Last week, officials and businesspeople from around the world came to Stanford to rub elbows at the U.S.-Russia Technology Symposium, the premiere technology conference between the two nations. The two-day marathon of speeches and panels aimed to tighten bilateral trade relations and encourage investment in Russia.

Topics varied from the gridlock of the Cold War past to the burgeoning but volatile market in Russia today. But the hot-button issues were Russia’s future in the information technology market, and the role of the government in stimulating foreign investment. Whereas several speakers pushed for tax breaks and kickbacks to create an IT friendly environment, others warned the government to be wary of the social costs of some business practices, notably outsourcing.

Virtually all panelists and speakers agreed that Russia has world-class engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists. Yet its IT industry is 30 times smaller than that of India, said Sergey Kravchenko, president of Boeing Russia. Kravchenko argued that if Russia is to keep abreast of global technology markets, “The best salesman for Russia must be the Russian President [Vladimir Putin].”

In an interview with The Daily, Andrey Fursenko, Russian minister of education and science and co-chair of the symposium, agreed that Putin’s government has a duty to uphold investors’ interests.

“[The government] depends on taxes, which our citizens and our businesses pay and that means we must earn these taxes,” Fursenko said.

But he did not agree that the president is obliged to be a salesman for the business sector.

“Our businesspersons are not kiddies in overalls,” he said. “They are big boys and girls. They can and must stand for themselves.”

He continued, “The fact that we must project a positive image of Russia and support the initiatives of business is unquestionable, and the president does this well. But he should not have to do it alone.”

Instead of relying solely on government protection, Fursenko said Russia’s businesses must be open to unconventional market strategies and have a nose for the cutting edge.

“Everyone doesn’t always have to think along the same lines,” he said. “To sense what the time demands, what will be in demand in five or 10 years, that is the foundation for some of the greatest successes,” he said.

Dmitry Milovantsev, Russia’s deputy minister of communication and information, pushed for a more proactive state role in the arena of business. He said a “critical mission” for Russia is to make IT a major source of growth in the technological export market, which he hopes will soar to over $8 billion by 2010, a fivefold increase from today.

Russian businesses are “overtaxed compared to other competitive nations,” Milovantsev said. He called on the government to enact “stimulating regulations,” which should ease the tax burden for IT firms in Russia and even cover the cost of their utilities, such as water and electricity.

“IT companies should cover IT and that’s it,” he added.

Several panelists pointed to Putin’s January meeting in Novosibirsk — where he pledged tax breaks and $650 million of state funds to boost the straggling IT industry — as an example of a major step toward the business-friendly policies that Milovantsev and others advocated.

In the keynote speech, William Perry, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and symposium co-chair, argued that governments should take a more precautionary role with respect to technology.

“Technology is a strange thing,” Perry said. “With one hand it gives you great gifts but with the other hand it stabs you in the back.”

As President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Perry played a key role in disarming the nuclear weapons held by the former Soviet Union, and he said that even today nuclear arms are a terrifying example of technology’s dangerous potential.

“There are thousands of nuclear weapons that we have to keep out of the hands of terrorists,” Perry said. “The United States of course worries that terrorists would detonate the bomb in an American city.”

Technologies that can be applied on the global scale, including various forms of IT, also have the potential to cause great harm, Perry said.

This kind of technology is “a fantastic success story,” he continued, citing the ease of communication and shipment around the world. “But of course there will be unintended consequences” — for example, the critical level of unemployment in much of Europe due to outsourcing.

“As we salute the unprecedented achievements [of globalization], we should note that the unemployed assembly worker in England...does not share our enthusiasm,” Perry said.

He urged global political institutions like the G8, an organization of the world’s eight wealthiest nations, to discuss the dangers of global technology and work to avoid the social backlash caused by outsourcing.

Still, a handful of speakers shared success stories about outsourcing in Russia, focusing on how their companies benefited from the eager and educated Russian workforce.

Intel, for instance, has longstanding partners and investments in Russia, said Claude Leglise, vice president of the software giant.

Michael Schwab, director of sales and marketing for I-many Inc. in Menlo Park, told The Daily that his company has had good experience with Russian engineers and computer scientists, and that if he were to open a business in the future, he would definitely consider hiring skilled workers in Russia.

However, the Russian consumer market is “not even on the radar” as a potential source of new customers, Schwab said. Products developed in Russia are by and large funneled back to western markets.

On Friday night, Perry declared the symposium a success, saying that “people are coming together...to make deals — and that’s really why we’re here.”

The main sponsors of the second annual USRTS are Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. Among the Stanford faculty who spoke at the symposium were Coit Blacker, director of the Stanford Institute for International Affairs; Tom Byers, professor of management science and engineering; and Katharine Ku, director of the Office of Technology Licensing.