Russia Fines Its Academy of Sciences 110M Rubles for Delaying Intel Clones
Oh, the glorious Russian import-substitution machine strikes again! Instead of actually building cutting-edge tech, the state is now aggressively cannibalizing its own scientific institutes for failing to copy decades-old Western silicon. Peak comedy.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia slapped a massive 110.4 million ruble fine on the Research Institute of System Development at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The crime? They missed the deadline to copy high-speed chips originally designed by American and Japanese tech giants.
The government handed over 544.6 million rubles back in 2017 to recreate old hardware from Intel, Marvell, and Broadcom. The scientists were supposed to deliver these magical "sovereign" clones by 2019, but they ended up dragging their feet for an extra 285 days.
Instead of pioneering the future, the institute spent years trying to clone the Renesas RapidIO router and an Intel RAID controller. Apparently, even copying homework from 2010 is an insurmountable task when your budget is constantly evaporating into thin air.
This isn't an isolated incident of bureaucrats eating their own. The state's defense program has turned into a massive cash-grab machine, with total fines against local IT companies surpassing 500 million rubles in a single month.
It is almost poetic to watch a country try to build a modern military-industrial complex by taxing its own scientists for failing to reverse-engineer obsolete Western technology. Perhaps the next step is to fine physics itself for not complying with state decrees.
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