Tech District · VIDEO ESSAY

The Rise and Fall of Soviet Computing, the Cold War Tech Race the USSR Lost to Silicon Valley

The Soviet Union was a superpower that conquered space, built nuclear weapons, and challenged America for decades. But when it came to computers, the USSR fell behind Silicon Valley. This is the rise and fall of Soviet computing — from early Soviet supercomputers and Cold War breakthroughs to copied Western designs, bureaucratic failures, and the technological gap that ultimately left the Soviet computer industry struggling to compete. Discover how the USSR tried to challenge American computing giants like IBM, why Soviet engineers struggled to keep up, and how Silicon Valley won one of the Cold War's most important technology races.