The US Department of Commerce recently banned Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky from offering certain antivirus and cybersecurity products in the United States due to national security concerns. US companies have until September 29 to remove covered Kaspersky products from their systems and update them.
But this is not the first blow to Russia’s global technological connectivity. In recent years, and specifically since 2022, Russia has become digitally isolated – and increasingly dependent on China – with significant consequences for human rights in Russia, cybersecurity and the foreign community. The United States and its partners deserve to take advantage of the political opportunities created through Russia’s growing isolation and dependence on Chinese technology.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia experienced a real boom in virtual generation. Americans with scientific and technical talent went in search of economic opportunities, began outsourcing systems to Fortune 1000 corporations, and discovered Russian corporations such as Yandex (a search firm). (engine introduced in 1997, a year before Google). Some have even resorted to the global development of cybercrime. In the early 2000s, the Russian virtual generation sphere was also quite connected to other countries. Non-Russian generation of Intel, AMD, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft and other corporations have been discovered all over Russia. Partnerships between corporations and universities were also quite common.
Moscow’s stance on the Internet began to change in the late 2000s and early 2010s, catalyzed by the belief that Western technology was a means of foreign espionage, projection of influence, and encouragement of revolution. The Kremlin’s “internet awakening,” as I call it, was motivated by the role of Georgian bloggers in the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, the use of social media in the Arab Spring of 2010-2013, and the online protests against Putin’s rigged election in 2011. and the return to the presidency in 2012, the Snowden leaks in 2013 and the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014, driven by social networks. In Russia, security hardliners, already concerned about the network, have also gained strength in the government. Where the West saw the prospects of the Internet for democracy and openness, the Kremlin began to see a two-sided coin: a weapon to be exploited and a risk to the security of the regime that demanded repression, security and autarky.
Vladimir Putin said in December 2014 that “we want to decrease our critical dependence on foreign technology,” and the state has followed this up with a decade of policies aimed at finding domestic technological alternatives. The effects were mixed. Russia has made progress in building a replacement formula for Microsoft Windows and has created a national software registry; while Rusnano, a state-owned nanotechnology company, and the Skolkovo Innovation Center, considered the “Russian Silicon Valley,” have collapsed over time due to a mix of mismanagement, lack of investment, lack of internal capacity, and corruption.
But since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, virtual isolation is increasingly a reality, if not a desired goal, for Moscow. Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine has taken the “brain drain” to new heights; at least 100,000 IT employees will leave Russia by December 2022, and the Digital Ministry has warned that recruiting tech personnel into the military (which is now exempt) would severely damage the country. Countless corporations shut down their operations in Russia in reaction to the invasion, restricting access to products and facilities in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and other areas. Western sanctions also hit Russia hard, especially in the hardware area: Russia’s source of technological gadgets was already a “disaster,” and Russian security organizations are increasingly resorting to buying chips from third countries and dismantling refrigerators and other gadgets for their potato chips.
If Russia’s virtual isolation is a developing reality, it also has a concrete goal for the Kremlin. The Digital Ministry announced in 2022 its goal to transform the national software login into a “full-fledged marketplace. “Hospitals, nuclear power plants, and everything in between are increasingly adopting Astra Linux, the local update to the Windows operating system. The state is setting up centers to check the compatibility of Russian software with domestic hardware and operating systems. Moscow also announced plans to create a “Multiscanner” platform to upgrade the use of VirusTotal, an online page aimed at scanning suspicious files and sites, due to Moscow’s fears that the U. S. government will be able to scan it. The U. S. can access the knowledge uploaded to VirusTotal through its owner, Google.
Russia has made some progress toward technological independence, but it has also replicated some of its virtual dependence in its relations with China. The economic value, on the one hand, of US chip exports from China and Hong Kong to Russia multiplied by 10 between 2021 and 2022 (from $51 million to just under $600 million); The estimate indicates that China and Hong Kong accounted for about 90% of global chip exports to Russia between March and December 2022. In 2023, China still provided about 90% of Russian microelectronics. Chinese smartphone brands Xiamoi and Realme took the two most sensible spots. on the Russian market in 2023 (overtaking Samsung and Apple). Still, some Chinese technology companies, such as Huawei and DJI, are reluctant to invest more in Russia due to the risk of Western sanctions.
Russia’s pivot to domestic production and Chinese suppliers is transforming the human rights landscape in Russia, while creating cybersecurity dangers for Russia and opportunities for the West. From a human rights perspective, Western tech corporations have already bowed to the Kremlin, just as Apple got rid of twenty-five virtual personal networks (VPNs) from its Russian app store; However, this pales in comparison to the censorship and surveillance of Russian networks and Chinese generation platforms. Russian platforms like VK give Russian security facilities maximum direct access to Russians’ online activities, and it is unlikely that many Chinese applications and facilities are materially other for the Kremlin. The U. S. Department of State The U. S. and others will have to take them higher. in view of the restrictions imposed on Russian citizens in their efforts to open up the web and combat censorship.
But those dependencies also create political opportunities for the West. The Kremlin’s purpose in “import substitution” and domestic innovation policy has long been for Russia not to be too digitally dependent on a foreign country, not to rip off the Western generation and simply upgrade it with Chinese generation. In fact, Russian security analysts and generation policymakers are still quietly concerned about this dependency and have even proposed policies to mitigate the dangers of Beijing’s espionage.
The United States and its partners deserve to use open-source intelligence to identify Russian requests for Chinese express generation products and facilities; This data can come from many sources, including Russian internet conferences, government contracts, and partnerships in the realm of smartphones, cellular apps, and operating systems. These data may also reveal the use of Chinese generation in certain spaces that create unique problems of failure. For example, Russia’s dependence on Chinese semiconductors is already high, and the Russian smartphone market is increasingly shifting toward Chinese phones and away from iPhones and Samsung phones. Some of those products and facilities would have possibly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities or poor coding as well. practices (as is the case with Huawei’s telecommunications equipment), creating more dangers for Russia.
Analysts in the United States and its partner countries also deserve to use open-source information to perceive the Russian deployment of technologies such as the Astra Linux operating system. Astra Linux is widely used in the Russian military and intelligence systems, in all likelihood introducing vulnerabilities that can be exploited on a giant scale. It’s also a custom-designed and (supposedly) hardened edition of an open-source operating system. By turning to Chinese and domestic goods, Russia is further wasting access to cybersecurity capability in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. Astra Linux developers would arguably have fewer features so that more Americans can verify and protect their code. These spaces can also allow the United States and its allies to gain credit in cyberspace.
Although the Kremlin can boast of its increasing technological isolation and its structure of operating systems and software registries, its need for Chinese generation means anything but technological independence.
Justin Sherman is the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative.