When hackers grounded Aeroflot and wiped out thousands of its servers, they didn’t just take down flights—they exposed just how fragile a big company’s tech stack can be. One minute you’re a national airline; the next, your app’s dead, your call center’s silent, and your entire network’s in shambles.
In the twentieth century, totalitarian rule was built on simple things: paper lists, fear, and backrooms with wires in the walls. People disappeared into archives, interrogations, and camps. But even then, it all worked thanks to the technologies of the time — typewriters, intercepted letters, shortwave radio. Technology didn’t save anyone from dictatorship. It merely…
Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine and its increasingly hostile stance toward Western democracies have cast a long shadow over its technology sector. What was once seen as a rising hub of digital innovation is now deeply entangled in a geopolitical crisis—raising serious questions about the safety, ethics, and long-term risks of using Russian software.
