Word: kremlins
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...Kremlin wants to engineer its own Silicon Valley. In a plan that was revealed in February, the Russian high-tech haven will come complete with new-wave architecture and all the comforts of a resort, a place for Russian geniuses to get together and invent the biggest thing since, well, the Internet. That's the hope, anyway. President Dmitri Medvedev, who has cultivated the image of a tech-savvy liberal, is staking much of his economic vision on the plan's success. And Russia has a resource that other nations envy: a fervid hacker culture with a reputation for excellence...
...project evokes of free thinkers brainstorming in a park, it still has a distinctly Soviet feel. It relies on central planning rather than a movement of geeks in garages, and it will be managed by the state. What it reveals, experts say, is the irreconcilable conflict between the Kremlin's new-age ambitions and age-old desire to control...
...government has clear goals. It wants the denizens of its Silicon Valley to hatch lucrative inventions that will help break the economy's dependence on the sale of oil and gas. "The appearance of great ideas, like life itself, is still considered a miracle," said the Kremlin's chief ideologist, Vladislav Surkov, who laid out the project in a rare interview with Vedomosti, a Russian business daily, on Feb. 15. "There are, of course, no miracle workers among bureaucrats and businessmen, but together we need to create an environment where miracles are possible." (See how hackers crippled Twitter...
...unusual role for him. Both under Putin's presidency between 2000 and 2008 and now under Medvedev's, Surkov has been widely seen as Russia's éminence grise. He is the author of the "sovereign democracy" theory that underpins Russia's neo-authoritarianism and the engineer of the Kremlin youth group Nashi, which uses strategic thuggery to discourage opposition. Now he has embraced his role as Russia's innovation guru...
...remotely. But visitors to the capital seemed dumbstruck at the chaos the storm had wreaked on normal civil functions. "It's embarrassing that the world's largest superpower closes from a few feet of snow," a 23-year-old tourist on the National Mall told the Associated Press. "The Kremlin must be laughing...