RUSSIA SENT BACK TO THE STONE AGE AFTER TAIWAN CUTS OFF ITS CHIPS

The end point of Russian military autarky?

I'm not "geek" enough to tell you why this is bad for Russia, but I'm geek enough to know that it is bad for Russia, very bad. Basically, Taiwan has decided to pull the plug on the export of strategic tech to Russia. 

As reported by Digitimes:

Taiwan restricts exports of strategic high-tech commodities to Russia and Belarus

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has announced a list of strategic high-tech commodities that are banned from exportation to Russia and Belarus.

Belarus is on the list as it may help Russia import such goods, MOEA said, adding the list is pursuant to Category 3 to Category 9 of Wassenaar Arrangement.

Microprocessors or microcircuits with any of the following conditions are under the ban: (1) Performance speeds reach 5 gigaFlops or higher and an arithmetic logic unit has access width of 32 bits or more; (2) clock frequency rates exceed 25MHz; (3) more than one data or instruction bus or one serial communication port that provide direct external interconnection between parallel microcircuits at a transfer rate of 2.5MB/s.

ICs with more than 144 pins or basic gate propagation delay time of less than 0.4 nanosecond are also prohibited.

Okay, let's cut it there before we get swamped with geek talk! But the general picture is simple enough: Russia's military will have a lot of problems staying "modern" in the not so distant future, as almost all their gear relies on tech that they themselves can't provide.

This must be one of the reasons Putin is forcing his army to make a big push in the Donbass, so that he can get hold of strong position before the tech gap between Russia and the Ukraine, which is getting increasingly sophisticated weapons from the West, becomes seriously debilitating.