Machinepower Index / Dossiers / Russia
Russia
Siege Autarky — Sovereignty by necessity. Cut off from allied hardware and markets, the state is forced into full-stack indigenisation on whatever silicon it can obtain.
Score comes from the twelve measurements beneath the three layers. A nation needs all of them at once — world-class models are no use on a grid that cannot power them — so one weak measurement pulls the Score down instead of being averaged away. Potential is the plain average of the three layers. The gap between the two is what being lopsided costs: nothing if a nation is evenly built, more the further its strengths and weaknesses sit apart. The exact formula is on the methodology page.
The three layers
Energy, grids, data centres and silicon — the physical capacity to run models at scale.
Models, alignment capability, standards influence and the talent that produces them.
The capacity to wire AI into the state and the economy while holding public consent.
Where the score comes from
Each layer is the plain average of its four measurements. The Score uses those twelve measurements directly rather than the three averages, because averaging hides things: a 10 next to a 3 comes out as a forgettable 6.5, and you lose both facts. Every measurement is scored 0–10 and marked to show where the number came from.
| Layer | Sub-dimension | Basis | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watts | Planning & Permitting | Assessed | 7.6 |
| Firm Power Capacity | Dataset | 7.2 | |
| Sovereign Compute | Dataset | 4.5 | |
| Hardware & Silicon Access | Dataset | 1.5 | |
| Weights | Frontier Model Output | Assessed | 4.3 |
| Alignment Capability | Assessed | 6.0 | |
| Regulatory Standing | Dataset | 7.4 | |
| Talent Density | Assessed | 5.5 | |
| Will | State Procurement | Dataset | 6.0 |
| Public Sector Adoption | Dataset | 7.0 | |
| Workforce Transition | Assessed | 6.8 | |
| Public Trust | Assessed | 6.6 |
Dataset means the number comes straight from a published source. Assessed means we judged it ourselves, because no dataset measures that thing cleanly — 6 of the 12 here, and 116 of 312 across the Index. The CSV export flags them too.
Sources
Every source below was published within the last 12 months. These are the main ones behind Russia's profile. The full list, and the rule on how recent a source has to be, are on the methodology page.
SaluteDevices, Sber's technology arm, documents the GigaChat family in a June 2025 technical paper — a domestic Cyrillic-centric model stack serving the regional market.
View source →Sanctions continue to block legal high-density GPU imports, forcing reliance on gray-market supply and pre-embargo hardware, capping training-cluster scale.
View source →Russia's national AI strategy runs to 2030 with implementation concentrated in state-backed champions (Sber, Yandex), prioritising domestic substitution over international integration.
View source →Bottlenecks
These hold Russia below its Potential. Its two lowest scores cost it the most: hardware & silicon access at 1.5 (part of Watts) and frontier model output at 4.3 (part of Weights).
Assessment
Forced into isolation, Russia relies heavily on domestic model weights coached by local search/banking giants (Yandex and Sber) and locally generated energy. However, severe sanctions lock it out of global advanced foundry/GPU supply corridors, while massive talent emigration severely caps its intelligence potential. Its sovereignty is highly insulated but structurally resource-constrained.
The art of the possible
Russia's realistic upside is resilience rather than parity: domestic models serving the Russian-language world, and compute built on cheap energy within sanction constraints. Any thaw in chip access would change its trajectory faster than any domestic lever.
Strategic play — Siege Autarky
Sovereignty by necessity. Cut off from allied hardware and markets, the state is forced into full-stack indigenisation on whatever silicon it can obtain.
The play is editorial, not scored: it names the game Russia's measured position supports. Eight plays run across the Index — Total Sovereignty, Strategic Autonomy, Chokepoint Leverage, Diffusion Advantage, Compute Rentier, Specialist Power, Sovereign Capital and Siege Autarky.
Open Russia in the live Index → — every source behind every number, the comparison tool and the CSV export.