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moose_man
At some point his love affair with Russia and China at the expense of US national security will come back to bite him. We live in a new era of great state competition. Freelancing by billionaires is just not acceptable.

'"You don't know?" inquires Stalin with marked surprise, staring at Mironov. "Do you know how much our state weighs, with all the factories, machines, the army, with all the armaments and the navy?"

Mironov looks at Stalin with surprise. "Think it over and tell me," says Stalin. Mironov smiles, believing that Stalin is getting ready to crack a joke. But Stalin is not joking. He looks at Mironov in earnest. "I am asking you, how much does all that weigh?" he insists.

Mironov is confused. He waits, still hoping Stalin will turn everything into a joke, but Stalin keeps staring at him waiting for an answer. Mironov shrugs his shoulders and, like a schoolboy undergoing an examination, says in an irresolute voice, "Nobody can know that, Yosif Vissarionovich. It is in the realm of astronomical figures."

"Well, and can one man withstand the pressure of an astronomical weight?" asks Stalin sternly. "No," answers Mironov'

smoldesu
Viva la economy! We've got iPhones and Teslas to manufacture, America will be damned if we let international politics get in the way of exploiting cheap labor.
rsynnott
Decades later, Google would adopt this as an interview question (not sure if they still do it, but for a while they liked asking questions like this, I gather, though to see how people would approach it rather than to threaten them, presumably).
drnos
Specifically not allowed