I used to get a copy of Janes Defense Weekly at work. It was always a good read when I was a young kid on the hill. They even used to put out a buyers guide for IFVs/LAVs. If you want to cut through the noise for good military analysis you usually have to drop some decent dough.
Much of Russia is essentially pro-global warming. They see the northern ice cap melting and their climate becoming more mild as a way to tap the potential of their land and northern coast.
Years ago I remember a Freakonomics podcast episode that delved into the hostility public and private policy makers had to running experiments. It mainly comes down to not wanting to bear the downside risk of an experiment having unfavorable or economically useless results. While if they just don’t know and no else does there is no consequence for doing the status quo even if the results are poor.
It also heavily favors the loud and self important who will force their way to the front and dominate the conversation. In an hour long meeting there is much more opportunity to give everyone several minutes to speak and have group discussion and deliberation. Now if your meeting can actually get done in 20 minutes, it probably should have been a phone call.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they each had their ‘petty’ reasons as well. You have to lose faith in the people around you and the system at large before you feel you can go rogue. I personally burned a pretty significant relationship and my career in the process when the Trump military trans ban came through. I had by that point been hit with many petty injustices and indignities, but it was ban that finally brought me over the edge.
When I used to work on publishing government reports we used to run into strange formatting issues if we didn’t stick with the Windows version of Office 365. Could we have worked around them with multiple versions or LibreOffice etc? Sure, but it would take time and at at $150-$350 and hour per contractor its not worth it. Just provision the licenses and be done with it.