[cloudsec9]

If supply chain was the issue, surely they could have worked to create a more local source for things; but it seems like a flavour of corruption to use slower and inferior machines instead of trying to leverage the best of both.

My feeling from the article was that he worked outside the box, and THAT was simply unacceptable to the authorities, no matter how good the underlying technology was.

[ordu]

> My feeling from the article was that he worked outside the box, and THAT was simply unacceptable to the authorities, no matter how good the underlying technology was.

USSR had a planning economy, so they decided ahead what good and in which quantity must be produced in a coming five years. And then comes some genius and makes a computer better than planned. What should they do?

Something alike was with Setun[1], there was no place for Setun in 5-years plan.

Moreover I suspect that what will be included into the next plan was a big politics. No low engineer could change that. Centralization is evil.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun

[aleph_minus_one]

> USSR had a planning economy, so they decided ahead what good and in which quantity must be produced in a coming five years. And then comes some genius and makes a computer better than planned. What should they do?

They should do what most management textbooks tell you: adjust the planning to include this innovation in the plan.

[naveen99]

Centralization is also fragile, a single point of failure, which fails without fail. even quantum mechanics doesn’t make a decision in advance.

[mordae]

> Centralization is evil.

This.

It doesn't matter what the official regime is, as long as the decisions are made by a disconnected committee with no way for the periphery to steer, it's always shit.