One of the country’s few remaining independent media outlets, analyzed the impact of American inventor Elon Musk’s inventions on the global economy, and on Russia in particular. She specifically singled out Musk’s recently unveiled solar battery:

Yulia Latinina of Novaya Gazeta writes:  First, car exhaust is really poisonous of the environment.  Second, his battery ensures that the house can be truly autonomous – after the invention of electricity, the house seized being an independent entity throughout the world. And third, this battery will change the world as much as shale gas could, and much more than the results of any election and any revolution.

Latinina feels that Musk’s breakthrough – along with other creations such as the hyperloop – will shift power away from presidencies and official heads of state, and move us toward a world where entrepreneurs have bigger sway and greater influence on international affairs. She is clearly impressed with the influence America’s top high-tech companies have, both at home and around the world. While she may overstate that influence, she importantly laments the absence of like initiatives in Russia, where major inventors and entrepreneurs must toe the government line:

President Putin is seriously waiting for the United States to finally come to its senses and to sit down to negotiate with him, as with Joseph Stalin at Yalta in 1945 and divide the world into spheres of influence … The problem is that the ‘zone of influence’ of the United States in the modern world is not established by Barack Obama, but by Sergey Brin, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs. But since Putin’s policy is not to allow a Musk or a Jobs in Russia  – since every independent entrepreneur is a potential threat to the authorities –  the underlying principle for such negations practically does not exit.