> Why is Russia so into hacking? Would it help if there was a startup community there to absorb the talent? Or is this the inevitable byproduct of bright people living under a brutally corrupt and dishonest dictator and his cronies for most of their lives?
It may be worth taking a look at the conditions that first gave rise to the eastern European malware scene in the late 80's, particularly in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria:
In particular, the presence of the necessary information and lack of economic opportunity gave rise to the original scene, and today that has transformed into an environment where the economic opportunity is directly tied to various for-profit black-hat activities (ransomware, identity theft and credit card fraud, etc.).
It is possible to link the relative lack of other economic opportunities to corruption, and that is a valid observation, but if black hat activities weren't profitable and relatively safe from retaliation (as long as you avoid Russian targets), the scene would still be typified by disaffected individuals rather than organized professional groups.
I'm not sure if creating a bunch of startups to soak up the extra talent would work, as the incentives to get a leg up on the competition via the Dark Arts (DDOS your competitor, spear-phishing their sales people, etc.) would still be pretty strong.
They inherited the military of the Soviet Union, which was overhyped but large and not obsolete. They have invested money into keeping up with tech in principle, i.e. a few demo units, but they don't have money to actually equip their military with the new tech or to train correctly. So the Russian military has Soviet nukes and otherwise it's a Potemkin village. It may be that the nukes are also a Potemkin village, but it's dangerous to check.
Russia has been doing asymmetric operations, e.g. buying the US republican party was a lot cheaper than winning a war against the US but effectively was almost as good. Helping far-right, anti-democracy, anti-EU, anti-NATO politicians worldwide has been destabilizing. Organizing both the racist and the anti-racist demonstration at the same place and time has kept people and governments distracted. They do a lot of mafia style things to bribe, intimidate and kill people into doing what they want. Turns out going after politicians is more effective than going after military officers because counter-intelligence is more hesitant to act when they suspect a politician of working with/for Russia.
Is the appearance of a deep state the main reason why counterintelligence is reluctant to act when it's politicans being bribed instead of military officers?
Right. Without really solid evidence, it might look like a military junta asserting control over the people's elected representatives. Someone who's not an elected politician would have just lost their security clearance and been let go, if the authorities decided to not pursue espionage charges.
Another thing is that the US military has been trained to be deathly afraid of appearing to have an opinion on politics, and this is both good and bad.
Their buying power within Russia is probably 3x that or more, plus because they have an extractive economy a disproportionately high proportion of GDP goes directly to the state, and because they are an oppressive state a disproportionate amount of that goes to the military.
Russian defence spending is about 1/12 that of the US, but between having lower grade equipment, conscription and cheaper domestic prices they probably get 2x to 3x bang for their buck, at least on paper. As we can see in Ukraine, in practice much of the bang is over hyped, but it still gives them the brute muscle to do a lot of regional bullying.
They dont? Everyone assumed they did but given their performance in the last 2 weeks I'd say it was overblown.
The reason everyone thought they were a great military power is because the Soviets were presumably a great military power with a large army and a lot of hardware. Tanks, aircraft, artillery etc etc. And when it all fell apart the Russians inherited the lion's share.
Russia has lower costs in terms of personnel, lower wages and the like will somewhat lower the overhead of their military. But I think everyone overestimated how much that would help. See, raw materials costs the same around the world more or less. Titanium costs the same in Russia as it does in the US. Same for steel or any other resource that is on the global market. So Russia can only build a tank so much cheaper than Europe or the US can, but there is a floor to that price. On top of that they have been under sanctions for years for a lot of important things they can't make domestically like advanced semiconductors.
Then there is the fact Russia is a well known kleptocracy. They may very well have nominally lower personnel costs but that's likely balanced by much higher corruption.
And when you think of the sheer size of their military, all of those nuclear subs. All of those ICBMs, there are a lot of expensive things there that will easily take up large chunks of their budget.
I think much of the conventional side of the Russian military was left to rot and much of what we were shown pre-invasion was just that, a show. T14 functionally does not exist. Same with Su-57. They are cool show pieces but the real military are using 30+ year old hardware that has been piecemeal upgraded and not well maintained.
It may be worth taking a look at the conditions that first gave rise to the eastern European malware scene in the late 80's, particularly in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria:
https://bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/papers/factory.html
In particular, the presence of the necessary information and lack of economic opportunity gave rise to the original scene, and today that has transformed into an environment where the economic opportunity is directly tied to various for-profit black-hat activities (ransomware, identity theft and credit card fraud, etc.).
It is possible to link the relative lack of other economic opportunities to corruption, and that is a valid observation, but if black hat activities weren't profitable and relatively safe from retaliation (as long as you avoid Russian targets), the scene would still be typified by disaffected individuals rather than organized professional groups.
I'm not sure if creating a bunch of startups to soak up the extra talent would work, as the incentives to get a leg up on the competition via the Dark Arts (DDOS your competitor, spear-phishing their sales people, etc.) would still be pretty strong.