Mailbox Peak: difficult and one that I’ve been thinking off for quite sometime.
Blowout:
Putin used Russia’s oil and natural gas behemoths for two purposes: increase Russia’s dominance in world order by supplying key sources of energy and make himself and those close to him rich through corruption.
Apparently, the companies too aren’t technologically advanced - they don’t have to because they face no competition.
They were close to extracting the easy stuff from the earth and needed technology, which rich American companies were happy to provide, to go further.
For example, Shell claimed they were capable of extracting oil from cold Alaskan waters but failed miserably, because of both incompetence and carelessness, when met nature.
Russian spies in US in 2010s were highly ineffective - they were caught, bugged (without their knowledge, of course) or incompetent. However, a strange thing happened. A random guy in Romania or something, who wasn’t very smart but had a lot of free time, hacked and released embarrassing stuff for many celebrities. So, someone in Russia realized they could cause harm through internet while sitting at home.
The book will probably connect this with US presidential elections later.
This chapter, while interesting, kept me wondering till the end what point the author was trying to make!