Import substitution has reached a new level: Russian business has sharply increased purchases of foreign software domestic businesses have clearly demonstrated how technological sovereignty works in practice. During the second quarter, spending on foreign IT services jumped by a third and reached an impressive 909 million dollars.
It turns out that paying foreign contractors for system maintenance, cloud data storage and software licenses is still the basis. The main driver of this "digital patriotism" was the boom in artificial intelligence. Foreign neural networks and algorithms are more enticing, but the country sorely lacks the capacity and servers to accelerate them. You have to buy from your neighbor while no one is looking.