The Russian-American Science Association (RASA) expresses its strong support for Olga Orlova, Editor-in-Chief of T-invariant, who has been designated by the authorities of the Russian Federation as a “foreign agent.”

On May 19, at 6:00 a.m., masked security forces raided the homes of staff of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IP RAS). About ten people were taken in for questioning by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. T-invariant discussed the details of this new “philosophers’ case” with Yulia Sineokaya, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and former deputy director of IP RAS, who is now labeled a “foreign agent” in Russia and serves as president of the Independent Institute of Philosophy (IPHI) in Paris.

In May 2026, a court handed down sentences to physicists Valery Zvegintsev and Vladislav Galkin. This marked the end of the hypersonic scientists case — the largest criminal prosecution of researchers in modern Russia. Over the course of 11 years, 11 physicists fell victim to the security services. Three of them died while under investigation, and five essentially received death sentences. T-invariant reviews the outcome of the hypersonic scientists case and examines what convicted researchers must do to demonstrate their utility to a state that hands them prison terms incompatible with life.

A bill pending in the U.S. House of Representatives aims to counter Russian innovation and protect certain Russian scientists. T‑invariant examines whether it will ever pass and, if so, who might actually benefit from it.

The Director of the MSU Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Katerina Tikhonova, now oversees a significant portion of AI education, research, and development in Russia. The Kremlin has long been working to consolidate this industry into a single system, and “control over it” can only be entrusted to a select few. However, these technologies are sovereign only on paper and in officials’ speeches. In reality, Russia remains heavily dependent on global AI. T-invariant examines how Katerina Tikhonova, Oleg Deripaska, and VTB Bank are involved in the process, why a “unified AI ecosystem” was built on Sparrow Hills.

Russia is currently discussing a draft law on the regulation of artificial intelligence (the AI Law), which may come into force on September 1, 2027. Major market players and legal experts are taking part in the discussion, but it is already clear that the central issue is not technological development. It is control over what users ask and what machines answer. T-invariant explains how the state intends to effectively legalize censorship in the AI sphere, how this mechanism would work, and who may end up taking the blame.

In 2016, the Association of Medical Workers of Chapayevsk (Samara Region) was labeled a “foreign agent.” The reason was research grants from U.S. organizations for medical studies that the NGO was conducting jointly with scientists from Harvard University. The organization was later dissolved. It was the first, but far from the last, case in which long-term medical research programs carried out jointly with major Western scientific centers were shut down to serve political interests. T-invariant examines what research was conducted in Chapayevsk and whether the scientists managed to complete their work.

A new way to recruit students into the Unmanned Systems Troops is by encouraging volunteers through the example of their peers. T-invariant reviewed university and college websites and social media pages, along with regional media reports, and compiled the most telling cases. University rectors are required to report on their results at regular meetings with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. But the quota for each institution – at least 2% of the total student body – is hard to meet.

T-invariant publishes the latest press release in the Chronicle of the Persecution of Scientists series: No. 31, dated March 31, 2026. Two more leading American universities – the University of California, Berkeley, and Tufts University – have been declared undesirable organizations. This has already caused alarm not only among scholars, but also among IT engineers. The situation is becoming increasingly complicated: developers are finding themselves in a zone of legal uncertainty.

Seven weeks in X’s (formerly Twitter) algorithmic feed — and American users’ political views permanently shifted to the right; turning the algorithm off reversed almost none of them. These are the results of an independent study conducted in 2023. One of its authors, Paris School of Economics professor Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, explained in an interview with T-invariant why the algorithm proved to be such a powerful tool for shaping opinions.

The year 2026 marks the tenth anniversary of Havana Syndrome — a mysterious psychophysiological disorder caused divide among scientists. While Trump speaks of a secret “Discombobulator,” and intelligence agencies quietly purchase devices allegedly capable of mimicking Havana Syndrome, new theories about its origin are emerging. T-invariant examined why the microwave hypothesis has hit a dead end, how the laser version could help resolve it, and what the consequences will be if this does not happen.

In March 2026, the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) launched an aggressive recruitment campaign targeting teenagers starting from 8th grade to assemble Shahed combat drones. Influencer marketing agencies help attract schoolchildren to build the main tool of daily terror against Ukraine. These managers never visited Alabuga and operate from the upper floors of Moscow City or from exotic islands in Southeast Asia. T-invariant has uncovered how the work of people who “every day live their best life” is organized, how their narratives and technical assignments are turned into videos on YouTube, TikTok, and Telegram, and how young influencers and internet entrepreneurs fight negative comments by scrubbing “stop words” about their client’s activities.