[Goose]

Telegram's rather open nature has allowed a lot of insight into Russian military communications and Russian milblogger thought spheres.  I wonder if this is yet another one of those external immunizations that will push the Russian military into a more capable posture.

It might, although IMO the actual official use of Telegram by the Russian military is in fact none. Predicting exactly how Russia will respond to immunizing events is difficult. During the cold war the US and NATO were often surprised at what the Soviet Union was able develop and deploy in response to foreign developments. This surprise went both ways, both that the Soviet Union often did much better than we expected but sometimes did much worse. IMO NATO and the US still suffer from the false equivalence of Russia with the Soviet Union. I know I do :-). Russia today consistently under-performs in their responses. That doesn't mean their responses are ineffective, but rather that they are not as robustly effective as one would have expected from the Soviets. The US has seen a massive and radical response from the Soviet Union to communications insecurity at least twice before in history.  We also saw continuous incremental changes from the Soviets that were sometimes quite subtle but very effective. So far, from Russia, we haven't seen any of that. Their troops were using the Ukrainian cellular network for communication during the invasion!

Frankly, I don't think anything that traverses the internet is of great consequence to Russian military communication. The Russians obviously have major issues in that area and sometimes resort to "workarounds" that they shouldn't need. There is where the security issues arise. Will the Russians fix that? I don't think so in the near term because their number 1 priority right now in terms of advanced technology is weapons, not communications.

[Goose]

Telegram's rather open nature has allowed a lot of insight into Russian military communications and Russian milblogger thought spheres.  I wonder if this is yet another one of those external immunizations that will push the Russian military into a more capable posture.

It might, although IMO the actual official use of Telegram by the Russian military is in fact none. Predicting exactly how Russia will respond to immunizing events is difficult. During the cold war the US and NATO were often surprised at what the Soviet Union was able develop and deploy in response to foreign developments. This surprise went both ways, both that the Soviet Union often did much better than we expected but sometimes did much worse. IMO NATO and the US still suffer from the false equivalence of Russia with the Soviet Union. I know I do :-). Russia today consistently under-performs in their responses. That doesn't mean their responses are ineffective, but rather that they are not as robustly effective as one would have expected from the Soviets. The US has seen a massive and radical response from the Soviet Union to communications insecurity at least twice before in history.  We also saw continuous incremental changes from the Soviets that were sometimes quite subtle but very effective. So far, from Russia, we haven't seen any of that. Their troops were using the Ukrainian cellular network for communication during the invasion!

Frankly, I don't think anything that traverses the internet is of great consequence to Russian military communication. The Russians obviously have major issues in that area and sometimes resort to "workarounds" that they shouldn't need. There is where the security issues arise. Will the Russians fix that? I don't think so in the near term because their number 1 priority right now in terms of advanced technology is weapons, not communications.