Publication in Russian on the Zen blog
https://dzen.ru/a/aiRpZfM-oDHeT-7m

SPIEF 2026 and the trap of the "Right Path": a lesson from Dune for the Russian economy. A stimulus-driven economy: how long will this spurt last?

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2026, statements were made again about the "steady growth" and the "right path" of the Russian economy. Official reports use figures for GDP growth and record low unemployment. But what is the real underside of this confidence when the economy is living in an accelerated SPIEF cycle? This is an allegory. This is an attempt to translate the dry language of macroeconomics, hidden inflation and dangerous "military overheating" into the scenery of a dark fantasy epic. This is a story about how large-scale injections into the production of destruction create the illusion of absolute well-being, masterfully masking the depletion of the very foundation of the system.

This story is not just fiction, but a cold mathematical projection of today's triumphant summaries. The incantations of growth, record employment, and the failure of all external constraints have just been repeated from a high rostrum. The action is transferred to the universe of Frank Herbert's "Dunes": an unnamed Great House, intoxicated by the illusion of indestructibility, repeats the eternal mistake of confusing overheating of military forges with sustainable development. We see this familiar rhetoric through the eyes of mentat Elia — through the smokescreen of interest rates and beautiful graphs, to where inflationary conflagration and technological famine are devouring the foundation. This is a lesson about the nature of state self-deception, preserved by the Bene Gesserit Order for those whose minds are ready to see through illusions.

"The Mathematics of Self-Deception"
Archival records of the Bene Gesserit Order. Scroll: "The Mathematics of Self-Deception."

"Studying the anatomy of extinct empires, we are always looking for a moment of fracture. It is a mistake to believe that death begins with the clang of enemy swords at the gates of the Citadel. No, true disintegration begins in the silence of cabinets, when rulers fall into the trap of artificial overheating, confusing death throes with development. Study this piece of history carefully. He is a testament to how a colossal mechanism that works exclusively for destruction creates a sweet mirage of absolute well—being for the crowd and the authorities. Mathematical series don't lie on their own, but they have a devilish ability to hide a disaster if the Counters take into account only what brings immediate benefits. This is a lesson about the nature of state self-deception, reserved for those whose minds are ready to see through illusions."— From the preface of Princess Irulan to the treatise "Lessons of the Sand"

"The illusion of prosperity is the sweetest poison for any Empire. When the forges do not know sleep, forging only swords, the numbers in the barn books dazzle the eye with their greatness. But metal being melted down for ashes will not satisfy the hunger of cities. Balance always requires sacrifice."— From the secret Chronicles of the Order of Counters

The Reception hall of the Great House was bathed in the cold, sterile light of lumoglobes. On the dais, in front of the indifferent emissaries of the Space Guild and the envoys of the Landsraad, the Duke was broadcasting. His voice, amplified many times by acoustics hidden in marble, sounded monolithic, like the tread of Sardaukar heavy infantry.

"Our House is on the Right Track," he said, his imperious gaze sweeping the ranks of the ambassadors. — Despite the blockade predicted by our enemies, we feel confident. Take a look at the reports of the Spice Chamber — our Great Machines are working. The vaults are full. The people are confident in the future. Our economic system has proved its invincibility!

The crowd exploded into measured, rhythmic applause.

Elia, the senior mentat archivist of the Financial Council, stood in the shadow of the heavy drapes. There was a dark ruby stain on her lips, a trace of sappho juice that expands the boundaries of consciousness. Her mind, trained to the state of a perfect organic computer, greedily absorbed these sounds, but did not succumb to their hypnosis. She split the ruler's words into pure vectors, probabilities, and hidden threats.

The numbers in her heavy black paper scrolls looked beautiful. They always looked great. Every month, the gross product charts crept up. The Cartel's sanctions have indeed failed: rare metals and melange have found new, shady channels. Huge highlighters were now going to the resource-hungry conglomerates of X. The immediate financial collapse expected by the enemies did not happen.

But the logic of the mentat revealed the deep, frightening underside of this artificial triumph. The truth rarely comes with the sound of drums. It seeps like fine sand through the cracks of a basalt foundation.

"Don't trust a number that flatters your desire to survive. Trust the figure that whispers of your death. But she's not lying."— The mantra of the navigators of the Guild of Financiers

Elia's mind drifted back to a recent meeting on the lower levels of the Citadel, in the area of the Old Towers, where foreign visitors were never taken. There she spoke with Orwen, a blind master architect who had once built the hydroponic hearts of their cities.

"You're working with Counters, girl," the old man said then, turning his empty eye sockets to her. "Tell me, how much is a sandstorm worth in your brilliant reports?"

"You can't buy it,— Elia said, frowning.

Orwen smiled bitterly. Now imagine an Empire that has learned to consider success only what can be sold.

Standing in the shadow of the curtains and listening to the Duke's ovation, Elia saw the blind man's prophecy come to life. The rulers found a way to disperse the blood in the veins of the state. In the deep wastelands, Fire Forges burned day and night. Machines were being forged there for the endless canny vendetta raging beyond the horizon.

These forges devoured metal. Fuel. Crystals. And people.

Every squadron of ornithopters that came off the stocks, every protective field generator increased the House's performance. The numbers were getting prettier. The reports confirmed the correctness of the path. But the mathematics of death was ruthless: these machines were disappearing. They sank into the sands of war and turned into black smoke. They didn't build moisture traps. They didn't harvest. No new schools were built. They simply ceased to exist. And in order to maintain the illusion of economic growth, it was necessary to light the furnaces even more. It was like a thirsty man in the desert trying to drink his own blood.

— Not a single inhabitant of our fiefdoms was left idle! The Duke's voice boomed through the vaults, pulling Elia out of her memories and building up the tempo. — Our employment level has reached an absolute ideal!

The Ideal of Desolation, the mentat calculated with chilling horror. The dynamics of calculations in her head spun at breakneck speed.

There were fewer and fewer young people in the capital every day. The recruitment of the Order of War and the exodus of the best minds outside the barrier drained the markets. The few who remained at the machines demanded unthinkable money. The guilds were hysterical for every engineer and courier, madly outbidding the bids. Heavy tanning beds settled in the pockets of ordinary citizens, creating a heady mirage of sudden wealth.

But the CHOAM balance cannot be deceived. In the markets, people received three times as many tokens, but they could buy less with them. The better the numbers in Elia's reports got, the longer the desperate queues stretched for clean water and pundi rice. The inflationary conflagration consumed the empire from within, destroying the very value of labor.

To stop this fire, the Top Bank raised interest rates skyrocketing in a panic. It has become physically impossible to occupy solariums for a peaceful life. Any merchant who wasn't involved in military contracts was now slowly suffocating with a noose around his neck. And the Duke's vaunted "technological sovereignty" turned into a shameful dependence on the smugglers of the Outer Ring, hastily re-gluing stamps on other people's machines.

"The true price of power is measured not in the tanning beds that have settled in the treasury of the House, but in how much moisture and blood will have to be given when the CHOAM balance requires payment of debts. The illusion of stability is the most dangerous of mental states, because it hides the tread of a sandworm until the sand opens up under your feet."— From the closed instructions for mentat-calculators

The Duke raised his hands, calling for silence, and shouted the final words, which made the windows shake.:

— Our future is unshakable! We are indestructible!

The hall exploded with a roar. The elite applauded ecstatically. The ambassadors nodded approvingly, hiding their predatory grins behind their smiles.

And inside Elia, a dull, ringing, unbearable panic was growing by the second. The computing centers of her brain combined the final equations, cutting off political lies, and the result burned with the absolute cold of an imminent catastrophe. The computing speed has reached its limit.

She suddenly felt physically how the huge, heavy Citadel under their feet was supported by a gaping void. Sometimes a fortress doesn't collapse from a battering ram. She just starts eating her own foundation. Stone by stone. Unnoticed. While the facade still dazzles with its gold. The economy of the House was like a wounded gladiator in the arena, injected with the ultimate, lethal dose of Tleilaxu combat stimulants. He fights with frenzied fury, his muscles seem to be forged from plasteel, the crowd roars with delight, looking at the scoreboard of his crushing blows.

But the fight is already lost.

His internal organs are rapidly burning out. The tissues melt from the monstrous overheating, and each new, seemingly victorious jerk only brings closer the inevitable second when the worn-out heart will burst with a bang in the chest.

The Duke was right about only one thing: they hadn't fallen right now. Right now, pumped full of stimulant poison, they're running faster than everyone else.

But there was a vast, merciless desert ahead. And the effect of the poison was rapidly wearing off.

Elia turned away from the raging hall and pulled her robes tighter around her, trying in vain to stop a large tremor. And outside, behind the thick airtight walls of the palace, in the gathering darkness of the Third Moon, heavy military caravans continued to blindly disappear over the horizon. They left behind deep, jagged ruts in the sand, footprints that the cold night wind dispassionately erased even before dawn. And with them, grain by grain, the very time of this Empire disappeared.

Epilogue: The Whisper of the Dunes
"You can forcibly drown out the voices of the seers, you can dazzle the crowd with momentary handouts and force the scribes to rearrange the barn books so that they sing hymns to the ruling House. But the great laws of the ecological and economic balance of the universe are inflexible. For every forced breakthrough, bought at the price of burning your own future, sooner or later you will have to pay. And when the effect of life-saving stimulants inevitably runs out, the bill billed by the merciless reality will no longer be measured by tanning beds or percentages of inflation. It will be measured by survival. The desert always takes its toll. And for those who can listen to the wind, it's obvious: the sand has already started its countdown."— From the apocrypha of Muad'Dib

From the author. Instead of an afterword.
When making speeches about indestructibility, it is easy to forget that an economy closed in on itself and on the accelerated production of means of destruction resembles an attempt to quench thirst with blood. The GDP figures inflated by the fiscal stimulus and the re-glued nameplates on imported machines create a mirage of abundance only until the balance sheet issues the final bill. Mathematics is inexorable: when the civilian sectors are suffocating from an exorbitant key rate, and the commodity mass is shrinking, the desert has already begun its countdown. The fee, as always, will be charged not by interest, but by survival.

The official reports of SPIEF 2026 skillfully portray the forced mobilization of the economy as its harmonious development. The system really showed amazing flexibility and avoided a quick crash. However, the laws of economics cannot be deceived. The current "confidence" has been bought at an extremely high price: personnel depletion, depletion of reserves and the suffocating rate of the Central Bank, killing the civilian sector. When these extreme government "stimulants" come to an end, the country will be billed. And you will have to pay for this overheating not with abstract figures from front-line reports, but with a real drop in everyone's standard of living.

The Dark Art of Dystopia by Violetta Wennman

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