Russia’s nanotechnology "Manhattan Project" gets slow start

By Christine Peterson, on August 8th, 2008

From The Economist, a look at Russia’s technology, including nanotech:

After years of high oil prices, money is again no object: in 2007 Russia put 130 billion roubles ($5.5 billion) into a state corporation for nanotechnologies that is being likened to the Manhattan Project…

But the big problem for high technology in Russia is neither money nor ideas. It is the country’s all-pervasive bureaucracy, weak legal system and culture of corruption. This may explain why the nanotechnology corporation has so far found only one project to invest in (and that is registered in the Netherlands).

On a visit to Russia in 2006 I was told to expect about half of Russia’s nanotech funding to be sidetracked due to corruption. Maybe they are going slowly on purpose, to try to reduce that. —Christine

John Hunt

August 13th, 2008 at 12:44 AM

Is Russia so interested in nanotechnology due to it’s military potential? Manhattan? Interesting choice of analogy!

Roger Godby

August 9th, 2008 at 7:37 PM

A senior acquaintance of mine in the sciences had had non-Party Russian (Soviet) acquaintances from the Cold War days. With the collapse of the Soviet Union (and much of the economy thereafter until Putin and/or the oil boom), he considered trying to get the former Soviet scientists consulting work: They were smart accomplished men reduced to growing potatoes in their institutes’ gardens. However, the idea came to naught because (1) the Russians had little or no access to precision digital equipment and therefore couldn’t produce the required results for certain types of work and (2) the Russians themselves told him there was almost no way to pay them: the postal services were unreliable, international bank wires were unreliable, and personal couriers were both costly and either unreliable or targeted for muggings. That was about 10 years ago, so I hope things have since improved.

ZEITGEIST

August 9th, 2008 at 6:12 AM

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