this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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And why would these people want to work with the ruzi government? The pay is terrible, the risk is high and limit your future career opportunities?
Russia simply doesn't make anything consumer facing except weapons and rockets.
I mean like in the case of fancy bear they do work for the government. It gives you immunity to target everyone outside of russia. Look at the amount of ransomware that is operated from within russia.
Immunity for one.
How do you know the pay is terrible?
Qualified people seem to work for drug cartels and slavers. I'm certain a nation-state can provide both pay and conscience better than that.
Maybe it could be great but good devs have the privilege to avoid this risk and go work abroad. I live in thailand and I speak russian so I'm familiar with russian devs escaping russia and tbh it's very easy these days with how easy it is to open a company in Singapore or Delaware.
Worth noting that rolling your own country wide spying distro wouldn't be as easy as one might think given that Linux kernel dev must follow US sanctions and there is some serious work there when it comes to hiding spyware effectively for at least plausible deniability, russia is not quite North Korea just yet.
Kaspersky had, of what I've head, their hardened OS implementing Linux ABI (of 2.6 times). Was apparently even floating somewhere around the interwebs. Don't know of commercial uses, but honestly there could be such amounts of money directed at solving that goal that all the Russians in Thailand combined won't be very significant in comparison, even evaluated themselves as potential organs.
Ok interesting input. To me it seemed like working for the government in russia gives you exceptional privileges above the rest of the society and the opportunity to stay with your relatives. For the spying distro part. It doesn't necessarily need to be linux based or based on a western distro since harmony os is also linux based and other kernels exist as well. I also thought more about the government itself and not the broad public. For the public they are already establishing their super app Max with such features.
It really doesn't unless you're dumb enough to buy in and play the game but Russia is basically a big mafia and you're one bad dinner away from offering some brain dead asshole that will end you. While you can just go live on the beach in Thailand and no ine will ever bother you. People underestimate the actual brain drain that is happening. Life is just too good for skilled Russians elsewhere to even bother. This is what societal collapse looks like.