The West pushed electronics and computing much further...

I had an epiphany when I visited the Arms and Armor collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The craftsmanship of some of these items is incredible. I had no idea that such precision work was possible at the time these were made. I suddenly realized that it was possible, but was undoubtedly really expensive and could only be afforded on a military budget. Yep, outrageous spending on military equipment is nothing new.

I have read that Russian microelectronics is way behind the West — that is, Taiwan and South Korea — and cannot possibly compete with the West and China in consumer electronics. But, Russia realizes that military electronics is critical to its existence and they are quite competent making military semiconductors. Sure, they're more expensive than imports, but having domestic capability that can't be embargoed is worth the cost. Plus, military electronics needs to be electrically more robust than consumer crap, so using older processes with larger transistors is an advantage.

I remember a time when Americans were joking about MiG fighters using vacuum tubes instead of transistors. They stopped laughing when someone pointed out that the tubes could survive an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would fry the transistors.

Regarding computing, my understanding is that Russian programmers have superior math skills and probably write better code. Western programmers — most based in India — have the "luxury" of faster processors and lots of memory, so they can write wasteful, inefficient code. A careful programmer can easily make up for the difference in electronics.

JMO/YMMV