In part, yes, but the main reason was severely mismanaged economy, specifically — super unproductive agro. They had to buy food (grain), selling oil. And then oil prices went down.
There's some theories that the US poisoned some of the crop fields in the 60s and 70s especially in the Ukraine resulting in inadequate yields, exacerbating the budgetary issues already present from space race / arms race spending.
I'm sure they have such conspirancid paranoia in north korea right now. They are expressions of unvented frustration in unreformable systems. It can not be the ruler or the ideology, and it can not be that the combination is unable to deal with a world that regularly throws you a stick for the legs if you think you have a good run.
Pests evolve and the soil becomes less fertile .Industrial Agriculture is not the same every year. it just looks loke that for a layman.
That's the type of ridiculous conspiracy theory that Communists frequently invented to excuse their own failures. The US had no capability for spreading enough poison in the USSR to significantly reduce crop yields. Like seriously, was the CIA supposed to be flying stealth crop duster airplanes over Ukraine and dropping Agent Orange everywhere? Makes no sense at all.
There is an excellent video about Lightbulb Cartel by Technology Connections, highly recommended if you want an engineers perspective, with no 'great conspiracy' hype.
Every time politicians vote on more privacy invading and controlling stuff — they should be wearing/using similar technology themselves.
In this example with ELDs I’d propose a small wearable device that would monitor time when congressman or congresswoman came to work, time they spent eating and using the bathroom and sleeping. And speed they are driving, certainly. Our goal is safety, right?
Oh, and to not make it too privacy invading, only their constituents should have real time access to this data, they are their employers after all, right?
And make this mandatory legislative testing phase (MLTP) at least one year.
We would be amazed at privacy protecting laws rivaled by none.
I am no expert, but my understanding is that to get nice chips, you need both ASML and TSMC. They have very different areas of expertise and posses very different know hows.
Sounds crazy hard, a lot of moving parts, both human and technical. But if pulled off right I’d pay for that kind of thing, preferably hosted and cared for me in a datacenter
