself to a life of poverty and drink (the favorite Russian sport nowadays, I imagine – but that’s nothing new).

However, other than that, things aren’t so bad…

Note from Tom Monday 7/18 7:24PM: After having hundreds of hits from Russia on Saturday and Sunday (which prompted me to write this post), I went to literally zero in the last 24 hours. This leads me to believe the post was blocked by the Russian censors soon after it went up, so this never reached the main people I was writing it for. However, I was also writing it for Western audiences. Russia needs to be treated as a pariah and criminal from now on, until Putin and his friends are removed from power in one way or the other. As long as it's permanent removal, I'm not picky about how it's done.

Any opinions expressed in this blog post are strictly mine and are not necessarily shared by any of the clients of Tom Alrich LLC. If you would like to comment on what you have read here, I would love to hear from you. Please email me at tom@tomalrich.com.