A while back I'd been reading about Russia and Putin's rise to power, and it was talking about how the KGB (or their successor org, I forget the exact details) blamed the west for the collapse of the USSR and essentially started to hide resources to fund efforts to continue fighting the West. (Which is part of we why it's so hard to tell if anything done in Russia is done by criminals, the government, a business - or generally a blend of all three).
Anyways, at the time I found myself wondering - if they hadn't misdirected so much of money, would the dissolution of the USSR have been so painful?
It reminds me of a story I had heard, which supposedly illustrates a common Russian mindset, though I don't know enough to say whether that's true or not. Basically a man was jealous of his neighbor, because his neighbor had more goats than he did. So given the chance to make a wish - rather than wish he had as many (or more) goats, he wished for his neighbor's goats to die.
Anyways, I can't imagine all those troll farms and disinformation campaigns are cheap. Well, who knows? It's not like I can find a breakdown of their budget.
But I do have to wonder - how different would it be if they'd spent that money in Russia?
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