Site Selectors Are People, Too
Sep 15, 2026 · 1 hr 31 min · 13 segments
In this episode of Site Selectors Are People, Too, host Devin Hillsdon-Smith addresses one of the most misunderstood hurdles in the economic development industry: navigating the impact of macro…
we often hear a very sterilized version of the Russia Ukraine conflict, right? We hear a lot about revolutionary drone and robotics capabilities emerging from Russia, but from your view, something that I think the rest of the world doesn't really understand is what is the actual economic state of Russia right now?
And it's one I spend a lot of time thinking about, but I mean, In the late Soviet period, and again, Russia is not a communist country.
But there are certain common features to how the folks in power seem to make decisions.
I mean, the guy that runs the show is an FSB operative that lived in East Germany.
When the Soviet Union died, supposedly there was only something like 100 or 150,000 beef cattle left in the whole nation.
Because you have a situation where roughly a million people, some of the most talented, left at the beginning of the invasion because they didn't want to fight.
And from what I read, the war here is unusual in that there are more people on the Russian side dying than are being injured because the Ukrainians are so effective with the drones.
And a lot of the labor that has been available has been sucked up into the defense industry.
we often hear a very sterilized version of the Russia Ukraine conflict, right? We hear a lot about revolutionary drone and robotics capabilities emerging from Russia, but from your view, something that I think the rest of the world doesn't really understand is what is the actual economic state of Russia right now?
And it's one I spend a lot of time thinking about, but I mean, In the late Soviet period, and again, Russia is not a communist country.
But there are certain common features to how the folks in power seem to make decisions.
I mean, the guy that runs the show is an FSB operative that lived in East Germany.
When the Soviet Union died, supposedly there was only something like 100 or 150,000 beef cattle left in the whole nation.
Because you have a situation where roughly a million people, some of the most talented, left at the beginning of the invasion because they didn't want to fight.
And from what I read, the war here is unusual in that there are more people on the Russian side dying than are being injured because the Ukrainians are so effective with the drones.
And a lot of the labor that has been available has been sucked up into the defense industry.
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