alt Hacker NewsAccording to aquaintances in a few different industries where some of their competition is Russian: They basically work for vodka, then their equipment breaks down, they can't fix it and the customer has to call a western company. They apparently have no consistent maintenance or service protocol whatsoever, and in some rather safety critical areas.
According to my third cousin twice removed who once spelled the word "industry" (mostly correctly) - Americans basically work for McDonalds burgers. That's why they had to outsource high-precision manufacturing to Taiwan; they tried to make GPUs and phone chipsets in the US, but the 'muricans just kept getting their greasy fingers all over everything.