Russian physicist Mikhail Kovalchuk was born in Leningrad on September 21, 1946 into a family of historians. At different times (and often at the same time) he was the director of several leading research institutes, including the Institute of Crystallography and the famous Kurchatovsky Institute, a member of the council at the Skolkovo Foundation, the host of popular science programs on television and the scientific secretary of the Council for education, technology and science under the President of the Russian Federation. In addition, he was involved in many other matters, which will be discussed here, since the hero of this article is Mikhail Valentinovich Kovalchuk.
Family
The father of a prominent physicist, Valentin Mikhailovich, a scientist-historian, a researcher at the Leningrad branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, worked at the Institute of History and was an expert on the siege of Leningrad as a survivor of all its hardships. He lived ninety-seven years and died in 2013. My mother taught history at Leningrad State University.
Mikhail Kovalchuk is the elder brother of the billionaire chairman of the board of directors at Rossiya Bank, who is associated with many large business assets. Yuri Kovalchuk is well known as a close friend of the President of the Russian Federation, and the billionaire’s son Boris headed the department of priority projects in the Russian government, and currently chairs the board of OJSC Inter RAO UES.
Wife and son
The wife of the popular physicist also studies history; she is a specialist in Ireland and is the daughter of the no less famous historian Yu. Polyakov, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The son of Mikhail Kovalchuk became the chairman of the board of directors of a large media holding - the National Media Group, which owns shares in Channel One and Channel Five, STS Media, REN-TV, Izvestia and many other media outlets.
Three years later he was hired. In 1978, Mikhail Kovalchuk, whose biography is extremely rich in scientific events, became a candidate of sciences, defending a dissertation in the same field and on a topic similar to his diploma.
Ph.D
Nine years later, Mikhail Kovalchuk was already the head of the laboratory of X-ray optics, and ten years later - defense again, now the dissertation is prepared for the next level - Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
During the defense, there were strong opponents, in the opinion of whom the results presented by the dissertation candidate were not of sufficient quality: they were either erroneous or plagiarized. Nevertheless, they managed to fight back, and Mikhail Kovalchuk successfully defended himself.
Director and professor
In 1998, Mikhail Kovalchuk became a professor and head of the Institute of Crystallography, where he came not so long ago as a simple trainee. In 2000, the Department of General Physics and Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences awarded him the title of corresponding member (in condensed matter physics). At the same time, he took over the leadership of the Research Center "Space Materials Science" at the institute.
Since 2005, Mikhail Kovalchuk accepted another highly responsible directorial position. accepted him to the post of head of the Center for Synchronous Radiation. And in 2007, he was entrusted with acting as vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, Mikhail Kovalchuk was not able to fully assume this position because he was not a full member of the RAS. And most academicians refused to accept him as a full member, considering him more of a manager than a scientist.
RAS reform
Instead, in 2012, he was entrusted with the duties of dean at the Faculty of Physics of St. Petersburg State University, which meant that he had to work in three outstanding institutes at once, which were also located in different cities. It ended with the fact that in 2013, a secret vote twice denied him the position that had belonged to him for the last fifteen years - Mikhail Kovalchuk was not re-elected director of the Institute of Crystallography.
After this, a bill appeared, the authorship of which many scientists attribute to the offended Kovalchuk. The Russian Academy of Sciences underwent a severe reformation. Mikhail Kovalchuk himself did not deny involvement, telling the press that the Academy of Sciences would inevitably perish, just as the Roman Empire perished.
2015
This year, Mikhail Kovalchuk had many public appearances, the most interesting of which were in the Federation Council, where he talked about how the United States is creating a new subspecies of man - the “service man,” what dangers are fraught with the use of artificial cells, and how the United States influences scientific and technological goals set by the rest of the world. Science in Europe and Russia especially suffers from their interference. Scientific cooperation between countries, according to Mikhail Kovalchuk, should be gradually curtailed and joint projects should not be started.
In December, following this speech, a meeting between Putin and Mikhail Kovalchuk took place. There he learned that academician E. Velikhov, president of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center, was becoming honorary president. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin appointed Mikhail Kovalchuk to this vacant position. Kovalchuk immediately proposed creating a new generation thermonuclear reactor. The beginning of 2016 brought new meetings between the President of the Russian Federation and the President of the Kurchatov Institute, where the search for organizations capable of controlling the flow of thought was discussed.
More positions
There are only seventeen important, truly loud-sounding positions belonging to Mikhail Kovalchuk. This is mostly membership in presidiums and commissions - in the Council under the President of the Russian Federation (science and education; modernization and technological development of the Russian economy; high technology and innovation, and so on), in boards - the Ministry of Industry of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation; on the council of chief and general designers, leading specialists and scientists - the area of high-tech sectors in the economy; in the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.
Scientific leadership also occupies a large place on this list: (special mention will be made about this legendary institution), dealing with nano-, bio-, cognitive and information technologies; Department of Physics of Nanosystems, Moscow State University, Department of Nuclear Physical Research Methods, St. Petersburg State University; Department of Radiation Interaction Physics, MIPT; taught as a professor at the Faculty of Materials Science of Moscow State University. He is Deputy Chairman of the RAS Commission, which deals with nanotechnologies.
Besides
Mikhail Kovalchuk works as editor-in-chief of "Crystallography", an academic journal, and deputy editor-in-chief of a scientific journal with the long title "Surface. X-ray Research". The popular science television program by Mikhail Kovalchuk on Channel Five is called “Stories from the Future.”
He is the Chairman of the National Committee of Crystallographers of the Russian Federation; RSNE; NKRK. He is also a member of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Section of Physics.
Scientific activity
Most scientists of the Academy of Sciences consider Kovalchuk to be an accomplished great scientist in the field of X-ray structural analysis, but he neither created new sciences nor made a contribution to other sciences. And pompous statements about Galilean-magnitude discoveries in the field of many sciences such as management, economics, pedagogy, political science, biology, and history (oh, how interesting is the decoding of the Russian human genome!) are simply banal nonsense, which scientists consider the weaknesses of an outstanding personality, and not at all Nazism and not Lysenkoism.
Despite all these shortcomings, RAS scientists consider Mikhail Kovalchuk to be the most sensible and decent person among all the leaders of Russian science. They also say that the reform on their territory was carried out by completely different people who were not guided by his proposals, but took full advantage of Kovalchuk’s conflict with the Russian Academy of Sciences.
ITEP
Scientists at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics are sounding the alarm bell: they are protesting against the transfer of their native institution under the auspices of the Kurchatov Institute and under the leadership of Mikhail Kovalchuk. In 2012, the “Save ITEP” website was even created, where letters to all Russian politicians, the prime minister and the president were posted. More than a thousand scientists signed them, including a third of the institute’s researchers. Even Nobel laureates from America signed the petition, considering ITEP one of the leading institutions in the world.
Their letter says that this act is equivalent to closing NASA in the USA, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. This is the scale of this institute - ITEP, founded for nuclear research in 1945, operating as part of Rosatom. In addition to him, two more leading research institutes in the field of biology and physics joined the Kurchatov Institute. Scientists see the purpose of such a merger as claims to create an alternative to the Russian Academy of Sciences due to the fact that Mikhail Kovalchuk failed to become an academician. And it is impossible to head the Academy of Sciences without this title.
Another point of view
The press service did not really comment on the situation in connection with the scandal around the Kurchatov Institute, citing the fact that by consolidating the country’s power, they want not only to achieve sustainable modernization, but also to achieve a technological breakthrough in one or several directions at once. So far, the information collected does not provide Mikhail Kovalchuk with the title of a successful manager. He paints rosy prospects, moreover, enormous ones, especially in terms of nanotechnology and hybrid anthropomorphic systems (robots).
Research is being carried out, but we don’t expect incredible results in this life, maybe in the next. Objective information by which the effectiveness of scientific work is judged is the number of publications. The budget of the Kurchatov Institute in 2012 alone exceeded seven billion rubles; now, of course, it is more. Nevertheless, it is significantly inferior in the number of publications to many universities and a number of research institutes. Moreover, this figure dropped very significantly during Kovalchuk’s leadership of the Kurchatov Institute.
Born on September 21, 1946 in Leningrad. Mother is a teacher at Leningrad State University; father is a historian, specialist on the Leningrad blockade.
Brother of Yuri Kovalchuk, chairman of the board of directors of Rossiya Bank, friend of President Putin.
In 1970 he graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Specialist in the field of X-ray physics and X-ray crystallography.
Since 1973 he worked at the Institute of Crystallography named after. A.V. Shubnikov Academy of Sciences (ICRAN) USSR; then - Institute of Crystallography named after. A.V. Shubnikov RAS). Since 1998 - Director of the Institute of Crystallography.
In 2001, he was appointed scientific secretary of the Council for Science and High Technologies under President Putin.
In the beginning. In 2004, he participated in a round table in Moscow dedicated to the ways of interaction between science and Kabbalah. (NG, February 25, 2004).
Since February 2005 - Director of the Kurchatov Institute scientific center.
On June 14, 2007, he was appointed deputy chairman of the Council on Nanotechnology under the Government (chairman - Sergei Ivanov, another deputy chairman - Andrey Fursenko.
Best of the day
In June 2007, he was elected acting vice-president of the RAS.
In September 2007, he was included in the supervisory board of the state corporation Rusnanotech.
On November 26, 2007, by a vote of the first two-thirds of the Public Chamber (PC), he was elected a member of the OP; the candidacy was proposed by the public organization “Nuclear Society of Russia”. (A public chamber of 126 people is formed in three stages: in the first, the President of the Russian Federation approves 42 members of the chamber of his choice, then they select another 42 people from those recommended by all-Russian public associations, and another 42 members of the chamber are approved from among those recommended by regional public associations. First a third of public activists were appointed by the president on September 28, 2007).
Since January 2008 - Chairman of the Education and Science Commission of the EP.
On May 8, 2008, ICRAN received a letter by mail, the sender of which was the Institute of Crystallography of Novosibirsk, and the addressee was the director of ICRAN M. Kovalchuk. The envelope was opened by M. Kovalchuk’s deputy (and commercial partner of his son Kirill in the company NKF Bunch Marketing LLC) Svetlana Zheludeva; Inside were an article on nanotechnology and a bag of white powder, which Zheludeva handed over to the Ministry of Emergency Situations for examination. On May 13, S. Zheludeva was hospitalized in a coma and with an initial diagnosis of hepatitis B.
Member of the Board of the Ministry of Education and Science.
Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Department of General Physics and Astronomy (Condensed Matter Physics) since May 26, 2000. Professor, Head of the Department of Physics of Nanosystems, Moscow State University.
Editor-in-chief of the journal "Crystallography", member of the editorial board and former deputy editor-in-chief of the journal "Surface. X-ray, synchrotron and neutron research" (editor-in-chief - Yuri Osipyan, deputy editor-in-chief - Sv. Zheludeva).
Awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree, and the Order of Honor (February 2007).
He is married to the daughter of academician Yuri Polyakov, a specialist in the history of Ireland. Son Kirill is the owner of the Grand Express train (Moscow-St. Petersburg).
– Doctor of Historical Sciences (1998), Associate Professor (2002), Professor of the Department of Theory and History of State and Law at the Far Eastern State Transport University (FEGUPS). Member of the Russian Historical and Legal Society. Born on March 8, 1953 in the village. Solontsy, Ulchsky district, Khabarovsk Territory. Graduated from:- Khabarovsk State Pedagogical Institute, Faculty of History and English (1975);
- postgraduate studies at the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1984)
- Far Eastern State Transport University with a degree in Law (2006).
Defended: Ph.D. thesis in specialty 07.00.02. – History of the USSR on the topic “Development of socialist competition in transport of the Soviet Far East during the period of building and strengthening socialism in the USSR (1933-June 1941)” at the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1986); - doctoral dissertation in specialty 07.00.02. – Domestic history - on the topic “Historical experience in the formation of the transport industry of the Russian Far East (70s of the 19th century - June 1941)” at Irkutsk State University (1998).
Main areas of scientific activity: history of law, history of transport and communications, historical portraits, history of villages in the region.
Since 1982, he has published more than 70 scientific and scientific-methodological works, including monographs on the history of the Fatherland and the history of law.
Main publications:
Monographs
- My native village. Khabarovsk: Amur Geographical Society, 1994. - 168 p.
- Historical experience in the formation of the transport industry in the Russian Far East (70s of the twentieth century - June 1941). Khabarovsk: Publishing house DVGUPS, 2003. – 193 p.
- Land ownership in Russia: legal and historical aspects (XVIII - first half of the XIX centuries). Khabarovsk: Publishing house DVGUPS, 2004. – 176 p. (co-author Teslya A.A.)
- Dirt roads of the Russian Far East (mid-XVII - early XX centuries) (Monograph). Khabarovsk: Publishing house DVGUPS, 2005. – 165 p.
- State legal regulation of the activities of railway transport in Russia (1836-1917) (Monograph). Khabarovsk: Publishing house DVGUPS, 2007. – 98 p.
- Highways of the Russian Far East (1917 – 1960). (Monograph). Khabarovsk, Publishing House "RIOTIP", 2008. – p.374. (co-authors V.G. Smetanko, N.F. Tsekhmester).
- Legal regulation of business activities of railways in the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. Khabarovsk: Publishing house DVGUPS, 2011. - 187 p.
Tutorials
- History of civil law in Russia: Textbook. Khabarovsk: Publishing house DVGUPS, 2001 – 123 p.
Contact details: Far Eastern State Transport University, st. Serysheva, 47, Khabarovsk, 680021. Department of Theory and History of State and Law. Tel. 407696. E-mail: [email protected]
Pravdinform
In September, an interesting discussion of purely conspiracy issues took place in the Federation Council, which was made public only recently on February 08, 2016. The release of this kind of information into the public political field in the Federation Council is something amazing. This event will probably be followed by something even more amazing and large-scale. What?
Federation Council meeting room.
September 30, 2015. 10 hours.
Chairman of the Federation Council V.I. Matvienko presidesTranscript
Valentina Matvienko.... "Expert time".
Today, as part of this column, we invited the director of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" Mikhail Valentinovich Kovalchuk to speak.
Mikhail Valentinovich is a graduate of the Physics Faculty of Leningrad State University, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, professor, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, leading scientist in the field of X-ray physics, crystallography, nanodiagnostics, one of the ideologists and organizers of the development of nanotechnology in Russia. Mikhail Valentinovich teaches at a number of leading universities and institutes in our country, is the editor-in-chief of the journal “Crystallography” of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and is a long-time author and host of the popular science television program “Stories from the Future” with Mikhail Kovalchuk. Mikhail Valentinovich is a member of the Presidential Council of the Russian Federation for Science and Education, he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III and IV degrees, and is a laureate of awards from the Government of the Russian Federation in the field of science, technology and education. After the appointment of Mikhail Valentinovich as director of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute", this very important, significant, well-known institution in our country received a completely new breath, new development. During the leadership of this institute, Mikhail Valentinovich managed to do a lot.
I want to thank you, dear Mikhail Valentinovich, for responding to our invitation, and I give you the floor. Please come to the podium.
The floor goes to Mikhail Valentinovich Kovalchuk. Please.
Director of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute".
Good afternoon, dear colleagues!
Valentina Ivanovna, first of all, I want to thank you and my colleagues for the opportunity to speak in such an important, iconic and significant audience.
I thought for a long time about what to devote my report to, and decided to talk in a certain sense about the future. This thought of mine is supported by the speech of the President of our country at the United Nations the day before yesterday, where he explicitly spoke about certain nature-like technologies, so I want to devote the report to this. (Please, first slide.)
You know, we live in a situation where in recent years we have only heard about crises: the mortgage crisis, the economic crisis, the banking crisis. And few people think that in fact this is only the outer shell of what is happening somewhere in the depths. In fact, civilization is experiencing a deep, perhaps the most difficult crisis in the entire history of its existence. The point is due to the fact that we live in a high-tech world; our entire life and civilization are based on high technology. And the crisis of that civilizational base, that is, in fact, science, determines what we see and discuss. I'll try to explain this.
When I was a teenager (this was many years ago), I came across a book by a certain French writer Vercors, called “The Silence of the Sea.” Maybe you've seen a French film about it. The book is generally about love, but this novel was so interesting that I looked to see if this writer had anything else. This Vercors has a book called "Quota, or the Advocates of Abundance." This book, almost 60 years ago, said that after World War II, humanity launched a new economic system called “expanded reproduction”: consume, throw away, buy new. In fact, the machine for the destruction of natural resources was turned on. And if this machine serves only the countries of the “golden billion,” the world’s resources will last for an infinitely long period. (This was said 60 years ago.) And as soon as one country like India reaches a level of energy consumption equal to the level of energy consumption of the United States 60 years ago, the world will enter an economic, energy collapse.
This is what we see today, and we must clearly understand that this is precisely the problem. And in fact, if we live in the paradigm in which we find ourselves today, then after a certain period of time civilization should, having retained, I don’t know, the wheel, fire, cattle breeding, return to primitive existence.
I will explain this in more detail. Look, the global challenges of the 21st century. Today, what is called sustainable development is associated with virtually sufficient and practically unlimited consumption of energy and resources. The global involvement in technological development of more and more countries and regions in the global world leads to increasingly intensive consumption, and in fact to the destruction of natural resources. Before our eyes, the “golden billion” was supplemented by China and India; half the world’s population switched from bicycles to cars. In fact, a resource collapse has occurred. The question is whether it will happen tomorrow or with some, so to speak, temporary shift - this is the second question. But the struggle for dwindling resources has become the dominant feature of world politics. You and I see this very well.
I would like to emphasize two very important things.
First. Leadership today is ensured by technological superiority; in fact, military colonization has been replaced by technological enslavement. And, what is extremely important, developed countries fall under this colonization in the first place.
What is the cause of this crisis, why did this happen? Look, our nature has existed for billions of years in an absolutely harmonious, self-consistent form: the sun is shining, its energy is converted through photosynthesis into chemical energy, and the entire system - bio-, geo - has been living harmoniously for billions of years, absolutely self-sufficient, without resource deficit. You and I have built the technosphere, which is the basis of our civilization over the last 150–200 years. And what happened? There is one figure: the total amount of oxygen that was consumed by the entire civilization until our time is 200 billion tons. We have destroyed the same amount of oxygen in 50 years.
The question is this. Imagine, before we invented the steam engine, we were, our technological life, civilization was part of the general technosphere, muscular power plus the power of wind and water. We did not upset the balance of nature. Then we came up with the steam engine, then electricity and built a technosphere that is completely antagonistic to nature. This means that, in fact, the cause of the crisis is the contradiction, antagonism between nature and the man-made technosphere. And this has actually happened over the last decade. This is the cause of the crisis.
Therefore, now I can tell you: humanity is in a very difficult situation, facing a choice. In fact, we are faced with a problem about what will happen to humanity next, and it is very deep. Therefore, choosing priorities today for civilization as a whole and for each specific sovereign country is the most important matter. All priorities can be roughly divided into two parts. There are tactical priorities that allow us to live today. If we do not produce medicine or food or modernize the army, we will lose everything today and will not be able to survive. But if we don't think about strategic challenges, then tomorrow we will disappear. I will explain this with a very simple example.
We recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of our Great Victory in World War II. Imagine, the Soviet Union was the winner on May 9, 1945. We had the most powerful, most technologically equipped, most combat-ready army in the world, we were the rulers of the world. But in August of the same year, after the explosion of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if we had not been involved in the atomic project, our victory would have been devalued, we would have simply disappeared as a state. Therefore, while solving the problems of creating weapons and winning the war, our state made profound decisions to implement a strategic priority in the most difficult conditions of war, which today has given us the opportunity to survive as a sovereign state. And you and I must understand that it is only thanks to this that today we live in a sovereign state, thanks to the fact that atomic weapons, submarines and missiles - the means of their delivery - were created. (Please look at this picture, the atomic project.) Moreover, what was important - in the most difficult conditions of the war, no one discussed anything. Atomic weapons were created. Nobody talked about innovation, about economic benefits. Atomic weapons and bombs were made in order to survive. But when you respond to a strategically important challenge, you blow up civilization for many decades, changing its appearance and face and creating a fundamentally new technological structure.
Look, nuclear energy first emerged from this bomb. In 1954, Kurchatov turned the bomb and created the world's first nuclear power plant (this is the date of birth of nuclear energy in the world), the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant. Then the logic of the development of nuclear energy led us to thermonuclear fusion. And today the whole world, having accumulated 10 billion in the south of France, is implementing our idea, which was first implemented in 1954 at the Kurchatov Institute, a tokamak is being created. Even the word is Russian. This is a future source of energy based on thermonuclear fusion, not fission, as is the case today.
This bomb was then turned into a nuclear power device, and in 1958 our first submarine was created, and a year later - the world's first nuclear icebreaker. And today we are unrivaled at high latitudes on the shelf, in the Arctic. At the same time, factories that build nuclear submarines have no alternative to creating platforms for oil and gas production on the shelf. And the first such platform, Prirazlomnaya, was created.
And now I want to draw your attention... I’m not even talking about space, that further movement into space is connected with nuclear energy to a significant extent. I will draw your attention to a simple thing. Look, we all use computers. And no one thought that, in general, computers and computational mathematics arose only because it was necessary to calculate the thermophysical characteristics of neutron reactors and the trajectory of going into space. Therefore, computational mathematics and computers arose. And today's supercomputers, which form the basis of our developments, arose in response to the ban on nuclear weapons testing. We came to an agreement with the Americans. We stopped doing it in Semipalatinsk, they stopped doing it in Nevada. But this test moved to a supercomputer, which was created only because of this.
I, finishing this story, want to tell you that if you solve a strategic problem, it explodes civilization, it turned the Soviet Union into a superpower and today has preserved our sovereignty, but at the same time it gave birth to a new high-tech economy. Today, for example, we are practically the only country that has a complete atomic cycle. One country is us. And we have actually created dozens of industries... If you evaluate these markets, they are the dominant, high-tech markets in the world, and we play key roles in them.
Therefore, the choice of strategic priority is a key issue for the development prospects of any state, especially one like ours.
And today we are faced with this crisis. There are two ways out of it. The first way out is to move as is, through a series of bloody wars for redistribution and access to resources, which is already underway. We will actually come to a primitive state. Or the second option is to create a fundamentally new technological base of nature-like technologies, that is, to actually include technologies in the chain of closed resource circulation, self-sufficient, that exists in nature.
Show me the next slide.
Look at this picture. In fact (I have already said this), the Sun is a thermonuclear source. Its energy in a minimal part (tenths, hundredths of a percent) is processed through photosynthesis into other types of energy, and then all this ensures the life of the entire complex, the Earth.
I want to draw your attention: the highest achievement, natural, is our human brain. At the same time, our brain consumes an average of 10 watts, during peak minutes – 30 watts. It's like a light bulb in the toilet of a communal apartment. And the supercomputers that we, for example, make and use... today at the Kurchatov Institute one of the most powerful supercomputers consumes tens of megawatts. But just last year the power of all the computers in the world equaled the power of one person’s brain. This is direct proof of the incorrectness of our technological movements.
I want to say that it is very easy for me to speak today, because the President of our country, speaking... Here is the quote. When he had already finished discussing the current political situation (Syria, Ukraine), he returned to emissions and said that we need to look at the problem more broadly: set quotas for harmful emissions, use other tactical measures.
“We may, for some time, relieve the severity of the problem, but, of course, we will not radically solve it. And we need qualitatively different approaches. We should be talking about the introduction of fundamentally new nature-like technologies that do not cause damage to the environment, but "exist with it in complete harmony and will allow us to restore the balance between the biosphere and the technosphere, disturbed by man. This is truly a challenge on a planetary scale." End of quote.
Please, next slide.
Now I want to say that this very succinct quote from the President’s speech at the United Nations has a very deep, long-developing basis for the development of science itself. Look, if we look at the natural course of development of science, what happened: a shift in emphasis to the “living”. If a certain number of years ago 90 percent of publications were devoted to semiconductors, then today almost the lion's share of scientific publications is devoted to the science of “living” - bioorganics. This is the first. That is, a transfer of interest to the “living”, to biology.
Second. Connections have appeared in science. They appeared a long time ago, and now there are a huge number of them - biophysics, geophysics, biochemistry, even neuroeconomics and neurophysiology. What does this mean? The scientific community was pregnant with this interdisciplinarity. She lacked these narrow disciplines, and she began to create such transitions, interfaces, connecting sciences. And, what is also very important, the emergence of interdisciplinary research in technology. Here's a look at how technology works today. Very simple. You take, a simple example, a log, cut off the branches. You have a log, you can build a frame. We processed further - timber, even further - lining, and so on. Next, what do we do with the metal? We mine ore, smelt the ingot, put it on the machine, cut off the excess, and make the part. Up to 90 percent of material resources and energy goes towards creating waste and polluting the environment. This is how technology works today.
And new additive technologies have already appeared, they are widely known, I think you have heard about it, when you now create parts naturally, by actually growing them. You can grow, you can do biological things first. For example, dentures are made, bone replacement. You grow parts of the human body. This starts from 3D printing, and, in essence, this is additive technology. And today you can create parts for any purpose using this additive method, not by cutting off the excess, but by building it up. And these are nature-like technologies.
Hence the conclusion. Today, from the strategic goal, which is nature-likeness, we have no other way out - a transition to a strategic priority. The new strategic priority of scientific and technological development is the integration, fusion of sciences and technological development of the results of interdisciplinary research. And the basis for this is the rapid development of fundamentally new interdisciplinary convergent fundamental research and interdisciplinary education.
But I would like to devote the remaining time to telling or talking about threats. You see, we live in a complex, rapidly changing world. And what to do is completely obvious, understandable, and we are ready for it, I will say more about this later. But we need to pay attention to the threats and global challenges that nature-like technologies conceal.
Look: on the one hand, we are moving to the technological reproduction of living nature. And this is clear. This will enable us to create technologies that will be part of the natural cycle without disturbing it. And in this sense, we will restore, as the President said, the natural metabolism in nature. But the possibility of targeted intervention in human life, even in the process of evolution, arises.
These threats associated with intervention can be clearly divided into two blocks. The first is biogenetic based on nanobiotechnology. That is, you can create artificial living systems with specified properties, including those that do not exist in nature.
I'll give you a simple example. Here we are creating, for example, an artificial cell. This artificial cell, on the one hand, is medically important. She can be a diagnostician, she can be a targeted drug deliverer. But, on the other hand, it can also be harmful, right? And then, in fact, one cell, which has a genetic code and develops itself, is a weapon of mass destruction. At the same time, thanks to the achievements of modern genetics, you can create this cell, ethnogenetically oriented to a specific ethnic group. This can be safe for one ethnic group and harmful and fatal for another. This is the first obvious type of danger when a fundamentally new weapon of mass destruction appears.
And the second thing. We are developing cognitive research, this is research into the study of the brain and consciousness. This means that the opportunity actually opens up to influence the psychophysiological sphere of a person, and it is very easy and simple. I can talk about this at length and in detail, but I will tell you only one thing. In fact, on the one hand, this is very important for medicine, for everything else, because you can make bioprostheses, you can create an eye control system for paralyzed people, and so on. But, on the other hand, there is feedback from brain-machine interfaces or brain interfaces, when you can create a false picture of reality inside a person, like a soldier, an operator, and so on. That is, this is a very subtle and complex thing - the control of individual and mass consciousness. And you and I see what is happening at the level of mass consciousness, say, with the help of the Internet.
Now I would like to summarize what I have said and emphasize the following. When I talked about nuclear energy, there is a dual nature of technology: there is a military application, there is a civilian one. And you know for sure: this nuclear power plant produces heat and electricity, but weapons-grade plutonium is produced here. Moreover, from a distance, by measuring the neutrino flux, I can monitor the state of the reactor and accurately say whether weapons-grade plutonium is being produced or not.
Further. What do you have from a nuclear explosion? Temperature, shock wave, plus radiation. We control all this today. Therefore, there is complete control over the non-proliferation of technologies of mass destruction. And here, in nature-likeness, the dual nature of technology is inherent. The boundaries between civilian and military use are blurred, and as a result, existing control methods are completely ineffective. I'm telling you: every development is of a medical nature. Why is there a surge in medicine today? Because medicine today is the correct civilian application, but automatically there is a second one, and they are almost indistinguishable.
The second danger is accessibility and relative cheapness compared to nuclear technologies, the possibility of creating weapons of destruction even in makeshift conditions and the absence of the need for delivery vehicles. Just imagine, the atomic bomb was created 60–70 years ago. Since then (although everything is written in the textbook) no one has made atomic weapons. Everyone who has it was given it either by the Americans or the Soviet Union. Nobody did. Why? Ask yourself a question. But because for this you need to have colossal science, deep traditions, colossal industry, and economic power. No state can do this. And therefore (although everything is written in the textbook) they took two pieces of uranium-235, created a critical mass - here you have a bomb. And everything is known. But no one did. But with these technologies, this can be done in the kitchen: you need to get a cell and control it, that is, it is very simple. And from here you have two things: you must think about a fundamentally new system of international security, because there is another important thing - you cannot predict the consequences of the release of artificially created living systems into the environment, how they will disrupt the evolutionary process.
Further. I won't go into details. Here are examples of the work the American agency DARPA is doing, for example, in this area - on consciousness control, on the creation of ethnogenetic systems. If you read only the names, it is enough to understand the scale of this activity.
And I want to very briefly, without going into details, remind you that we began to prepare responses to these challenges in accordance with the presidential initiative on the nanoindustry development strategy back in 2007. I leave aside the stages, so to speak, the innovation part. Regarding the commercial development of nanotechnologies, I would like to say that over the years a fundamentally new research base has been created, a network structure across the country, and we have approached the implementation of the task of the third stage, announced in 2007, which should lead to the creation in the Russian Federation of a fundamentally new technological basis for the economy based on base of nanobiotechnology and nature-like products.
Next slide.
I just want to show you... I invite you all, Valentina Ivanovna, perhaps to hold some meeting at the Kurchatov Institute to see what, in accordance with the instructions of the President, has been created at the Kurchatov Institute over the past five to seven years. We have created a Center for Convergent Sciences and Technologies, which has no analogues in the world, based on mega-installations, the only source of synchrotron radiation in the post-Soviet space, a neutron research reactor and a powerful complex, a supercomputer, biogenetic technologies, neurocognitive research, and so on. This is all there, it works. The average age of the hundreds of people working there is 35 years. A personnel training system has been created. The world's first faculty of NBIC technologies was created at the Physics and Technology Institute on the basis of the Kurchatov Institute. That is, the personnel “pump” is turned on. And it all works.
Further. I would now like to use the remaining time to talk about what is happening in the world with science and technology. Here is science and technology in the system of factors for the development of civilization. Look at what is happening today, even if you look at it from a layman’s perspective.
First. We hear cries all the time, and this is happening, about the creation of an absolutely transparent scientific and educational sphere, this is the first thing, and unlimited mobility of human resources.
Now what does this mean? Here you have foundations (our foundations, for example) that give money for scientific research, but after that everything is in the public domain. This means that all information about the results, performers, personnel reserve, created and prepared at the expense of the national budgets of various states, is in the public domain and can be easily monitored, and therefore, so to speak, managed. This makes it possible, first of all, and only today, for the United States, at the expense of resources from the outside world, to use the results of R&D or R&D, attract performers and recruit the most capable young personnel. In fact, today Americans are creating a global distributed scientific and educational environment, which is financed by national budgets and serves the interests of the United States. This is the real thing.
Next, the next step. Now, if you look at us, what is happening to us in the light of what I just said, the following is happening: the country is purposefully deprived of strategic goals and concentrated on tactical tasks. Until today... we have no strategic national interest in scientific and technological development. We solve tactical problems, like during a war: we can make tanks, guns, win the war, but lose the future. Today we are concentrated - until recently, the latest decisions of the President - on solving tactical problems.
The second is the clustering of the scientific sphere. It happened at a time of survival, when everything was bad for us, there was no money. The great sphere, the great scientific sphere of the Soviet Union has broken up into clusters, because you cannot get out of the encirclement either as a division, or as a battalion, or even as a platoon - one by one. That's why it clustered. And today this clustering with the help of the grant system is fixed and frozen in order to... in this case it is easily managed.
I'll give you an example. For 15 years I was the director of one of the largest academic institutes - our Institute of Crystallography on Leninsky Prospekt. 250 scientific workers and 50 grants, very small, from the scientific fund - 500 thousand rubles each. The entire potential of the institute is divided into 50 groups. 50 groups of five people live perfectly well on these 500 thousand, having no responsibility, nothing else, work, travel abroad, have graduate students, apply for the next grant and live luxuriously. And the results of this activity, which are obtained with our money, are very easy to take advantage of only through monitoring, even electronic monitoring, of reports on these works. All. And this actually creates a system that is completely controlled, and you serve for your budget, for example, in Germany... I can explain to you in detail. American Colony. They have no strategic goals, but they serve America's global interests for their budget.
I want to tell you another very important thing. An assessment system, for example, scientometric, of scientific activity in the country also actually leads, for example, to the destruction of national scientific periodicals and so on. These are very subtle things. In fact, we are witnessing an attempt to form a system in which scientific and technical global goals are understandable only to the United States and are formulated by them, and Russia should become a supplier of intellectual resources, a performer of tactical tasks necessary for the United States to achieve a strategic result.
This, fortunately, did not happen, but nevertheless we are still in the zone of this danger. This all happens at the expense of the budget of the Russian Federation.
I’ll explain to you, I’ll give a very important example of how Americans participate in international projects. Look: there are a huge number of international projects in Europe. The Americans are not involved in any project financially or organizationally - neither in CERN, nor in the X-ray laser, anywhere, but their representatives sit on all the management committees, and not only them, but also Poles and Slovaks with American passports. Firstly, they carry out full monitoring, secondly, they try to push through those decisions that are important to them, and so on. I can give you specific examples. This means that they actually influence decision-making informally and then take full advantage of these results. I'll give you an example. A European neutron source was created. We decided to do it many years ago, 10 years. They created teams of people. They created a road map of what will be done. They look further. The Americans say: “Good material, but it still needs to be improved.” A new group, lists of people, addresses, appearances, a new, second book, a “White Book” are created. They look and say: “It’s already decent, but we still need to improve it a little, bring more people from here and there.” And after that, the Americans don’t ask anyone, allocate $1.5 billion from the budget to their national laboratory, take all this material and these people from Europe and build this accelerator. In Europe, this work has not yet begun (10 years have passed), but in America it has been working for four years. That's the whole answer. In fact, everything is used for preparatory work for the money of European countries, but it is used in this way.
We, Russia, today participate in key roles, financially and intellectually, in major projects. We contribute more than 2 billion dollars to European projects - ITER, CERN, which is on everyone’s lips, the free electron laser and the heavy ion accelerator. Germany alone has a billion dollars. And I must say that today we have returned to the creation of megaprojects on the territory of the Russian Federation, we have the PIK reactor. Sergei Evgenievich Naryshkin visited our site in Gatchina, saw this reactor, we were there the day before yesterday, on Monday. This is one of the most powerful, the most powerful reactor in the world, which, having passed the energy path, will go into operation and will be the largest installation in the world. Then we are creating the Russian-Italian project “Ignitor”, a new tokamak, the third is an accelerator in Dubna, and the fourth is a synchrotron. This means that we have projects on our territory. But we must be very careful, understand that international cooperation, say, by the same Americans, is also used to weaken Europe in the first place, and they are trying to drag us into this story to strengthen their own positions.
I'll skip the conclusions, they're not important I think here. You know, the conclusions are clear. I wanted to draw you some futuristic pictures. I thought for a long time whether to say this or not. I think this is advisable. Just imagine, this may seem like such an ominous, strange future, but you must understand that, unfortunately, this is reality. Let's take a rough look at the world, how the world works. The structure of the world was very simple: a certain elite always tried to put the rest of the world at its service. First there was the slave system, then there was the feudal system, then there was capitalism in one form or another in fact. But each time it ended in a change of formation. Why? Because the people whom the elite tried to turn into servants did not want this for two reasons. They, firstly, were biologically the same people as those who wanted to turn them into servants, and secondly, their self-awareness grew as they developed, and they themselves wanted to become an elite. And this whole cycle happened.
And now the following happens. Today, a real technological opportunity has arisen in the process of human evolution and the goal is to create a fundamentally new subspecies of homo sapiens “service” man. If you watched the movie "Dead Season", you remember well, but then there were some kind of reasoning, but today it is becoming biologically possible to do this. The property of the population of “service” people is very simple - limited self-awareness, and this is regulated cognitively in an elementary way, we see that this is already happening. The second thing is breeding management. And the third thing is cheap food, these are genetically modified products. This is also all ready.
This means that, in fact, today a real technological possibility has arisen to breed a “service” subspecies of people, and no one can stop this, this is the development of science, but this is actually happening. And you and I must understand what place we can take in this civilization.
I’ll read it to you, I’ll just read it, it’s not just like that. Can I come over?
Valentina Matvienko. Yes, sure.
Mikhail Kovalchuk.(Speaks not into the microphone.) In 1948, the President of the World Health Organization... Can you hear that? No?
Valentina Matvienko. And we have it on the screens of all the senators.
Mikhail Kovalchuk.(Speaks not into the microphone.) Skim your eyes, it says everything exactly there. Back in 1948...
Valentina Matvienko. Show this slide again.
And you have…
Mikhail Kovalchuk....announced what must be done.
Valentina Matvienko. Mikhail Valentinovich, there is also a slide opposite you.
Mikhail Kovalchuk. Unfortunately, it's blurry and I can't see it.
Valentina Matvienko. It's clear. We can see it very clearly.
Mikhail Kovalchuk. I want to say, it definitely says that step by step, firstly, we need to change our self-awareness, as if to teach people that there is no need to reproduce and continue the race, and so on, to remove national characteristics. This is what was said first by the President of the World Health Organization, Rockefeller’s right-hand man, and then in the US National Security Memorandum No. 200 of 1974, which says that this must be done in such a way that countries do not understand that this has begun to happen.
Then a very important circumstance (the President spoke about this in his speech) – the absolutization of individual freedom. Pay attention, today they tell you from all sides (and some of our radio stations) that the child is more important than the parents. This happens at all levels - from family to state. Absolutization of personal freedom: the individual is above the sovereign state, children are above parents, and so on. What does this lead to? This is actually a slogan for the destruction of the sovereign state, the sovereignty of the state, which is the only instrument for protecting society and values and maintaining a balance between human rights and freedoms. And we are seeing this today. The absolutization of the slogan of individual freedom leads to the destruction of sovereign states.
And then - you have no protection, you have crowds of people who fight each other and are easily controlled from the outside. And this is a most powerful tool.
And another very important thing is actually the replacement of this organized community of people interacting and protected by the state with a totality, simply a population of controlled individuals. That's what we're talking about.
And the next thing is the actual reduction of the birth rate through the introduction into the mass consciousness of ideas that contradict natural ones. We are talking about LGBT people, families without children and everything else.
In fact, today we have this in the humanitarian sphere, but it is based on the technological basis of creating a “service” person.
That, in fact, is probably all I wanted to tell you. (Applause.)
Valentina Matvienko. Mikhail Valentinovich, I sincerely thank you for such a meaningful and interesting report. And the applause of my colleagues confirms that they listened to him with great interest. I think you have given us serious food for thought, including in our future lawmaking.
By the decision of the Federation Council you were awarded our commemorative medal “Federation Council. 20 years”. Let me, on behalf of my colleagues, present you with this medal. (The presiding officer presents the award. Applause.)
Mikhail Kovalchuk. Unexpected and pleasant. Thank you.
Speaker information
Mikhail Valentinovich Kovalchuk was born on September 21, 1946 in Leningrad.
Graduate of the Faculty of Physics of Leningrad State University (1970), Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1988), Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2000), professor.
Since 1998 - Director of the Institute of Crystallography named after A. V. Shubnikov RAS.
Since 2005 - director of the Kurchatov Institute.
M. V. Kovalchuk is a leading scientist in the field of X-ray physics, crystallography and nanodiagnostics, one of the ideologists and organizers of the development of nanotechnology in Russia. He made a significant contribution to the development of government programs that determine the development of the nanoindustry in the Russian Federation.
Since 2010 - member of the Skolkovo Foundation Board.
Other positions
M. V. Kovalchuk - Scientific Secretary of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for Science, Technology and Education; member of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for modernization and technological development of the Russian economy; member of the government commission on high technologies and innovations; member of the council of general and chief designers, leading scientists and specialists in the field of high-tech sectors of the economy; Member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.
Mikhail Valentinovich is also the dean of the faculty of nano-, bio-, information and cognitive technologies at MIPT; Head of the Department of Physics of Nanosystems, Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov; editor-in-chief of the journal “Crystallography” of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Chairman of the National Committee of Crystallographers of Russia.
M. V. Kovalchuk - Chairman of the National Conference on the Application of X-rays, Synchrotron Radiation, Neutrons and Electrons for Materials Research (RSNE); Chairman of the National Crystal Growth Conference (NCGG). He is the author and host of the popular science television program “Stories from the Future with Mikhail Kovalchuk.”
M. V. Kovalchuk is a full member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in the “Physics” section.
Family
Father - historian, specialist in the siege of Leningrad, Valentin Mikhailovich Kovalchuk.
Brother - Kovalchuk, Yuri Valentinovich, a major businessman, chairman of the board of directors of Rossiya Bank. Known as a person close to Vladimir Putin.
Awards
Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III degree (2011) - for great contribution to the development of science and many years of fruitful activity
Prize named after E. S. Fedorov of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences for 2009.
Certificate of Honor from the Government of the Russian Federation (2006) - for many years of fruitful scientific and social activity
Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree (2006) - for great contribution to the development of domestic science and many years of scientific activity
Prize of the Government of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology (2006) - for the creation of a scientific and technical complex based on specialized synchrotron radiation sources "Siberia" at the Russian Scientific Center "Kurchatov Institute"
Books
M.V.Kovalchuk. Science and life: My convergence: Vol. 1: Autobiographical sketches: Popular science and conceptual articles. - M.: Akademkniga, 2011. - 304 pp., ill., 1,000 copies, ISBN 978-5-94628-356-4
Summary of the report by M.V. Kovalchuk
– The crisis of technogenic civilization (Vercors, Coronel: “Quota, or “Supporters of Abundance”) - the launch of a machine of expanded reproduction and consumption. Energy collapse. Destruction of natural resources. The struggle for dwindling resources is a dominant feature of world politics. Leadership today is ensured by technological superiority in exchange for military enslavement. Developed countries fall under this colonization in the first place (lack of strategic planning at the state level, fragmentation of scientific activity, external management with the help of grants, analysis and appropriation of the results and scientific personnel). The cause of the crisis is the antagonism between the technosphere and nature.
– Tactical and strategic tasks. Solving tactical problems meets today's needs (the production of tanks and aircraft during the Second World War ensured victory in the war, but Hiroshima devalued the achieved superiority). Solving strategic problems ensures the sovereignty and development of the state and society in the long term (the nuclear project ensured today's sovereignty of Russia). The choice of strategic priority is key for the state.
– The way out of the crisis is the creation of a fundamentally new technological base of nature-like technologies (inclusion of technologies in the chain of closed, self-sufficient resource circulation existing in nature). Through interdisciplinarity to nature-likeness. Nature-like technologies – shifting the focus of research to living things (biotechnologies). Connecting sciences and the emergence of interdisciplinary sciences in technology. Modern technologies - up to 90% of resources and energy go to waste and pollute the environment. Additive technologies are the creation of a product naturally, by “growing” it.
– The strategic goal is similarity to nature. The strategic priority of scientific and technological development is the integration of sciences and technological development of the results of interdisciplinary research. The basis for this is the rapid development of fundamentally new interdisciplinary convergent fundamental research and interdisciplinary education.
– Nature-like technologies – threats and challenges. The transition to technological reproduction of living nature carries the threat of targeted interference in human life, even in the process of evolution. Two blocks of threats. The first is biogenetic. Creation of artificial living systems with specified properties (for example, the creation of a living cell for diagnosis or drug delivery, or a weapon of destruction of a certain species, race, or ethnic group). The second is cognitive research (the study of the brain and consciousness). An opportunity opens up to influence the psychophysiological sphere of a person. Management of individual and mass consciousness.
The danger of dual use and the inability to control malicious use.
Availability and relative cheapness of creating weapons of destruction based on these technologies and the absence of the need for special means of delivery to the enemy.
It is impossible to predict the consequences of the release of artificially created biological objects into the environment.
The danger of unilateral ownership of these technologies.
– Science and technology in the system of factors for the development of civilization.
Creation of an absolutely transparent scientific and educational sphere. Unlimited mobility of human resources. All information about the results, performers and personnel reserve created and prepared at the expense of the national budgets of various states is in the public domain and can be easily monitored, and therefore managed. This allows today, first and foremost, and only the United States, at the expense of the resources of the outside world, to use the results of research and development, attract performers and recruit the most capable young personnel. In fact, Americans today are creating a global distributed scientific and educational environment, which is financed by national budgets and serves the interests of the United States. Global goals are understandable only to them, and are formulated by them. The rest of the countries are suppliers of intellectual resources, performers of tactical tasks necessary for the United States to achieve a strategic result.
What's happening to us? 1. deliberately depriving the country of strategic goals and concentrating on tactical tasks. We lack a strategic national interest in scientific and technological development. 2. Clustering of the scientific sphere. Today it is fixed and frozen using the grant system. In this case, it is easily manageable. 3. The scientometric assessment system in the country leads, among other things, to the destruction of national scientific periodicals.
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