Drain Putin’s Brains

A s the West faces the threat of a revanchist Russia, there is a weapon we can deploy to great effect to weaken our enemy. We can hire away his technical team.

Specifically, the United States could, with a stroke of a pen, totally destroy the capacity of Russia to compete militarily or economically with us by offering a green card to any Russian with a technical degree who wishes to emigrate to the United States.

Such a move would destroy Russia’s technical capacity and greatly strengthen our own position against both the short-term threat from Russia and the longer-term challenge posed by China.

There are a number of objections that could be raised against making such a move. I’ll try to answer the most prominent.

1) Wouldn’t it cost Americans jobs? No. Technical talent is the key resource for creating new industries, which means more jobs and higher living standards. I am not advocating that we give Russian scientists and engineers jobs in the United States — just the right to seek them. Those who are better than American engineers will be hired, to the benefit of our industries. Those who can’t make such a case for themselves can start their own businesses, and many will. (Immigrants in general, and Russian immigrants in particular, are extremely entrepreneurial. According to the book The Millionaire Next Door, immigrants and their first-generation children start the majority of new businesses in America, and Russian immigrants lead the pack.) Those who can neither find technical work nor start businesses can drive cabs, sell Internet subscriptions, or whatever. The key point is that they won’t be developing hypersonic weapons for Putin.

2) Might some of the Russian immigrants be spies? Sure. But anyone doing classified work goes through a security-clearance process. The Russians might still gain some secret information, but we would gain much more info about them from the immigrants. Furthermore, we would gain the weaponry the immigrants might have invented for Russia had they stayed home. One has only to look at the personnel roster of the Manhattan Project — highlighted by such Axis emigrants as Fermi, Szilard, Teller, Bethe, Einstein, Bohr, etc. — to see how this influenced the outcome of the last world war.

3) If it’s a good idea to invite in Russian technical talent, why not invite that of the whole world? There are arguments to be made for such a position, but I’m not making them here. Any good idea can be made bad by taking it too far. A steak dinner is a fine thing, but 20 steaks is 19 too many. The idea here is to steal Russia’s technical talent, not the talent of all countries, including our allies. One might consider dealing with China in like fashion. But that is a subject for another day.

4) Can’t Putin respond by blocking emigration? Yes. But to do that he would have to block most foreign travel by Russian citizens. That would place him in an adversarial position vis-à-vis his subjects and would greatly weaken his popularity The 1989 fall of the East Germany shows how well a regime is likely to fares when it serves as its people’s jailor.

5) Isn’t it unfair to reward the subjects of our enemies, rather than our friends? Yes. It is unfair. But you don’t win wars by doing what is fair. You win by doing what wins.

To be clear, hiring away Putin’s scientists would not by itself stop Russia’s pending invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions, by themselves, won’t work either. The only way to save Ukraine now is to provide its army with ample weaponry and back it up with fighter air cover. Nothing less will do in the current crisis, and there is good reason for doubt that the Biden administration is up to the challenge.

But even if Biden somehow succeeds in deterring Putin this time, the threat from Russia will persist. If he fails, it will grow exponentially greater.

So let’s make the smart move and take away the men and women Putin needs to win.