Russia is to invest more than $1 billion into nanotechnology research and development over the next three years.
Business Week reports First Deputy Prime Minister (and until recently, Defense Minister) Sergei Ivanov as saying that 90% of the benefits will be economic, while the remaining 10% will have military application:
“(Nanotechnology) is a very promising scientific and technical field, capable of fundamentally changing the model of the Russian economy … from a fuel economy to an economy of the future”.
RIA Novosti, on the other hand, has to put the story’s focus on President Putin’s comments about the military potential of the research:
“It is an area of activity in which the state is ready to invest on a grand scale. The only question is that this work should be well organized and effective, yielding practical results,” Vladimir Putin told a meeting at the Kurchatov Nuclear Research Institute in Moscow.
He said nanotechnology will lay the groundwork for new weapon systems, both offensive and defensive, adding that nanotechnology is already being used in high-tech sectors of industry, medicine, transport, space research, and telecommunications.
Russia clearly needs to catch up with the US in areas like this, both in the military and economic arenas, so it’s clearly sensible for them to invest some of the oil revenues in this area.
I’d imagine, though, that the overall amount Russia is investing is still relatively small compared to that of its competitors.
{ 3 comments }
GER O'BRIEN 04.21.07 at 12:30 pm
Its a step in the right direction but its not a whole lot of money. Ireland’s state R&D budget is around 15 billion euros for the next three years and we’re only a speck on the map compared to Russia. They need to spend a lot more, and now, even borrow if necessary, if they want to jump from resource to knowledge economy even in the medium term. That dirtiest of words in Russia - inflation -is preventing Putin from flashing the cash. Its hard to blame them on past events I suppose.
Rurrik 04.22.07 at 12:43 pm
They need to stop meddling in science and let scientist do their job without politics. Putin wants to appoint his man to Academy of Scientist which the academy rejected but he’s going to get his way anyway if he has to destroy the whole Academy. This is the thing, these people don’t care about Russia they only want to make the appearance of trying to do something. a 1 billion dollar investment in nanotechnology is laughable, it wont even bring Russia into the top ten.
Aleks 04.23.07 at 12:18 am
We shouldn’t forget that US$1b in Russia is not the same as US$1b in the US or Europe, in much the same way Russia’s defense budget may be in numbers closer to the UK, but in global rankings of (’scuse the pun) ‘bang for buck’, goes much further.
Add this to all the ‘free’ technology they’ve ‘purloined’ (headlines screaming ‘Russian spy levels in UK back to highest of Cold War’) and…
…they’d still be ahead of the Chinese for a while, but only because of their legacy research base…
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