Strategic Culture Foundation
No, Your Intelligence Is Actually Bad. Very Bad
Patrick Armstrong
See also
See also
As recent events in Syria suggest, Russia has found an effective way of keeping aggressive Western powers at bay with state-of-the-art missile systems and electronic warfare methods – much of it reportedly developed by young scientists and on the cheap…
"Like I said in my address to the Federal Assembly, we create second-to-none and state-of-the-art arms systems. One of those systems was created by a team of very young scientists. I asked them where they came from and how they could invent such things. They said that they united into a scientific group after graduation and developed the world's most powerful arms system in seven years," Putin said during a plenary meeting of the Russian Union of Rectors.
Perhaps even more amazing than the brief amount of time that was required for Russia to turn around its military situation, with the help of young scientists, is the fact that it is now able to concentrate its budget resources on infrastructure and the economy....
Robert Bridge
By the way (and this is a trivial observation) the Russian language is not as alien as it might seem. At first glance, Cyrillic script looks like it was brought to earth by extraterrestrials. However, when you make a bit of effort, you see that written Russian is surprisingly similar to written English. In fact, while it will take you about 18-24 months to learn to speak Russian, you can learn (with just a bit of effort) to read about 40% of Russian storefront signs and advertising posters in only two WEEKS.[!] It's true.
ReplyDeleteThis is not the case with Arabic, or Chinese, or Tamil, or Native American languages, or any other non-Indo-European languages. They are truly alien to English speakers.
(Russian and English are both Indo-European languages.)
Here’s another trivial observation about Russia…
ReplyDeleteIf you look at YouTube compilation-videos of car crashes, you will see that the greatest percentage of these videos come from Russia. Does this mean that Russians can’t drive, and that Russians are continually slamming into each other?
No. The incidence of traffic accidents in Russia is about the same as in the USA. In Russia, traffic lights are set up, and road stripes are set out, almost exactly like in the USA. (This is not the case in the UK or Europe.)
So why all the YouTube videos of traffic accidents in Russia? The reason is that in Russia, if you have an accident, and the other party is a big shot, you are pretty much screwed, even if the big shot is at fault. Therefore almost all motorists in Russia have dash cams mounted in their vehicles. Millions and millions of dash cams (which are quite cheap to buy).
When you have an accident in Russia, and the crash isn’t your fault, your dash cam video is your proof.
Hence the large number of Russian crash compilation videos on YouTube.
'Bad intelligence' here refers more to behavior than quality of intel. Russia's EW capability has been known or at the very least suspected for some time now. There have been a variety of low-key and under-reported demonstrations ("aggressive fly-boys" and such) that have resulted in cancelled exercises and rapid naval withdrawals.
ReplyDelete