Hello World : Inside Russia's Creepy, Innovative Internet - Bloomberg

In the world of internet technologies, Russia is giving Silicon Valley a run for its money. The documentary Inside Russia's Creepy, Innovative Internet, produced by Bloomberg as part of their Hello World series, takes a tour through some of the country's most cutting-edge efforts, and the figures who make it all possible.

The journey begins with Dmitry Grishin, the co-founder of a Russian internet corporation called the Mail.Ru Group. Grishin's real passions lie in robotic gadgetry, and his work runs the gamut from drone-driven shipping technologies to the BB8 character in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. These accomplishments have garnered the adoration of other giants from his field who reside in the United States who are all clamoring for his particular brand of invention. But given the rise of tech entrepreneurship currently taking place in his homeland, he feels compelled to remain where he is for the time being.

The spirit of innovation has led to the creation of many tech start-up companies in the region. Several of these are profiled in the film, including endeavors related to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. While the talents behind these efforts are progressive in their approach to the possibilities of technology, they often find themselves at odds with a government that monitors their every move. The Kremlin has set forth a series of laws that restrict the freedom of the creators, and they've put equally prohibitive walls around their country's virtual activities.

Historically, Russia has fallen far behind the rest of the world in their adoption of the internet. The film shows us how this all changed in 2012 when the web became a galvanizing forum for protestors to express their opposition to the re-election of President Vladmir Putin. In response, the government began exterminating these opposition sites, and worked tirelessly to recreate the internet experience only in the image they chose to project. The film shines a spotlight on the hacking community that attempts to thwart these oppressive tactics, and the large cybersecurity firms who walk a tightrope between serving international clients and occasionally bending to the will of their government.

Inside Russia's Creepy, Innovative Internet provides an intriguing look inside a landscape where this generation's tech revolutionaries struggle to thrive within the confines of an oligarchy.

Directed by: Ashlee Vance

Episode 9: For the past five years, Russia’s been building walls around its web and packing it with tech oligarchs, startup cities, face-finding algorithms, hacker hunters, and, of course, a few bears.

The best mouse I’ve ever met lives in Akademgorodok, a Siberian city about an hour’s drive from Novosibirsk. The mouse is not alive. It’s a 2-foot statue that stands watch over a genetic engineering laboratory. Frozen in time, the mouse wears glasses and a lab coat, using a pair of knitting needles to stitch together strands of DNA.

The Akadempark logo in winter.

PHOTOGRAPHER: GRANT SLATER

This tribute to the sacrifices mice have made on behalf of humanity feels right in Akademgorodok. Sixty years ago, the Soviets set up the city as a remote science and technology center—just in case the scientists in Moscow were wiped out by a hydrogen bomb. The researchers were enticed to the middle of nowhere with nice apartments, good food, and the chance to think up radical ideas away from the prying eyes of the Kremlin. Their labs—ranging from biotech to nuclear fusion centers—still hum, and the city’s still packed with engineers.

On this episode of Hello World, I travel to Akademgorodok to learn about its history and its future. The fall of the Soviet Union meant many of the labs had their funding cut. But, of late, the Russian government has been pumping money back into the city, hoping it will emerge as a startup paradise in the taiga. Dozens of young companies have already clustered together to work on projects that include new takes on drones, slick air-filtration systems, and, yes, nuclear fusion. With its mix of nerds, peculiar restaurants, and lakeside banyas, it’s a startup city unlike any other on the planet.

Dmitriy Vinnik, a philosophy professor in Akademgorodok, prepares a steam bath.

PHOTOGRAPHER: GRANT SLATER

Akademgorodok, though, is just one part of my journey in this episode. From Siberia, I travel to Moscow, where another strange world is being created—the world of the Russian internet.

Russia is one of only a handful of countries to have developed its own internet, including its own search engines, e-mail systems, and social networks. To get to the roots of this sovereign internet, I spend a day hanging out with Dmitry Grishin, co-founder and chairman of Russian internet giant Mail.Ru Group. Grishin is a technology legend in Russia. We cruise Moscow in his Tesla, check out his gadget collection at the Mail.Ru offices, and dine at the highest restaurant in Europe, because that’s what Russian techno oligarchs do.

As for the budding tech oligarchs, well, there are plenty of those running around Moscow, too. Over the past few years, Russia’s wealth of smart, aggressive entrepreneurs has yielded a new generation of world-class technology companies. There’s Prisma, which uses artificial intelligence to turn your photos and videos into works of art, and Group-IB, one of the world’s top cybersecurity firms, which has an unmatched track record when it comes to hunting down hackers.

But the most stunning—and creepiest—software developed in Russia is something called FindFace. It’s an app that lets you take a picture of a stranger and then almost instantly, using a facial-recognition algorithm, find the person on a social network. If you’re hoping the software doesn’t work that well, you’ll be disappointed: When I tested the app, it found the right faces all the freaking time. Privacy is so 2015.

The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics at night.

PHOTOGRAPHER: GRANT SLATER

The Russian startup scene has all the charms and oddities you might expect. The young engineers are clever, eager, and ready to make their mark on the world. They’re also operating in a climate where the government meddles in their affairs and, sometimes, takes control of their companies. Nobody cares to speak much about this in the open, but the grimaces and non-answers tell the story quite well.

There’s a part of Russia that desperately wants to build a booming technology industry that can provide the economy with a buffer from the swings in oil and mineral prices. And then there’s that part of Russia that can’t let go enough to give the engineers the freedom to actually make this happen.

Grab yourself a vodka, and a mouse, and join me in witnessing the bizarre spectacle that is Russian technology.

Follow Ashlee Vance's Hello World travels

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Editors: Jim Aley, Thomas Houston 

Web Design: Stephanie Davidson, Sharon Chen, Sheryl Sulistiawan 

Producer: Bernadette Walker 

Video Team 

Director: Grant Slater 

Cinematographers: Austin Brown, Grant Slater, Roman Yudin 

Editors: Victoria Blackburne-Daniell, Alan Jeffries, Grant Slater, Robie Flores, Andrey Alistratov 

Executive Producers: Ashlee Vance, Diana Suryakusuma, Jed Rosenberg