The writer is research assistant at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
Vladimir Putin does not use the internet, according to a Russian intelligence officer who defected. Nor does he have a smartphone. A decade ago he made the people in his inner circle use typewriters. In this context, it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia has fallen so far behind on artificial intelligence.
Global sanctions have also prevented the country from developing a domestic AI sector. Radio Free Europe recently reported that Sberbank — Russia’s majority state-owned financial services giant — has only been able to procure 9,000 graphics processing units since Russia began a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 (Microsoft bought almost 500,000 last year). Russia has new trade partners, but not ones with access to large quantities of advanced semiconductors. Compounding the problem, it has lost about 10 per cent of its tech workforce to emigration since 2022.