At present, the clear leader here is Russia that places a high priority to development of its far-north. It has a formidable fleet of icebreakers already, including five nuclear-powered vessels: two heavy ones that can negotiate ice of up to 2.25 meters thick, two ones suitable for work in relatively shallow estuaries of great Siberian rivers, and the Sevmorput lichter-carrier (the world’s only commercial nuclear vessel in operation). A new-generation Arktika icebreaker has been commissioned recently by Baltiisky Shipyards in St.Petersburg, capable of navigation across 2.9 meter ice, and four more ships of the same class are expected to reach the service by 2030. They have variable draft, so they are both sea- and river-worthy. Besides this, three Lider-class icebreakers of even greater capacity (up to 4 meters of ice) are to be built.

No less important, Russia, together with Sweden, Finland and Canada, has a history of developing and building a fleet of ice-capable commercial vessels that are the necessary complement to the ice-breakers. Soviet ships of Lena, Amguema and Norilsk series came into service in 1950s-1990s. They were mostly built as general cargo / bulk carriers. Yet the development of natural gas extraction in the regions adjacent to the polar sees, along with formation of global LNG market, brings about new classes of technologically-advanced vessels, ice-capable LNG carriers.

Naturally, other leading global powers start to pay attention to this domain, too. China obtained observer status with the Arctic Council in 2013, and declared itself a “near Arctic state” in Jan 2018, with the “Polar Silk Road” plan. Its own ocean-faring icebreaker fleet is currently small with two vessels, but the plans abound – e.g. to build ice-capable LNG tankers by a JV between Socso and Sovmorflot funded by Novatek and Silk Road Fund. We have all witnessed the astonishing speed and scale of infrastructure build-up China is capable of, and running shipbuilding programs of both commercial and geopolitical importance is probably one of good ways to support the national economy in the time of COVID crisis, and by the same token to achieve some longer-term strategic goals.

In the light of the present entente between Russia and PRC, the US views the Arctic area as a new frontier to defend. The US Congress considers building six more icebreakers to add to the existing two. Other major sea-faring nations, including Japan and S.Korea, have a plenty of shipbuilding capacity and competencies to go after the new promising market segment. Nuclear propulsion may be a costly exotics (few countries in the world do the necessary technologies on an operational level), but conventional ice-capable vessels come – as a matter of fact, Russia placed an order for 29 such vessels for Yamal LNG Project, including 15 LNG tankers. The present economic downturn and a glut of hydrocarbons may delay or scale down such plans, but is unlikely to cancel it outright. After all, the Arctic is estimated to hold about one-third of all undiscovered natural gas reserves (plus 13% of oil reserves), and the present shift towards more ecologically-friendy types of fossil fuel means there will be more demand in the years to come.

So what may all this mean for industries beyond the shipbuilding? Extra demand for special steel alloys capable of withstanding mechanical loads under very low temperatures, for rubber and plastic (along with technical fluids like lubricants) to work under these extreme conditions, and for Arctic-hardened UAVs capable of searching for easier ways across the ice fields by optical, IR and radar tools. As the powers of the West playing catch-ip in the Arctics, and commercial goods flow likely to grow over there, this looks like a range of interesting niche business opportunities.

In the modern understanding even better technologies are being used. We have online courses, professors keep in touch with students everyday, real-time tests and exams are a normality, and much more. Introduction of all this tech already happened quite some years ago. Subsequently, a plethora of online educational courses appeared in mid-2000s. Nevertheless, the area covered by remote classes almost exclusively was targeting higher education or teaching some specific skills to adults. What is more, many distance education programs at universities were considered sub-par. Their quality was widely mocked by the professionals and the general public alike. Maybe you can even recall those comedy TV sketches about using the online university certificates as wallpaper from 10 years ago?

So the pre-COVID-19 landscape in remote learning was a bit lackluster and uninspiring — not many people wanted to enroll and paying for distance learning was considered a waste of money. It is widely believed that the 3 main factors were to blame:

• low quality — at least as perceived by the customers — for the majority of the online-only courses even with the leading colleges and universities;
• lack of trust by both potential students and future employers;
• relative inexperience with online tech and methods among both students and professors.

There were high chances that the current pandemic would change all of this. Fervently enforced lockdowns combined with the need to continue studies magically made the remote solution not only viable but seemingly the best-and-only way to go. Everybody was forced into using remote apps for communication. Lack of trust was overcome in directive mode by university administrations just telling students and professors to go online. And quality seemed of lesser concern. Troubling times require drastic measures — so who cares about quality so much?

All the changes described above (there were even more, I understand that) bode so well for the acceptance of distance leaning. But here we are in September 2020 discussing and rooting for going ‘back to normal’ with awkward relief. So many open questions still remain: is it even possible for humans to study without peer pressure and social interaction? maybe we are just at the early stage of the technology adoption curve and more change is still to come? why the cost-efficiency of distance education not the major factor here? what other triggers do we need to launch a real revolution in learning?