Table of Contents

The world this week

Politics
Business
The weekly cartoon
This week’s covers
Leaders
Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the Pentagon?
Can Friedrich Merz save Germany—and Europe?
After DeepSeek, America and the EU are getting AI wrong
Countering China’s diplomatic coup
The Lucy Letby case shows systemic failure and a national malaise
Letters
Letters to the editor
By Invitation
The neglect of Asia was the great failure of Yalta, writes Stephen Kotkin
Briefing
America’s military supremacy is in jeopardy
Asia
South-East Asian producers are being hammered by Chinese imports
Is MAGA great for India?
New Zealand and the Cook Islands fall out over China
Can Indonesia make its Top Gun dreams a reality?
China
Tensions with the West are fuelling China’s anxiety about food supplies
Hail China’s new “ice-and-snow economy”
Panama symbolises the Sino-American struggle for influence
United States
Donald Trump wants states and cities to do as they are told
Donald Trump and the art of the quid pro quo
Inside the world’s most famous aeroplane boneyard
What happened next at USAID
Elon Musk has been pushed out of the Treasury
What is Elon Musk getting up to with America’s payment system?
How Bob Dylan broke free
The Americas
Most Latin American migrants no longer go to the United States
Guatemala is grappling with a globetrotting Jewish “cult”
Javier Milei’s liberal reforms are hurting yerba mate growers
Middle East & Africa
For Donald Trump, South Africa is DEI in the form of a country
How to go from fish lover to fish farmer
Homs’s troubles show the challenges facing Syria’s leaders
Israel mounts an attack on Palestinian intellectual life
Hizbullah’s decline is a boon for Lebanon’s new government
Instead of luxury condos, Gaza faces a resumption of war
Europe
Germany’s “business model is gone”, warns Friedrich Merz
Ukraine’s fears are becoming reality, after Trump talks to Putin
Ukraine fears being cut out of talks between America and Russia
Robert Fico’s pleas for cheap Russian gas bring Slovaks onto the street
A new crackdown is gathering strength in Turkey
Le Chat, the cat-bot France has pinned its AI hopes on
How India became an unexpected role model for Europe
Britain
It increasingly looks as if Lucy Letby’s conviction was unsafe
Britain’s review body for criminal convictions is struggling
Parliament is advertising for a new Black Rod
A British incubator of businesses often bound for the Bay Area
Valentine’s Day may need to adjust to the times
London is ageing twice as quickly as the rest of England
Is Sir Keir Starmer a chump?
International
China’s stunning new campaign to turn the world against Taiwan
Business
Chinese cars are taking over the global south
German business is being suffocated by high costs and red tape
BP is underperforming and under pressure
Elon Musk’s $97bn offer is a headache for Sam Altman’s OpenAI
Could a German startup disrupt Europe’s arms industry?
How to get people to resign
Defence tech is blowing up Silicon Valley’s beliefs
Finance & economics
How AI will divide the best from the rest
Why you should repay your mortgage early
Elon Musk is failing to cut American spending
Donald Trump’s Super Bowl tariffs are an act of self-harm
Russian inflation is too high. Does that matter?
Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
The danger of relying on OpenAI’s Deep Research
Science & technology
How artificial intelligence is changing baseball
AI is being used to model football matches
A neutrino telescope spots the signs of something cataclysmic
Forget DeepSeek. Large language models are getting cheaper still
Does intermittent fasting work?
Culture
The secret to the success of “Saturday Night Live”
Do societies need more, or less, discretion in enforcing rules?
What explains the enduring appeal of Bridget Jones?
Faceless influencers are becoming famous online
How did the Catholic church go so wrong?
Does more education lead to less sex?
Six of the best films about love
Economic & financial indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Obituary
Donald Shoup knew how to get cities going
 [Feb 15th 2025]
 The world this week
 Leaders
 Letters
 By Invitation
 Briefing
 Asia
 China
 United States
 The Americas
 Middle East & Africa
 Europe
 Britain
 International
 Business
 Finance & economics
 Science & technology
 Culture
 Economic & financial indicators
 Obituary
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The world this week

 Politics
 Business
Business ::
 The weekly cartoon
 This week’s covers
The Economist :: How we saw the world

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The world this week

Politics
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

Donald Trump held a phone call with Vladimir Putin and said he would “immediately”·
start negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, announcing that he and the Russian
president would hold talks that will be hosted by Saudi Arabia. Their conversation lasted
90 minutes and was the highest level of contact between the Oval Office and the Kremlin
since the start of the war in 2022. Mr Trump then called Volodymyr Zelensky to inform him
about the conversation. The Ukrainian president said they had talked about a “lasting,
reliable peace”. In an earlier interview with The Economist Mr Zelensky had warned about
the dangers of excluding Ukraine from negotiations.
The newfound co-operation between America and Russia was also evident in a prisoner
swap. Russia released Marc Fogel, an American teacher it has held in detention since 2021.
America returned Alexander Vinnik, a cyber-criminal.
Meanwhile, the UN monitor in Ukraine reported that short-range drones, equipped with
cameras and able to distinguish civilians from troops, had caused more civilian deaths in
January than any other weapon.
Klaus Iohannis resigned as Romania’s president rather than face an impeachment vote in
parliament. Mr Iohannis stayed in office after the result of November’s presidential election
was voided by the courts amid claims of Russian meddling. The election was won by Calin
Georgescu, a hard-right critic of NATO. The decision to scrap the result has infuriated the
right-wing opposition. A re-run of the election will be held in May, though it is uncertain if
Mr Georgescu will be allowed to run.
Unplugged
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania disconnected themselves from Russia’s electricity grid and
joined the European Union’s network in a two-day switchover. The Baltic countries have
not bought electricity from Russia since 2022 but were still dependent on its grid for power
flow. They joined the Russian grid in the 1950s when they were under the Soviet thumb.
The leaders of the main national-conservative parties in France, Hungary, Italy, the
Netherlands and Spain were among the participants at a Make Europe Great Again rally
in Madrid, where they urged the EU to adopt some of the policies Donald Trump has
introduced in America. “Yesterday we were the heretics, today we are the mainstream”,
declared Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. None of them mentioned tariffs.
The ruling Vetevendosje social-democratic party won the most votes in an election in
Kosovo, though it fell short of enough seats for an overall majority in parliament. The
prime minister, Albin Kurti, has rejected forming a coalition with opposition parties,
describing them as “animals” and “thieves”.
Talks led by the hard-right Freedom Party to form a government in Austria with the
conservative People’s Party collapsed over differences on Russia and the EU. The Freedom
Party wants a fresh election, hoping it may do even better than its showing at the polls in
September.
In Britain the MP behind a controversial assisted-dying bill introduced an amendment
that would remove the legislation’s judicial safeguard of requiring a high-court judge’s
approval for individual cases. More than 140 MPs who previously voted for the bill at its
second-reading stage because of that safeguard may now vote against it, according to
reports. The bill passed its second reading last November with a majority of 55.
King Abdullah of Jordan visited the White House for talks with Donald Trump. The
president reiterated his plan for America to take over Gaza and force the removal of more
than 2m Palestinians who live there. He earlier suggested that he would stop aid to Jordan
and Egypt if they did not allow Palestinians to settle in their countries. After the meeting
King Abdullah reiterated his government’s “steadfast position against the displacement of
Palestinians”. At a meeting with Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state, Badr Abdelatty,
Egypt’s foreign minister, said Arab states rejected Mr Trump’s plan. Egypt is working on a
plan of its own.
The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in Gaza came under strain· after the militant
group said it would postpone the release of three hostages scheduled for February 15th.
Hamas appeared to back down after Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said he
would end the ceasefire if the hostages are not returned.
The UN said that a worker in its World Food Programme had died while he was being held
in detention in Yemen’s Sa’ada region, and called on the Iranian-backed Houthis to release
the couple of dozen UN staff that it is still holding.
Fighting erupted in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo despite calls from African
leaders for a ceasefire between M23, a rebel group backed by Rwanda, and Congolese
forces. Having captured Goma, M23 is advancing towards Bukavu, another big city 200km
(125 miles) away.
Ecuador’s presidential election will go to a run-off in April, after the centre-right
incumbent, Daniel Noboa, and his left-wing challenger, Luisa González, fell short of the 50%
vote threshold to claim victory. It was thought that Mr Noboa’s record of cracking down on
gang violence would be enough for him to win the first round, but Ms González, who served
in the government of Rafael Correa, a former leftist president, has promised to boost the
economy and cut fuel prices.
Sexual violence against children in Haiti, including rape, has increased by 1,000% since
2023, according to Unicef. Children as young as eight are also being forcibly recruited into
the warlords’ gangs that control much of the country, and now account for half of all gang
members.
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, went to Washington for a meeting with Mr Trump·.
The leaders have a good relationship, forged over a shared interest in countering the rise of
China, but they will also discuss trade and worker visas.
Don’t be my Valentine

The number of marriages in China fell by 20% last year, according to the Ministry of Civil
Affairs, a bigger rate of decline than during the pandemic. Only 6.1m couples tied the knot,
less than half the number who were wed a decade ago. The state is pressing colleges to
hold “love education” seminars that emphasise the benefits of marriage and family as one
way of increasing the country’s low birth rate.

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Business

Business
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

Emmanuel Macron hosted a summit on artificial intelligence· in Paris that was

advertised as a chance to speed up the development of the technology, while ensuring that
“nobody is left behind”. The French president announced private-sector investments and
urged Europe to “resynchronise with the rest of the world” on AI. But America and Britain
spoiled the party by not signing the official declaration, which mentioned international
governance, and was signed by China. J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, warned against
“excessive regulation”, which could stifle innovation, and making deals with “authoritarian
regimes”.
Where does he find the time?
Elon Musk made an unsolicited $97bn bid· to buy the non-profit group that controls
OpenAI. Mr Musk was one of the startup’s founders but has since had a spectacular falling
out with Sam Altman, another founder and its current boss, and has launched his own rival
AI firm. Mr Altman is trying to convert OpenAI from a not-for-profit entity to a for-profit
company. He rejected the bid, cheekily offering to buy X, Mr Musk’s social-media platform,
for $9.74bn instead.
SoftBank reported a quarterly loss of ¥369bn ($2.4bn), in part because of a drop in the
value of the tech investments held by its Vision Funds. The Japanese conglomerate plans to
raise the money for its recently announced investment in a joint venture with OpenAI on a
project-by-project basis.
The EU said it would respond with “proportionate countermeasures” to Donald Trump’s
proposal to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports to America. The EU is
hoping for talks with the Americans before the duties come into force on March 12th.
Meanwhile, China went ahead and imposed its counter-tariffs on American goods, after a
deadline passed to reach a deal.
BP’s annual underlying profit of $8.9bn in 2024 was its worst since 2020·. Amid a chorus of
criticism from investors, the oil giant promised to “fundamentally reset” its strategy. Its
stock did jump earlier, however, in response to news that Elliott Management, an activist
hedge fund known for shaking up management boards, has taken a stake in the company.
BP’s market value is about half that of Shell’s.
Following a disappointing set of earnings for the fourth quarter, Chevron announced a
cost-cutting strategy that could see it shed 20% of its workforce before the end of 2026.
The world’s biggest supplier of batteries for electric vehicles filed to sell shares in a
secondary listing in Hong Kong, which is expected to be the city’s biggest stock offer since
2021. Based in China, CATL wants to raise funds for its international expansion plans.
Foxconn, an electronics contract manufacturer that assembles the iPhone, confirmed that
it was interested in buying Renault’s stake in Nissan, after merger talks between Nissan
and Honda reportedly fell apart. Foxconn is interested in acquiring the stake only if the deal
includes co-operation on EVs, which it is developing through its Foxtron venture.
Unilever announced that it would list its ice-cream business on the Amsterdam stock
exchange, with other listings in London and New York. It expects to spin off the business,
which includes Ben & Jerry’s, by the end of this year.

America’s annual rate of inflation rose for the fourth consecutive month in January. At 3%,
it is back up to where it was last June, before the Federal Reserve embarked on a round of
interest-rate cuts. In his first testimony to Congress since Mr Trump’s return to the White
House, Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, said he was in “no rush” to cut rates again.
The British economy grew by 0.1% in the last quarter of 2024 compared with the
previous quarter. Markets had expected a contraction. For the year as a whole GDP
expanded by 0.9%.
More firms abandoned their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Disney
ditched a DEI measure that contributed towards setting executive pay, replacing it with one
on “talent strategy”. Goldman Sachs dropped a rule that stopped it from advising firms
about listing shares if the boards of those firms were all male and white. And Deloitte US
asked staff working on government contracts to delete gender pronouns in emails.
The penny dropped
Donald Trump ordered the Treasury to stop producing one-penny coins because they are
literally a waste of money. Each penny costs 3.7 cents to make. Canada got there first,
eliminating its penny in 2012. But Americans for Common Cents, a group that wants to
keep the coin, say consumers will be short-changed as demand for nickels would rise,
increasing costs to the taxpayer. A nickel is worth five cents but costs 13.8 cents to make.

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The world this week

The weekly cartoon

2 月 13, 2025 06:26 上午

Dig deeper into the subject of this week’s cartoon:

What happened next at USAIDChina’s stunning new campaign to turn the world against
TaiwanDonald Trump turns an angry gaze south
The editorial cartoon appears weekly in The Economist. You can see last week’s here.

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The Economist

This week’s covers

How we saw the world
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午
WE HAVE TWO covers this week. In most of the world we contemplate Donald Trump’s
plans for the Pentagon. He recently declared that it would become a target for Elon Musk’s
Department of Government Efficiency. The work could not be more important. Not since
the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and built huge tank formations at the height of the cold
war have America’s military vulnerabilities been so glaring. In the killing fields of Ukraine
America is being out-innovated by drone designers; in the seas and skies off China it is
losing its ability to deter a blockade or invasion of Taiwan. Pentagon angst is as old as the
military-industrial complex, and it is hard to think that this administration will succeed
where others have failed. But the hope is that it will. America’s security depends upon it.

Leader: Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the Pentagon?Briefing:
America’s military supremacy is in jeopardy·
In Europe our cover shows Friedrich Merz, the probable next chancellor of Germany after
the election on February 23rd. As our interview shows, there is much to approve of in the
leader of the Christian Democratic Union. He is confident, intelligent and remarkably calm
considering the stakes. His instincts lie in the right direction and he bluntly declares that
Germany’s business model “is gone”. But there are also reasons for doubt. Mr Merz seems a
little too prone to favour what sounds like incremental change over the radical shake-up
that Germany and Europe need. Too often, he behaves as if the hard part will be to get
elected. Yet governing will be much harder. To command his coalition and to carry through
difficult reforms in a time of turmoil, he will need a mandate for sweeping change. So far, he
has been too timid to ask for one.

Leader: Can Friedrich Merz save Germany—and Europe?Europe: Germany’s “business

model is gone”, warns Friedrich Merz·

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Leaders
 Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the
Pentagon?
High alert :: America’s security depends upon their success
 Can Friedrich Merz save Germany—and Europe?
European politics :: He is on track to win the election, but to fix Europe he will have to fix his country first
 After DeepSeek, America and the EU are getting AI wrong
The Paris discord :: Europe has a chance to catch up, whereas America should ease up
 Countering China’s diplomatic coup
Words before war :: China has turned much of the global south against Taiwan. That could be laying the ground for forced
unification
 The Lucy Letby case shows systemic failure and a
national malaise
Blind Britain :: Whether or not the neonatal nurse is guilty of murder, her saga is revealing

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High alert

Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck

or reform the Pentagon?
America’s security depends upon their success
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

IN THE PENTAGON they must surely be on high alert. On February 9th President Donald
Trump declared that it would soon become the target for Elon Musk’s Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE). Accusing it of “hundreds of billions of fraud and abuse”, Mr
Trump will unleash his insurgents, fresh from feeding foreign aid into the woodchipper.
Their work could not be more important, or more risky.
That is because America’s armed forces face a real problem. Not since the Soviet Union
launched Sputnik and built huge tank formations at the height of the cold war have
America’s military vulnerabilities been so glaring. In the killing fields of Ukraine America is
being out-innovated by drone designers; in the seas and skies off China it is losing its ability
to deter a blockade or invasion of Taiwan.

The stakes are all the higher because the Pentagon is a place where MAGA ideology meets
reality. Mr Trump’s foreign policy is transactional: this week he said he had begun talks
with Russia on the future of Ukraine. But it is built on the idea that peace comes through
strength, and that is possible only if America’s forces pose a credible threat. And what if
DOGE goes rogue in the Pentagon? If Mr Musk causes chaos or corrupts procurement, the
consequences for America’s security could be catastrophic.
The problems are clearest in the struggle to turn technology into a military advantage·. The
drones over Ukraine are upgraded every few weeks, a pace that is beyond the Pentagon’s
budgeting process, which takes years. American and European jammers in electronic
warfare cost two or three times as much as Ukrainian ones, but are obsolete. Many big
American drones have been useless in Ukraine; newer ones are pricier than Ukrainian
models.
Another problem is that America’s defence industry has been captured. At the end of the
cold war the country had 51 prime contractors and only 6% of defence spending went to
firms that specialised in defence. Today, just five primes soak up 86% of the Pentagon’s
cash. Wary of driving more primes out of business, the department has opted for a risk-
averse culture. Contracts are typically cost-plus, rewarding lateness and overspending. The
resulting lack of productivity gains helps explain why building warships in America costs
so much more than it does in Japan or South Korea.
Behind this is the nightmare of budgets. Two-year delays are aggravated by congressional
squabbling. Pork-barrelling politicians waste money by vetoing the end of programmes.
They guard their control over spending so jealously that, without congressional
permission, the Pentagon cannot as a rule shift more than $15m from one line to another—
too little to buy even four Patriot missiles. When the Pentagon proposed diverting just
0.5% of the defence budget to buy thousands of drones under its “Replicator” initiative in
August 2023, winning approval took almost 40 congressional meetings.
Pentagon angst is as old as the military-industrial complex. Past secretaries of defence,
including Bob Gates and the late Ash Carter, were philosopher kings next to their new and
manifestly unqualified successor, Pete Hegseth. And yet the defence bureaucracy has
always seemed to come out on top.
There are two reasons why this moment may be different. One is that the time is ripe. Not
only is the threat to American security becoming clear, but a new generation of mil-tech
firms, including Anduril, Palantir and Shield AI, is banging on the Pentagon’s doors·. Indeed,
Palantir is now worth more than any of the five prime contractors.
More controversially, Mr Musk is eager to crack heads together, an enthusiasm which
stems partly from the second reason to hope: his experience elsewhere. In the 2010s, to
escape the ignominy of paying for rides to the International Space Station on Russian
spacecraft, NASA put fixed-price contracts to provide such services out to tender. Boeing
offered something called Starliner; Mr Musk’s SpaceX offered Crew Dragon at a much lower
cost. Crew Dragon has been a huge success. Starliner has yet to fly a successful mission
(and has left Boeing having to absorb billions of dollars of budget overruns).
From 1960 to 2010 the cost of getting a kilogram into orbit hovered at around $12,000;
SpaceX rockets have already cut that by a factor of ten, and promise much more. Helsing·,
Europe’s only defence unicorn, takes a similarly nimble approach to development,
continually updating its systems with data from the front lines.
Mr Musk’s task is big and complex. American weapons need more AI, autonomy and lower
costs. Where possible, they should be made from cheap off-the-shelf parts that ride on
advances in consumer tech. The Pentagon should foster competition and risk-taking,
knowing that some schemes will fail. A decade ago Carter set up a unit for innovation, but it
was often seen as a threat. The Pentagon needs more of them. It should also listen to
combatant commanders, too often drowned out by politics. Hardest of all, Mr Trump will
have to get congressional Republicans to give the Pentagon a freer rein to spend and
innovate.
Reforming the Pentagon is much harder than other parts of government. America cannot
focus on preparing for war in 2035 if that involves lowering its defences today. It cannot
simply replace multi-billion-dollar submarines and bomber squadrons with swarms of
drones, because to project power to the other side of the world will continue to require big
platforms. Instead America needs a Department of Defence that can revolutionise the
economics of massive systems and accelerate the spread of novel systems at the same time.
Mr Musk and his boss are conflicted. If Mr Trump prefers sacking generals for supposedly
being “woke” or disloyal, he will bring dysfunction upon the Pentagon. If Mr Musk and his
mil-tech brethren use DOGE’s campaign to wreck, or to boost their own power and wealth,
they will corrupt it. Those temptations make it hard to think that this administration will
succeed where others have failed. But the hope is that they will. America’s security depends
upon it. ■
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Story newsletter.

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European politics

Can Friedrich Merz save Germany—and

Europe?
He is on track to win the election, but to fix Europe he will have to fix his country first
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

GERMANY IS THE hole at the heart of Europe. It accounts for a quarter of the European
Union’s output but it has been in recession for the past two years—and this year risks
being the third. The perception that irregular migration is out of control has led to a surge
in support for the xenophobic right, fragmenting German politics and causing paralysis in
government and inaction in the EU. Its business model relied on manufacturing exports,
especially to China, cheap gas from Russia and security provided by America. But that lies
in ruins. The election on February 23rd is the most significant in Europe for years. There is
a likely winner; but what happens next is both hard to discern and critically important.
That winner-in-waiting is Friedrich Merz, the 69-year-old leader of the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU). Together with its Bavarian sister party, the CDU is predicted to
win some 30% of the vote, far more than any party but not nearly enough for a majority.
Coalition-forming will take months, and it is not clear whether Mr Merz will go for an
alliance with the Social Democrats or the Greens. He may even need a second partner,
which would be bad news: the unwieldy three-party coalition led by today’s chancellor,
Olaf Scholz, condemned Germany to three years of drift and, when it collapsed, an early
election.
But the biggest mystery surrounds Mr Merz himself. As his detractors gleefully point out,
he has never been a minister, and indeed has never run anything larger than the CDU’s
parliamentary caucus. His career in business was of the advisory and convening sort.
Assuming he gets the top job, how will he transform a broken Germany? And since Europe
functions best when it has strong Franco-German leadership, how will Mr Merz lead
Europe when his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, is a busted flush?
In an interview·, we try to shed light on the man. There is a lot to approve of. He is
confident, intelligent and remarkably calm considering the stakes. His instincts lie in the
right direction. He understands the concerns of business and promises a crusade against
red tape, whether generated by Brussels or Berlin. He bluntly declares that Germany’s
business model “is gone”. He believes in free markets, free trade and the Atlantic alliance,
and his pledge to restore Germany to the heart of Europe is welcome. He knows that fixing
immigration is crucial to weakening the appeal of Germany’s hard-right party, the
Alternative for Germany (AfD), warning that “This could be one of our last opportunities to
resolve the problems before the populists [win] a majority.”
All that is reassuring. But there are also reasons for doubt. Mr Merz seems, if not
complacent, a little too relaxed, too prone to favour what sounds like incremental change
over the radical shake-up that Germany and Europe need. Consider one example: he
supports the completion of an EU-wide banking union, which is essential if Europe’s single
market is to match America’s and China’s. Yet in almost the same breath he objects to the
proposed takeover of Germany’s Commerzbank by UniCredit, an Italian lender, because the
bid is “hostile”. Such takeovers are precisely how a single market should work.
Or take something bigger: public spending and the “debt brake”, a constitutional provision
that bars the government from running more than tiny deficits. Hobbled by this, Germany
has not been able to invest adequately in its roads, railways, digital infrastructure or
defence; spending on education and other social services also suffers. Pressed on whether
he will seek to change it, Mr Merz will say only that “I’m open to discuss that, but it is not
our first approach.”
Insiders say that work on the debt brake is under way, but that Mr Merz does not want to
say so openly because German voters are a frugal lot. Anything more than a minor tweak
will be contentious and difficult. It would be better for Mr Merz to signal now that he wants
to be bold. Ideally he would seek to scrap the debt brake altogether, and say so. Being clear
today would also strengthen his hand in coalition talks, which may otherwise land in the
mushy middle ground.
This same incrementalism runs through much of what Mr Merz says. Even if talks between
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin lead to a ceasefire in Ukraine, Russia will remain an
existential threat to Europe. Mr Merz and his fellow European leaders should be especially
concerned that Mr Trump looks as if he means to negotiate over their heads.
NATO members have a target to spend 2% of GDP on defence each year. Germany was
always a laggard, but after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Mr Scholz established a
special fund to top up spending to the mark, which Germany now (just) meets. That fund
will run out in the next couple of years. Given the threat from Russia, 2% is no longer
enough. After a ceasefire, Mr Trump is likely to want to reduce America’s commitment to
NATO. The experts’ consensus is that 3.5% of GDP needs to be the new benchmark. Mr
Merz declines to commit to this, and firmly discourages talk of a joint European bond to pay
for more defence spending. But if the EU’s biggest and richest member is not leading on
rearmament, no one except the brave Poles and Balts on the front lines of the next war will
be ambitious either.
The other crisis confronting Mr Merz and the wider EU is immigration. The toxic
perception that Europe’s borders are not secure has driven voters in many countries to
support extreme parties, making it far harder to form stable moderate governments. Mr
Merz has been bold here, but in a ham-fisted way. By introducing a non-binding motion
into the Bundestag calling for a breach of Germany’s commitments to passport-free travel
in Europe, he achieved nothing. The vote passed with the support of the AfD, breaking a
taboo against co-operation, galvanising his opponents, disquieting supporters and
demonstrating a worryingly poor sense of what it is to lead.
Too often, Mr Merz behaves as if the hard part will be to get elected. Yet governing will be
much harder. To command his coalition and to carry through difficult reforms in a time of
turmoil, he will need a mandate for sweeping change. So far, he has been too timid to ask
for one. ■
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The Paris discord

After DeepSeek, America and the EU are

getting AI wrong
Europe has a chance to catch up, whereas America should ease up
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

THE ATTEMPT at global harmony ended in cacophony. As Emmanuel Macron’s AI summit

drew to a close on February 11th J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, bluntly set out an
America-first vision for artificial intelligence (AI), castigated Europe for being too rule-
bound and left before the usual group photograph. EU countries, for their part, struck a
collaborative tone with China and the global south, while stressing the need to limit the
risks of using AI.
Both Europe and America should rethink their approach. After the work by DeepSeek,
China’s hotshot model-maker, Europe has been given an unexpected chance to catch up—if
it can cast off its regulatory straitjacket. America can no longer behave as if it has a
monopoly on AI. It should change how it wields power over its allies.
The pace of innovation is astonishing. Barely six months ago AI looked as if it needed a
technological breakthrough to become widely affordable. Since then reasoning and
efficiency techniques have emerged, enabling DeepSeek to develop models close to the
frontier even though it cannot use cutting-edge American chips. And DeepSeek is just
exhibit A. Researchers everywhere are racing to make AI more efficient. Those at Stanford
and the University of Washington, for instance, have trained models more cheaply still.
Once there were concerns that the world did not contain enough data to train advanced
systems. Now the use of synthetic data seems to be having good results·.
For Europe, which looked hopelessly behind in AI, this is a golden opportunity. In contrast
to Google’s search engines, where network effects mean that a winner takes all, no law of
computing or economics will stop European firms from catching up. Better policy can help
close the gap. Mr Macron is rightly encouraging investment in data centres·. But just as
important is cutting through the red tape that prevents companies from innovating and
adopting AI. The EU’s AI Act is fearsomely stringent: a startup offering an AI tutoring
service, by one account, must set up risk-management systems, conduct an impact
assessment and undergo an inspection, as well as jumping through other hoops.
Another hurdle is privacy rules. Even big tech firms, with their huge compliance teams,
now launch their AI products in Europe with a delay. Imagine the costs for startups.
German manufacturers sit on a wealth of proprietary data that could feed productivity-
enhancing AI tools. But fear of breaching regulations deters them. A wise relaxation of
rules, as well as harmonised enforcement, would help Europe exploit AI’s potential.
Uncle Sam needs to wake up, too. China’s advances suggest that America has less monopoly
power over AI simply by having a hold over cutting-edge chips. Instead, it needs to attract
the world’s best talent, however distasteful that may be to MAGA Republicans.
America should also change how it engages with its allies. In Paris Mr Vance rightly warned
against the use of Chinese infrastructure (and the fact that China signed the summit’s
declaration on AI governance may explain why America declined to). But America would
more successfully discourage the adoption of Chinese AI if it were more willing for its
friends to use its technology. In his final days in office Joe Biden proposed strict AI controls
that would hinder exports even to partners like India. Revising those would nudge
countries to use American tech rather than pushing them into China’s embrace. American
AI now faces competition. If it wants to reign supreme, Uncle Sam will have to entice, not
threaten. ■
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Words before war

Countering China’s diplomatic coup

China has turned much of the global south against Taiwan. That could be laying the ground
for forced unification
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

IN JUST A few weeks the Trump administration has unleashed a dizzying number of
initiatives and controversies abroad, from imposing tariffs and cutting America’s
international aid budgets to starting talks with Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine and
reimposing “maximum pressure” on Iran. Yet America’s biggest long-term challenge
remains China and, as we report, amid the turmoil of America’s election campaign in 2024
and the disruption of Donald Trump’s first weeks in office, the People’s Republic has been
busy strengthening its position.
Barely noticed, China has pulled off a diplomatic coup by turning more of the world against
the self-governing island of Taiwan·. Most countries, including Western ones, recognise
China rather than Taiwan. Until recently, most of them also either acknowledged that China
claimed sovereignty over Taiwan, advocating a peaceful resolution of the dispute, or took
no position on the question. But over the past 18 months a large number of countries in the
global south have signed up to a new diplomatic position. They now support “all” efforts by
China to unify the island with the mainland. The Economist reckons that 70 countries have
now endorsed this harder language.
Such a tweak may seem semantic. But it matters because Taiwan is already a flash-point
and the new language offers China diplomatic protection if it uses force. The Biden
administration made great efforts to renew America’s alliances in Asia, partly to deter a
Chinese attack on Taiwan. Even so, the situation remains delicate. At times Joe Biden
appeared to depart from the intricate American position of “strategic ambiguity”. This is
aimed at discouraging China from attacking, but without emboldening Taiwan so much that
it declares independence. Before America’s elections, China held military exercises that
simulated a devastating blockade of Taiwan.
Since taking office, Mr Trump has not laid out his policy on Taiwan, though he has
threatened to impose tariffs on its chipmaking industry. His administration includes China
hawks, such as Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and cheerleaders for China, such as Elon
Musk. On February 7th, after talks between Mr Trump and Ishiba Shigeru, the Japanese
prime minister, the two used tougher language than usual over Taiwan, saying that they
“opposed any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion”. But at
points in the past Mr Trump has appeared to belittle Taiwan’s desire to withstand Chinese
bullying. He may yet be open to a deal that sells out Taiwan in return for concessions from
China.
A full invasion of the island by China is possible, and Xi Jinping, China’s president, has asked
the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to go to war by 2027. Another option would be a
quarantine, or inspection regime, that seeks to cripple Taiwan’s economy while falling
short of an act of war.
China’s diplomatic effort appears to be aimed at minimising the censure it would face in
either scenario. By getting much of the world to formally legitimise “all” action taken by
China, Mr Xi may hope to make it harder for America to enforce sanctions against it.
Already, the Western embargo of Russia, which lacks UN backing, has proved impossible to
enforce fully around the world. Any attempt to impose similar measures on China in a
Taiwan crisis may be even less successful. Alongside this pre-emptive lawfare, China is also
seeking to increase its self-sufficiency in everything from semiconductors to food·.
Mr Trump’s return to the White House, along with his resentful and transactional America-
first worldview, raises questions about America’s commitment to its partners in Asia. The
diplomatic coup over Taiwan is a reminder that, amid these doubts, China is busy making
plans.■
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Blind Britain

The Lucy Letby case shows systemic

failure and a national malaise
Whether or not the neonatal nurse is guilty of murder, her saga is revealing
2 月 13, 2025 05:18 上午

IT IS HARD to know which is more shocking. Is it the murder of seven babies and
attempted killing of seven others at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England,
for which Lucy Letby, who was a nurse there, is in prison for life? Or is it the possibility that
Ms Letby is the victim of a miscarriage of justice? It looks increasingly likely that her
convictions, in 2023 and 2024, were questionable. An international panel of experts has
raised serious doubts about the medical evidence—and about whether the babies’ deaths
were even murder·. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent body
that probes potential wrongful convictions, may refer the case back to the Court of Appeal.
Whether or not Ms Letby is guilty, her saga exposes deep failures, as well as an overarching
malaise afflicting Britain.
One area of failure is the justice system. British courts are not alone in finding it hard to
interpret statistics (how likely was the spike in baby deaths at the Countess of Chester to
have arisen by chance?) or to know what weight to put on the testimony of expert
witnesses, especially when the evidence is entirely circumstantial, as in the Letby case. In
America examples of dodgy science leading to the imprisonment of innocent people are all
too common: deceptive forensic evidence and expert testimony played a part in 44 of the
223 exonerations officially recorded there in 2022. But Britain seems to be adept at
suppressing doubts about verdicts. It took an article in the New Yorker and international
health specialists to prompt more British voices, including this newspaper, to question Ms
Letby’s conviction.

The CCRC is part of the problem. In 2021 a cross-party inquiry concluded that it was “too
deferential to the Court of Appeal”. Critics say its budget is too small, its approach too
cautious and, crucially, its mandate too restrictive (it can refer cases for appeal only if it
sees a “real possibility” that a conviction will not be upheld). The commission was set up in
1997 after a series of high-profile blunders to restore faith in the justice system. It is not
succeeding·.
A second failure is in the use of public inquiries. These often drag on interminably—such as
those into the covid-19 pandemic or the Post Office scandal—only to produce
recommendations that are largely ignored. An inquiry chaired by Dame Kate Thirlwall has
been looking into what went wrong at the Countess of Chester hospital. But its remit does
not include the Letby verdict, so risks being pointless.
The third, and craziest, failure relates to the National Health Service. The Letby case has
highlighted its dismal state. In some years the NHS spends more on the costs of harm in the
area of maternity than it does on maternity care itself. At the Countess of Chester, the spike
in baby deaths led to a search for a culprit before it triggered an alert to the regulator, the
Care Quality Commission. But it may be that the culprit was the system. It is possible that
what were thought to have been the crimes of a killer nurse were the result of shoddy care
within the NHS that is far from unique.
In all this a common thread is that poor standards have set in to the point that perceptions
become dulled. Hence the overarching malaise. In worrying ways Britain is blind. The
public is slow to see that evidence is questionable. The fog around an inquiry may be so
dense that people cannot spot fatal flaws. Vision in the health service may be too blurred to
distinguish between systemic failure and murder. Yes, justice should be blind. But the
Letby case shows that Britons need to keep their eyes wide open. ■
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Letters
 Letters to the editor
On diversifying portfolios, the London Gazette, exit taxes, social media, red tape, braindance :: A selection of
correspondence

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On diversifying portfolios, the London Gazette, exit taxes, social media, red tape, braindance

Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence
2 月 13, 2025 05:24 上午

Letters are welcome via email to [email protected]

Stocks and bonds
Buttonwood’s column on February 1st argued that diversifying portfolios across asset
classes has become harder in recent years. Fair enough. But there are two other points to
consider. First, the stock and bond correlation is determined by the nature of the shocks
hitting economies. The recent positive correlation may be temporary, driven by
unprecedented large supply-side shocks, such as the European energy crisis and the
supply-chain disruptions from the pandemic.
Modern monetary policy based on an inflation-targeting framework is supportive of a
negative stock-bond correlation. We expect the negative correlation to return. The reason
being that equity cashflows tend to be driven by economic growth. And in response to
growth above trend, central banks tend to raise rates, leading to a positive correlation
between growth and rates, and thereby a negative correlation between equities and bonds.
The second point is that correlation, although important, is not everything. Investors also
care about the protection that bonds offer in equity downturns. For instance, during the
global financial crisis of 2007-09, global equities fell by over 50% and global bonds rose by
6%. Bonds tend to act as shock absorbers when you need them the most. Average
correlation does not capture this feature.
Giulio Renzi RicciHead of asset allocation
Vanguard Europe
London
Read all about it
Historians do indeed love the London Gazette, Britain’s oldest newspaper (“Published by
Authority”, February 1st). But it is far more than just “a treasure trove of trivia”. Its
advertisements and notices are vital evidence of the social and economic history of Britain
from 1665. Unfortunately, its search function is woefully inadequate, based on an Optical
Character Reader from the dark ages of digital scanning, which scrambles letters, and
leaves sizeable gaps in its publication years without scanning at all. To be properly
appreciated and used systematically it needs to be re-digitised in full to current standards.
Jonathan BarryLudwig Maximilian University of Munich

Pay before you leave

You argued that exit taxes, which, broadly, are paid when someone moves money out of a
country, are dysfunctional (“In search of growth”, January 25th). Although it is true that
exit taxes do not raise much revenue, they can protect the capital-gains tax base. Without
exit taxation, countries run the risk that paying capital-gains taxes becomes a voluntary act
of the less mobile, while the wealthy mobile escape by planning to emigrate.
To support the principle of capital-gains taxation on realisation rather than on accrual, a
compromise must be made when individuals emigrate. A stricter exit-tax regime imposes a
burden on illiquid entrepreneurs, whereas a laxer regime risks avoidance of taxation. Well-
designed exit taxation of gains accrued while living in the country can support the tax
system and ensure that stayers and leavers are treated similarly.
Kristoffer BergLecturer and fellow
Trinity College
University of Cambridge

Social-media effects
I take issue with your review of Nicholas Carr’s latest critical book on technology (“The
bloom is off the rose”, February 1st). You suggested that research and insights into how
social media affect young people are not worth another weighty tome. Actually, we don’t
have enough of these books. As a father of three teenagers I have seen how their use of
social media changes them. Social media do provide opportunities, but teenagers’ brains
seem to be ill-equipped to cope with the fancy new features designed by the engineers and
product managers employed by Snap, Meta and the rest. And it looks like it’s by design. Mr
Carr’s book is welcome amid an unequal fight that is changing societies.
Edouard ChabrolLuxembourg

A global mess of red tape

There was a contradiction in your issue of February 1st between the leader praising
deregulation (“The revolt against regulation”) and the leader in favour of the global
minimum corporate tax (“Tax harmonies”). The latter is the most demanding tax regulation
the world has ever seen on such a scale.
Very few tax scholars or practitioners can master this massive set of extremely complicated
rules in any detail. When they were adopted by the European Parliament there was
scarcely any debate. That may partly be due to the fact that hardly any of the
parliamentarians were willing to expose their uncertainty. African tax lawyers have said
that the complexity of the new rules is simply beyond their tax administrations.
In Norway representatives of the tax authorities have, off the record, said that the potential
tax revenues will never exceed the costs of implementing the rules. And that is not taking
into account the compliance costs for corporate taxpayers.
America has not adopted the global minimum corporate tax. So this will be one more
example of the European Union overregulating in spite of the clear advice in Mario Draghi’s
report on EU competitiveness that productivity should be the priority.
There is one clear winner from the global minimum tax: the big accounting firms. In total
they are set to make literally hundreds of millions of dollars from assisting the taxpayers.
But that is not an argument in favour of the tax, clearly the opposite.
Ole Gjems-OnstadProfessor emeritus of tax law
Norwegian Business School
Oslo
You praised Argentina’s deregulation efforts, and seemingly accepted the government’s
view that all regulation stems from some form of government capture by private interests.
By equating regulation with burdensome red tape, you overlooked its crucial role in
addressing market failures. You gave an example of unnecessary costly “standards on the
flammability of children’s pyjamas”. As a parent, I can easily imagine that if properly
enforced, such standards would be a source of substantial consumer welfare.
Javier AsensioAssociate professor
Department of Applied Economics
Autonomous University of Barcelona
I’m reminded of Bernard Woolley’s slogans to make people look kindly upon bureaucracy:
“Administration saves the nation!”; “Red tape is fun!”; “Red tape holds the nation together!”
Forty years on, “Yes Minister” remains as relevant as it ever was.
Vincent PoirierQuebec City

Selected ambient works

Legion of followers of braindance may have spat out their cornflakes when they saw their
strange but nonetheless very real music genre declared all but non-existent in the august
pages of The Economist (“(Don’t) name that tune”, January 25th). Braindance does exist,
sold perhaps millions of records, and was the odd brainchild of Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label,
which even some of the once hip but now slightly less fleet-of-foot CEOs and business
leaders who read your newspaper will surely remember.
Robert RowlandsNottingham

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By Invitation
 The neglect of Asia was the great failure of Yalta, writes
Stephen Kotkin
Jaw-jawing at Yalta, 80 years ago :: Black grouse and caviar helped Stalin get much of what he wanted, but his Red Army
counted for more, says a notable historian of Russia

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Jaw-jawing at Yalta, 80 years ago

The neglect of Asia was the great failure of

Yalta, writes Stephen Kotkin
Black grouse and caviar helped Stalin get much of what he wanted, but his Red Army counted
for more, says a notable historian of Russia
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午

Archive 1945 is a project republishing The Economist’s original reporting on the final year of
the second world war. Eighty years on, follow the course of the conflict week by week, in new
instalments every Friday. In our entry of February 7th, we looked back at our coverage of
Yalta.
EIGHTY YEARS ago the Big Three—America, Britain and the Soviet Union—assembled for
eight days of jaw-jawing at the Crimean resort of Yalta, their second gathering to finish the
second world war and adjudicate the post-war order. Yalta proved to be a vastly grander
spectacle than the preceding meeting, in late 1943 in Tehran, with far larger delegations.
Yet the results proved to be less significant, precisely because of Tehran’s decisions. “Yalta
made less history than is generally believed,” the left-wing journalist Louis Fischer noted
just over a quarter-century on, voicing the new conventional wisdom. He was only half
right, writing as if Asia did not exist.
Three old men worn down by the war gathered at Yalta: the imperialist and anti-
communist Winston Churchill (71 years old), the communist Josef Stalin (67) and the anti-
imperialist Franklin Roosevelt (63), who, although the youngest, had congestive heart
failure and was to die that April. It was Adolf Hitler who brought the three together, and he
was soon dead, too.
As Roosevelt waffled on about rich countries needing to help poorer ones, Churchill looked
bored, while Stalin doodled. The drink and the delicacies—black grouse, partridge, venison
and caviar—were sensational amid severe wartime deprivations. The despot’s Georgian-
Russian hospitality came in handy, but his Red Army was handier. It stood within striking
distance of Berlin, while the Americans and the British were fighting in the forests of the
Ardennes to regain lost territory.
Roosevelt was the first sitting American president to set foot in Russia. Having travelled a
third of the way around the Earth, he achieved both of his main strategic goals. The first
was Stalin’s assent to the formation of a United Nations, with Soviet participation. That win
was announced at the conference.
Unannounced, though, was a secret deal for the Soviets to enter the Pacific war against
Japan in exchange for significant territorial concessions already set out at Tehran.
Roosevelt was on the verge of a monumental victory over Nazi Germany, thanks in no small
measure to, in effect, renting the Soviet land army in exchange for lorries, radios and Spam.
(Best estimates suggest the Soviets lost more troops in Europe in the few weeks leading up
to Yalta and just after than the Americans lost during the entire war in both European and
Pacific theatres.) But he still faced a prolonged fight against Japan. The American president
reasoned that Soviet territorial aggrandisement was embedded in victory, and that Stalin’s
appetites did not exceed those of the tsar in the first world war.
Churchill aimed to win a place for France in the victors’ occupation of Germany, secure a
democratic Poland and keep Britain relevant. He got the first. “He is trying to forget that he
has achieved little,” the prime minister’s doctor observed as the parties left Yalta.
Stalin, a cold-blooded murderer and consummate charmer, relied for his aims on the
correlation of forces. He obtained grudging recognition of his demand for German
reparations, which, of course, he could (and did) seize anyway, carting off to Moscow
everything of value. He got a formal invitation to smash his way into north-east Asia, which
no one could have stopped. And he had already occupied Poland.
Like Churchill, Stalin signed up to Roosevelt’s Declaration of Liberated Europe, which,
echoing the Atlantic Charter of 1941, called for Europeans “to create democratic
institutions of their own choice”. The despot could apply his own definition of democracy.
As for the UN, Roosevelt granted the Soviet Union a veto over its decisions.
In public, Roosevelt and his aides oversold the agreement at Yalta as a new dawn; in
private, he described it as the grim best they could manage under the circumstances. Yalta’s
celebratory mood descended into recrimination, disillusion and second-guessing. A cold
war came to replace the wartime coalition.
To this day many analysts insist that cold war could have been avoided, as if it were a mere
misunderstanding between powers; such analysts squabble only over whom to blame. In
fact, the cold war was an expression of a fundamental clash of interests and, at a still deeper
level, of values. The protagonists who stood up to the Soviet Union without provoking an
armed conflict deserve credit.
Almost no one had wanted a cold war. The idea that, in 1946, an American diplomat wrote
a long telegram to Washington and a just-ousted British prime minister delivered a speech
in Missouri and, voilà, the cold war was launched, is nuts. Reluctance to wage a new global
struggle ran deep after the catastrophe of the second world war.
Stalin’s repeated actions, however, ensured that the West could not live in denial for ever. A
Soviet-backed communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 would seem hard to pooh-pooh,
yet many did so. A Soviet blockade of Berlin later that year did not overcome entrenched
opponents of confrontation. It took North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950, finally,
to break the remaining hesitancy.
Options for great-power rivalry are not infinite. The worst option is hot war. Another is
appeasement—which, as Churchill once quipped, delivers dishonour and war anyway.
Then there’s the seduction of Pygmalion, whereby the leading power seeks to transform a
street urchin into a lady, or, in the jargon, into a responsible stakeholder in the
international system. This leaves only cold war, whose decisive advantages are that it is not
hot and that it works.
Getting to cold war constitutes an achievement. It even allows for significant co-operation
between bitter rivals. And in an age of mutually assured nuclear destruction, cold war
increases the odds of the survival of all life on the planet. A decisive disadvantage, though,
is that a cold war between great powers often means hot wars for others, whether as
proxies or targets. That remains of burning relevance today.
Looking back at Yalta’s eight plenary sessions, we see that Poland came up at seven, while
China barely entered the deliberations. The chief exception, in the face of an incredulous
Churchill and Stalin, was Roosevelt’s stubborn elevation of poor, war-torn China to one of
the great powers, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Yet neither Roosevelt
nor his successors had a clue how to stabilise a vast country ravaged by Japan’s aggression
and rent by internal political divisions. The relative neglect of Asia was the great failure of
Yalta. Poland’s fate was tragic but of no strategic moment in the world order.
Stalin’s participation in the spoils of the Pacific war required that he conclude a treaty with
the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek. His representatives travelled to
Moscow and got a surprisingly advantageous agreement. Chiang would squander the
opportunity, however, failing to grasp Stalin’s utter dismissiveness towards the Chinese
Communists and his immense distrust of Mao Zedong.
Asia was riven by four post-war partitions: in China, over Taiwan; in Vietnam, informally at
the 16th parallel and formally at the 17th; in Japan, at the Southern Kuriles or Northern
Territories, but not the home islands, thanks to adroit manoeuvering by the Americans; and
in Korea, at the 38th parallel, following maladroit American manoeuvering. In all cases, war
or civil war broke out to enact, prevent or overcome actual or prospective partitions.
Before Yalta gave way gradually to a cold war that, given the alternatives, was necessary
and welcome, it enabled finishing the rout of the second world war’s chief aggressors,
Germany and Japan. In the fullness of time, Germany attained peaceful unification. Japan
joined the Western alliance immediately (as did Poland, eventually). Yalta’s failures over
Asia, unlike those over Europe, were real.■
Stephen Kotkin, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is a scholar of
Russian and global history and a biographer of Stalin.

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Briefing
 America’s military supremacy is in jeopardy
Disrupting the Pentagon :: To win future wars it needs new weapons, new suppliers and a new system of procurement

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Disrupting the Pentagon

America’s military supremacy is in

jeopardy
To win future wars it needs new weapons, new suppliers and a new system of procurement
2 月 13, 2025 09:11 上午 | WASHINGTON, DC

ON THE FRONT lines in Ukraine, war is not nearly as foggy as it used to be. Satellites and
drones equipped with many kinds of sensors are always scanning every inch of the
battlefield, while artificial intelligence (AI) instantly interprets the data they gather. It is far
easier than it would once have been for either side to spot and attack anything that moves
—one reason why big, old-fashioned offensives have made so little headway.
America has played a big part in these changes. It has helped Ukrainian forces build drones
that are more capable yet cheaper than those deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, for
instance, and develop an AI “kill chain” in which targets are identified and munitions
guided to them, often deep behind enemy lines. American firms, too, are in the vanguard of
this new era. They visit Ukraine regularly to observe how their weapons are performing
and adapt them accordingly. Private capital is flooding into American companies that aim
to disrupt the conventional battlefield·. In December Palantir, a data firm, became the
world’s most valuable defence contractor, supplanting RTX, an aerospace giant. Palantir’s
market capitalisation was a fraction of RTX’s when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Now it
is much bigger (see chart 1).
Asleep at the cutting edge
Yet for all America’s expertise and innovation, not to mention its vast defence budget, its
own armed forces are struggling to adapt. Mark Milley, until late 2023 America’s most
senior soldier, argues that the military machine that he oversaw for four years is, in
essence, unfit for purpose. In an article he co-wrote last year with Eric Schmidt, a former
CEO of Google and backer of a fund investing in military technology, he notes that American
firms make the best AI systems, but its armed forces struggle to absorb and deploy them.
Troops lack the equipment and training to cope with a drone-saturated battlefield. It takes
America years to buy weapons that are evolving month by month. The Pentagon, the pair
conclude, needs “a systemic overhaul” in how it fights, what it buys and how it does its
shopping.

America’s new president seems to agree. This week Donald Trump announced that he was
directing Elon Musk, his woodchipper-wielding agent of change, to take on the Pentagon.
Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, complained in his confirmation hearing last month
that the Pentagon is “too insular [and] tries to block new technologies from coming in”. The
new national security adviser, Mike Waltz, recently told an interviewer, “We do need great
minds and we do need business leaders to go in there and absolutely reform the Pentagon’s
acquisition process.” Mr Trump is appointing tech types, such as Emil Michael, a former
executive at Uber, to senior defence jobs.
They have their work cut out. To remain a world-beating military power, capable of waging
and winning a war with China, they will need to change three things. The first is the armed
forces themselves: how they fight and what they fight with. The second is the defence
industry that supplies them, which needs rebalancing towards newer, more innovative
companies. The third is the least understood and the most resistant to change, but vital to
fixing everything else: the pork-barrel politics of defence spending.
There is a heated debate about how much change is needed within the armed forces
themselves. Some observers believe that technology is hyped and that orthodox measures
of military strength, such as sound tactics, troop numbers and ammunition stockpiles will
remain more important. AI will struggle with complex tasks and commanders will not trust
it, they argue; difficult terrain will flummox robots. America, this camp thinks, should be
pumping money into a bigger army, more shipbuilding and more high-end missiles.
At the other extreme are radicals who believe that everything has changed. An outspoken
exponent of this view is Mr Musk. He recently responded to a Chinese drone display by
harrumphing, “Some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35”—implying
that swarms of cheap drones could easily defeat a vastly more expensive warplane. A
similar, if less abrasive assessment can be found in “Unit X”, by Raj Shah and Christopher
Kirchoff, in which the authors describe their struggle a decade ago to establish a forward-
looking arm of the Pentagon called the Defence Innovation Unit (DIU). They, too, would do
away with entire classes of weaponry. “In a world where hypersonic weapons and anti-ship
missiles can easily destroy a navy vessel,” they write, “it no longer makes sense to spend
billions of dollars building destroyers and battleships.”
In the middle are more cautious modernisers. They believe it is too early to shred
America’s existing force structure entirely. AI and autonomy have not yet advanced to the
point where software can handle all the tasks of a human pilot, they insist. Uncrewed
surface vessels have worked well in the Black Sea, but would find it hard to cross the Pacific
or navigate mid-Atlantic storms. The Chinese drone swarm, they point out, was a
choreographed light show which would have fallen to pieces in the face of jamming. Physics
imposes hard limits: a small drone will never be able to carry serious firepower across
oceans while evading Chinese air defences. “Not everything needs to be gold plated and
have all of the capabilities,” says Aditi Kumar, who was DIU’s deputy director until January
20th, “but some systems do.”
In this view, America needs what experts call a “high-low mix”, in which a modest number
of complex and high-end platforms and munitions operate alongside a much larger number
of cheaper, simpler and mostly uncrewed weapons. Fancy weapons are still essential—
American ATACMS and Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles have made mincemeat of
Russian air defences in Crimea, for instance. But they can be used to clear the way for
cheaper ones. Or both sorts can be used in tandem, with “loyal wingmen” drones flying
alongside crewed jets, for example.
The Goldilocks army
The optimal mix of forces is hotly debated. The question of which high-end weapons to
scrap and which to keep is especially delicate. Speaking last year, Mr Milley proposed
doubling the number of submarines. These are some of the most complex and expensive
weapons in America’s arsenal, but their stealthiness means that they can survive on a
sensor-saturated battlefield. But he cast doubt on aircraft-carriers. “We’re going to have a
ship that sails with 5,000…sailors on it and the thing will be dead in the water in 20 years,
for sure,” he argued. “We can do all the electronic magic [to jam missiles], but the bottom
line is: it’s a big piece of steel that saw its best day at Midway.” Mr Milley was similarly
doubtful about the F-35: “do we really think a manned aircraft is going to be winning the
skies in 2088?” The risk of this approach is that if America finds itself at war before 2030, it
could be caught short—equipped with too few legacy systems like the F-35 and not enough
new tech to compensate.
Regardless of what America buys, the next question is who should build it. American
defence contracts typically involve one buyer, the government, which sets the
requirements and carries all the costs of research and development (R&D), which helps
explain its conservatism about what it buys. This set-up allows private firms to take on
projects with huge costs and long timelines, which would otherwise be too risky: think
aircraft-carriers or bombers. But it is a hopelessly unsuitable approach to buying smaller,
software-infused gear that has to be updated constantly to remain effective.
In October Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir, published a 4,000-word
manifesto titled “The Defence Reformation”. He lamented that the number of big defence
firms selling weapons to the Pentagon has shrunk from 51 in 1993 to five today (see chart
2). “Consolidation bred conformity,” he argued, “and pushed out the crazy founders and
innovative engineers.” It also changed the identity and ethos of arms-makers. Mr Sankar,
who turned down a top job in Mr Trump’s Pentagon, notes that before the fall of the Berlin
Wall only 6% of American defence spending went to specialist arms-makers. Most
contracts went to companies that had both commercial and military arms. Ford made
satellites until 1990, he notes, just as General Mills, better known for its cereal and cookies,
made guidance systems for ICBMs.
The commercial world kept them competitive and forced them to invest in research and
development at their own risk. Today specialist defence contractors account for 86% of
defence spending. Michael Brown, a former head of DIU who is now a partner at Shield
Capital, a venture-capital fund, notes that two-thirds of the business of the top ten suppliers
to the Pentagon is defence only; in China, the equivalent figure is 30%. “Think about the
difference in your mentality as a company.”
As weapons become increasingly reliant on data and code, both the Pentagon and its
suppliers are under pressure to absorb the tech world’s risk-taking mindset and rapid
development in the form of frequent upgrades and increasing use of AI. “We’re taking
cheaper, commercial off-the-shelf components, using software provided by the
government,” says Ms Kumar, referring to DIU’s drone development, “and integrating the
two and fielding a capability that is substantially lower cost than what the department has
been able to do before.”
Big Silicon Valley firms are coming around to working with the Department of Defence. On
February 4th Google reversed a long-standing policy barring the use of its AI tools for
military purposes. Tech giants and top AI model-makers, such as OpenAI, Anthropic and
Meta, have also embraced military business. “They didn’t want to do anything with DoD,”
says Yili Bajraktari, who used to work at the Pentagon and now leads the Special
Competitive Studies Project, a research group. “Now you have the tech companies all in.
They are gung-ho about DoD.” So are investors. Venture-capital deals in the defence
industry have grown 18-fold over the past decade, from $500m in 2014 to about $8.7bn in
2024, according to Bain & Company, a consulting firm.
Money can’t buy you readiness
It will be difficult, however, to harness corporate America’s enthusiasm using the
government’s procurement system. America’s defence budget, at over $800bn a year, is far
and away the world’s biggest, but allocating it is a ludicrously slow and political process. In
theory, the administration lays out its defence strategy, the service chiefs tell the secretary
of defence what they need to fulfil those goals and the administration then requests the
sums necessary from Congress. In practice, things are not nearly so simple. Service chiefs
sometimes lobby Congress directly to approve pet projects. Lawmakers often prevent the
Pentagon from retiring obsolete weapons if their home state will be harmed. And Congress
micromanages, allowing the Pentagon to move around no more than $6bn within the
budget, and even then only with the approval of senior members of Congress for each slice
of $15m or more.
The most baleful consequence of all this is interminable delay. Drones in Ukraine have their
software, sensors and radios swapped out every six weeks or so. Year-old AI is archaic. Yet
the gap between the start of the Pentagon’s budget process and any money appearing is—
at a minimum—two years. Political deadlock means that budgets are rarely passed on time
anyway, leading to “continuing resolutions” in which new programmes cannot be started.
Last year saw a six-month delay. Simplifying and accelerating all this, says Mike Horowitz,
until recently a deputy assistant secretary of defence, is “the secret to unlocking the
innovation problem”.
It is possible to persuade Congress to pay for innovative new schemes, but it is hard work.
In August 2023 Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defence at the time, announced that
the Pentagon planned to buy “multiple thousands” of easily upgradeable drones to be ready
within two years. This “Replicator initiative” marks “huge progress”, argues Mr Horowitz,
who helped run it. “Compared to ‘Pentagon standard’,” he argues, meaning overpriced and
slow-to-arrive kit, “Replicator is delivering a lot of capability fast at a low relative price
point.” Mr Brown notes that drones with a pricetag of $17,000 apiece during his tenure
(2018-22) now cost less than a tenth of that.
But to talk Congress into allocating just $500m to Replicator—about half of one percent of
the defence budget—Ms Hicks and her team had to conduct nearly 40 briefings. Moreover,
this sort of streamlined procurement is not catching on across the Pentagon, notes Mr
Brown: “That’s the part that’s been disappointing.” Another example is Other Transaction
Authority (OTA), a procedural innovation that allows departments to buy things without
getting bogged down in the Federal Acquisition Regulation, a 2,000-page Talmudic set of
rules that has spawned a priesthood of procurement officers. The Pentagon has spent
$86bn via OTAs to date, mostly over the past five years, notes Austin Gray, who runs a
defence startup. But their use has now “plateaued”, laments Mr Brown.
The Pentagon’s lawyers are wary of rocking the boat, Mr Brown says. “That kind of risk-
averse mentality applies to so many things at DoD: don’t take the risk and stick your neck
out, because it could get chopped off.” Mr Sankar of Palantir recalls that when ChatGPT was
released to public acclaim in 2022 his firm offered to include a similar chatbot free of
charge in a product it was making for the army. The army refused because it had not
included a formal requirement for such a feature in the original contract.

The future is already here

Rocking boats is a speciality of Mr Trump and Mr Musk. Many in their orbit have big ideas
about reform. Mr Hegseth has promised “to hire a lot of smart people”. Even some former
officials from Joe Biden’s presidency believe that Mr Trump could shake things up for the
better at the Pentagon. “If the Trump folks pursue the innovation that some of them say
they want,” says Mr Horowitz, “there’s a real opportunity—if they can effectively operate
the Pentagon bureaucracy.”
Destruction +/- creativity
That is a big if. At the moment the new administration’s focus seems to be cutting costs
rather than reforming the process of procurement. “We’re going to find billions, hundreds
of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse,” Mr Trump said of military spending this week. Mr
Hegseth, for his part, seems concerned chiefly with rooting out wokeness in the ranks,
although he is said to have recently met the CEO of Scale AI, a data firm. But even if he
harnesses the brightest minds in IT, they may not have a winning formula for wrangling
obstreperous members of Congress.
Yet the task could scarcely be more pressing. “I don’t think we understand the sense of
urgency,” warns Mr Bajraktari. “In Washington there is not a sense that there’s a war in
continental Europe…and we might likely have a war in Asia.” America’s armed forces will
need a drastic overhaul if America is to remain the world’s pre-eminent power. The sort of
innovation that is required should come easily, given corporate America’s strengths. Yet
politics, as usual, is getting in the way. “Everybody understands the problem we’re in right
now,” says Mr Bajraktari. “We’re the number one global power in
software—and our military is not able to use it.” ■
Correction (February 13th 2025): The original version of this story misstated the proportion
of the business of the biggest suppliers to China’s department of defence that is defence only.
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Asia
 South-East Asian producers are being hammered by
Chinese imports
A tidal wave of trade :: Deep ties with China stymie a protectionist response
 Is MAGA great for India?
America and India :: Ahead of an Oval Office confab, we explore the next chapter of the Trump-Modi bromance
 New Zealand and the Cook Islands fall out over China
Three’s a crowd :: That is New Zealand’s second diplomatic dispute in the Pacific this year
 Can Indonesia make its Top Gun dreams a reality?
Banyan :: An aircraft-carrier is the last thing its navy needs

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A tidal wave of trade

South-East Asian producers are being

hammered by Chinese imports
Deep ties with China stymie a protectionist response
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur

IN BANGKOK, THAILAND’S capital, a shopkeeper hawking trendy clothes made in Vietnam

and Bangladesh complains that business has slowed to a crawl. In Indonesia plans are
being hatched to steer more ships to its eastern ports. And in Malaysia, one politician
decries a “burdensome” new tax that will hurt the poor. Behind all three seemingly
unrelated instances is a deluge of Chinese goods bearing down on the world. China’s
neighbours in South-East Asia are on the front line.
The phenomenon begins in China. Because of a property slump, dispirited consumers and
the state’s resistance to large fiscal stimulus, demand is weak. In search of new drivers of
growth, China has doubled down on manufacturing. Much of this is bound for export
markets: in 2024 China’s net exports made up almost a third of GDP growth, the highest
share since 1997.
This dynamic, in which China’s sluggish demand and strong production spills abroad, is not
happening evenly. As the West throws up barriers to Chinese goods, they are flowing to
emerging markets instead. In the past three years, the value of Chinese exports to the
Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has risen by 24%. Imports flowing the
other way have not grown. As a result, China’s trade surplus with ASEAN has doubled.
To some extent, rising Chinese exports to ASEAN reflect how firms have adjusted to trade
tensions between America and China. Many have added production nodes outside China,
particularly in South-East Asia. But this is not the whole story. Several lower-value-added
sectors in the region have seen a rush of Chinese import competition. To illustrate this, The
Economist has examined changes to the Chinese share of total imports for five ASEAN
countries between the first nine months of 2024 and the same period in 2022.
In aggregate, the changes look manageable: ASEAN saw a two-percentage-point rise in the
Chinese share of imports. However, a closer look at individual products reveals rapid shifts.
In two years the Chinese share of plastics imports across Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam has risen by six percentage points; for iron and steel, the
increase was 12 percentage points. Meanwhile the Chinese import surge is happening
while ASEAN’s exports to the world stagnate.
Producers in the region are squirming. In Thailand manufacturing production has fallen by
11% since December 2021. In Indonesia fears of mass layoffs in labour-intensive textiles
abound. The industry lost 80,000 jobs in 2024, according to the country’s manpower
ministry. The government thinks 280,000 textile jobs are at risk this year. Smaller firms are
bearing the brunt, but larger ones are teetering, too. Sritex, a listed Indonesian giant which
sews clothes for fast-fashion groups such as H&M, has gone bankrupt; its finance director
blamed “an oversupply of textiles in China”.
Stagnation has set in more broadly. On average, industrial production in South-East Asia’s
five biggest economies (excluding rich Singapore) is stuck at the levels of 2022. The fear is
that this is only the beginning. Unrelenting pressure from China’s manufacturing
juggernaut could slowly deindustrialise South-East Asia. “Our industrial base just isn’t as
competitive as China’s,” says Burin Adulwattana at Kasikorn Bank, a Thai commercial
lender. “We lack both the financial and human capital to stop its current deterioration.”
That view is shared by some policymakers: the threat to smaller firms is nothing short of
“collapse”, Indonesia’s then-trade minister said last year.
South-East Asian governments have begun to push back. Prime targets are popular Chinese
e-commerce apps such as Lazada and TikTok Shop, which deliver goods straight from
factories to consumers. Several countries have raised taxes or tightened limits on cheap
imported goods sold online. A few Chinese-dominated product categories have been hit
with anti-dumping duties. Customs enforcers are being put on high alert for imported
goods.
Indonesia, with its long history of protectionism, has gone the furthest. It has put
restrictions on e-commerce, including banning most transactions on social-media sites
such as TikTok and stopping overseas merchants from selling on Indonesia’s online
platforms. In October Indonesia moved to take one Chinese platform, Temu, off the
country’s app stores. In recent months it has also thrown up levies on imports of iron and
textiles, among other products. On February 5th Budi Santoso, the trade minister, appeared
at a press conference flanked by armed guards showing off piles of allegedly Chinese-made
illegal clothes seized from smugglers.
The showmanship deceives. Even in the toughest trade-restricting countries, Chinese
imports continue to grow. In Indonesia and Thailand the most recent six months of data
show a 25% and 20% rise, respectively, from the previous year. And ASEAN remains
remarkably open to Chinese goods, not least thanks to a free-trade deal struck in 2002 with
China.
Since the start of 2021, ASEAN has introduced 104 new trade restrictions on Chinese
goods, including both tariffs and subsidies to offset import competition, according to Simon
Evenett of Global Trade Alert, a trade-policy monitor. That is a moderate uptick in anti-
Chinese protectionism compared with the decade before. But ASEAN’s response looks puny
when compared with the rest of the world. During the same period, Asian nations other
than those in ASEAN enacted 670 new import curbs on China; in the rest of the world
beyond Asia, it was 2,716. As a result, ASEAN’s share of new trade restrictions has fallen for
a decade (see chart).
Governments taking a more protectionist response would result in higher costs for price-
sensitive South-East Asian consumers. At Bangkok’s Chatuchak night market, vendors and
shoppers cheer the affordability of Chinese-made clothes. It is not only about price. Momo,
an older lady selling her own branded clothes produced in China, praises Chinese factories’
handiwork. In Malaysia politicians slammed last year’s 10% tax on low-value imported
goods for harming “B40”, the bottom 40% of earners.
The region’s economies are also deeply integrated with China’s. It is the largest trading
partner for nine of ten ASEAN countries, and the third-largest source of foreign-direct-
investment inflows to the bloc. Informal business ties through the “bamboo network” of the
Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia give China additional leverage, says Priyanka Kishore
of Asia Decoded, a consultancy in Singapore.
As a result, South-East Asian governments are struggling to decide what to do. In June
Indonesia’s then-trade minister announced plans to slap 100-200% across-the-board
tariffs on Chinese goods, but a week later it was walked back. “We are not targeting any
particular country, especially China,” claimed another. Ministers in Malaysia and Thailand
are similarly cautious.
More disruptions loom. Should Donald Trump ramp up tariffs on exporter economies like
ASEAN’s, the bloc could find itself caught between an America which refuses its goods and
a China which is displacing many of its own producers—leaving it bereft of a clear
economic niche. The region’s businesses should focus more on higher-value-added
services, or pivot to becoming suppliers to Chinese manufacturers, says John Lee of East-
West Futures, a consultancy in Berlin. But that seems unlikely to happen soon. ■

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America and India

Is MAGA great for India?

Ahead of an Oval Office confab, we explore the next chapter of the Trump-Modi bromance
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

Not quite a bed of roses

WHEN NARENDRA MODI walks into the White House this week, he will do so as the prime
minister of the world’s fifth-largest economy. By the end of President Donald Trump’s
second term, it may be the third. America is betting on India’s inexorable rise. In Mr
Trump’s first term, “Howdy Modi” and “Namaste Trump” mass rallies, headlined by the two
men, became a visual shorthand for a relationship which many in India hope will deepen.
But the president that Mr Modi meets now is different: more than ever he is unconstrained
by norms. Trump 2.0 is as likely to coerce partners as co-operate with them. As a result
there are more potential points of friction than India’s diplomats might like. Trade remains
a flash point. And a triumphalist America-first agenda could lead to new flare-ups over
migration, defence and technology.
The relationship rests on a bipartisan article of faith: both need each other to hedge against
China. A deadly border skirmish between China and India in 2020 pushed Delhi further
into Uncle Sam’s arms. Total trade has doubled in the past decade, to about $200bn in
2024. American firms employ 1.7m people in India. America’s economy benefits from a 5m-
strong Indian-American diaspora, of whom 80% have university degrees. Indian-origin
bosses lead Alphabet and Microsoft.
Mr Trump’s election victory has been welcomed by Indians, 84% of whom believe that he
will be good for India, the highest share among 24 countries surveyed in November 2024
by the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank. As well as geopolitical and
economic ties, he brings other benefits. Mr Trump may temper American criticism of
India’s oil purchases from Russia. He is uninterested in imparting the lessons on human
rights that have long exasperated India’s elites. And on February 10th Mr Trump signed an
executive order suspending the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which
American authorities used to launch a probe against Gautam Adani, a billionaire ally of Mr
Modi. Mr Adani faces charges in American courts. (He denies wrongdoing.)
Yet America’s hyper-assertive nationalism and desire to draw economic activity within its
borders could create stresses with India, which views itself as a wholly independent actor
rather than a partially subordinate ally, and is keen to build up its own manufacturing base.
One problem is trade. In his first term, Mr Trump cancelled India’s preferential-trading-
partner status, which grants lower or zero tariffs. He also curbed India’s Iranian oil imports
through sanctions and raised tariffs on Indian steel and aluminium. Since then, America’s
trade deficit with India has almost doubled, from $24bn in 2020 to $46bn in 2024. In order
to pre-empt any spat over trade, Mr Modi is already making concessions. India’s budget on
February 1st lowered tariffs on an eclectic list of items. Indian importers of LNG have been
negotiating larger purchases from American suppliers, too.
Tensions over undocumented migrants in America also loom. At around 725,000 people,
Indians were the third-largest group in 2022, according to Pew Research Centre, a think-
tank. As with trade, Mr Modi has vowed to co-operate. In the first week of February 104
such individuals were marshalled in handcuffs into an American military aircraft bound for
Punjab. But the issue will continue to rumble. Political friction over undocumented
migrants could sabotage legal flows of people, particularly those from India’s tech-services
industry. Some 72% of the foreigners awarded an H-1B skilled-worker visa in the year
2022 to 2023 were Indian. Within MAGA circles these visas are intensely disliked, although
other Trump-confidants, including Elon Musk, have defended them.
The third issue is defence. Joe Biden pursued containment of China in a predictable way. A
deal in December 2024 authorised a $1.2bn sale of MH-60R helicopters and related
equipment to India. The Biden administration also played to India’s desire to build its
defence industry by approving the co-production of General Electric’s F414 jet engines,
encouraging American defence firms to manufacture in India, and giving India access to
military technology. One goal was to help wean India off Russian military equipment, which
accounts for 36% of defence imports.
Mr Trump is far less likely to help India’s manufacturing push and has already urged Mr
Modi to buy more American equipment. And he may lose patience with India’s “multi-
alignment”, or doctrine of engaging with multiple partners while formally allying with
none. He could push India to beef up its security partnership with America, Japan and
Australia. At the other extreme, his penchant for surprise deals could produce a great-
power detente between America and China over Taiwan, which could sideline India.
The final issue is tech. India is aligned with America in many respects: it has pushed to
remove gear made by Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, from Indian networks, for
example, and has attracted big investments from Amazon, Apple and other Silicon Valley
giants. But India’s ultimate ambition is to become a major tech player in its own right. Mr
Modi’s government wants to fund the creation of an Indian large language model and is
subsidising semiconductor plants. It has pushed programmes such as Aadhaar, a home-
grown digital-identification system, hard.
Mr Trump’s techno-nationalism could cut against such ambitions. On February 11th J.D.
Vance, the vice-president, told an audience in Paris that “The Trump administration will
ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US, with American-designed and -
manufactured chips.” India’s best hope is to argue that its home-grown tech offerings
augment American power. Its cheap payment and identification systems could offer
alternatives to Chinese models to countries elsewhere in the global south—without
competing with upscale American ones.
For years American analysts have wondered what their country gains from working with a
sometimes prickly India, asking if the “India bet” will pay off. The second Trump term may
lead more Indians to ask the same question about America. ■
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Three’s a crowd

New Zealand and the Cook Islands fall out

over China
That is New Zealand’s second diplomatic dispute in the Pacific this year
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午 | Sydney

IN THE STRATEGIC contest under way in the Pacific, a familiar pattern has emerged. China
signs an agreement with an island nation. America’s regional partners get spooked. The
Cook Islands, a sparsely populated string of 15 islets, is the latest to set off alarm bells. Its
prime minister, Mark Brown, was preparing to sign a “comprehensive strategic
partnership” to “expand economic opportunities” with China as The Economist went to
press. That has sparked a fight with New Zealand, the Cook Islands’ former colonist.
The Cook Islands needs trade and investment. Its economy depends on tourism, and,
having graduated to “high-income” status in 2020, it is no longer eligible for aid. As Mr
Brown sees it, China is part of the solution. Details of his deal have not yet been made
public, but the agreement could set a path for Chinese engagement in deep-sea mining—
which both China and Mr Brown are itching to develop, though many other Pacific nations
oppose it. Mr Brown is so keen on digging up critical minerals that he dishes out nodules of
them at conferences.
New Zealand complains about being “blindsided”. It has long been the Cook Islands’ biggest
donor. Under a “free association” agreement, Cook Islanders hold New Zealand passports,
and the two countries are required to collaborate on security and foreign policy. New
Zealand’s conservative government claims that Mr Brown has flouted this arrangement by
refusing to share details of his deal. This “lack of transparency” could “have major strategic
and security implications”, wrote a spokesperson for Winston Peters, who is both foreign
minister and deputy prime minister.
In reality, the arrangement between New Zealand and the Cook Islands sketches out only
vague expectations about “co-operation” and “consultation”. Mr Brown argues that New
Zealand had fair warning. He says he is not seeking security assistance from China—a
matter of concern since China struck a security deal in the Solomon Islands in 2022,
fuelling fears about a military base there. Still, an economic deal may have security
implications, for instance by giving China access to strategic minerals, points out Anna
Powles of Massey University in Wellington. Mr Brown did nothing to allay such concerns
when he described China in an interview as a “like-minded country”. Many Cook Islanders
are worried and on February 13th the opposition party filed a no-confidence motion
against Mr Brown.
New Zealand’s dispute with the Cook Islands is its second in the Pacific this year. On
January 27th Mr Peters announced that he would review all aid funding to Kiribati,
Hawaii’s closest neighbour, after Taneti Maamau, the president, cancelled a meeting with
him. Kiribati has cosied up to China in recent years and a policing agreement has stationed
Chinese officers in Kiribati’s capital. Officials in New Zealand and Australia complain of
trouble speaking with counterparts in Mr Maamau’s government. Together the countries
account for almost half of Kiribati’s aid.
New Zealand is not likely to cut that funding, says Dr Powles. Mr Peters “knows that heavy-
handed tactics do not go over well in the Pacific”. But for that reason, grandstanding may
not serve its interests. Australia’s centre-left government, by contrast, has taken a softer
approach to Pacific diplomacy. Its defence minister and deputy prime minister, Richard
Marles, was also snubbed by Mr Maamau on a recent trip to Kiribati, but still delivered a
patrol boat and praised their “close friendship” on social media. Such tactics work. Since
2023 Australia has signed agreements with Tuvalu and Nauru giving it veto rights over
security partnerships with other countries (ie, China). In the grand competition, the tricky
partners normally get more, not less, aid and attention. ■

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Banyan

Can Indonesia make its Top Gun dreams a

reality?
An aircraft-carrier is the last thing its navy needs
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

INDONESIA’S NAVY chief dropped a bombshell when he stopped to speak to reporters

ahead of a meeting with his top brass earlier this month. “It seems”, he began tentatively,
“that we need an aircraft-carrier for non-war military operations.” If this pitch was not
entirely convincing, it is because the idea was probably not his own. Most big decisions
about which military kit to buy in Indonesia these days are made by Prabowo Subianto, the
former special-forces commander and defence minister who was elected president last
year.
In fact, an aircraft-carrier is the last thing that Indonesia’s struggling navy needs. Its ageing
fleet can claim only eight vessels with a range of more than 5,000km (3,000 miles). They
patrol an archipelago wider than Europe, which sits astride key sea lanes for commerce
and the geopolitical contest between America and China. Even more than ships, Indonesia
lacks bases to sustain the navy’s operations and technology to help it understand what—
and who—might be in its waters.
Carrier operations are among the hardest things that a navy can attempt. America makes
launching and recovering aircraft on a pitching deck look routine. But it has been doing it
for more than a century and still sustained high casualties well into the cold war. Moreover,
carriers require escort ships and air-defence capabilities that Indonesia does not have.
China is still working through the challenges of operating aircraft-carriers, more than two
decades after buying its first one.
And carriers are expensive. Indonesia might look to buy a used item; China’s maiden
carrier came from Ukraine. Speculation in Jakarta, the capital, has focused on a recently
decommissioned Italian carrier, Garibaldi. Even this would not come cheap—and costs
would soon pile up. The navy would need to acquire carrier-capable jets for the ship and
train its pilots. It would be impossible to do all of this within the navy’s modest budget of
just over $1bn a year.
You might wonder how Mr Prabowo, whose political programme has long been tied to his
military reputation, could make such a blunder. But a retired general who served with him
says that even in the army, his decisions were “very rarely based on a firm concept of
operations”. He acted on instinct, and with an eye to politics as much as strategy. An
aircraft-carrier would give Mr Prabowo something that he and many of his supporters
crave more than military might: prestige.
Thailand offers a cautionary tale. The only other South-East Asian navy to boast an aircraft-
carrier, it ordered a ship based on a Spanish design. Fully equipped when Thailand took
possession of it in 1997, its Matador fighter jets were withdrawn from service in 2006, and
it rarely goes to sea. It now sits alongside a pier south of Bangkok, the capital, where Thais
can tour what was once intended to be a symbol of national greatness.
If Mr Prabowo’s Top Gun dreams are getting ahead of the navy, then his plans for the army
risk taking it back to the “dual-function” military and civil role that it performed under his
then-father-in-law, the late dictator Suharto. The defence ministry has announced plans to
add new units to mirror the structure of the civilian government in each province and
district. Meanwhile, a bill in the legislature would allow active-duty officers to serve as
ministers. Both steps reverse important reforms made following the army’s return to the
barracks in 1998, during the restoration of democracy. Civil-society activists say these
moves degrade democracy; security analysts worry that they distract the government from
more urgent national defence priorities.
These debates about the structure of the army and navy go back to the 1980s, when Mr
Prabowo was a young major. His early mentor was General Benny Moerdani, a visionary
strategist, who argued for a smaller, more professional force. Moerdani fought prestige
acquisitions and sought to roll back the army’s civil role.
But Moerdani and Mr Prabowo had a falling out. Moerdani recalled Mr Prabowo from his
role of leading patrols in East Timor, accusing him of disobeying orders. In response, Mr
Prabowo set about undermining his former patron. Mr Prabowo’s father-in-law dismissed
Moerdani, and his career once again took off. Now, the maverick officer is president
himself. There is no one to stop him from reversing Moerdani’s legacy, or chasing the
trappings of military glory. ■
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China
 Tensions with the West are fuelling China’s anxiety about
food supplies
Food security :: Grain pains are growing
 Hail China’s new “ice-and-snow economy”
Get your skis on :: The country is betting on winter sports and tourism to boost growth in its rustbelt
 Panama symbolises the Sino-American struggle for
influence
Own goal :: The superpowers use soft and hard power

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Food security

Tensions with the West are fuelling

China’s anxiety about food supplies
Grain pains are growing
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

AMERICAN SOYABEAN farmers could draw some comfort from the tariffs that China
imposed on an array of American imports on February 10th. Foodstuffs like theirs were not
affected by China’s countermeasures against the 10% levy on Chinese imports that had
been ordered a few days earlier by President Donald Trump. But growers in farming states
like Illinois and Iowa still have reason to worry. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, wants to wean
his country off food from the West. Amid rising geopolitical tensions, he sees self-
sufficiency and diversity of supply as an increasingly urgent need.
In Mr Xi’s calculations, much has changed since Mr Trump launched his first trade war
against China in 2018, during his previous term in the White House. American soyabeans—
which China imports mainly for feeding farm animals—were then a prime target. China
slapped tariffs of up to 25% on American farm products. Its state media highlighted the
impact this would have on Mr Trump’s rural supporters. The pain was felt less in China: it
turned much more to Brazil instead. The tariffs were mostly removed in 2019, but Mr Xi
had made his point. China—which previously had imported 40% of its foreign soyabeans
from America—no longer had to rely so heavily on it.
Since then, the People’s Republic has gained yet more leverage. America now provides less
than one-fifth of the soyabeans that China buys from abroad. For American soyabean
farmers, China remains nearly as important as it was: it still takes nearly half of their
exports (down from just over 60% in 2017). But for Mr Xi, any dependence on the West
remains uncomfortable. In the past few years, as the contest with America and other
Western countries has intensified, China has become ever more preoccupied with
maintaining food security, stressing that it is a vital component of national security. In 2023
China published a book of Mr Xi’s thoughts on the topic. Last year the country introduced
its first food-security law.
All this has expanded the way China views food security. The usual term for it is liangshi
anquan, which literally means grain security. It commonly refers mainly to rice, wheat and
maize as well as soyabeans (an oilseed). Now it is promoted with another term: da shiwu
guan, or the “big food concept”, covering all types of commonly eaten foodstuffs. “We
cannot allow others to control us! This is a major matter of national security!” Mr Xi told
rural-affairs officials in December 2020.
Yanking your supply chain
That year China experienced the first of two global shocks that focused its attention on food
(after an outbreak of swine flu that in 2019 cut swathes through the country’s pig stocks).
During the covid-19 pandemic, stockpiling, poor harvests and disruption to shipping
caused global prices of farm produce to surge, sounding a warning bell in China. Then in
2022 came the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an agricultural giant. The country accounted
for over a quarter of China’s imports of maize and barley. The impact on food supply in
China was mild: stockpiles enabled the country to stabilise prices, and it found other
sources. But the war highlighted the vulnerability of global supply chains. In a conflict with
America over Taiwan, say, many of China’s imports, including food, would be imperilled.
That could be a serious blow to China. The country is the world’s biggest producer of food.
Its grain harvest last year (including soyabeans) hit a record high of more than 706m
tonnes. It is over 95% self-sufficient in the production of main staples for human
consumption: rice and wheat. But the country’s growing wealth has fuelled demand for a
much more varied diet. Since 2004 China has been a net importer of foodstuffs. It is now
the world’s biggest buyer of them. Imports in 2023 were worth $140bn. It relies on foreign
supplies for 80% of its soyabean needs, 70% of its edible oils, 30% of its milk and nearly
10% of its meat (see charts).
Xi’s cheese
Mr Xi worries about all this. He sees a robust agricultural economy as a great-power
necessity. In 2013 he said that the strength of countries like America, Russia, Canada and
Europe’s major powers was “closely linked with their capacity to produce grain”. He does
not say China should aim to end all imports, but declared in 2019 that “Chinese people’s
rice bowls should mainly be filled by their own food. That includes the main non-staples.”
To boost food security, China has stepped up efforts on a variety of fronts. One has been to
ensure that it has sufficient stockpiles of staple grains. In his 130-page book on food
security, Mr Xi barely mentions climate change, but it is a huge problem. The grain harvest
in 2024 was helped by the weather: the crop area damaged by natural disasters was
unusually low. Last year, however, the president of China Agricultural University, Sun
Qixin, said that global warming could reduce China’s yields of wheat by over 6%, maize by
over 7% and rice by more than 9%.
Amounts in stock are a closely guarded secret. They could now be at “record levels”, says
Gustavo Ferreira of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). But Chinese leaders are not
content. They point to “grain rats”: officials who buy low-quality grain for storage, or
siphon off supplies and sell them. In December a former minister of agriculture, Tang
Renjian, was arrested for bribery, though details have not been made public. “We must
always keep tight control of food security—very tight. It is better to produce and store a
little more than necessary,” Mr Xi said in 2022, soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Chinese like to point out that their country has 18% of the world’s population but just
7% of the world’s arable land. They now try to ensure that 120m hectares (300m acres) are
preserved for farming, mostly for staple crops. This “red line” is close to being breached: in
2023 China had fewer than 129m hectares of arable land, down from 135m hectares a
decade before. The new food-security law is partly intended to warn officials that
unauthorised use of land could result in criminal sanctions. In recent years farmers in some
areas have been pressed to use land where they were growing cash crops for producing
grain instead (subsidies have helped, but since land is, in effect, owned by the government,
they have little choice). In the past couple of years China has been accelerating efforts to
encourage farmers to merge their tiny plots to make it easier to farm more efficiently with
machinery.
Officials have their eye on tech, too. While he was minister, Mr Tang called seeds the
“computer chips” of agriculture. As with semiconductors, China is putting much effort into
producing the best. But Americans control much of the intellectual property for genetically
modified (GM) types, which has stiffened the resistance of Chinese officials to allowing
their use. Widespread public concerns about food safety have compounded obstacles to GM
food production. But it is expanding. In 2023 only 1% of maize-growing land was planted
with GM seeds. The USDA predicted in 2024 that this could grow to 15% in the next few
years.
Chinese leaders used to raise population growth as a reason to fret about food security.
That is becoming much less of a concern: last year China’s population fell for a third
consecutive year. But since geopolitical turbulence is unlikely to subside, leaders are as
nervous and uncertain of the implications of Mr Trump’s second term as many of America’s
allies. “The greater the risks and challenges we face, the more we must stabilise agriculture
and ensure the safety of grain and key non-staple foods,” Mr Xi said when Mr Trump was
last in power. Even beyond Mr Trump, rivalry with the West will continue. Mr Xi will keep
thinking about food. ■
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world makes of China—and what China makes of the world.
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Get your skis on

Hail China’s new “ice-and-snow economy”

The country is betting on winter sports and tourism to boost growth in its rustbelt
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | HARBIN

Ice, ice, baby

IT IS NOT known whether Xi Jinping has ever strapped planks to his feet and raced down a
mountain at speed. But at a banquet welcoming dignitaries to the opening of the Asian
Winter Games in the north-eastern city of Harbin on February 7th, China’s leader made
clear that he hoped more compatriots would soon be shredding the gnar. “Ice and snow are
as valuable as gold and silver,” he said, suggesting that frozen water could be an engine for
Harbin’s “high-quality development”. Plastered across national media, his comments are a
push to develop everything from snowboard lessons and winter homestays to self-heating
ski socks and snow-making machines as part of “the ice-and-snow economy”.
Exhortations of this sort have helped Harbin—one of China’s coldest cities with
temperatures regularly falling below -20°C—become one of its hottest destinations. Last
winter, the city received 87m visitors, a fourfold increase from the previous year (helped
by a post-covid rush). Tourism revenue shot up sixfold. Some 12m tourists visited Harbin
during the recent lunar new year holiday, up by 20% from last year, according to state
media.
For decades, locals have cut blocks of ice out of the frozen Songhua River and carved them
into statues. In recent years, the sculptures have become grander in scale and design. The
city became a social-media sensation last winter, with whole ice buildings lit up. Most
tourists are domestic. “Chinese people, especially we southerners, yearn for snow,” says Ms
Chen, visiting with her son from Hangzhou.
With growth slowing, China is betting on winter sports and tourism to give its economy—
especially in the north-east—a lift. The government says it wants the sector to be worth
1.5trn yuan ($205bn) by 2030. Some progress is being made. During last year’s winter
season, 26m people visited China’s national-level ski resorts around the country, creating
19bn yuan in revenue, up 140% from the previous year. In 2014 Mr Xi said he wanted to
get 300m (nearly the population of America) into winter sports. The government says it hit
that target before hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, which further spurred middle-class
demand. By the end of 2023 China had 1,912 skating rinks, triple the number five years
previously, and the number of ski resorts had nearly doubled, to 935.

The frigid rustbelt needs all the help it can get. The provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and
Heilongjiang—roughly the area formerly known as Manchuria, and now called “Dongbei”
meaning “north-east”—were among the country’s wealthiest during the Mao era. But after
economic reforms were launched in 1978, the region’s dependence on the state sector and
heavy industry meant that it fell behind southern cities better positioned for light
manufacturing and exports. The state has tried to revitalise Dongbei for more than two
decades, to little effect. An ageing population and over-reliance on hard-to-reform state-
owned enterprises are difficult problems to resolve. In 2023 Heilongjiang had the second-
lowest GDP per person and a population shrinking at the fastest rate of all Chinese
provinces. With or without crampons, Mr Xi has a mountain to climb.
Plenty of people are sceptical that the ice-and-snow economy can lead to long-term change.
More tourism can help at the margins, but “the ski resort does not solve the structural-
adjustment problem,” says Andrew Batson of Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm in
Beijing.
Something is better than nothing, though. The latest efforts to diversify the Dongbei
economy have created new, well-paid jobs for young people whom the region has struggled
to retain. On the outskirts of Daqing, an oil city west of Harbin, the slopes are busy. Gao Yu,
a ski instructor, says he is paid about 7,500 yuan each month, almost double the average
salary in Daqing. Local authorities are now trying to boost the summer-tourism trade, not
least for those fleeing the southern heat, so that income keeps flowing even after the ice
and snow have melted away. ■
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Own goal

Panama symbolises the Sino-American

struggle for influence
The superpowers use soft and hard power
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | PANAMA CITY AND TAIPEI

PANAMA RESPONDED quickly to Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Chinese influence in the
Panama Canal. On February 2nd it said it would not renew participation in the Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI), China’s global-development scheme, and it has launched an audit of
the Hong Kong firm that runs the ports at each end of the canal. Leaders are reported to be
considering cancellation of the contract.
Already Chinese state media are decrying America’s expansionism and, having made
similar noises on Greenland and Gaza, have restated China’s credentials as a supporter of
smaller states in the face of big, bad America. “No more pretending! Trump claims he will
expand American territory”, read a China Youth Daily headline after the inauguration. “The
world is not blind to the truth of who is keeping the canal neutral and thriving and who
keeps threatening to ‘take back’ the canal,” said a foreign-ministry spokesperson. Panama
is in danger of becoming a case study of how an American hard-power win could become a
soft-power loss.
America did not need to resort to threats to combat Chinese influence in Panama, says
Nehemías Jaén, a former Panamanian diplomat. The peak of China hype was in 2017-19, he
says. Then-president Juan Carlos Varela switched recognition from Taiwan to China in
2017, as a result of China’s aggressive diplomacy·. He signed a flurry of bilateral
agreements that included joining the BRI. But very little of the promised prosperity
materialised.
China has committed only $386m in loans and grants to Panama since it joined the BRI,
according to AidData, a research lab at William and Mary University. Most of it was before
2020. Since then many of the Chinese infrastructure projects have been quietly cancelled or
reassigned, partly because of American pressure. A free-trade agreement was put on ice. In
2021 Panama revoked a concession for a Chinese consortium of firms to build a port on the
Caribbean coast. In January the first contract for a railway line from Panama City to the
border with Costa Rica (originally a Chinese proposal) was awarded to an American firm.
China has not made significant inroads in Panamanian public opinion either. A survey in
2023 by the Centre for Insights in Survey Research found that 62% of Panamanians were
not aware of any major Chinese investment in their country.
But Mr Trump’s belligerence has re-awakened some anti-American ghosts. With the
country using the dollar as one of its official currencies, Panama’s government has little
choice but to appease America and distance itself from China. But some citizens are angry.
Protesters burned effigies of Mr Trump and Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state, during
Mr Rubio’s recent visit. Panama’s president reiterated that ownership of the canal is not
negotiable. Rubén Blades, a famous musician and former presidential candidate, wrote that
“Panama has to prepare for the eventuality of another invasion.” Labour unions have
organised protests.
Such sentiments may not change Panama’s political stance. But anti-Americanism in the
region is tilting some others towards China. Neighbouring Colombia, with whom Mr Trump
locked horns early in his presidency, is joining the BRI and launching a new shipping route
to Shanghai including a stop at a Chinese-built megaport in Peru that opened last year.
For years Chinese leaders have accused America of hegemonic behaviour. They now claim
to be the upholders of the rules-based order, and point with some justification to America’s
disregard for international norms when it suits its interests. But if they fail to cut through
with those arguments, the Panama affair has another implication. With Mr Trump
apparently signalling a return to spheres of influence in international affairs, China will not
hesitate to push harder for its own in Asia. ■
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United States
 Donald Trump wants states and cities to do as they are
told
Federalist capers :: But local governments are taking immigration into their own hands
 Donald Trump and the art of the quid pro quo
Dodgy politics :: The president likes to kneecap prosecutions of his friends
 Inside the world’s most famous aeroplane boneyard
Plane to see :: What are 3,200 military aircraft doing in the Arizona desert?
 What happened next at USAID
Foreign aid :: A textbook case of how not to cut wasteful government spending
 Elon Musk has been pushed out of the Treasury
America’s payment system :: But court filings reveal quite how deep DOGE got
 What is Elon Musk getting up to with America’s payment
system?
The Treasury :: Nobody is sure, many are worried
 How Bob Dylan broke free
Lexington :: The biopic “A Complete Unknown” tells only part of the story

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Federalist capers

Donald Trump wants states and cities to

do as they are told
But local governments are taking immigration into their own hands
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | Atlanta and Huntington Beach

PAT BURNS carries Donald Trump around with him. Figuratively—he says the president
gives him “hope”—but also literally. The Republican mayor of Huntington Beach, California
brought a bust of Mr Trump to a recent council meeting. The city is California’s MAGA
capital. Last month the city attorney, Michael Gates, sued the state (again) to try to avoid
complying with a law that limits California’s co-operation with federal immigration
authorities. Huntington Beach has also declared itself a “nonsanctuary city”. The state
government has a “tyrannical” mentality, argues Mr Gates. “Huntington Beach is just
fighting for its local control.”
Republican islands in Democratic states are not the only places crying out for that. Mr
Trump is testing the limits of executive power in countless ways, including by trying to
force states and cities to abandon policies he dislikes. Democrats who want to limit his
influence find themselves arguing for states’ rights, long a conservative rallying cry. The
president wants to “kill” congestion pricing in New York, and release more water from
California’s reservoirs to farmers. But the best example of this fight over state sovereignty
and the particulars of American federalism comes from local sanctuary policies and the
backlash against them.
The sanctuary movement began in the 1980s, when churches near the southern border
offered shelter to people fleeing brutal regimes in Central America propped up by the
American government. That act of civil disobedience evolved into municipal policy when
cities adopted sanctuary ordinances, limiting their co-operation with immigration
authorities. These measures proliferated during Barack Obama’s presidency as a protest
against a policy that increased information-sharing between local law officers and
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which carries out deportations. Mr Trump’s
animus towards immigrants during his first term supercharged the movement. Eleven
states have sanctuary laws on the books.
Sanctuary laws can prevent cops and jails from co-operating with ICE, stop police from
asking about someone’s immigration status or provide legal aid and benefits to
unauthorised immigrants. None of these measures prevent ICE from operating
independently in Democratic states. But because the agency depends on local law officers
to voluntarily hand over migrants, such laws can reduce deportations. This is the reason for
Mr Trump’s ire: carrying out mass deportations gets tricker when the leaders of big diverse
states say no thank you. As of 2022 about half of America’s 11m undocumented immigrants
lived in Democrat-run states; and at least 5m live in “trifecta” states where Democrats
control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion (see map).
Mr Trump’s attempts to withhold Department of Justice (DoJ) funding from sanctuary
jurisdictions during his first term failed because the Tenth Amendment “prevents the
federal government from forcing, commanding, coercing their co-operation”, says
Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. That has
not stopped Mr Trump from trying again. Pam Bondi, his attorney-general, issued a
directive threatening to withhold DoJ funds from sanctuary jurisdictions and prosecute
local governments for resisting federal immigration operations. Ms Bondi’s first targets
were Illinois and New York. “If you are a state not complying with federal law, you’re next,
get ready,” she said in a press conference. San Francisco has already sued the
administration on Tenth Amendment grounds.
Although the federal government has so far failed to crack down on local sanctuary policies
and the officials who enact them, Republican-run states—home to at least 5.2m
unauthorised immigrants—are succeeding. There is no Tenth Amendment equivalent for
cities and counties, which are considered “creatures of the state”, a definition that leaves
little room for legal autonomy. Bill Miller, a Republican strategist in Austin, says that
Texas’s governor, lieutenant-governor and attorney-general chose not to take cabinet jobs
because they reckon they can wield more power at home. “The federal government is
taking their cues from Texas,” he adds.
Anti-sanctuary bills, which are multiplying in Republican states, fall into two categories.
The first set bans sanctuary laws and comes with penalties for non-compliance. Last year
Georgia passed a law that revokes state funds from sanctuary cities, and Louisiana ensured
that the state’s top lawyer can sue them. A new law in Tennessee makes voting for a
sanctuary-style policy a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. Chris Carr, Georgia’s
attorney-general, who is running for governor, argues that more progressive cities like
Athens and Savannah that try to thwart the state’s immigration agenda “undermine the
rule of law”.
The second set mandates that cities must co-operate with state and federal raids. Several
states want to force law-enforcement agencies into a hitherto voluntary ICE programme
that deputises police to act as immigration agents. A bill in Florida, the state with the third-
biggest unauthorised immigrant population, would make illegal entry a state crime and
allocates $250m for local sheriffs to enforce immigration rules.
The states’ justifications for these laws are largely untested, and cities may soon sue. Their
strongest case will probably be against state laws that limit their free speech and
democratic process, says Rick Su of the University of North Carolina. Cities may also
succeed in arguing that by forcing them to do immigration enforcement, states are
mandating extra work without pay. Eric Johnson, Dallas’s Republican mayor, says that
although his city is prepared to “do what we are asked”, he does not want to raise taxes to
“take on new responsibilities”. The sheriff of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, says she does not
have the funds to detain immigrants for as long as ICE wants her to.
Republican cities in Democratic states are equally unhappy. Huntington Beach argues that
its city charter makes it less a creature of California than its own sovereign entity. But Mr
Gates is not sticking around to see how his lawsuit pans out. He is heading to Washington,
DC to work for Ms Bondi, where his remit may include cracking down on sanctuary cities.
He admits that “It’s probably a good fit.”■
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Dodgy politics

Donald Trump and the art of the quid pro

quo
The president likes to kneecap prosecutions of his friends
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | New York

CORRUPTION IN POLITICS is occasionally clear-cut: think wads of cash handed over in a

briefcase. More often it is blurry; trading favours is part of politics. This week New Yorkers
were treated to an unsolicited lesson in the squishy concepts of quid and quo courtesy of
their mayor and their president.
On February 10th the Department of Justice (DoJ) dismissed an indictment against Eric
Adams, New York’s mayor. Three days later he was set to meet Tom Homan, Mr Trump’s
border czar, to talk up joint work on immigration enforcement. Mr Homan said he foresees
a “great agreement”. Mr Adams’s eagerness to co-operate with the feds differentiates him
from practically every other high-profile Democrat across the country.
Mr Adams has been currying favour with Mr Trump ever since he was indicted in
September. He paid tribute at the president’s Florida estate and at the inauguration. Some
called this grovelling. Others saw it as shrewd participation in the transactional politics so
extravagantly practiced by Mr Trump. It paid. Mr Adams has been spared a trial, previously
set for April, over allegations that he took bribes from a Turkish official. These included
free flights on Turkish Airlines and discounted stays at the Istanbul St Regis. Prosecutors
alleged that in return he fixed a fire inspection at the Turkish consulate in New York. He
denied all wrongdoing.
In its memo to shelve the charges, the DoJ cited matters of politics, not law. It said that
fighting the case would distract Mr Adams from immigration enforcement and from
campaigning for re-election ahead of the mayoral primary in June. The indictment can
always be revived—pointedly, the DoJ said nothing about the merits of the evidence—
giving Mr Trump leverage over Mr Adams until his term ends next year. Al Sharpton, a
fixture of city politics, called Mr Adams a “hostage”.
As far as corruption allegations go, those against Mr Adams were small-bore. What makes
the saga striking is the Trump administration’s transparent use of prosecutorial power to
turn Mr Adams into an ally or, more cynically, a client, says Jacob Eisler of Florida State
University. The notion that politics should stay out of law enforcement—an aspiration
since Watergate—seems dead and buried. This tension was present (though rarely so
public) during Mr Trump’s first administration. During Joe Biden’s presidency it was
explicit, in the prosecutions of Mr Trump and the pre-emptive pardons of Liz Cheney, Mark
Milley and others.
Mr Trump’s impulse to harness law enforcement for political ends manifests in two ways.
He has often threatened to go after his political enemies for what he calls their corruption;
meanwhile he has undercut prosecutions of his friends and allies. In his first term he
granted clemency to seven former Republican congressmen convicted of various forms of
self-dealing. This week he pardoned Rod Blagojevich, a former Democratic governor of
Illinois who appeared on his reality-TV show. Mr Blagojevich went to prison for trying to
sell a Senate seat. He was caught on tape calling it “fucking golden”. Mr Trump released him
in 2020. Mr Blagojevich now calls the president a “great effing guy”.
If Mr Trump meant to telegraph a more permissive approach to graft this week, it was not
just at home. He also ordered a six-month pause on enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act (FCPA), a law that makes it illegal for businesses to bribe foreign officials. His
executive order called bribes “routine business practices in other nations”. The implication
seems to be that American firms should have licence to bribe too. It names “critical
minerals” and “deep-water ports” as assets that American firms lose out on by being too
persnickety about graft. If and when the DoJ resumes FCPA enforcement, it may focus on
pay-offs to cartels and organised crime; these are a preoccupation for Mr Trump.
What to make of Mr Trump’s moves? Firms will not give up on FCPA compliance en masse;
the statute of limitations for a bribe paid today will outrun his presidency. As for
corruption at home, pursuing it may fall increasingly to prosecutors in state courts rather
than federal ones. And to voters. In a few months New Yorkers will deliver their verdict on
Mr Adams. He polls in the single digits among Democrats. ■
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Plane to see

Inside the world’s most famous aeroplane

boneyard
What are 3,200 military aircraft doing in the Arizona desert?
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午 | TUCSON

OMG it’s AMARG

FOR INFANTRY and armoured cavalry, target practice is relatively straightforward. Load
up on training rounds and aim for paper bullseyes, plywood cutouts or life-size models of
enemy vehicles. Air-defence forces have a trickier time. Despite the exception of the
occasional Chinese spy balloon, the skies do not offer a wealth of objects to shoot at.
One solution comes from the armed forces’ own fighter jets. Since 2010 Boeing has
converted retired F-16 fighter jets into unmanned QF-16s (the Q designates a drone). They
are easily identified by their orange tails. The Air Force uses them as chase planes or shoots
missiles by—but not at—them. After some 300 hours of being chased and shot at, they end
their service lives as targets over the Gulf of Mexico, where they are shot down with live
ordnance. The debris ends up as an artificial reef at the bottom of the sea.
The source of the converted F-16s is the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration
Group, or AMARG, at the Davis-Monthan air-force base in Tucson, where the Department of
Defence and some civilian agencies such as NASA and the Department of Agriculture store
surplus aircraft. It is better known simply as “the Boneyard”. AMARG is a perpetual source
of fascination on internet forums frequented by aviation nerds, who pore over satellite
imagery of the 3,200-odd aircraft of 75 different types scattered over 2,600 acres of desert.
AMARG describes itself as “America’s National Airpower Reservoir”.
The reservoir is topped up and drawn down as needed. In 2021, as America hastily
withdrew from Afghanistan, many Russian-built Mi-17 helicopters purchased for the
Afghan armed forces happened to be at maintenance sites abroad. With no question of
sending them to the Taliban, they were transferred to AMARG and put into storage. After
Russia invaded Ukraine the following year, Joe Biden included the helicopters in an $800m
military-aid package to Ukraine. They still bear their desert camouflage, albeit with blue-
and-yellow stripes painted on the sides.
In the imagination of the public, the Boneyard is where ex-service planes go to decay. In
practice, AMARG is a temporary storage site, a source for spare parts and a “regeneration”
facility, where stored planes are made fit to fly again. “Nothing that you see out here is
junk,” says Robert Raine, AMARG’s spokesman. Even what is obviously junk—a bunch of
decaying B-52 bombers with their wings and tails chopped off—is there for a reason. They
are kept in that state so that Russian spy satellites can verify America’s compliance with the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Whole-aircraft transfers such as those to Ukraine (or other allied countries) are less
common than the reclamation of parts from stored aircraft for use on serving fighters,
bombers, transport carriers and others. The parts could be anything from engine
components to entire horizontal stabilisers (those are fins at the back of a plane, jutting out
sideways underneath the tailfin). Mechanics—whom AMARG calls “artisans”—go out into
the desert, locate the part, extract it, and bring it to a warehouse where it is cleaned,
checked, packaged and shipped. The reservoir can process up to 30 such requests every
day. AMARG sent out thousands of parts during Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm,
Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
Once an aircraft has been stripped of its usable parts, its owner—the Air Force, Forest
Services and others—usually asks AMARG to get rid of it. The first step is to pull off
anything classified and to “demilitarise” the plane. Hazardous bits such as hydraulic fluid,
materials like asbestos, and explosives like those in the ejection seat system are all
removed. So are composite materials. Contractors then take over, running what’s left
through a shredder, twice. The ex-plane emerges on the other side in pieces about half a
centimetre in length. “This stuff is high quality aluminium. It becomes, at a minimum, car
parts,” says Mr Raine. Other metals, such as titanium, are also reused. “You get a lot of golf
clubs out of a wing box on an F-14.”■
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Foreign aid

What happened next at USAID

A textbook case of how not to cut wasteful government spending
2 月 13, 2025 05:51 上午 | Lilongwe and Cape Town

System error
ON JANUARY 28th the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued an “emergency humanitarian
waiver” to exempt life-saving aid from Donald Trump’s freeze on all foreign assistance.
Two weeks later, in Malawi, a country of 20m in southern Africa that is the world’s
seventh-poorest by GDP per person, most local charities have stopped working and about
5,000 people—many of them health workers—have lost their jobs, says Mazisayko
Matemba of the Health and Rights Education Programme, an NGO. “We expect more people
to get infections and start dying.”
From South Africa to Afghanistan, the picture is similar. Mr Rubio issued two edicts that
sought to rescue PEPFAR, a successful anti-AIDS initiative, as well as other “core life-
saving” medical, food and shelter programmes from Elon Musk’s demolition crew at the
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Mr Musk has rapidly dismantled USAID, but
DOGE tore apart foreign aid systems so quickly—closing offices, firing thousands of
contractors, freezing bank accounts—that Mr Rubio’s waivers have so far proved
meaningless, say aid workers in multiple countries. “Even when a waiver has been issued,
there’s no way to execute it because the payment system has been broken,” says Kate
Almquist Knopf, a former USAID Africa director based in Nairobi.
In Malawi, the antiretroviral drugs PEPFAR pays for are one of the major reasons why life
expectancy has risen from 45 in 2000 to 63 in 2022. In South Africa, the $440m America
spends every year fighting HIV and TB in the country accounts for about 17% of the
government’s budget for tackling the diseases. Jeremy Nel, who runs one of the biggest HIV
clinics in South Africa, in Johannesburg, says the staff in the hospital who were funded by
PEPFAR were told on January 27th they could not come to work. They are still waiting for
instruction from USAID, “but it is unclear whether USAID even exists anymore,” he says.
“The number one problem has been the abruptness of the transition.”
Francois Venter, who runs a health NGO in the same city, points out that HIV programmes
cannot be stopped and started “at the drop of a hat”. Charities don’t have financial reserves
or access to loans; they need to know that the invoices they send will be reimbursed. The
disruption in recent weeks “won’t cause death overnight but what it will do is set our
progress back years,” says a doctor who until recently was funded via PEPFAR.
Mr Rubio has sounded defensive about the rapid and performatively cruel way that USAID
has been dismantled. Initially, he blamed USAID staff for not co-operating. On February
10th, Mr Rubio conceded that there had been “some hiccups about how to restart the
payment programmes, but all that’s going to get taken care of here very quickly.” PEPFAR
and other lifesaving programmes “will continue”, he added, but he warned that PEPFAR is
likely to shrink.
In the meantime, local and international charities face insolvency. A few large commercial
and non-profit groups with diversified revenue may survive, executives in the sector say,
but the business model for many charities reliant on USAID contracts is largely cash-in,
cash-out, with little scope to build up reserves or borrowing power. When DOGE stopped
payments, it cut off $750m to $1bn in money owed to contractors for work already
completed, one executive estimates.
Across Africa, aid workers are parsing just how life-saving a programme must be to qualify
for the Trump administration’s backing. Direct food aid may be allowed, but how about
cash vouchers to buy food in the market? Medicine to fight HIV may be allowed, but how
about education programmes to stop transmissions? Does the provision of seeds to
villagers who will starve if they don’t plant before the next wet season count as life-saving?
In Washington, there is no one to answer the phone and sort out such questions, aid
officials say. “This was done so ignorantly, without an understanding of what’s required at
both ends of the implementing chain,” says Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the
Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University’s School of Public Health.
Mr Rubio, a supporter of PEPFAR and other foreign aid during his Senate career, may yet
have a chance to repair some of the damage he has overseen. But Mr Trump has offered his
top diplomat little cover to do so and appears more impressed by Mr Musk’s claim that
foreign aid is essentially a corrupt racket. ■
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America’s payment system

Elon Musk has been pushed out of the

Treasury
But court filings reveal quite how deep DOGE got
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午 | WASHINGTON DC

But maybe Musk elected Trump

AS ADMISSIONS GO, it was an uncomfortable one. In one of several affidavits filed on the
night of February 11th, Joseph Gioeli, a Treasury official in charge of technology at the
Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said that Marko Elez, a former Twitter engineer associated
with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had in fact had the ability
to write code into the bureau’s sensitive payment systems. Mr Elez’s computer, Mr Gioeli
testified, had “mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions” on one system.
This came after officials insisted to Congress and to journalists that DOGE’s access was
“read only.”
This was revealed in a lawsuit filed by the attorneys-general of various Democratic-led
states, seeking to keep Mr Musk and his team out of the Treasury’s payment system. On
February 8th a judge issued a court order that no political appointees should have access to
the payment system, and that any copies of data they might have downloaded from it
should be destroyed (this was later amended to allow Senate-confirmed officials access).
The court order—should it stand, and assuming it is adhered to—has suspended for now a
saga that has gripped Washington for the past two weeks. That is, the question of what
exactly has Elon Musk and DOGE been getting up to inside one of America’s most sensitive
computer systems. The drama broke into the open on the morning of January 31st, when
David Lebryk, the bureau’s long-standing boss and a career civil servant, suddenly
resigned. As The Economist previously reported, Mr Lebryk often told staff members that if
the bureau was in the news, the country was in serious trouble.
Mr Lebryk’s departure seems to have been sparked by a demand from Tom Krause, a
software executive close to Mr Musk. Mr Krause ordered Treasury officials to halt
payments made by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), according to
emails obtained by the New York Times. Mr Lebryk refused, arguing that the Treasury’s job
is not to refuse payments—only agencies can do that. He was put on leave, and then
resigned. In the days after, USAID was all but shut down, though a legal battle over the
status of many of its staff continues.
The Bureau of the Fiscal Service makes the vast majority of federal payments, worth almost
a fifth of America’s GDP. Its system contains the bank details, Social Security numbers and
tax identifications of almost every individual and organisation ever paid money by the
federal government. Its access by political officials really has only one precedent: that of
Richard Nixon’s use of Internal Revenue Service data to target people on the president’s
“enemies list”. Not only that, the system has been built over decades on top of a 1960s
“COBOL” mainframe. Hasty messing around with its code could produce damaging errors
that would be difficult to fix.
Treasury insiders feared that Mr Krause, who retains his job as CEO of Cloud Software
Group, a big contractor, and Mr Elez were trying to find a way to shut down payments
directly. In the days after Mr Lebryk resigned, Mr Musk repeatedly suggested on X, his
social-media platform, that his team was doing exactly this. Treasury officers “literally
never denied a payment in their entire career”, he tweeted.
The affidavits—by career civil servants under oath, not political officials—do suggest that
Mr Elez did not succeed in directly blocking payments using the Treasury’s system. Or at
least, this hasn’t been discovered yet. Instead they suggest Mr Elez was working to develop
a way to automatically identify USAID payments and flag them, so that they could be
blocked upstream. The court submissions do not yet shed light on what may have
happened to many payments to contractors not associated with USAID that remained
stalled, in defiance of two different court orders.
Yet even assuming the code-writing privilege really was an accident, the extent of access
given to Mr Elez does suggest something serious was afoot. And the frustration of the
project has sparked MAGA outrage. On February 6th Mr Elez resigned after the Wall Street
Journal revealed he had previously posted a string of racist comments on social media. Mr
Musk and J.D. Vance, the vice-president, immediately demanded he be reinstated. After the
court ruling, Mr Musk called for the judge to be impeached, while Mr Vance suggested the
government could defy his order.
Judge not
Appearing in the Oval Office with Mr Musk on February 11th, Donald Trump criticised the
judge, but said he would comply with the ruling. The affidavits say that Mr Elez’s laptop
was returned when he resigned, and that it had been fitted out with software intended to
stop him from extracting any data he might have accessed. Since resigning, he has not yet
resurfaced. Unless Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, intends on doing a lot of coding
himself, that suggests it will now be difficult for DOGE to get back in.
Yet fears about DOGE more generally seem unlikely to subside. Even as the court fight over
the Treasury gathered pace, other young engineers were going into the Consumer Finance
Protection Bureau, where they were also given complete “root” access over the data
systems. This too includes access to sensitive information, such as the details of
enforcement actions. The Treasury should resume paying its bills, but DOGE is not done
yet. ■
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The Treasury

What is Elon Musk getting up to with

America’s payment system?
Nobody is sure, many are worried
2 月 13, 2025 08:05 上午 | FOND DU LAC, WISCONSIN

ON THE MORNING of January 28th April Mullins-Datko, the director of ADVOCAP, a social-
services provider in Fond Du Lac, a city of 40,000 people in Wisconsin, put in her usual
request to draw down $250,000 to pay staff salaries and other expenses connected with
Head Start, a federal programme that provides child care, education and food to families on
low incomes. Every other time ADVOCAP has done this the money has arrived within 48
hours.
This time it did not. As of February 9th ADVOCAP has received just $44,000 of the $250,000
they were expecting. To pay their workers, they have had to use bank credit. If the money
does not materialise soon, they will have to begin laying off staff and shutting down their
Head Start programme. The result will be 202 children without services and 80 staff
members without jobs.
ADVOCAP appears to be a victim of Donald Trump’s seizure of the federal government’s
payment systems. Its money should not be missing, according to the White House. A memo
that froze much government funding, issued late on January 27th, was quickly rescinded
after an outcry and a court ruling. Yet ADVOCAP’s money has not turned up and nobody
seems able to explain why.
Ms Mullins-Datko says she has been calling anyone she can, but “they’re not responding.
I’ve heard nothing from them.” She has received only one insight: “I called the Office of
Head Start central office in DC and they said, ‘Oh, we’re sorry. This isn’t an Office of Head
Start problem. This is a Treasury Department issue.’” Guidance sent to NGOs by the
National Head Start Association, which represents service providers, confirms they too
have been told that the problem is with the Treasury.
That clue connects ADVOCAP’s glitch to a bigger question that has roiled Washington over
the past week: Exactly what has Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, or
DOGE, been doing inside the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, a once-obscure but sensitive area
of the Treasury? This is the part of the government responsible for paying out roughly 80%
of the nearly $7trn that the government spends each year.
The drama broke into the open on the morning of January 31st, when David Lebryk, the
bureau’s longstanding boss and a career civil servant, suddenly resigned. Until then, the
bureau was among the most anonymous of federal offices. According to Don Hammond, a
former official there, Mr Lebryk often told staff members that if the bureau is in the news,
the country is in serious trouble. Ever since he stepped aside, it has been in the news an
awful lot.
A few days after Mr Trump took office, Tom Krause, a software executive now working
with DOGE, ordered Treasury officials to halt payments made by the US Agency for
International Development (USAID), according to emails obtained by the New York Times.
USAID has subsequently been all but shut down. In the emails, Mr Lebryk argued that
refusing payments was not the Treasury’s legal or technical role--only agencies (like
USAID) can do that. He was put on leave and subsequently resigned. His defenestration has
sparked something close to panic among seasoned government watchers and career civil
servants about what DOGE might be doing.
What is clear is that allies of Mr Musk, including Mr Krause, and also a 25-year-old former
Twitter engineer, Marko Elez, have been given access to the bureau’s payment system,
under the orders of Scott Bessent, Mr Trump’s new Treasury secretary. They may have
asserted the authority to write new code into it, although politically-appointed officials
deny that. Nobody disputes that they have acquired the ability to read details of some of the
most sensitive data the government holds, including the bank details, social security
numbers and tax identifications of essentially every individual and organisation ever paid
money by the federal government. In the past only non-partisan career civil servants have
had access to this information. Mr Krause not only is partisan, he retains his previous job,
as CEO of Cloud Software Group, a tech-services company.
What could they have done? Contradicting the Treasury’s own spokesperson, Mr Musk has
repeatedly suggested on X, his social-media platform, that his team are shutting down
payments to government contractors directly. He claims to be fighting corruption. Before
DOGE came in, Treasury officers “literally never denied a payment in their entire career”,
he scoffed. If they are blocking payments, it could violate two court orders. Yet Treasury
insiders are concerned that DOGE officials may have found ways to implant code that could
delay payments to recipients while hiding that from career civil servants.
Another possibility is that DOGE could be asserting authority over a system, Do Not Pay
(DNP), designed to prevent bad payments by automatically freezing out accounts known to
belong to dead people, tax delinquents and recipients out of compliance with federal rules.
The firing of 17 inspectors-general, one of Mr Trump’s first acts in office, might facilitate
this, since they have oversight of the DNP system.
Even if Mr Musk’s claims that he is blocking payments are nonsense, the system is
vulnerable to accidents caused by tinkering. Programmes like these have been built up over
decades, literally on top of 1960s “COBOL” mainframes, says Mikey Dickerson, a former
head of the United States Digital Service. “No living person understands more than a small
piece of it.” Small changes made without extensive testing can produce catastrophic errors.
The Treasury says Mr Musk’s team has been limited to “read-only” access. Yet Mr Musk
says he is issuing instructions to others. These could impinge on several privacy laws. And
the payment system could be used against political opponents in a devastating fashion, by
cutting transfers to unfavoured organisations. There is only one real precedent for political
appointees going into these sorts of federal systems, some older officials note. That was
when Richard Nixon’s team used Internal Revenue Service records to work out how to
target people on the president’s “enemies list”.
On February 8th a federal judge in New York, citing a risk of “irreparable harm”, stopped
DOGE temporarily from gaining access to the payment system, and ordered that any data
retrieved be destroyed. But Treasury workers fear that this order will simply be ignored.
Mr Musk’s response was to call the judge “a corrupt judge protecting corruption” and to call
for him to be impeached. J.D. Vance, the vice-president, retweeted a claim that the order
amounted to “judicial interference”.
For ADVOCAP, the consequences are already serious. Ms Mullins-Datko says her employees
are worried that they may not get their next pay cheques, and some have been looking for
other jobs. The money ADVOCAP is owed, she stresses, is for work already done, and she
has a five-year contract to continue providing services. The terms of this contract include
extensive auditing to prevent any fraud or misuse of funds. “The government is in breach of
contract,” she says. ■
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Lexington

How Bob Dylan broke free

The biopic “A Complete Unknown” tells only part of the story
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

“BOB DYLAN didn’t have this to sing about/You know it feels good to be alive.” So sang the
band Jesus Jones in 1990 in “Right Here, Right Now”, an anthem about the liberation of
eastern Europe. It’s a lovely line, but of course it’s wrong about Mr Dylan. In 1990 he wasn’t
even at the midpoint of his glorious career; you can buy tickets now for his Rough and
Rowdy Ways Worldwide Tour this year. He did have the fall of the Berlin Wall to sing about.
He just didn’t do it.
Not to pick on Jesus Jones—it’s a great song—but the implication that Mr Dylan would have
sung about the end of the cold war speaks to an enduring disappointment, or wistfulness,
that he does not lend his genius and influence to great political causes. His early protest
music created that appetite, at least on the left, and it has been whetted anew in every
subsequent generation by reverential singalongs of “Blowin’ in the Wind” in elementary-
school music classes and undergraduate sit-ins.
But Mr Dylan veered away from politics early in his career. That choice is downplayed in
the diverting biopic “A Complete Unknown”, a contender for top honours at the Oscars next
month. The film focuses instead on the musical choice Mr Dylan made around the same
time, to disappoint the mandarins of folk music by exchanging his acoustic guitar for an
electric guitar and backing band at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. It’s too bad the film
couldn’t explore his motives for both choices. The musical one mattered more, but at least
in retrospect it seems like a no-brainer, and the political choice has more relevance to our
own time.
Mashing fact and fiction, discarding some influences on Mr Dylan and inventing or
exaggerating others, the film identifies him with left-wing causes and coyly leaves things
there. After he arrives in Greenwich Village, a new girlfriend urges him to read a leftist
writer and takes him to a civil-rights demonstration. Mr Dylan’s guitar acquires a sticker
reading “This machine kills fascists” (though the only authorities he winds up confronting,
folk purists such as Pete Seeger, are surely the gentlest fascists imaginable). As the Cuban
missile crisis reaches a terrifying climax we see him before a small audience in a
subterranean Village bar, belting out “Masters of War”, that didactic tirade.
For Lexington’s money, one of the film’s most moving scenes is when Mr Dylan performs
“The Times They are a-Changin’”, supposedly for the first time, before a young audience
that almost immediately begins to sing along with the refrain, in bright sunshine at the
Newport Folk Festival in 1964. That scene and others capture the ways Mr Dylan spoke to
his moment and, by restoring his music to its context, they summon its urgency and power,
which a wireless speaker in a contemporary living room tends to dissipate.
By 1964 the real Bob Dylan was turning away from activism. That year he told a writer
from the New Yorker, Nat Hentoff, that he was done with “finger-pointing songs”. He didn’t
want to be a spokesman for anyone, and he was “never going to have anything to do with
any political organisation again in my life”. That was also the year Mr Dylan released “My
Back Pages”, with its declaration that “I’d become my enemy/In the instant that I preach”,
and its mocking, uplifting refrain looking back at more righteous days: “I was so much older
then/I’m younger than that now”.
What had happened? There is no reason to suspect Mr Dylan of the “Republicans buy
sneakers too” calculation that Michael Jordan once said kept him out of politics. With his
fierce curiosity and magpie ways, Mr Dylan has always prized the particular, not the mass,
as well as his freedom from the loyalties or obligations beyond personal principles that he
saw as constraining so many Americans. “I can’t tell them how to change things,” he told
Hentoff, “because there’s only one way to change things, and that’s to cut yourself off from
all the chains. That’s hard for most people to do.” Years later, in the first volume of his
autobiography, Mr Dylan would reveal that his favourite politician in the early 1960s was
Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a right-winger who declared, when he ran as the
Republican nominee for president in 1964, “Extremism in defence of liberty is no vice.” Just
as, even after Mr Dylan went electric, his music would remain rooted in the American folk
tradition, so did his personal politics grow from old American ideals, of self-reliance and
self-creation.
Don’t need a weatherman
The political stakes seemed high enough in the America of the 1960s. In today’s
hyperpolitical era, when social media has granted audiences new power and sharpened
their tribal edges, artists seem to feel even more tempted or compelled to offer themselves
as leaders, or political “influencers”. For the most famous to opt out can bring a hail of
abuse, as Taylor Swift discovered when she failed to endorse Hillary Clinton in 2016. Mr
Dylan is more out of step than ever. One appraisal of “A Complete Unknown” in the New
York Times zeroed in on Mr Dylan’s real-life “baffling neutrality”, noting that that attitude
“most likely leaves you poorly suited to contributing to collective action”.
Surely that is the point. Mr Dylan felt sick, he once wrote, to witness his “meanings
subverted into polemics”. His lyrics challenge listeners not to march together but to derive
meaning for themselves. It is not hard to imagine a thoughtful musician, alone on a stage,
staring out at a sea of faces chanting his words while he holds a machine that supposedly
kills fascists, and feeling not just a thrill at his success but a stab of revulsion, even fear, at
his power. He might wonder why his fans so clearly yearned for someone strong to defend
them, whether they were right or wrong. Under those circumstances, it would seem not a
nihilistic but an exemplary choice, a potentially enlightening one, to decide that that just
wasn’t going to be him, babe. ■
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The Americas
 Most Latin American migrants no longer go to the United
States
Migration :: Can the region cope with a new wave?
 Guatemala is grappling with a globetrotting Jewish “cult”
Showdown :: The government is holding about 140 children that it seized from the Lev Tahor sect
 Javier Milei’s liberal reforms are hurting yerba mate
growers
Slashing the state :: But consumers now pay some 30% less for Argentina’s national drink than they did in 2023

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Migration

Most Latin American migrants no longer

go to the United States
Can the region cope with a new wave?
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | Cúcuta

ESTHER HERNÁNDEZ fled Venezuela to Colombia in 2017 with her husband, three
daughters and a sewing machine. Her voice cracks as she recalls sleeping in a shelter,
cooking on an open fire and at times going hungry. Her husband left for Chile in 2018,
desperate for work. He eventually got a construction job in Puerto Montt, some 8,000km
(5,000 miles) away. Ms Hernández built up a sewing business. Saving furiously, and with
regularised legal status in Colombia, the family eventually bought land in El Zulia, a small
village near the Venezuelan border. Brick by brick she built a house there. Now, after six
years away, her husband is coming home at last. “I am a Zuliana now,” she smiles.
If you listen to American politicians you might think that every migrant in Latin America is
heading for the United States. In the past most did, but not any more. The Hernández
family, rather than those who make for the United States, is now typical of Latin American
migrants. Between 2015 and 2022 the number of intra-regional migrants in Latin America
and the Caribbean soared by nearly 7m to almost 13m. Over the same period the number of
migrants from the region living in the United States increased by just 1m.
Most of those migrants are Venezuelans fleeing dictatorship and economic chaos. Some 8m
now live outside Venezuela, 85% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean. They are
joined by Nicaraguans, also ditching dictatorship, who tend to make for Costa Rica.
Haitians, escaping the horror of their gang-run state, also tend to settle in Latin America
and the Caribbean, particularly in the Dominican Republic and Chile.
With a 2,200km border with Venezuela, Colombia is on the front line. Some 2.8m
Venezuelans live there, one in every 20 people in Colombia. The country has been
remarkably welcoming. In 2017 it opened the first of a series of schemes giving some
Venezuelans access to health care and education, and the right to work, for two years. In
2021 it went further, guaranteeing Venezuelans who had arrived before February that year
most of the rights enjoyed by Colombians, even if they had entered the country irregularly.
This scheme lasts for a decade, and provides a path to permanent residency and
citizenship. Almost 2m Venezuelans, including Ms Hernández, have already received their
new identity card under this scheme. Some 350,000 more applications are being processed.
This warm welcome can be seen at the Centro Abrazar (roughly, hugging centre) in Bogotá,
a kindergarten-cum-migrant-centre funded by the city’s government. Mere days after long,
scary journeys, dozens of Venezuelan children twirl and sing, wearing paper sashes
decorated in crayon with their favourite word about themselves (“happy”, “beautiful”,
“brave”). The centre is free, open every day of the year and, crucially, helps new arrivals
quickly get their papers in order and their children registered in Bogotá’s school system.
A nativist might expect such a welcome to lead to severe economic disruption. Yet migrants
did not push up unemployment among local workers, even in Colombia. The wages of less-
educated and informal workers did fall in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, but the decrease
was usually small and temporary. The IMF estimates that since 2017, Venezuelan migrants
have increased annual GDP growth by an average of 0.1 percentage points in receiving
countries like Panama, and by 0.2 in Colombia, a boost which will last until 2030.
Hospitals and schools feel the strain, nowhere more so than in Colombia. In 2019 the
country spent 0.5% of its GDP looking after migrants, according to the IMF. Spending has
declined since then to around 0.3% of GDP. The IMF says the costs will be balanced over
time by rising tax revenues as more migrants enter the labour force. Quick regularisation is
helpful, as it brings down health-care costs as well as boosting the tax take.
Many Latin Americans, especially Chileans, think migrants bring crime. A study by Nicolás
Ajzenman of McGill University and co-authors, which examined data from between 2008
and 2017, found that when the proportion of migrants in a given part of Chile doubles, the
share of people there who say crime is either their biggest or second-biggest concern
jumps by 19 percentage points, relative to the nationwide mean of 36%. But they found no
impact on crime of any sort. Colombia saw an increase in violent crime near the border in
2016, when migration was surging, but the victims tended to be Venezuelan, suggesting it
is migrants who bear the risks.
Still, crime has risen overall in Chile in recent years. Politicians blame migrants. The influx
of black Haitians also “triggered much more evident racism”, says Ignacio Eissmann of the
Jesuit Migrant Service in Chile, an NGO. Attitudes are hardening elsewhere, too. Between
2020 and 2023 the share of Costa Ricans who say migrants damage the country jumped by
15 percentage points to 65%. In Peru and Ecuador four in five people believe the same.
Governments—most of which were welcoming initially—are reaching their limits. From
2018 Chile demanded that Venezuelans and Haitians must get a visa before coming. Peru
and Ecuador started demanding the same of Venezuelans in 2019. It is now nearly
impossible for Venezuelans to get a visa at home; after Nicolás Maduro stole the election in
July, all three countries closed their embassies there. Chile’s leftist president, Gabriel Boric,
says the country cannot take more migrants. Regularisation has stopped, and he is pushing
to widen deportation powers. Peru’s government has made it much harder for migrants to
regularise their status. In theory migrant children can attend school regardless. In practice
the missing paperwork often blocks them.
Brazil and Colombia remain relatively generous. Carlos Fernando Galán, the mayor of
Bogotá, says political leaders have a responsibility “to ensure there is not more xenophobia,
to show the benefits that migration can bring”. Yet angry voices are growing louder. Almost
70% of Colombians think that migrants cause an increase in crime. That may be why
Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, has been slow to introduce new regularisation
schemes for recent Venezuelan arrivals. (He recently announced a scheme so restrictive
that few will benefit.) “The central government has gone backwards,” sighs Gaby Arellano
of the Together We Can Foundation, an NGO which helps Venezuelans.
Mr Maduro’s rule in Venezuela is becoming more despotic. Arrivals to Colombia have
increased since July 2024, though official numbers are unreliable. The border is riddled
with trochas (illegal crossings); at official crossings people are often waved through
without a document check.
Some say the Maduro regime’s persistence makes little difference to migration. “Whoever
comes will be manageable,” says Jorge Acevedo, mayor of the border town of Cúcuta. His
words reflect Colombia’s welcoming spirit, but his city is now dealing with an influx of
Colombians displaced by violence in the nearby region of Catatumbo. More Venezuelans
could break a strained system.
Whoever comes, Colombia, Peru and the region, not the United States, will again feel the
biggest impact. ■
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Showdown

Guatemala is grappling with a

globetrotting Jewish “cult”
The government is holding about 140 children that it seized from the Lev Tahor sect
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | Guatemala City

Covered up from the age of three

OFFICIALS IN GUATEMALA are dealing with a strange situation. They have seized about
140 children from Lev Tahor, a fringe Jewish sect that has long faced charges of child abuse.
The group claims merely to be strictly Orthodox, but in reality resembles a personality cult;
former members have claimed that core Jewish texts are not studied, just the writings of its
deceased founder, Shlomo Helbrans. The sect has been wandering the world since Helbrans
founded it in Israel in the late 1980s. Most of its members are citizens of Canada, the United
States, Guatemala or Israel. The seizure of children in Guatemala is Lev Tahor’s most
dramatic encounter yet with state power, and has thrown the sect’s future into question.
Outside a children’s shelter in Guatemala City Lev Tahor mothers, wearing garments
resembling burqas, lie on the street in protest. “We are just victims,” says a Lev Tahor
woman in her 20s, who claims that officials took her breastfeeding baby.
Nancy Lorena Paiz, who heads the anti-human-trafficking unit of the Guatemalan
prosecutors’ office, maintains otherwise. She says the parents knew about the alleged
abuse, which includes the marriage of girls as young as 12, forced pregnancy and physical
punishment. “They didn’t protect their children,” says Ms Paiz.
For years, officials all over the world have fielded complaints about Lev Tahor (“Pure
Heart”). The sect is thought to have 300 members and has been called a cult by Israel’s
government. Several of its leaders are in prison in the United States. On December 20th,
after four Lev Tahor children came forward with testimony, Guatemalan police raided the
sect’s compound in a rural area a two-hour drive from Guatemala City, and took the rest of
the children to a shelter. Authorities have arrested several Lev Tahor men for human
trafficking.
Up to now, Lev Tahor has mostly managed to dodge child-protection agencies. Helbrans
(who died in 2017) left Israel shortly after founding the sect. His adherents followed him to
New York in the 1990s and in the 2000s to Canada, where child-welfare authorities
eventually investigated the community. Lev Tahor fled to Guatemala in 2014, and around
early 2022 some families crossed over into Mexico. A police raid there took several
children into custody, but, aided by Lev Tahor adults, they overpowered guards and
escaped.
Guatemalan officials avoided similar embarrassment. Two days after the raid in December,
officials in the shelter heard a commotion. The children had escaped, but they were soon
caught and returned.
Mothers were initially allowed inside the shelter, but after they refused to identify
themselves or their children a judge ordered their separation. Julio Saavedra, the
government’s most senior legal adviser, says there was a “credible threat” of mass suicide.
Marvin Rabanales, Guatemala’s social-welfare secretary, acknowledges that family
separations are traumatic. Sixty-five of the children are between two and nine years old; 15
are younger than two. Mothers of the infants must get permission from a judge to
breastfeed. Officials have identified many of the children. Several have been reunited with
parents who have left Lev Tahor.
Lev Tahor says it is a victim of religious persecution—driven by Israel—due to its rejection
of Zionism. “Their decision is to destroy the community,” says Uriel Goldman, a sect
spokesperson. He says former members are bribed to speak ill of it.
Hasidic Jews have condemned Lev Tahor. A delegation of rabbis, led by David Weis, a
prominent rabbi from Antwerp (who belongs to the Hasidic Satmar group, which is also
anti-Zionist), recently visited Guatemala. They met members of Lev Tahor, which one rabbi
had labelled a “terrorist cult”, and praised the Guatemalan officials for their work.
In New York, rabbis have been discussing ways to help Lev Tahor children. People who
have tried for years to extricate family members are waiting anxiously. Some have court-
approved guardianship of sect children. Shie Blum, a rabbi whose sister has several
children in the sect, has flown to Guatemala multiple times since the raid. “It is now or
never,” he says. ■
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Slashing the state

Javier Milei’s liberal reforms are hurting

yerba mate growers
But consumers now pay some 30% less for Argentina’s national drink than they did in 2023
2 月 13, 2025 10:52 上午 | Posadas

Tea bags, much cheaper now

MANY ARGENTINES sip mate daily. The brewed, bitter drink is made by infusing leaves of
the yerba mate plant, a relative of holly. It is grown by some 13,000 farmers, mostly on a
small scale across 230,000 hectares (568,000 acres), predominantly in the northern
province of Misiones.
Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, deregulated the industry in December 2023, ending the
power of the National Institute of Yerba Mate (INYM) to set minimum prices. Now growers
are struggling. Prices for their crop have dropped by more than 50% in real terms. “It
doesn’t cover costs,” says María Ferreira, a yerba mate grower, sitting by a road in
Misiones. She and other growers say they are now at the mercy of the ten mills that buy,
grind and package more than 70% of the supply.
They have been here before. The industry was regulated for nearly 60 years until the then-
president, Carlos Menem, dissolved the commission that set planting limits in 1991.
Subsequent overproduction saw a steep decline in prices over the next decade. Farmers
blocked roads with their tractors in protest and in 2002 regulation returned with the
creation of the INYM.
The institute’s 12 directors, from different parts of the supply chain, set minimum prices
through unanimous agreement. The federal government arbitrated disagreement.
“Artificially high” prices resulted in over-planting, says Gerardo Alonso Schwarz, an
economist in Misiones. In recent years the INYM began to limit how much could be planted.
“The reality is that the regulatory entity that could have controlled the cycles didn’t do it,”
he says.
Argentina’s deregulation ministry has applauded the reduced price that consumers are
paying for their brew, which in November was 30% lower in real terms than a year earlier.
Industry leaders attribute the 50% price reduction that some farmers have seen to an
improved growing climate, and to the use of the black market. “Many producers don’t want
to pay taxes, so they sell to other people who pay them less,” says Victoria Szychowski, who
runs the Amanda mate brand.
María Soledad Fracalossi of the INYM has encouraged farmers to diversify their crops.
Although a federal court has ordered the suspension of Mr Milei’s deregulation measures
with respect to yerba mate, Ms Fracalossi says the INYM cannot set prices until all of its
directors’ seats are filled. The federal government appoints its president. It has not done so.
Strikingly, even though growers are upset, many don’t harbour hard feelings towards Mr
Milei; his budget cuts have helped the country reduce inflation dramatically. Jorge
Lizznienz, a second-generation yerba mate farmer, says that the libertarian has given
Argentines hope. When it comes to yerba mate though, he ventures that “the president of
the country is being badly advised.” ■
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Middle East & Africa

 For Donald Trump, South Africa is DEI in the form of a
country
Volk music :: His enmity will hurt the rainbow nation
 How to go from fish lover to fish farmer
Tasty Tilapia :: Expanding aquaculture in Africa could have many benefits
 Homs’s troubles show the challenges facing Syria’s
leaders
The new disorder :: Both supporters and opponents of the old regime are unhappy with the new rulers
 Israel mounts an attack on Palestinian intellectual life
Raiding a bookshop :: The arrest of a prominent bookseller in Jerusalem bodes ill for freedom of expression
 Hizbullah’s decline is a boon for Lebanon’s new
government
Militants, disempowered :: But it will not be able to ignore the armed group entirely
 Instead of luxury condos, Gaza faces a resumption of war
Playing with fire :: Donald Trump’s chances of a grand bargain in the Middle East are shrinking

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Volk music

For Donald Trump, South Africa is DEI in

the form of a country
His enmity will hurt the rainbow nation
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | Cape Town

ONE OF THE first things Donald Trump did on retaking office was to halt America’s
programme to settle refugees. That is bad news for Africans who might want to flee war or
oppression. But the White House is making an exception for a group of white Africans: the
roughly 2.5m South Africans of mostly Dutch, French and German descent known as
Afrikaners. On February 7th Mr Trump issued an executive order that stopped aid to South
Africa, citing the country’s “aggressive” posture towards America, and pledged to admit
“Afrikaner refugees” fleeing ostensible persecution by their government.
Even if this is a genuine offer, there is unlikely to be an exodus. Contrary to what Mr Trump
suggests, Afrikaners—or any of the 63m South Africans—are not experiencing Zimbabwe-
style land seizures. They also feel deeply rooted in their homeland. “Africa is in our blood,”
explains Theo de Jager, a farmer, in an open letter declining the American president’s offer.
But the order is still significant. It symbolises how after 30 years of giving South Africa the
benefit of the doubt, America is now doubting the benefits of its ties to the “rainbow
nation”. The African National Congress (ANC), in power since the end of white rule in 1994,
failed to see that its questionable friendships abroad and the economically harmful laws
passed in the name of racial redress at home might eventually incur a cost.
The order also reflects the success that some Afrikaner groups have had in promoting their
agenda in America, especially among MAGA Republicans. And it shows how Mr Trump will
punish countries for both their foreign and domestic policies. The latter makes South Africa
especially vulnerable because, for those of a Trumpian persuasion, South Africa is
“diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) in the form of a sovereign state.
Under the ANC South Africa has had a history of welcoming American aid and investment
while being friendly with America’s adversaries. The ANC has long stood accused of
accepting donations from countries that are hostile to the West, including China.
When geopolitics was more placid, that was merely irksome. But in recent years
Washington has woken up to South Africa’s antipathy to Israel and its ties to China, Russia
and Iran. Michael Waltz, Mr Trump’s national security adviser, was one of the congressmen
leading calls for a review of relations between America and South Africa, partly because
South Africa brought a case of alleged genocide against Israel at the International Court of
Justice (ICJ). As a senator Marco Rubio, now secretary of state, criticised South Africa for
acceding to China’s demands that Taiwan should move its representative office away from
Pretoria, the capital. He says he will not attend a meeting of G20 foreign ministers this
month in Johannesburg.
But South Africa’s alleged sins go beyond international relations. Joel Pollak, a South-
African-born editor at Breitbart, a right-wing media outlet, and potentially America’s next
ambassador to the country, has connected Mr Trump’s opposition to DEI policies in
America with the president’s approach to South Africa. “[W]hen you look at the political
debate in South Africa, it’s very much about redressing the past…And the world is tired of
it,” he told News 24, a South African outlet.
One policy that has provoked ire is Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), which among
other things can require firms investing in South Africa to give equity stakes to black-
owned businesses. The policy was sold as a way to help correct centuries of systemic
racism. In reality it has enriched a black elite while raising the costs of doing business. Elon
Musk, whose attempt to bring Starlink internet to his home country has been hampered by
BEE requirements, has accused South Africa of having “openly racist ownership laws”.
Another area identified by Mr Trump is property rights. In a move that America’s president
seems to have conflated with actual land seizures, on January 23rd Cyril Ramaphosa, his
South African counterpart, signed the Expropriation Act, which gives the state new powers
to expropriate property in the “public interest”.
Those close to the president argue it is a modest reform that will be used to streamline
infrastructure projects. To its critics, including groups representing Afrikaners, the law will
make it easier for the government to confiscate your property on the pretext of righting
historical wrongs.
To Afrikaner groups the law adds to a sense that they are under siege. It is a message they
have taken to America on lobbying trips, where they have also highlighted cases of
murdered farmers. Though these ought to be seen against the backdrop of widespread
violent crime across South Africa, nuance is usually lost by the time the subject is aired on
American right-wing media. In conspiratorial quarters of the far right such cases are taken
as evidence of a deliberate “white genocide” (a claim that has no basis in reality).
Mr Ramaphosa has said that South Africa “will not be bullied”. But he is preparing to send a
team of envoys to Washington. A potential olive branch under discussion is amending the
law to allow satellite services such as Mr Musk’s Starlink to operate without having to hand
over equity in their local operations. The Democratic Alliance (DA), a liberal party that is
the ANC’s key coalition partner in government‚ has been calling for a change in the policy
since before Mr Trump won re-election.
Broad concessions are unlikely, however. Mr Ramaphosa’s allies say he is unlikely to drop
its case at the ICJ. Nor will there be any rethinking of the wisdom of BEE. If the
Expropriation Act is revisited, it will be as a result of court challenges rather than Mr
Trump’s demands. Many in the ANC will be tempted to deepen their relationships with
other BRICS countries.
Yet shrugging off the potential effects of Mr Trump’s punitive actions is naive. South Africa,
which has more people living with HIV than any other country, receives around $440m—
17% of the government’s budget for combating HIV and TB—in annual American aid to
tackle the virus. Under a Trump administration South Africa’s participation in AGOA,
legislation that grants African countries tariff-free access to America for certain exports, is
under threat. Mr Trump is unlikely to champion South Africa’s exit from the grey list of
countries seen as not doing enough to combat money-laundering. And it is hard to imagine
a Trump-appointed ambassador promoting South Africa as an investment destination for
American businesses.
Mr Trump’s mendacious interventions will not benefit South Africa. They will amplify
extremist voices, both black and white. They could lead to further hardship among the
poorest. And yet the rational response by the ANC would be to see the current fracas as
something of a wake-up call. For while Donald Trump has told some lies about South Africa,
he has hit on some truths, too. ■
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Tasty Tilapia

How to go from fish lover to fish farmer

Expanding aquaculture in Africa could have many benefits
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午 | Mpakadan, Lake Volta

Plenty of fish in the lake

AFTER YOU travel away from shore on a speedboat for about 40 minutes, Lake Volta, the
largest man-made lake in Africa, feels like the open sea. Yet parts of the Ghanaian lake are
actually a giant fish farm. Millions of tilapia, a popular freshwater fish Ghanaians believe is
best fried whole, live in cages that resemble bottomless paddling pools. Out in the deep it is
easier to control oxygen levels to prevent the fish from dying of stress or disease, explains
Vicente Maldonado of Tropo Farms in Mpakadan.
The lake has space for many more fish cages. Yet Tropo is one of only a few big fish farms in
west Africa. Despite its large lakes, long coastlines and plentiful fish lovers, the continent
lags behind in aquaculture, which has fuelled the fishing industry’s global expansion over
the past decade. Catching up could have many benefits, but obstacles persist.
Unlike elsewhere in the world, where farmed fish accounts for some 60% of consumption,
Africans mostly eat wild fish. In Ghana only 17% of all fish consumed is farmed. With
climate change and overfishing endangering wild stocks, farms could provide more reliable
supplies, reducing the need for expensive imports (40% of the fish Africans eat comes from
abroad). Done right, it could also be better for the environment and bring in foreign
currency from exports.
Why has fish farming not taken off? The main problem is money. Once set up, aquaculture
can be more lucrative than traditional fishing, but it takes several months for baby fish to
grow big enough to sell. Most fishermen do not have enough cash or credit to afford to
switch. Once a farm is up and running, feeding the fish and making sure they don’t overheat
or die of disease is more expensive in areas with poor infrastructure. Unreliable electricity
grids make it hard to power reliable cold chains. Bad roads and high tariffs hamper the
fish’s route to regional and foreign markets.
Better trade links and infrastructure would help, too. So would cheaper credit for aspiring
fish farmers. If west Africa manages to take a deep dive into aquaculture, the splash could
reverberate far beyond its borders. ■
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The new disorder

Homs’s troubles show the challenges

facing Syria’s leaders
Both supporters and opponents of the old regime are unhappy with the new rulers
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | Homs

Looking for a slice of normal life

THE CITY of Homs in central Syria has long held a unique position in the Syrian psyche.
Home to a mix of ethnic groups, it became a symbol of resistance to Bashar al-Assad’s
regime in 2011, when activists gathered around the clock tower that stands at its centre
before the dictator brutally suppressed their protest. At the same time, it was a significant
regime stronghold. Much of the population depended on government jobs, and the local
military academy churned out officers for Mr Assad’s army. The family of Mr Assad’s wife
comes from Homs.
Two months after the fall of the regime, former supporters and opponents of Mr Assad in
the city increasingly have something in common: a sense that the government of Ahmed al-
Sharaa, Syria’s new president, has left them to fend for themselves. Mr Sharaa’s supporters
are waiting in vain for redress following decades of dictatorship, even as he is failing to
protect members of Mr Assad’s Alawite sect from retributive violence.
The mounting chaos in Homs exemplifies the challenge Mr Sharaa faces all over Syria. His
government must ensure the safety of all ethnic groups while paying heed to the desire for
justice among the formerly oppressed. It must also create economic opportunities across
the board.
In Homs, things are not going well. Dozens of people have been killed or kidnapped in rural
areas outside the city in recent weeks. Some, mostly Alawites seen as loyal to Mr Assad,
have been targeted in sectarian revenge attacks; others by gangs hoping to extort ransom
money. Locals say it is increasingly difficult to distinguish one from the other.
Crime is rampant. In the centre of town, the owner of a van parked on the kerb was cursing
the thieves who had just made off with two rifles from the driver’s cab as your
correspondent passed.
Local residents, though impressed with Mr Sharaa’s rhetoric, bemoan a gap between words
and actions. Alaa Ibrahim, an Alawite activist attempting to mediate between the families of
the kidnapped and Homs’s new rulers, believes Mr Sharaa’s fighters have no interest in
meting out revenge. But he says he has found that Alawite concerns are being ignored.
“Sometimes our messages to the chief of police go unanswered,” says Mr Ibrahim.
It does not help that the government’s attempts to impose order have been ham-fisted.
Having dismissed most of the security forces and judges who served under Mr Assad, the
new leaders lack the manpower to police the city or ensure that the courts function. Instead
they have conducted showy raids of neighbourhoods associated with the old regime,
summarily rounding up hundreds of young men and detaining them for weeks. With Mr
Sharaa’s more obedient fighters tied up in Damascus, members of less disciplined and more
radical groups are plugging the gaps.
Many are locals who were forced to flee Homs for Idlib, Mr Sharaa’s stronghold, a decade
ago and have returned in recent weeks to find their homes destroyed. Hassan, a young
fighter with Mr Sharaa’s rebels, was just 13 when he and his family fled Baba Amr, a Sunni
neighbourhood associated with the resistance to Mr Assad. They returned to find that
looters affiliated with the regime had stripped their house down to the rafters. Now Hassan
patrols the streets, his wispy beard a testament to the Islamist worldview he adopted in
Idlib. ”People feel they have been denied justice since the liberation,” says Kinan al-Nahas,
an Islamist community leader.
The economic malaise is making things worse. Little outside support has materialised since
Mr Sharaa’s victory two months ago. International sanctions on Syria’s financial sector
remain in place, stalling economic recovery. The job market in Homs is so dire that young
people speak of a looming “hunger revolution”.
Ziad Kashu, a Christian activist, says he fears the rise of organised crime and gangs far more
than a sectarian explosion. Kidnapping for ransom, he says, became a lucrative line of
business during the final years of the Assad regime and has remained so. Creating better
job opportunities might reduce young people’s propensity to turn to crime or revenge, he
suggests: “The solution is economic.”
For now, many in Homs hope that moderation will prevail. Suhail Junaid, the city’s most
influential sheikh, says he is preaching tolerance. “This regime is rooting out sectarian
division,” he promises. Much depends on whether the new government can deliver on such
promises. Unless Mr Sharaa can put money in people’s pockets, deliver justice to the many
who have been wronged by Mr Assad and ensure that minorities are safe, things are sure to
get worse in Homs and all over Syria. ■
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Raiding a bookshop

Israel mounts an attack on Palestinian

intellectual life
The arrest of a prominent bookseller in Jerusalem bodes ill for freedom of expression
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

ON A BUSY thoroughfare in East Jerusalem, the predominantly Palestinian part of the city,
sits a literary oasis. The Educational Bookshop, run by Mahmoud Muna, himself a
Palestinian from East Jerusalem, and his family, has long been regarded as one of the finest
in the region. A pillar of Palestinian intellectual life, the shop on Salahuddin Street stocks
anything from in-depth studies of Gaza to the latest bestsellers by Yuval Noah Harari. The
only thing that is hard to find is a book that Mr Muna has not read, as your correspondent
discovered during recent visits.
On the afternoon of February 9th Israeli police raided the shop on Salahuddin street along
with another branch. They arrested Mr Muna and his nephew on charges of disturbing
public order after initially accusing them of “selling books containing incitement and
support for terrorism”. They were released from detention into house arrest on February
11th, following a court order issued the previous day. The sole evidence presented so far
for the alleged offences is a children’s colouring book. Mr Muna’s brother said the police
confiscated any book bearing a Palestinian flag and used Google Translate to search for
references to “Palestine”.
Read all our coverage of the war in the Middle East
The raid and arrests have prompted outrage in the region and beyond. A group of Israeli
intellectuals issued a statement condemning the raid, arguing it was part of a broader
pattern of repression against freedom of expression. Palestinian public life in Jerusalem has
been increasingly curtailed in recent years. Flying the Palestinian flag in public was banned
in 2023. The construction of illegal Israeli settlements has accelerated dramatically since
the war in Gaza erupted following Hamas’s massacre on October 7th 2023.
In this highly charged environment, Mr Muna’s bookshops continued to provide a rare
space for dialogue in the divided city. He hosts lectures from Israeli authors and Palestinian
dissidents alike. Just about everyone who passes through Jerusalem and works on the
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians knows him and his shop. Diplomats who have
recently arrived in the city stop by for his recommendations. Journalists milk him for story
ideas and bite-size analysis. “They’ll be really stuck if our bookshop goes out of business
too,” he wrote in November 2023.
For now, that looks unlikely. Business was heaving in the days after the raid (Mr Muna’s
brother opened the shop in his absence). Yet the scars left by it will undoubtedly linger. As
Israel’s oldest civil-rights organisation put it: “A police raid on a bookstore and the arrest of
its owners are reminiscent of dark periods in history.” ■
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Militants, disempowered

Hizbullah’s decline is a boon for Lebanon’s

new government
But it will not be able to ignore the armed group entirely
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | Beirut

THE BILLBOARDS are the same as before. Drive from the airport into Beirut, Lebanon’s
capital, and leaders of Hizbullah, the armed Shia movement, smile down at you. One board
depicts two backs draped in Iranian and Lebanese flags, the arm of the first wrapped
around the shoulder of the second. Cars still carry portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the
Hizbullah leader Israel killed in a strike on Beirut in September. After his funeral on
February 23rd, a huge shrine will be built where the road cuts through Hizbullah’s
stronghold in the southern suburbs.
But look beyond appearances, and Lebanon has changed. Hizbullah’s Shia heartlands in
south Beirut and Lebanon’s southern villages are reeling from the war. What remains of its
leadership is in Iran, the militia’s sponsor. And the Lebanese state, freed from the militia’s
clutches, has begun to function again.
Read all our coverage of the war in the Middle East
Almost three years after elections in May 2022, Lebanon has a new president, Joseph Aoun,
and prime minister, Nawaf Salam. A new government, made up of able technocrats, was
formed on February 8th, though it is still awaiting parliamentary approval. Unlike previous
administrations, it is not subject to an effective veto by Hizbullah, with only five of the 24
new ministers approved by the militia. “It’s the best government since the end of the civil
war” in 1990, says Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies in London.
The composition of the government reflects Hizbullah’s declining influence. Israel’s war,
which targeted Hizbullah’s Shia base while leaving the rest of the country mostly intact, has
levelled the playing field for other sects. The group’s control over Beirut’s airport and the
country’s ports is waning. With the Assad regime gone and neighbouring Syria ruled by
Ahmed al-Sharaa, a Sunni, Hizbullah has lost its landline to its patron, Iran, its means of
rearming and its hold on the captagon trade, another key revenue stream. With hostile
governments on all sides, Hizbullah feels increasingly cornered.
The hope is that with Hizbullah sidelined, the government will be able to make headway on
economic reforms and on implementing the ceasefire deal with Israel and UN resolution
1701, which calls for the disarmament of Hizbullah and other armed groups. In his
inaugural address on January 9th Mr Aoun, a former army boss, said that Lebanon’s armed
forces alone had an “exclusive right” to bear arms. The active involvement of America and
Saudi Arabia in shaping the government has raised hopes for reconstruction funds from the
Gulf and fresh loans from the IMF.
Still, the new government will not be able to ignore Hizbullah entirely. Political power in
Lebanon is allotted by sect, and the Shias comprising Hizbullah’s base are the largest group.
The militia still has some cash to compensate followers who lost their homes in the war
with Israel, though less generously than it used to. Along with its allies it forms the largest
bloc in parliament, at least until elections next year. It managed to force through its choice
for finance minister, Yassin Jaber. He could stymie the banking reforms that are required to
end a six-year depression and unlock IMF funding after a war that the World Bank says has
caused $3.4bn of damage.
The group is also unlikely to give up its weapons, despite Mr Aoun’s insistence. Though
Hizbullah has lost its leadership, Israel reckons it still has tens of thousands of fighters and
around 30% of its arsenal. Mr Salam, who as prime minister will be in charge of overseeing
the disarmament, is “too nice” to confront the militia head-on, says a friend. He may also be
too sympathetic to some of Hizbullah’s positions. Moreover, a third of Lebanon’s army is
Shia and may be reluctant to turn on its own.
Failure to make progress on disarmament may endanger the ceasefire agreement with
Israel, delaying the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon due this month. That may
prompt Hizbullah’s angry supporters to clamour for another fight. Lebanon is not out of the
woods. ■
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Playing with fire

Instead of luxury condos, Gaza faces a

resumption of war
Donald Trump’s chances of a grand bargain in the Middle East are shrinking
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | Jerusalem

Bleak prospects
FOR NEARLY a month both Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that
controls Gaza, have largely honoured the ceasefire agreement they reached on January
15th. Even though each side has accused the other of violating the agreement, Israeli forces
have withdrawn from most parts of the war-ravaged strip. In return, each week Hamas has
released small groups of hostages.
Then, on February 10th it said it would not release the next group as planned on February
15th, prompting Israel to threaten the resumption of “forceful warfare” unless Hamas
relented. On February 13th Hamas said it would release another set of hostages after all.
Even so, the ceasefire looks desperately fragile.
Read all our coverage of the war in the Middle East
The back-and-forth reflects disagreement over the terms for the second stage of the
ceasefire, set to begin in March. The conflict appears to have been exacerbated by the
intervention of Donald Trump, America’s president, who has proposed removing all
Palestinians from Gaza and transforming the rubble-strewn strip into a massive luxury
resort.
The next stage of the ceasefire is supposed to include a complete Israeli withdrawal from
Gaza, the release of all hostages and talks on rebuilding the devastated strip. Binyamin
Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, stood next to Mr Trump when he outlined his plan at a
press conference in Washington last week. Mr Netanyahu has made it clear he will not
accept an end to the war while Hamas still rules Gaza.
But the Hamas commanders who control the fate of the hostages have no intention of going
anywhere. During the latest release of hostages on February 8th, they paraded the three
men in front of a banner in Arabic, English and Hebrew saying “We are the day after”. The
message was addressed to Mr Trump as much as to Israel.
Mr Trump wants the release of hostages to be speeded up from the original plan. “If all of
the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock...let hell break out,” he said after
Hamas’s announcement. That bought time for Mr Netanyahu. It delighted the hard right in
his government, who wanted a return to the fighting and “voluntary emigration” of
Palestinians long before Mr Trump proposed it, and whom he has struggled to keep in his
ruling coalition since the ceasefire began. But if Hamas relents, he may yet come under
pressure from Mr Trump to stick with the ceasefire.
He is not the only leader in the region forced to navigate carefully around Mr Trump’s
unexpected ideas. In Mr Trump’s telling, Jordan and Egypt are supposed to house uprooted
Gazans. They oppose this, but know that angering him could result in losing American aid.
King Abdullah of Jordan was careful not to contradict Mr Trump while visiting Washington
on February 11th. He said Jordan would accept 2,000 sick children from Gaza for medical
treatment. Only after leaving did he post on social media that he had “reiterated Jordan’s
steadfast position against” the Trump plan. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s president, has
postponed his trip to America. His foreign ministry said on February 11th that it was
working on its own “comprehensive vision” to rebuild Gaza without removing the Gazans.
By all accounts, Mr Trump still desires a grand regional alliance between America, Saudi
Arabia and Israel. That has become hard to imagine. The best hope is that Mr Trump’s
threats help convince Hamas to continue releasing hostages, preserving the ceasefire. His
unworkable plan for Gaza may spur much-needed thinking on how to actually solve
Gazans’ woes. But for now, the president’s interventions have made things worse, not
better. ■
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Europe
 Germany’s “business model is gone”, warns Friedrich
Merz
The man who could lead Europe :: Germany’s probable next leader talks about Ukraine, saving the economy and beating
the AfD in an exclusive interview
 Ukraine’s fears are becoming reality, after Trump talks to
Putin
Going over their heads :: A phone call sparks fear and dread in Kyiv and other European capitals
 Ukraine fears being cut out of talks between America and
Russia
An interview with Volodymyr Zelensky :: Hours before Trump’s call with Putin, we spoke to an apprehensive Volodymyr
Zelensky
 Robert Fico’s pleas for cheap Russian gas bring Slovaks
onto the street
A populist turns towards Putin :: Protestors see him as a mini-Orban
 A new crackdown is gathering strength in Turkey
Erdogan’s endgame :: Opponents of all stripes are being targeted
 Le Chat, the cat-bot France has pinned its AI hopes on
A feline helper :: Mistral AI’s chat assistant raises a pressing question
 How India became an unexpected role model for Europe
Charlemagne :: Emulating India is not just about currying favour

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The man who could lead Europe

Germany’s “business model is gone”,

warns Friedrich Merz
Germany’s probable next leader talks about Ukraine, saving the economy and beating the AfD
in an exclusive interview
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | STROMBERG

IT IS A calm and confident Friedrich Merz who greets The Economist on February 7th at a
luxury golf resort in Stromberg, a small town in Germany’s Rhineland where he will
campaign later in the day. Two weeks ago controversy exploded around the leader of the
conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), after he relied on the hard-right
Alternative for Germany (AfD) to get a non-binding motion urging restrictions on migration
through parliament. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protest. But the row does
not appear to have fazed the man hoping to become chancellor after the election on
February 23rd. Getting migration and the economy right are essential, he tells us, if the AfD
is to be kept out of power.
Mr Merz is very tall, thin and has a no-nonsense rhetorical style worlds apart from Olaf
Scholz, the incumbent he hopes to unseat. His energetic campaign performances belie his
69 years. Polls suggest that the AfD controversy has not derailed his goal of a solid victory
for the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). If so, Mr Merz
will have first dibs on the chancellery.
German election tracker: who’s leading the polls?
For worried observers, Europe risks being left behind as China and America race ahead in
innovative industries like AI. Mr Merz insists that Germany has no choice but to change.
“The business model of this country is gone,” he states bluntly. His response begins with a
war on red tape. “We have to do serious work on this burden of bureaucracy,” he says,
blaming Brussels as well as Berlin. Asked for examples, Mr Merz rattles off a list of
troublesome EU rules, including the due-diligence reporting standards that German
business leaders loathe.
Second, Mr Merz will take an axe to the benefits system. “We have to concentrate our public
spending”, he says, “on not paying people who are not willing to work.” On energy, another
bugbear for German industry, he promises grid reform and “to build at least 50 gas power
plants”. There will be no return to Russian gas “for the time being”, but Mr Merz is
“absolutely” open to signing long-term contracts for (pricey) American liquefied natural
gas. New nuclear reactors will be considered.
Mr Merz also wants to slash taxes and raise defence spending. Pressed on whether his sums
add up, he appeals vaguely to the revenues from the growth he hopes to inspire (Germany
has been in recession for two years), and says that “there is a lot of room for changes” in
the €460bn ($474bn) federal budget. But many think the gap between aspiration and
reality, including Germany’s vast public-investment needs, means the constitutional debt
brake, which limits the federal government’s structural deficit to 0.35% of GDP, must be
relaxed. “I’m open to discuss that,” says Mr Merz. “But it is not our first approach.”

Merz meets media

For the fiscal hawks of the CDU/CSU, reforming the debt brake would be a big step. But
elsewhere Mr Merz hardly comes across as radical. “German industry is still strong,” he
insists. Despite the world’s protectionist turn, and the prospect of tariffs from America, he
insists that Germany’s export-led model can “definitely” survive.
Although he seems uncomfortable with the word “leadership”, Mr Merz is serious about
restoring energy to Germany’s European policymaking, something other governments have
missed under Mr Scholz. Strengthening the EU’s voice is a leitmotif of the Merz worldview,
stretching from China policy to his support for Emmanuel Macron’s ambitions to bolster
Europe’s defence industry. Mr Merz promises to energise the “Weimar triangle” with
France and Poland, musing on military co-operation as well as joint projects in AI and
quantum computing. He can imagine working very closely with Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s right-
wing prime minister.
More fundamentally, Mr Merz supports a “concentric circles” idea of organising Europe in
which some countries integrate deeply while others share less sovereignty and receive
fewer benefits from the single market. “To be completely in or completely out is not the
right answer,” he says, referring to Britain’s link to the EU. Greater concessions should have
been made on the free movement of people to avoid Brexit, he believes.
As for Donald Trump, Mr Merz claims the American president’s transparent approach
means preparing to negotiate with him will be “very easy…‘America first’ means that he is
committed to do the best things for his own country.” Brussels should meet America’s
promised tariffs on EU exports as it did during Mr Trump’s first term in 2018, Mr Merz
says, with a targeted response that inflicts sufficient pain to concentrate minds.
On defence spending, mindful that simply meeting the NATO floor of 2% of GDP will be
tricky enough once a special fund expires in 2028, he hesitates to commit to higher
numbers, though accepts “it has to be more” in the long term. And if America insists that he
moves more quickly? “It is not my task to make President Trump happy,” Mr Merz snaps.
Meanwhile, calls from EU partners for tweaks to fiscal rules to enable higher defence
spending, or even joint borrowing, will get short shrift in a Merz chancellery. “I’m very
sceptical about that,” he says. Changing the EU treaties is “extremely complicated, and I
don’t see it in the foreseeable future”.
An early test for Mr Merz may be American demands that Europe should take the lead on
security guarantees for Ukraine if peace talks, announced by Mr Trump on February 12th,
succeed. At the Munich Security Conference this weekend he will meet American officials
who want their European counterparts to take on more responsibility, including J.D. Vance,
the vice-president. Peter Hegseth, Mr Trump’s defence secretary, said on February 12th
that “America will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages
dependency.” But the hawkish Mr Merz, who once said “Peace can be found in any
cemetery; only if there is freedom will there be peace,” has yielded to a more cautious
chancellor-in-waiting.
Sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine “could be an option”, he says, but “only after a
reliable ceasefire”. As for the security guarantees Volodymyr Zelensky demands, “a country
at war is not a potential NATO member”. Pressed, Mr Merz concedes he would eventually
like to see Ukraine as “a country in peace in NATO”, but adds it is too early to consider
admitting a country without full control over its territory—at least until America has
clarified its policy. Mr Merz does, though, look favourably on American proposals to use
frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.
Mr Merz’s hesitancy is understandable. He has an election to win, and the constituency in
Germany for fiscal splurges and placing troops in harm’s way is limited. Yet even his stated
proposals show flaws. The border controls and rejections of asylum-seekers he demands
sit awkwardly with his professed pro-Europeanism; existing controls have already upset
relations with Poland. Meanwhile, Mr Merz backs EU proposals to ease the flow of capital
across the single market while rejecting what he calls the “extremely unfriendly” proposed
takeover by Italy’s UniCredit of Commerzbank, one of Germany’s biggest lenders.
Defence of national champions aside, Mr Merz’s zest for injecting America-style red-
blooded capitalism into Germany’s dozier model is genuine. He remains at ease in the
world of boardrooms he inhabited in his decade in the private sector, notably as the
chairman of the German arm of BlackRock, an asset manager. Acquaintances from that
time, during which he became a multi-millionaire, speak of his quick-wittedness and
leadership qualities.
He has certainly demonstrated resilience. Mr Merz quit politics in the 2000s after Angela
Merkel bested him in a CDU power struggle. But in 2018, when she resigned the party
leadership, Mr Merz shocked the political world by placing his hat in the ring. That bid
failed, as did a second two years later. He got there in the end. Yet there remains frustration
at his inability to seal the deal. Many think the CDU/CSU should be polling higher than its
current 30%, given the travails of Mr Scholz’s outgoing government. Mr Merz struggles
with women and younger voters. And although his pledge never to enter coalitions with the
AfD is serious, less than half of German voters believe it.

As his opponents like to point out, Mr Merz has never run anything larger than the CDU’s
parliamentary bloc. But the tests will come quickly. He will need to woo either the Social
Democrats or Greens (or both) into coalition talks, which he says he hopes to finish by
Easter (April 20th). His team is frantically preparing a list of early actions to prove to
cynical Germans that politics can still get things done. G7 and NATO summits follow in June.
Mr Merz ends with a stark vision of Germany’s future. Fixing the economy and immigration,
he says, will shrink the AfD—ideally below the 5% level needed to enter parliament. Fail,
and a darker future awaits. “This could be one of our last opportunities to resolve the
problems before the populists [win] a majority,” Mr Merz warns. The German republic has
long been one of Europe’s strongest bulwarks against the far right. To some, Mr Merz’s
actions have weakened that firewall. To the man likely to take over the reins of Europe’s
largest economy, he represents its last chance. ■
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Going over their heads

Ukraine’s fears are becoming reality, after

Trump talks to Putin
A phone call sparks fear and dread in Kyiv and other European capitals
2 月 13, 2025 09:16 上午

EVER SINCE Donald Trump vowed during his election campaign to end the war in Ukraine
quickly, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his European supporters have feared
abandonment by America. Their dread grew on February 12th, when Mr Trump spoke by
phone with Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, without co-ordinating the details beforehand
with Ukraine, and announced that negotiations to end the war would start “immediately”.
He later said he might meet Mr Putin in person in Saudi Arabia.
It was exactly the sort of unilateral American move that, just hours earlier, Mr Zelensky had
warned against in an interview with The Economist. “If Russia is left alone with America,
Putin with Trump, or their teams, they will receive manipulative information,” the
Ukrainian president warned. European leaders said they should not be left out and insisted
the West should seek to “put Ukraine in a position of strength”.
Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine war
Supporters of Ukraine in the West accused Mr Trump and his entourage of making
concessions to Mr Putin without getting anything in return. The Russian stockmarket rose.
In global markets the oil price slipped by 3%, reflecting in part an expectation that
negotiations could eventually result in the rehabilitation of the Kremlin and the lifting of
Western sanctions on Russia’s energy industry and wider economy.
Mr Trump has met Mr Zelensky twice in recent months—in New York in September and in
Paris in December—and the two spoke after the call with Mr Putin. But Ukrainian officials
say they were not consulted on the timing or the content of the call—a break with the
Biden administration’s stated policy of discussing “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”
(though contacts between the White House and the Kremlin did take place behind the
scenes).
Mr Zelensky nevertheless tried to sound positive after the news broke of the Trump-Putin
conversation, posting on X, a social-media platform: “No one wants peace more than
Ukraine. Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression
and ensure a lasting, reliable peace. As President Trump said, let’s get it done.”
Mr Trump had once boasted he could get a deal done in less than 24 hours. That has not
happened. But he is nevertheless moving fast, though with little sign of a real plan and
much evidence of turmoil in his team.
Keith Kellogg, a former three-star general, had been designated as America’s special envoy
for Ukraine and Russia. But it was Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s golfing buddy and now his
Middle East envoy, who flew to Moscow on February 11th to bring home a detained
American schoolteacher, Marc Fogel—a goodwill gesture by Mr Putin to prepare for the call
with Mr Trump. Neither does General Kellogg figure in the negotiating team announced by
Mr Trump: Marco Rubio, the secretary of state; Mike Waltz, the national security adviser;
John Ratcliffe, the CIA director; and the trusted Mr Witkoff.
Mr Zelensky has sought to position himself as a willing partner for peace, casting Mr Putin
as belligerent, determined to press his meat-grinding advance into Ukraine. For a while Mr
Trump seemed to share the view, even threatening tariffs and more sanctions against
Russia if it refused to negotiate. Those close to his administration whispered that he
understood that a deal would require much greater pressure on Mr Putin. Senior aides
were sent to Europe to confer with Mr Zelensky and European allies at the Munich Security
Conference that is starting on February 14th, and elsewhere.
But the president suddenly changed direction. On February 12th he announced on his
Truth Social network his “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with the Russian
leader. Mr Trump hailed their alliance in the second world war, gushed about the “great
benefit” of working with Mr Putin and spoke of “visiting each other’s Nations”.
Negotiations require direct contacts. But Mr Trump is in effect starting to normalise
relations with Russia without obtaining tangible concessions. Indeed, Mr Putin’s
spokesman said talks had to involve more than the cessation of fighting; it was necessary to
“address the root causes of the conflict”, which in Kremlin-speak means absorbing Ukraine
into a Russian sphere of influence.
If anything, it was America that seemed to make the early compromises. Pete Hegseth, the
newly installed American defence secretary, said it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to return
to its international borders, given its territorial losses after Russia’s intervention in 2014
and its full-scale invasion in 2022.
He conceded that “a durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to
ensure that the war will not begin again”. But he seemed to stymie such guarantees in
advance. He suggested that America would do little to provide them. Ukraine would not be
admitted to NATO. Nor would America send forces to Ukraine to secure any peace
agreement. Nor would it allow NATO to protect European troops that might be deployed
there. Ukraine’s security would be the task of European and non-European troops in a
“non-NATO mission”.
Future support for Ukraine is unclear. Mr Trump seems to be treating a possible agreement
on American access to Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals as compensation for tens of billions in
past American assistance “with little to show”. Mr Zelensky has suggested that he might
agree to grant such access in return for continued aid, but Mr Trump has not yet accepted
that.
Michael McFaul, a former American ambassador to Russia, posted on X: “Diplomacy 101:
Don’t give anything without getting something in return. Don’t negotiate in public. Don’t
negotiate about Ukraine’s future without first co-ordinating your position with Ukrainians.”
Mr Trump has long ignored American diplomatic conventions. Despite his unorthodox
methods, though, some hope Mr Trump’s aides will shift him towards more orthodox
policies. Kurt Volker, Mr Trump’s former envoy to Ukraine, thinks the president is trying
“both to entice Mr Putin with warm talk and show he can put pressure on him”. In
comments later in the day, Mr Trump seemed to adjust his position. “I’m backing Ukraine,”
he insisted. He predicted that Ukraine might get some territory back, and said America
would continue to support it as long as assistance was “secured”—perhaps a reference to a
deal on rare earths. “If we didn’t do that then Putin would say he won,” added Mr Trump.
Even so, the mood among Ukrainian officials has greatly darkened. “I think it will all be
decided without Ukraine,” says one. “Ukraine is fucked. And so is Europe, by the way.” ■
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An interview with Volodymyr Zelensky

Ukraine fears being cut out of talks

between America and Russia
Hours before Trump’s call with Putin, we spoke to an apprehensive Volodymyr Zelensky
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午 | KYIV

Editor’s note: On February 12th President Donald Trump confirmed that he had spoken to
Vladimir Putin. Mr Trump said they had agreed to start US-Russia negotiations
“immediately”, aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Hours earlier we had interviewed
Volodymyr Zelensky, who warned that negotiations that excluded Ukraine would be a
dangerous betrayal.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, Ukraine’s man of action, doesn’t take to limbo easily. His five and
a half years as president have been a series of brutal tests. But the waiting game is the most
palpably frustrating. Three weeks after Donald Trump took office, the Ukrainian president
still doesn’t know what his plans are for Ukraine. Mr Zelensky reveals only minimal contact
with the new leader of the free world: just “a couple of calls” since a meeting in September.
He says he is “sure” Mr Trump has no oven-ready peace plan. How could there be when no
one has been consulting Ukraine about it? He is not being informed about contacts between
the White House and the Kremlin; what he knows he gets from the press like everyone else.
There are “probably” some ideas that he should know about, but he’s yet to be told about
them. “We haven’t seen them, and we haven’t heard any proposals.” The fear for Ukraine is
that a deal between Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin could be done over his head.
President Zelensky is in an oddly upbeat mood during an hour-long conversation in his
presidential compound in Kyiv. His face is tired, but he has been keeping fit, the calloused
palms of his hands testifying to the 7am gym sessions he squeezes in after sleepless nights
of military reports and explosions. He even occasionally laughs, subduing the angrier edges
of his personality, in what appears to be a communications push ahead of the Munich
Security Conference that starts on February 14th. This conference could be the Trump
team’s signal to snap into action, he suggests. “There will be two large delegations
[America’s and Ukraine’s], there will be meetings.” Yet the mood music is ominous. Just a
few hours after this interview, the American president declared on social media that there
is “little to show” for support of Ukraine. “This war MUST and WILL end soon,” he wrote.
Mr Zelensky confirms he will sit down in Munich with Mr Trump’s deputy, J.D. Vance, a man
who once claimed to “not care what happens to Ukraine one way or another”.

Mr Zelensky sidesteps that insult. “Honestly, I think the vice-president of the United States
today is focused on domestic issues,” he says. Ditto the rest of the Trump team. But he
admits he still doesn’t understand the new administration’s real intentions. “We will be
able to discuss some things at the meeting, and then I will find out their vision. I think the
most important thing is that they hear our vision.” He warns the Americans not to keep
Ukraine out of the loop. That has been Mr Putin’s aim from the start, he thinks, and he
worries the White House could be easily misled: “If Russia is left alone with America, Putin
with Trump, or their teams, they will receive manipulative information.”
The Ukrainian president is clearly concerned by some of the early signals coming from
Team Trump. In January Marco Rubio, now secretary of state, suggested that both Russia
and Ukraine must make “concessions” for peace. Too much, the Ukrainian president says, is
being asked of the non-aggressor. Readiness to sit down with “the killer” (Mr Putin) is
compromise enough. “Imagine that Hitler wasn’t destroyed...Imagine that after everything
he did to the Jews...people said, okay, let’s look for a compromise.” Mr Putin, he says, has
“acted like Hitler” and the wrong type of diplomacy would rehabilitate him. Ukraine is
ready to negotiate, but only with security guarantees that could hold Russia back from
fresh aggression. A history of broken deals has shown that talks and ceasefires alone will
not work. “Without a security guarantee, it’s zero…[Putin] doesn’t want any peace.”
The trouble is that America and some European states appear unwilling or unable to make
credible commitments of the kind Mr Zelensky is demanding. He admits that NATO
membership is unlikely because of opposition from America, Germany and Hungary—
though, he says, the latter would snap into line if ever Mr Trump asked. “No one is giving
up.” But if the door remains shut, Ukraine must “build NATO on its territory”, meaning, he
explains, a strengthened Ukrainian army. “We have to double it. Double. To be on the same
level as the Russian army.” Mr Trump can provide the security guarantees without asking
Russia, he suggests, and Europe could help fund it, he insists. “Missiles, long-distance
missiles and Patriot [air-defence systems].” Is there a plan B if none of this is possible?
“This is plan B,” he says.
Mr Zelensky has a warning for those who think that a quick deal undercutting Ukraine will
make their lives easier. Western leaders focused exclusively on domestic politics are
“delusional,” he says. Mr Putin is coming for them too, he claims. “No one understands what
war is until it comes to your home. I don’t want to scare anyone. It will come. I’m just telling
you the facts.” Russia is increasing the size of its army, he says—by 140,000 last year and
by 150,000 this year. He says he knows of plans to send most of them to Belarus under the
pretext of training, in a worrying repeat of the exercises that preceded the full-scale
invasion of Ukraine three years ago. The assumption is that these troops might attack
Ukraine. But what if they turned to attack Lithuania or Poland? “Why doesn’t anyone think
that this will happen?” The maths do not look good for Europe, he insists. Russia has 220
brigades, roughly consisting of 3,500-5,000 men each. Ukraine has 110; Europe just 80. “Do
you understand what is happening? Without Ukraine, Europe will be occupied.”
Mr Zelensky claims that his troops are holding their own against the Russian brigades,
which remain focused on eastern Ukraine. The past year has seen Mr Zelensky and his
troops struggle against a Russian war machine that is built on mass and fear. “If the guys
aren’t going straight, they kill them.” Many have criticised Ukraine’s president for taking his
time over mobilising more men, starving front-line units of soldiers and losing positions as
a result. Mr Zelensky disagrees with them. Ukraine mobilised 30,000 a month over the last
year, he claims. “It was, I think, a lot.” Yes, morale is up and down, people are tired. “This is
life.” But the Russians feel it too, says Mr Zelensky. Western pessimism is misplaced. He
denies that Ukraine’s lines are under serious pressure. If Mr Putin thinks he can win, it is
only because he doesn’t understand the details, the losses. He cites intelligence that
suggests the Russian leader is not getting information from his inner circle. “No one wants
to spoil his mood, they’re afraid of him.”
Amid this moment of peril he insists that his own position is secure and he has public
support. But there is growing dissent in the ranks, and he hints at it. “There are people who
are very patriotic, and there are people who are not.” He dodges a question about his own
future, and whether he will seek re-election, once an election can be held. That is not on his
mind, he insists, perhaps unconvincingly. He is disdainful of comments made by Mr
Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, General Keith Kellogg, that Ukraine could
hold elections during wartime. How could you run them in a city like Kharkiv, under daily
Russian bombardment? “It’s interesting when General Kellogg thinks about the elections.
He’s 82 [in fact, 80] years old, and he thinks about the elections in Ukraine.” The Ukrainian
president insists that power has not poisoned him. That, after all, is what sets him apart
from the man in the Kremlin. “And I have time, he doesn’t. He will definitely die soon.”
Mr Zelensky says he is determined that Mr Putin will not use a new American presidency to
sideline Ukraine. “Look, I will not let Putin win. This is what I live by.” Ukraine’s president
is sticking by his guns to get the maximum he can in the way of security guarantees. Less
obvious is what, if anything, he can do if Mr Trump cuts a deal without him.■

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A populist turns towards Putin

Robert Fico’s pleas for cheap Russian gas

bring Slovaks onto the street
Protestors see him as a mini-Orban
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | Bratislava

No cheap gas please

OLD-TIMERS IN Bratislava still call Freedom Square “Gottko”, harking back to Soviet times
when it was named after Klement Gottwald, a communist leader of Czechoslovakia. On
February 7th demonstrators packed it from end to end, protesting at the current Slovak
government’s overtures towards Russia. In total some 100,000 people turned out in rallies
across the country. The flags of NATO and the European Union waved; demonstrators
chanted “Slovakia is Europe” and called on Robert Fico, the prime minister, to resign. In
Bratislava one of the heads of Peace to Ukraine, the main group organising the rally,
accused Mr Fico of trying to “turn Slovakia into a Russian province”.
The big Friday-night protests have been going on ever since late December, when Mr Fico
flew to Moscow to meet Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. They gathered force in January
after Tibor Gaspar, an MP from Mr Fico’s Smer party, blunderingly told an interviewer that
Slovakia might one day consider leaving the EU. Mr Fico and other officials assured voters
that the comment had no concrete implications. “All of Robert Fico’s governments have
fully declared their pro-European orientation,” says Judita Lassakova, a Smer member of
the European Parliament.
But the protests are about much more than foreign policy. Mr Fico has been prime minister
four times, beginning in 2006. In 2018 he was forced to resign by huge anti-corruption
protests, after investigations into the murder of Jan Kuciak, a journalist, revealed links
between the government and underworld figures. Mr Fico was always a rabble-rousing
populist, but his Smer party was originally left-leaning and pro-European. During his years
out of government that changed: he began adopting the anti-vaccine, Russia-friendly
language of Europe’s far right.
After returning to power in October 2023 he abolished an anti-corruption police unit and a
special prosecutor’s office which was prosecuting Smer MPs. The government shortened
the statute of limitations on corruption cases and reduced penalties for bribes. It
transformed the state broadcaster into a pro-government mouthpiece. Heads of cultural
institutions such as the National Gallery have been replaced by party loyalists. Mr Fico
grew more radical after a failed assassination attempt last May. Many accuse him of leading
an autocratic transformation of the state, like that of Viktor Orban in Hungary.
That is an exaggeration. The prime minister “is trying to follow [Mr Orban’s] playbook, but
he doesn’t have the ingredients”, says Beata Balogova, editor of Sme, an independent
newspaper. He lacks the cadre of clever lawyers who helped Mr Orban reshape Hungary’s
legal code. Slovak oligarchs have not bought and neutered the major press organs. The
courts remain reasonably independent. Where Mr Orban’s party holds two-thirds of
Hungary’s parliament, Smer has a tentative majority dependent on fickle coalition partners.
Unlike Mr Orban, says Milan Nic of the German Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank,
Mr Fico has rarely obstructed EU support for Ukraine, despite his pro-Russian rhetoric. His
trip to Moscow was prompted by a practical issue: gas. In December Ukraine declined to
renew the contract allowing Russian gas to flow through its pipelines to customers in the
EU, chiefly Austria and Slovakia.
That struck at one underpinning of Mr Fico’s popularity: low energy prices. Over two-thirds
of Slovak households use gas, and consumer prices are fixed by the state. SPP, the
government-owned gas distributor, has arranged to get some Russian gas via the
Turkstream pipeline, but prices may rise by a third this year. Importing liquified natural
gas through European ports is much more expensive, says Michal Lalik, head of SPP’s trade
division.
To close its fiscal deficit, which hit 5.7% of GDP in 2024, the government has raised the
basic VAT rate from 20% to 23%. Inflation is rising. The business community is grumbling:
the employers’ association said Mr Gaspar’s comment about leaving the EU was bad for the
economy.
Mr Fico may yet serve out his term. But his coalition could soon fall to 76 of the 150 seats in
parliament, or fewer. Several MPs have quit Hlas, a coalition partner founded by defectors
from Smer. His other partner, the hard-right Slovak National Party, worries that Smer’s
turn to the right is cannibalising its electorate. With the party abandoning its focus on the
welfare state, says Miroslav Beblavy, a former MP, “many Smer voters are not sure what it
stands for.”
The next demonstration, scheduled for February 21st—the anniversary of Mr Kuciak’s
murder—will probably be the biggest yet. Mr Fico has responded to the protests with wild
charges. On January 31st he claimed, without evidence, that they were fomented by an
armed Georgian group plotting with Ukraine and Slovak opposition parties to carry out a
coup. Michal Simecka, the leader of Progressive Slovakia, the biggest opposition party, was
dumbfounded. “You can repeat that it’s a fantasy and that the only coup is taking place in
Mr Fico’s head, but you feel weird denying it because it’s so absurd.” ■
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Erdogan’s endgame

A new crackdown is gathering strength in

Turkey
Opponents of all stripes are being targeted
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午 | ISTANBUL

TURKEY’S TV STARS do not have it easy. The global success of the country’s soap operas,
episodes that last up to three hours, and the frantic pace of production make for punishing
work schedules. Actors regularly spend up to 16 hours a day on the set. But in the little
spare time they have, some of them also plan and carry out armed coups.
That, at any rate, seems to be the view of prosecutors who ordered the arrest of Ayse
Barim, a top talent manager, in late January on charges of “attempting to overthrow”
Turkey’s government. The charges stem from Ms Barim’s involvement in the Gezi Park
protests, which shook the country in the summer of 2013. Since her arrest, a number of
celebrities who took part in the demonstrations, including Halit Ergenc, the star of
“Magnificent Century”, a popular historical drama, have been hauled in for questioning by
the authorities. Turkish prosecutors are now combing through archival footage of the
protests, to determine which news outlets “legitimised” the unrest by reporting on them in
an insufficiently critical manner.
Turkey’s government, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, continues to frame the
protests, which were triggered by the planned redevelopment of a popular Istanbul park
but snowballed into wider demonstrations about freedom of assembly and expression, as a
coup attempt. Five protesters, including Osman Kavala, a prominent businessman, have
already spent years in prison, convicted on laughably weak evidence. (Turkey has ignored a
ruling by the European Court of Human Rights ordering Mr Kavala’s release.) But why
prosecutors should now have ordered a new Gezi probe 12 years after the protests took
place is unclear.
One reason may be to set the stage for a broader crackdown, signs of which are already
apparent. On February 11th, police in Istanbul rounded up ten municipal officials from the
opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on terrorism charges. A week before that,
prosecutors announced they would seek over seven years in prison and a ban from politics
for Ekrem Imamoglu, the CHP mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial capital and largest
city, for “insulting” and “threatening” the city’s chief prosecutor. Police have also arrested
five journalists for broadcasting an interview with an expert witness said to have played a
key role in the investigations against Mr Imamoglu and other CHP mayors.
Mr Imamoglu, a likely challenger to Mr Erdogan (or to his chosen successor if he does not
run) in the next presidential elections is no stranger to such tactics. In 2022 a court
sentenced him to more than two years in prison, pending appeal.
Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) party suffered a shocking defeat at the hands
of the CHP in local elections last year. Turkey’s leader is now out for revenge, and keen to
brand the opposition as corrupt and beholden to armed groups, analysts say. The arrests,
and the rehashing of the Gezi conspiracy, mean he may be preparing a decisive blow,
through the courts, against Mr Imamoglu. “He’s trying to intimidate artists and journalists,”
says Berk Esen, a political analyst, “so when he decides to go after Imamoglu no one will
dare protest or rally behind him.”
Kurdish politicians in Turkey have endured similar treatment, and worse, for years. Since
2016, well over a hundred democratically elected mayors from the country’s main Kurdish
party have been sacked by decree and replaced by state appointees. Many have been
arrested. The trend has continued since last year’s elections. The next in line may be Van, a
city in south-east Turkey, whose co-mayor was recently given a prison term.
Another recent arrest, that of Umit Ozdag, a far-right politician accused of “insulting the
president” and inciting public hatred against refugees living in Turkey, suggests that Mr
Erdogan may also be looking to smother potential opposition to his government’s outreach
to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the armed group Turkey has fought for the past 40
years.
On or around February 15th, the anniversary of his capture by Turkish agents in Kenya, the
PKK’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, is expected to call on the group to disarm. The
move, which follows months of secret talks, could put an end to a war that has claimed over
40,000 lives, and pave the way for concessions to Turkey’s 15m or so Kurds. Some Turkish
nationalists, including Mr Erdogan’s allies in parliament, have dropped their long-standing
objections to talks with the PKK. Mr Ozdag could be made an example to those who have
not.
The next presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey are scheduled for 2028. Mr
Erdogan is preparing for them well in advance. ■
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A feline helper

Le Chat, the cat-bot France has pinned its

AI hopes on
Mistral AI’s chat assistant raises a pressing question
2 月 13, 2025 09:05 上午 | PARIS

Make way for the cat

ONE PRESSING question at the artificial-intelligence (AI) summit in Paris this week was
this: is Mistral AI’s assistant a cat, or a chat? Called Le Chat and developed by a French
startup as a competitor to ChatGPT, it launched as a smartphone app on February 6th. To
the English speaker, Le Chat looks like a French twist on AI chat, which it conducts in
English (and other languages). Yet at the jamboree President Emmanuel Macron plugged it
using a soft “sh”, rendering Le Chat distinctly feline. Arthur Mensch, Mistral’s 32-year-old
boss, says his baby is indeed four-legged. Look carefully at the icon in the shape of the letter
M, he says: it is also a cat’s face.
Days after it launched, Le Chat became the most-downloaded iOS app in France. Powered
by chips from Cerebras, an American competitor to Nvidia, it is much faster to use than
other AI assistants, including ChatGPT. Like China’s DeepSeek, it uses open-source models;
but unlike the Chinese AI assistant, Le Chat does not raise national-security questions.
France’s defence ministry, as well as Helsing, a German startup focused on intelligent strike
drones, have signed deals with Mistral. “There’s nothing like Le Chat anywhere else in
Europe,” says Verity Harding, a British AI specialist. “When you download it,” declared Mr
Macron, “you are helping a European champion.”
As ever, trying to build champions was a core message in Paris, though one that was
marred by a spat with J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, over regulation. The
summiteers promised technology that would be “safe, secure and trustworthy”; he accused
world leaders of wanting to “strangle” AI.
All the same, France unveiled €109bn ($113bn) in private, mostly foreign, AI investment
over the coming years, much of it to go on data centres that can make use of the country’s
low-carbon nuclear electricity. This boost to France’s AI sector well exceeds the £39bn
($49bn) that Britain says it will spend on AI. For all his political woes, Mr Macron was
strikingly chirpy as he cajoled foreign tech bosses and leaders over foie gras and
champagne at the Elysée Palace.
Le Chat has a long way to go. It is little known, even in Europe. Mistral is a dwarf among
American tech giants. But in Paris it got the AI world talking. Ask Le Chat to explain its
name wittily and it shoots back: “a conversation starter and a purr-fect marketing coup”. ■
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Charlemagne

How India became an unexpected role

model for Europe
Emulating India is not just about currying favour
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午

FEELING A BIT glum and in need of a reboot, plenty of middle-aged Europeans opt for a
retreat in India, seeking the reinvigorating properties of a few yoga stretches and gallons of
masala chai. Might the trick work for political federations as well? The entire team of 27
European Union commissioners is gearing up for a brief passage to India later this month, a
rare mass excursion out of their small peninsula. For the Brussels-dwelling Eurocrats on
tour, the bustling South Asian vibe on offer will mark a sharp contrast with their home turf,
whose sclerotic economy is matched only by its gridlocked politics.
The visit will kick up lots of talk of a “strategic partnership” between the world’s two
biggest democracies. There will be earnest entreaties to agree on a trade deal, 18 years
after talks began. Some touring officials will no doubt grumble about the grinding poverty,
or the putrid Delhi smog. Europeans have long come to poorer countries with lectures on
how backward locals should aspire to be more like them, with a focus on human rights,
green rules and so on. That moralising tone might usefully be left behind in this case. For all
India’s flaws, an attentive European visitor will see much there that should make them
envious—and that they might learn from. Once under the thumb of various European
colonisers, India is an unexpected role model for today’s EU.
The most desirable feature the wandering Europeans will come across on their trip is
economic growth, something that feels as alien in their homeland as bland food might in
Mumbai. True, the Indian economy has cooled of late, generating a mere 5.4% year-on-year
growth at last count. Still, that is roughly 5.4% more than the euro area. For India, growing
at an annual average rate of around 7% over the past decade or so has yielded more than
higher living standards. The confidence in a bigger, richer future provides a spring in the
Indian stride and geopolitical swagger that Europeans can hardly remember. As a rich
place, the EU will not soon experience growth at Indian rates, nor will India soon reach
European living standards (it aims to be a developed nation by 2047). Still, there are
lessons for the EU to draw. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister since 2014, has
sometimes been hesitant in his economic reforms. But the introduction of a pan-Indian
Goods and Services Tax in 2017 removed internal economic borders between states to
create a single market of the sort Europe harps on about endlessly, but fails to ensure
works well.
Equally unattainable for Europe, but no less desirable, is its host’s demography. India
overtook China to become the world’s most populous country in 2023—just as the EU
population started shrinking for the first time since the Black Death in the 14th century.
The median Indian, aged just 29, is in fine cricket-playing mettle. His European
counterpart, in his mid-forties, needs a rest after softly kicking a football. India frets its
“demographic dividend” may fizzle, and that it might get old before it gets rich. Europe, for
its part, worries it will get poorer as it gets older, and its social-security system runs out of
workers to pay for the swelling ranks of retirees. If ever there was a place for EU
policymakers to ponder the sustainability of their social model, India is it.
As representatives of federal Europe’s top body, the commissioners will look with jealousy
at India’s governance. Though the EU is a concatenation of 27 nations that gel into an
awkward polity, India is the mirror image: one proud nation divided into 28 states. The EU
is a bloc with a few trappings of a country, such as a common currency, flag and a national
anthem (though no lyrics). But European citizens lack a visceral attachment to their union,
preferring their countries (or even regions) instead. Some assume it will always be so. How
can a peninsula with two dozen official languages, different religions and cuisines ever
spawn a coherent collective identity, with an army to boot? Europe is wondering; India has
already shown the way. Not every facet of Indian politics is worth replicating. But whereas
India suffers from bouts of crass majoritarianism, it can be hard for Europe’s disparate
coalition governments to come up with any sort of majority at all. India’s polity is
sometimes over-centralised; the EU’s conversely can feel unworkable under the weight of
vetoes wielded by national governments. Something for the Europeans to ponder over a
biryani.
What of policies that Europe could emulate? India has pioneered digital public
infrastructure that works. An “India Stack” of technology now links citizens’ identity with
their phones and bank accounts, making dealing with the still-hulking bureaucracy less
daunting than it once was. Even more than Mr Modi, the Eurocrats should ask to meet
Nandan Nilekani, an Indian tech grandee who pioneered the digital ID scheme, known as
Aadhaar, and the whizzy services that go alongside it. A detour to Bangalore and its startup
scene would prove enlightening for the EU brigade.
Indian summer
Beyond the elusive trade deal, much of the talk will be about geopolitics. India and Europe
are both aspiring third wheels in a G2 world. Both fret about being dependent on China as a
trade partner (and could use each other’s help to diversify). Both also worry about
America’s Trumpian turn, though it is more obviously problematic for the EU. Without the
kind of outside security guarantor that has underpinned European security for decades,
India has developed some measure of the “strategic autonomy” Europeans now crave. It
has form when it comes to playing off potential partners against each other. Europeans
winced when Mr Modi last year hugged Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Moscow (perhaps
unsurprisingly given Russia is still its biggest supplier of arms) while also getting closer to
America. That is the type of diplomatic contortion even a yogi would struggle to pull off.
Europeans may not like it, but they should at least try to understand it. ■
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Britain
 It increasingly looks as if Lucy Letby’s conviction was
unsafe
Letby case :: The case of a nurse jailed for killing babies exposes deep problems with British justice
 Britain’s review body for criminal convictions is
struggling
Criminal incompetence :: The Criminal Cases Review Commission needs more money and a wider remit
 Parliament is advertising for a new Black Rod
Carrot and stick :: The post offers carrot, as well as stick
 A British incubator of businesses often bound for the Bay
Area
Founders and flyers :: Entrepreneur First has taken an American tilt
 Valentine’s Day may need to adjust to the times
Romance in Britain :: Changing dating habits mean fewer couples and more throuples
 London is ageing twice as quickly as the rest of England
Urban demography :: Partly because it’s a nice place to be old
 Is Sir Keir Starmer a chump?
Bagehot :: Those in government seem to think so

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Letby case

It increasingly looks as if Lucy Letby’s

conviction was unsafe
The case of a nurse jailed for killing babies exposes deep problems with British justice
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

IS LUCY LETBY guilty? The question has persisted since August 2023, when a jury found
the nurse had murdered seven babies and tried to kill six others at the Countess of Chester
hospital in north-west England. In the eyes of the state, for a long time any doubt over the
conviction amounted to nothing more than a conspiracy theory. Ms Letby has had two
appeals rejected; in July 2024, in a retrial preceded by nine months of reporting
restrictions, a second jury found her guilty of another count of attempted murder. An
ongoing public inquiry is predicated on her guilt. Its chair, Dame Kate Thirlwall, dismissed
the speculation about the case as “noise”.
Yet the doubts have grown. What started with a few sceptics became weightier with a New
Yorker article and questioning by statisticians. Now eminent scientists and politicians are
concerned, too. At a press conference in London on February 4th an international team of
neonatal experts led by Shoo Lee, a retired Canadian neonatologist, concluded that all the
deaths and injuries blamed on Ms Letby were in fact due to natural causes or medical
errors. The findings have been sent to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an
independent body with the power to refer cases back to the courts.

None of the experts goes so far as to claim that Ms Letby is innocent. The question is
whether her conviction was based on unreliable evidence, and was thus, in legal terms,
unsafe. If so, the former nurse could be the victim of one of the highest-profile miscarriages
of justice in British history. Regardless of the outcome, the case raises troubling questions
about the workings of the British state.
Part of the complexity lies in the fact that the case against Ms Letby was entirely
circumstantial. There were no eyewitnesses, and there was no forensic evidence or any
motive to speak of. There was, however, a sharp increase in the Countess of Chester’s
neonatal deaths. Over a period of 13 months in 2015 and 2016, 13 babies died, an
unusually high number compared with the two or three deaths recorded in each of the
previous years. Suspecting foul play, doctors accused Ms Letby, who was the nurse on shift
during most of the incidents. Eventually the hospital trust reported the case to Cheshire
Constabulary.
From the outset the police relied on flawed statistical analysis to build their case. They
asked Jane Hutton, a medical statistician at the University of Warwick, to calculate the
probability that one member of staff could so often happen to be on duty when the deaths
or collapses occurred. Such an approach would be wrong, Professor Hutton told them: it
risked equating a low probability of a series of events occurring with a high probability of
guilt. Before looking for a suspect, they should first consider all possible explanations for
the deaths and unexpected collapses, she suggested. The police agreed to this analysis, but
later dropped it as a line of inquiry on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
The bulk of the case rested on medical evidence, interpreted for the jury by expert
witnesses over ten months. Dewi Evans, a retired consultant paediatrician who had offered
to help, was the prosecution’s star witness. He spoke confidently about how the babies’
sudden collapses and deaths had occurred: the only possible explanations, he argued, were
that they had been variously injected with air, force-fed with milk, inflicted with trauma
and poisoned with insulin.
Yet here too the evidence is not without controversy. During the first trial it emerged that a
judge in another case had criticised Dr Evans’s testimony as partial and “worthless”. Dr Lee
got involved after seeing that Dr Evans had misinterpreted a paper he had co-written in
1989 on air embolisms. The 14 experts from some of the world’s best child-health
institutes examined 17 cases involved in the trial. “We did not find any murders,” said Dr
Lee.
Instead they found explanations never heard by the jury. Many of the babies were
premature and low-weight with chronic problems, making them more likely to die from
natural causes. Most were cared for poorly. In one case the panel found that, rather than
the air embolism Dr Evans had diagnosed, the baby had probably died of sepsis and
pneumonia after her mother had not been given antibiotics soon enough. In another, the
prosecution said Ms Letby had inflicted trauma to a baby’s liver, but the panel concluded
that a traumatic birth had caused the injuries.
Even the notion that two babies had been poisoned with insulin, a theory accepted on the
stand by Ms Letby (while denying that it was she who did it), was contradicted. The panel
said the theory had been premised on an incorrect interpretation of blood tests: the babies’
insulin levels were within the normal range for preterm babies, the doctors said.
Beyond any individual errors, the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital also
appears to have been fundamentally unsafe. Inadequate staffing, poor leadership and
delays in seeking advice were picked up in a report in 2016 by the Royal College of
Paediatrics and Child Health, a professional body—in keeping with shortcomings found in
inquiries into other maternity scandals in England. In a statement to the Thirlwall inquiry,
one father recalled seeing a nurse Googling how to do a lung drain on his triplet.
Data from the Care Quality Commission, a regulator, suggests that the hospital failed to
report two of the deaths attributed to Ms Letby. This included one baby who died of
respiratory complications, exacerbated by a drug-resistant bacterium detected in her
tracheal tube. At the trial an estate plumber described how there would sometimes be
“sewage floods” in the unit. Poor plumbing, the panel noted, could be a factor in the
bacterial infection. The hospital was slow to downgrade the unit after the spike in death
rates, and had no robust procedures for investigating deaths. “If this was a hospital in
Canada, it would be shut down,” said Dr Lee.
None of this proves that Ms Letby is innocent. The prosecution relied on other
circumstantial evidence: the confidential handover sheets Ms Letby hid under her bed as
“trophies”; the handwritten notes (“I am evil, I did this”), though they may have been
written as therapy. But in a case built on weak foundations, large cracks are appearing. “I
think it’s beyond reasonable doubt that this conviction is not safe,” says Professor Hutton.
“Not only that; in my opinion, it’s beyond reasonable doubt that there should never have
been a trial.”
Back to court?
Whether the case collapses is another matter. Ms Letby’s defence team failed to present
any of the new evidence during the trial—and appeals require fresh evidence that could
not have previously been considered. The only witnesses the defence called were Ms Letby
herself and the plumber. “Our system in this country is very much one bite of the cherry,”
says Glyn Maddocks, a lawyer who has successfully appealed against miscarriages of
justice. He points out that successful applications to the Criminal Cases Review
Commission· are incredibly rare.
Still it seems “quite likely” that the CCRC will refer the case back to the Court of Appeal,
reckons Lord Ken Macdonald, a former head of the CPS. The review body is still reeling
from the recent high-profile case of Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison after
being wrongly convicted of rape. It will not want another. Yet any decision will take time,
not least because the CCRC is badly underfunded. What the appeal court would do in the
event of a referral is also hard to predict.
Whatever happens, the case has not only revealed horrors in the way hospitals care for
babies. It has exposed deep flaws in the criminal-justice system, and risks further
undermining faith in the law. “Surely it is telling us as a nation that we need to reflect on
whether our processes are working as we would want them to,” says Professor Neena
Modi, a neonatologist, who was also on the expert panel. Doing so will bring new heartache
to the victims’ families. But the safety of future victims depends on it. ■
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Criminal incompetence

Britain’s review body for criminal

convictions is struggling
The Criminal Cases Review Commission needs more money and a wider remit
2 月 13, 2025 05:26 上午

ON FEBRUARY 3RD the Criminal Cases Review Commission received an application from
Lucy Letby’s lawyers claiming the former nurse is not, in fact·, a baby-killer. The CCRC must
now determine whether to refer her case to the Court of Appeal. It probably will. But she
would be one of the very few. Of the 1,442 applications reviewed last year, 98% were
denied referral.
The CCRC was established in 1997 to restore confidence in the judicial system. Wrongful
convictions had racked up. The Guildford Four, Birmingham Six and Maguire Seven were
found to be innocent of murder after many years in prison. As an independent body, the
CCRC would “challenge and think differently”. It is mandated to ask if there is a “real
possibility” that the Court of Appeal would overturn the conviction in light of fresh
evidence or trial errors. If evidence has been presented at court—however poorly—it
cannot be presented again.
Andrew Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for rape he did not commit. Twice the CCRC
denied him referral, although forensics had been misinterpreted. Only when new DNA
evidence emerged did the CCRC refer the case. His conviction was overturned.
Last year the CCRC’s chair resigned after a review of its handling of Mr Malkinson’s case
argued it was “too cautious”. Now the CCRC is rudderless while handling more applications
than ever, on a squeezed budget. ■
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crucial. So is knowledge of economics and an ability to work with data. For details go to
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Carrot and stick

Parliament is advertising for a new Black

Rod
The post offers carrot, as well as stick
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

THE JOB advertisement is at once both clear and coy. It states that the successful candidate
will demonstrate “strong interpersonal and influencing skills”, a “calm manner” and
“excellent communication skills”. What it does not add is that, once a year, those “excellent
communication skills” and “calm manner” will be put to use by hitting a big door in
Parliament three times with a big stick while the king sits nearby, waiting, on a big gold
throne.
The role of Lady or Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod is becoming vacant. It is an appealing
post that, the advert explains, offers carrot as well as stick. The successful candidate will
benefit from a salary of £87,000-114,000 a year ($108,000-142,000) and from “generous
civil service pension schemes”. There are other perks: Black Rod also gets a corner office
(“Black Rod’s box”); good job security (the role began in 1350 and seems unlikely to stop
soon) and an almost unparalleled ability to wear tights and ruffles in public.
On the downside, they will have a slightly odd job title. Though Britain offers odder. The
Royal Household, similarly, if rather more flashily, has a “Gold Stick”, a “Silver Stick” and a
“Silver Stick-in-Waiting” (they are deputy to the Gold Sticks). Meanwhile the nearby College
of Arms employs a “Portcullis Pursuivant” and a “Rouge Dragon Pursuivant”.
With the typical opacity of the English establishment, few of these titles are very
explanatory: Portcullis Pursuivant spends little time with portcullises; the Rouge Dragon
spends little time with dragons. By comparison, the title of Black Rod is practically pellucid:
Black Rod has a black rod. Naturally, it is called a “staff”.
Most imagine that the role of Black Rod largely involves walking round in tights. But there
is rather “more to it than that”, says an insider. Black Rod doesn’t merely attend the state
opening: she helps organise it, and other ceremonial events. There are other duties: Black
Rod is also an usher of the Noble Order of the Garter, the Serjeant-at-Arms in the House of
Lords and Secretary to the Lord Great Chamberlain. A series of titles which feel less like a
job advert than a paragraph in a Tolkien novel.
The role, which is initially offered for three years, might sound silly but it has been held by
some serious people. The current Black Rod, Sarah Clarke, ran Wimbledon before she ran
the Lords. All the Rods before her had been men, many of them military men. This helped
them perform some of Black Rod’s many roles (such as seeing to the security of the Lords)
but not others (“hairy legs”, says the insider darkly, can play havoc with too-thin tights).
The role may be traditional but, as the advert is keen to explain, the hiring process will not
be. The House of Lords, like the House of Commons, is “committed to becoming an even
more welcoming, inclusive and diverse organisation”. Both houses are keen to welcome all
types of people. Unless, of course, you’re the king or Black Rod. In which case, the
Commons will shut the door in your face. ■
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Founders and flyers

A British incubator of businesses often

bound for the Bay Area
Entrepreneur First has taken an American tilt
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

LAST MONTH Jemima Bunbury and Daan Ferdinandusse incorporated Sartor Technologies,
their fashion-tech startup, in America and started decamping from London to San Francisco
to seek a seed round of funding—barely three months after they met. They got together at
Entrepreneur First (EF), an incubator for startups that was founded in London in 2011 by
Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford, two alumni of McKinsey, a consultancy.
EF curates cohorts of wannabe founders, throwing 40 of them into a room; they must
couple up within weeks or face ejection. Ms Bunbury and Mr Ferdinandusse are a classic EF
pairing of a sector expert and a tech type. She is a 26-year-old Brit who has worked in
venture capital and fashion; he is a 27-year-old machine-learning engineer from
Amsterdam.
As Britain’s Labour chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seeks a boost to growth from
entrepreneurship, EF is worth watching. EF has launched more than 800 startups with a
combined paper value of $11bn. Its programme, run from offices in Bangalore, Paris and
San Francisco as well as London, forces founders to demonstrate traction quickly and
stress-tests their businesses for venture-capital investment. EF’s staff look for founders
who can work productively while hunting for problems with a big potential market. Like
reality-TV producers, they step in to tweak the rules or break up couples if things are not
working out too well.
After eight weeks EF backs successful teams with a $125,000 investment in exchange for an
8% stake. The process can be stressful (your correspondent, who went through the
programme in 2017, can attest to that), but having a peer group in the same situation helps,
says Mr Ferdinandusse. Mr Clifford, who was EF’s first CEO, has recently taken on
additional responsibilities with the British government, chairing the Advanced Research
and Invention Agency, a government-backed R&D-funding agency established last year, and
advising the prime minister on artificial intelligence. Ms Bentinck stepped into the CEO role
at the end of 2023, with Mr Clifford moving to become chairman.
EF’s portfolio includes Cleo (a fintech firm), Permutive (an adtech platform) and Aztec
Protocol (a blockchain-privacy company). It employs 110 people. Ms Bentinck says she is
proud of the “enormous” returns EF has generated for its investors and its longevity in a
market where many accelerators survive only a couple of years. EF now attracts thousands
of applicants for each cohort. Part of its challenge is diverting the ambitious away from
steady six-figure salaries in finance or consulting. “We’ve made founding not just viable but
an aspirational pathway and career for a bunch of people who didn’t even realise that was
possible,” says Ms Bentinck.
Yet early-stage investing is hard, with any returns coming only years down the line. To
date, EF-backed firms have racked up a modest $800m in exits. And none of its portfolio
companies has the name recognition of Airbnb, DoorDash or Stripe, which emerged from Y
Combinator, a San Francisco-based accelerator.
To grab some of that Silicon Valley sparkle, Ms Bentinck has pushed EF towards America
since becoming CEO. Most founders now move to San Francisco for the programme’s final
stint, hoping to catch the eye of the world’s biggest venture capitalists. Ms Bentinck herself
was seconded there last year for the launch of EF’s hub. Seven of the 11 firms in EF’s latest
cohort were incorporated in America.
California dreamin’
Although Britain dominates Europe in venture-capital funding, the capital available is still
an order of magnitude larger in America. And California’s appeal is as much cultural as
financial, according to Ms Bentinck. “The Bay Area still has an enormous draw for the most
talented technologists,” she says. “They want to be based in the birthplace of modern
computing and they want to be surrounded by people who validate their life choices.”
Succumbing to California’s gravitational pull might not impress Ms Reeves. The same week
the chancellor said she wanted Britain to be “the best place in the world to be an
entrepreneur”, Sartor’s CEO was boarding a plane to Silicon Valley. Is EF’s tilt to America a
worry for Britain?
Not if it makes it easier for British startups to raise funds and keep going. However, it
becomes a problem if over time it pulls their operations and focus to America. Reid
Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, who sits on EF’s board, says that the accelerator has a
duty to give participants every advantage. “If building a bridge between the UK and the Bay
Area can help scale that business, then that is what EF is going to do.”
Mr Hoffman and the EF team hope that some of their portfolio companies will come back to
Britain after picking up valuable experience in Silicon Valley. Asked if Sartor is likely to
remain in America, Ms Bunbury sounds more pragmatic than patriotic: “It will depend on
what’s best for the business,” she says. ■
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Romance in Britain

Valentine’s Day may need to adjust to the

times
Changing dating habits mean fewer couples and more throuples
2 月 13, 2025 05:46 上午

Playing the Feeld

I T IS SUPPOSED to be the most romantic day of the year. On Valentine’s Day you typically
take your partner by the hand through a crowded restaurant, then do your best to maintain
loving eye contact across a table while ignoring the other couple sitting uncomfortably
close to you. You try to enjoy an overpriced meal on Cupid’s busiest night.
Love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day has become deeply entrenched as a celebration for
couples in Britain and beyond. Last year, according to a survey by YouGov, a pollster, nearly
half of adults in Britain marked the day in some way. Yet the ways they do so are changing.
Some traditions, it is true, remain firmly in place. Sections of stores become a sea of pink.
Giving a card to a loved one is still common (43% of Britons who celebrate Valentine’s Day
did so last year, according to YouGov), as are gifts of chocolates (25%) and flowers (20%).
But perhaps surprisingly, given the reputation of a romantic meal as a core part of the
ritual, last year only 6% of Britons went out for a Valentine’s dinner with their partner or
date. Instead, many more opted for a quiet night in with a home-cooked meal or a
takeaway.
That points to social changes that are bound to affect a day dedicated to romance. In 2023
almost 40% of the adult population in England and Wales were reported to be single, up
from 30% in 2001. Of course, that need not stop people from celebrating on February 14th:
some women may chose to indulge in “Galentine’s Day”, a term coined some years ago to
describe a version of the occasion focused on enjoying it with friends rather than lovers.
For others, the challenge is not the lack of a partner but rather the number of them.
Alternative forms of romantic connections are becoming increasingly popular, including
polyamorous ones in which individuals have more than one partner at any given time.
Another YouGov poll, in 2023, found that up to 13% of adults in Britain had considered, or
participated in, this type of relationship. A different YouGov survey conducted in 2015
found that 2% of British adults had been in such consensual open relationships.
The user base of Feeld, an online app for “alternative dating”, has been growing in leaps
and bounds in recent years. The platform caters to “open-minded individuals” seeking
multiple partners, without stigma. As more young adults appear to be using their 20s and
30s to focus on themselves, their careers and their identities, the expectation of exclusivity
and commitment in relationships may be less important than it used to be.
It is not clear how durable these trends will prove. But the dating game is becoming more
fluid in Britain. If restaurants want to keep up their Valentine’s Day trade, they may want to
start offering more tables for three. ■
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Urban demography

London is ageing twice as quickly as the

rest of England
Partly because it’s a nice place to be old
2 月 13, 2025 05:49 上午

SOME LONDONERS dream of retiring to cottages by the sea. But Nick Sanderson, the chief
executive of Audley Group, believes that desires are shifting. His company has built flats for
retirees in Clapham, in south London, and will soon start building 150 more in Brent Cross,
in the north-west of the city. It hopes to create a retirement village in Canada Water, in the
east London docklands. “Why would you choose to go and live out in the middle of
nowhere?” he asks.
London’s population is certainly altering. Between 2011 and 2023 the median age of its
inhabitants rose by two years, from just under 34 to just under 36. Although the city is
younger than England and Wales as a whole, it is ageing more than twice as quickly.
Compared with cities like Exeter, Manchester and Nottingham, which have universities and
relatively cheap homes, it seems decidedly creaky (see chart).
A report published last month by the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, suggests that
three changes are responsible for this trend. London has fewer babies than it used to.
Young adults make up a smaller share of its population than in the past. And the ranks of
the middle-aged and old are swelling.
London experienced a remarkable baby boom in the first decade of this century. Since then
it has suffered a crash. Between 2010 and 2023 the capital’s fertility rate, which is
expressed as the number of births per woman, fell from 2.0 to 1.4—a slightly faster decline
than in England and Wales as a whole. The fertility rate in inner London is 1.2, close to the
national levels in Italy and Japan, two rich countries that are well known for their rapidly
ageing populations. Around the capital, primary schools are closing.
The shortage of young adults might not be quite as acute as official statistics suggest.
Recent population estimates are influenced by the last census, which was conducted in the
covid-ravaged month of March 2021. Around that time, some young people abandoned
their cramped city-centre flats for suburbia. Now that covid is a mere nuisance, and more
employers are insisting that people work in the office, a portion may have crept back into
the city, unnoticed by statisticians.
But perhaps not a large portion. The pandemic, and the rise in home-working that it
triggered, wiped out some of the retail and hospitality jobs that used to draw young people
to London. An index of transactions at Pret, a sandwich chain, shows that sales in shops
serving London’s city workers were just 63% of pre-pandemic levels last October.
Maybe it’s because I’m a pensioner
Immigrants, who are often young, seem to be shunning the capital for cheaper places
outside the city limits, such as Thurrock to the east and Watford to the north. Between
2011 and 2021 the proportion of foreign-born people in Newham, an ethnically diverse
borough of inner London, was flat. In Lambeth, another inner London borough, the share
fell. When Britain left the EU in 2020 it created an immigration system that favours health
and care workers. Health and care jobs can be found all over the country, not just in
London.

The baby bust might end; young adults could return to the city. By contrast, the rise of
middle-aged and old people appears to be inexorable. The Greater London Authority (GLA),
which oversees the capital, estimates that the number of people aged 50 or over rose by
more than 400,000 between 2014 and 2024, accounting for more than four-fifths of overall
population growth in the city. The GLA expects similar growth over the next decade. Parts
of suburban London, such as Richmond upon Thames, in the west, are greying at high
speed.
“The culture has changed,” argues Patrick Devlin, an architect who designs retirement
homes, among other buildings. The desire to move to a seaside bungalow is giving way to
the desire to live near friends and cultural amenities. London is exceptionally well supplied
with the latter, and with superb public transport, which can be ridden gratis by Londoners
from the age of 60 (elsewhere people must wait until 66). Despite the paranoid rants of
some American populists, the city has grown safe. Cumbria and Hampshire have higher
rates of violent crime.
“It’s a more pleasant city to live in—if you have the money,” says Richard Brown, a London-
watcher. Middle-aged and old Londoners often do have the money, or at least the wealth,
because they bought their homes when prices were more reasonable than they are today.
Others settle as close to the city as they can, and commute when they must.
In the long run, the fact that London is such a hard place for children and young adults
should be concerning, because it suggests that the city could gradually become less exciting
and dynamic. For now, however, there is a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, and a bus is
pulling up. Where’s that free pass? ■
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Bagehot

Is Sir Keir Starmer a chump?

Those in government seem to think so
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

SIR KEIR STARMER KC is among the most successful British politicians of the past half-
century. In just four years, Sir Keir took the Labour Party from its worst defeat since 1935
to a 411-seat landslide result that puts him above Clement Attlee and just below Sir Tony
Blair in the pantheon of Labour prime ministers. This came after a garlanded career as a
human-rights barrister, in which a man from a modest background rose to the top of a
profession that is both snobbish and competitive. Now, aged 62, Sir Keir stands atop a
political system that gives near-untrammelled executive power to someone with a colossal
majority in Parliament. And yet a simple question is asked in Westminster: is the prime
minister a chump?
Those around the prime minister think so. “Get In”, a new account of Sir Keir’s rise by
Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, offers a glossary of their thoughts in a book that is as
excruciating as it is insightful. “It’s impossible to work out whether Keir realises he is a
pawn in a chess game,” says one anonymous adviser. “Or does he like being a pawn in a
chess game, provided it makes him powerful?” Another chosen metaphor is the Docklands
Light Railway, a driverless train line in south-east London: “Keir’s not driving the train. He
thinks he’s driving the train, but we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR.”
At times, the leader of a G7 country is seen as nothing more than a useful idiot by those
closest to him. Instead, Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s chief of staff, serves as
both head and heart for Sir Keir. The prime minister, runs the logic, is simply not a
politician. Or as Mr McSweeney puts it: “Keir acts like an HR manager, not a leader.” Even
those who praise the prime minister end up burying him. Peter Hyman, a former Blairite
adviser, said: “Unlike other leaders I’ve seen, he’s very experiential.” Sir Keir learns by
doing, like a toddler squishing playdough through his hands.
In this telling, when Sir Keir is master of his own destiny it invariably leads to some
concrete-footed error. He is, after all, a human-rights lawyer who accidentally endorsed
war crimes on a radio show when discussing how Israel could respond to the attacks by
Hamas in October 2023. This was duly turned into viral videos that crushed the party’s
support among Muslims, formerly a solid base that shows little sign of returning to the
party.
A low opinion of the man in 10 Downing Street is not limited to underlings. Cabinet
colleagues regard Sir Keir with a mix of curiosity and contempt. The cabinet is full of
political animals, who do not see Sir Keir as one of their own. Sir Keir professes to dislike
Westminster politics and the Labour Party’s internal shenanigans; others live for it. None of
those at the top of government—whether Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, Wes Streeting, the
health secretary, or Pat McFadden, who runs the Cabinet Office—initially thought Sir Keir
was right for the job. Sir Keir’s rise is best explained by luck and circumstance. Rank
jealousy is always an underrated factor in politics. How are you living my dream?
Many in the cabinet behave as if the prime minister is simply not there. Britain has come to
expect imperial prime ministers, who dominate departments. Under Sir Keir, Downing
Street has overseen decolonisation. Power resides once again with cabinet ministers, who
are going feral. Departments veer in different ideological directions. Sometimes this is
harmless. When it comes to health, the solution is more choice for patients and less
cosseting of producers; in education the recipe is the opposite, with teachers coddled and
choice a dirty word. Sometimes, however, this incoherence matters. An all-out push for
development by the Treasury pulls against the headlong rush towards net zero. It is a
tension that will snap soon enough.
If Sir Keir is a pawn, then he may be sacrificed. At the moment, this would be a bad move
for those who profess to control him. For now, Labour members—a soft-hearted bunch,
according to the hard-hearted men around the prime minister—choose the next leader and
therefore prime minister. What if they pick the wrong person? Switching Labour’s rules to
ensure only MPs pick the leader when in power would solve that. It could be sold as a “Liz
Truss lock” (Ms Truss was foisted on Conservative MPs by the party’s strange members).
Allowing this change would be the equivalent of Sir Keir painting a target on his chest and
marching across a shooting range. It would, in short, be the actions of a chump.
Vote chump!
By demeaning the man they serve, Sir Keir’s advisers and colleagues damn themselves.
Those who insist they are actually running the show have staged a farce. Labour
squandered its first months in power with rows between self-regarding advisers and a
symphony of “I thought you had the plan”-type excuses. This time last year Labour was
polling above 40 points. Now it is on a little more than half that. Advisers rarely last when
well-known outside Westminster. “Loudly call your boss a chump” is, funnily enough, not a
quote from Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
Westminster is a world in which individual genius or idiocy is always seen as the reason for
something going well or badly. Yet the historic political success of Sir Keir crashes against
the plodding reality of the man. A deeply flawed prime minister can still succeed. For all his
failings, Sir Keir still polls above all of his alternatives. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the
opposition, is held in contempt by her own Conservative Party, which in turn has yet to
grapple with its own unpopularity. Nigel Farage brings Reform a high floor and a low
ceiling. Sometimes things are beyond the control of individual politicians and advisers. Sir
Keir is proof that context matters far more than the content. Even a chump can make it to
the top. ■
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International
 China’s stunning new campaign to turn the world against
Taiwan
Semantic strikes :: Seventy countries have recently backed “all Chinese efforts” to take the island

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Semantic strikes

China’s stunning new campaign to turn

the world against Taiwan
Seventy countries have recently backed “all Chinese efforts” to take the island
2 月 13, 2025 05:35 上午

FOR THOSE anxious about Chinese aggression towards the self-ruled island of Taiwan,
there was a welcome signal at the end of Donald Trump’s third week back in the White
House. After talks with Ishiba Shigeru, the Japanese prime minister, on February 7th, the
two leaders said America and Japan “opposed any attempts to unilaterally change the
status quo by force or coercion” in relation to Taiwan, which China claims as its own.
This steely new language was a victory in America’s long quest to get its allies to show
more solidarity with Taiwan. Yet in the battle for global backing over the island’s fate,
China is rapidly gaining ground. By The Economist’s count, 70 countries have now officially
endorsed both China’s sovereignty over Taiwan and, just as crucially, that China is entitled
to pursue “all” efforts to achieve unification, without specifying that those efforts should be
peaceful. Moreover, the vast majority of those countries have adopted that new wording in
the past 18 months, after a Chinese diplomatic offensive across the global south.
Our findings are consistent with those in a recent study by the Lowy Institute, an Australian
think-tank. It found that by the end of last year 119 countries—62% of the UN’s member-
states—had endorsed China’s preferred wording for accepting its claim to sovereignty over
Taiwan. Of them, 89 also backed China’s unification efforts, with many supporting “all” such
measures. (The Lowy Institute study did not quantify the latter group or specify when they
adopted this expansive language.)
China’s latest diplomatic push appears to be designed to secure global support for its
broadening campaign of coercion against Taiwan. That campaign includes the threat of
imposing a quarantine or inspection regime on Taiwan (huge Chinese military drills in
October practised a blockade). A full-scale invasion does not appear imminent, but
American officials say that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has ordered his generals to have the
capability to invade Taiwan by 2027.
China wants protection from the sanctions that Western officials have discussed imposing
in the event of a Taiwan crisis. By ensuring much of the world recognises the legitimacy of
its actions, it makes it unlikely that sanctions or even censure could be imposed via the UN.
It also means that global compliance with Western-led sanctions might be even lower than
has been the case after Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
“It is plausible to conclude that nearly half of UN member-states have, intentionally or not,
formally endorsed a PRC (People’s Republic of China) takeover of the island,” noted
Benjamin Herscovitch, a former Australian defence official, in the Lowy Institute study.
How these countries would actually respond is unclear, he adds, but China would probably
“portray these countries as having given the green light for its use of force”.
The 70 countries adopting the most pro-China language span Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania
and Latin America; 97%, including South Africa, Egypt and Pakistan, are in the global south.
In many of these countries, China has secured access to critical natural resources and
financed ports and other transport projects through its Belt and Road infrastructure
scheme.
Among the most recent examples is Sri Lanka, where Chinese companies have invested in
two strategically important ports. When its president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, visited
China in January a joint statement said, for the first time, that Sri Lanka “firmly supports all
efforts by the Chinese government to achieve national reunification”. That replaced a more
vague phrase in a joint statement in 2024, which backed China’s efforts to “safeguard its
sovereignty and territorial integrity”. Similar new wording appeared in a joint statement
with Nepal in December.
One of China’s biggest coups came in September, when 53 African governments signed a
statement in Beijing. They agreed that Taiwan was Chinese territory and said that Africa
“firmly supports all” China’s unification efforts. At the previous such summit, in 2021, they
did not explicitly mention Taiwan but backed “resolving territorial and maritime disputes
peacefully”.
Even Malaysia, which has its own territorial dispute with China and typically avoids taking
sides on Taiwan, has leaned towards the Chinese position. In a joint statement in June 2024
Malaysia used new language recognising Taiwan as Chinese territory “in order for China to
achieve national reunification”. It stopped short of endorsing “all” unification measures, but
dropped an earlier call for “peaceful” efforts to that end.
The shift suggests that China’s influence in the global south continues to grow even as its
overseas lending has declined and many developing countries have had problems servicing
Chinese loans. America and its allies, meanwhile, have failed to incentivise poor countries
to resist Chinese pressure over Taiwan, partly because of a reluctance (until Mr Trump
came back) to link aid to foreign-policy goals.
Because there are so many developing countries, they could play a decisive role in judging
the legitimacy of any Chinese act of aggression against Taiwan—and of any American-led
attempt to intervene. China would rally support for its actions at the UN, while America and
its allies would urge members to join them in condemning China and imposing sanctions.
And the West, it seems, would face a far tougher battle than it did in March 2022, when 141
of 193 UN members backed a resolution in the General Assembly demanding Russia’s
withdrawal from Ukraine.
China’s diplomatic offensive appears to be linked to the war in Ukraine, says Ja Ian Chong of
the National University of Singapore. “Looking at the diplomatic isolation Russia faced,
they’d prefer to avoid that,” and to ensure that China-friendly countries continue to supply
oil and other resources (or allow trans-shipment through their ports) in a conflict over
Taiwan, he says. Besides, he adds, China “likes to appear legitimate”.
Dr Chong did a study of national positions on Taiwan in February 2023. That did not
include countries that supported all China’s unification efforts, because there were so few
then. But it found that 51 accepted China’s preferred formula for defining its sovereignty
claim over Taiwan. China appears to have won over at least 68 more countries since then,
judging by the figures from the Lowy Institute study and one published on January 17th by
the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think-tank.
Among those adopting firmer language is Russia, which has become increasingly reliant on
Chinese imports to offset Western sanctions since its invasion of Ukraine. Still, even though
others with close ties to China, such as North Korea and Serbia, have endorsed “all” China’s
unification efforts, Russia has held back, endorsing only “initiatives” to that end.
China has won other linguistic concessions, too. Some countries have adopted its preferred
wording on Tibet, referring to it only as Xizang, the anglicised version of its Mandarin
name, which Chinese officials have been trying to promote.
China exaggerates the level of international support for its position on Taiwan, claiming
there is a “universal” consensus in its favour. And some foreign officials may be unaware of
the new wording’s nuances, cautions Meia Nouwens of the IISS. She links China’s efforts to
its armed forces’ recent focus on what they call the “three warfares”—psychological, public
opinion and legal—in preparing for a Taiwan conflict.
China may also fear that its sovereignty claim is increasingly being challenged by the West.
Japan is among several American allies that have recently made firmer and more frequent
statements criticising Chinese military pressure on Taiwan and backing “meaningful”
participation in the UN for the island, which is not a member. Bonnie Glaser of the German
Marshall Fund, a think-tank, notes that much of Europe has recently woken up to the
potential economic cost of Taiwan conflict. “There have been conversations in many
capitals about how countries can contribute to strengthening deterrence” and impose costs
on China in a war, she says.
Words as weapons
A more recent concern for China is that Mr Trump could coerce some countries to change
their positions on Taiwan. Panama, for example, switched diplomatic recognition from
Taiwan to China in 2017 and signed up to Mr Xi’s Belt and Road infrastructure scheme the
same year. But on February 6th, under pressure from Mr Trump, Panama withdrew from
Belt and Road. It is also conducting an audit of a China-linked company that controls ports
adjacent to the Panama Canal.
Of course, America could simply bypass the UN if China attacked or blockaded Taiwan.
American forces could unilaterally block shipping to and from China. But America will also
need access to bases, ports and other facilities in the global south, especially the Indo-
Pacific. And if a large majority of countries view its response as illegitimate, even some of
its allies might waver. It has been hard enough for the West to sustain international
solidarity with Ukraine, whose sovereignty was not in dispute before Russia invaded. The
battle for global support on Taiwan will be even harder-fought. And China is already on the
advance. ■
Editor’s note (February 2nd 2025): This piece has been changed to clarify that 119
countries have endorsed China’s preferred wording for accepting its claim to sovereignty over
Taiwan.

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Business
 Chinese cars are taking over the global south
High-speed chase :: Petrol engines, not batteries, are powering their growth
 German business is being suffocated by high costs and
red tape
Crisis in Standort Deutschland :: Many bosses doubt that the upcoming election will change that
 BP is underperforming and under pressure
Back to petroleum :: Yet another strategic U-turn is on the cards
 Elon Musk’s $97bn offer is a headache for Sam Altman’s
OpenAI
Spoiler alert :: Tesla’s boss is willing to use whatever means he can to hobble his opponent
 Could a German startup disrupt Europe’s arms industry?
Rearmament revolution :: Meet Helsing, Europe’s defence-tech unicorn
 How to get people to resign
Bartleby :: Without torching the organisation or losing your best employees
 Defence tech is blowing up Silicon Valley’s beliefs
Schumpeter :: Hardware is all the rage. So is patriotism

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High-speed chase

Chinese cars are taking over the global

south
Petrol engines, not batteries, are powering their growth
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

“STYLING, BUILD quality and polish” were “frankly lacklustre”. The review in Car and
Driver, a respected motoring publication, of a vehicle made by BYD on display at the Detroit
Motor Show in 2009 was hardly encouraging for a car that its Chinese manufacturer hoped
to start exporting to America in a few years.
Since then the global automotive industry has been overhauled. China has taken a decisive
lead as the world’s biggest manufacturer of cars. Despite its unpromising start, BYD has
surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest maker of fully electric vehicles (EVs) by volume (and
is far ahead when plug-in hybrids are included). The company has assisted in wresting
China’s car market from once-dominant foreign competitors. At the same time, it and other
Chinese firms such as Chery, Geely and SAIC have turned their country into the world’s top
exporter of vehicles, speeding ahead of Germany and Japan.
China’s carmakers now aspire to overthrow Volkswagen and Toyota at the pinnacle of the
global car industry, says Pedro Pacheco of Gartner, a consultancy. Further expanding
exports is central to that. The number of cars shipped abroad from China reached 4.7m last
year, triple the amount three years earlier, according to Citigroup (around a third of these
came from multinational brands with factories in the country). The surge is set to continue
—in 2030 the bank reckons sales abroad will hit 7.3m.
That has led to much consternation among incumbent carmakers, with particular attention
paid to the growing number of Chinese EVs on European roads. Yet the bulk of China’s car
exports—nearly three-quarters last year—are powered by internal-combustion engines
(ICEs). And most are aimed neither at western Europe nor America, but at the rest of the
world.
Car-carrying vessels are departing China’s ports in ever greater numbers in part because
the domestic market, where 23m passenger vehicles were sold last year, is neither as fast-
growing nor as profitable as in the past. Chinese consumers once opted mostly for foreign
brands, but these days domestic carmakers account for around three-fifths of sales in the
country. As Harald Hendrikse of Citigroup notes, at home “the Chinese have won”.
Victory has come at a price, however. Creating a homegrown EV industry using subsidies
and other government inducements has resulted in severe overcapacity. Chinese factories
could perhaps turn out nearly 45m cars a year, equivalent to around half of all global sales,
yet they operate at only 60% of that capacity, according to Bernstein, a broker. Oversupply
has led to a vicious price war. Seeking an alternative outlet, Chinese carmakers have turned
abroad. BYD, Geely and Great Wall have said that margins are five to ten percentage points
higher on sales overseas.
As the incentive to export strengthens, however, the opportunities to do so are diminishing.
Last year the EU imposed tariffs on Chinese-made EVs to combat what it regards as unfair
subsidies. Chinese brands’ share of EV sales in Europe grew from around 4% in 2021 to
10% in 2024, but may now climb to only 11% by 2030, according to Schmidt Automotive
Research, a consultancy. If that door is slightly ajar, others are firmly shut. Tariffs of 100%
imposed during Joe Biden’s presidency in effect bar Chinese EVs from America (a further
levy of 10% on Chinese goods recently imposed by Donald Trump will not have much
additional impact). Fierce loyalty to domestic brands in Japan and South Korea and rocky
diplomatic relations with India have kept Chinese carmakers at bay in those countries.
Switching lanes
Undeterred, these firms have shifted their focus to countries in South-East Asia, the Middle
East, Latin America and even Africa. Although each is relatively small, taken together they
account for 20m sales or more. Most are fast-growing, unlike rich countries or China, and
do not have a big domestic industry that would lobby for protection. Emissions and other
regulations are also not as strict, notes Felipe Munoz of JATO, another consultancy.
Opportunism has played a role in this. A shortage of chips during the pandemic prompted
Western carmakers to concentrate on their priciest and most profitable vehicles in their
biggest markets, rather than cheaper models better suited to developing countries. That
left a gap for China to fill. Western sanctions helped, too. The biggest importer of Chinese
cars is Russia. When Western carmakers pulled out after its invasion of Ukraine, the share
of Chinese brands surged, from 9% in 2021 to 61% in 2023, according to Rhodium Group,
one more consultancy. Sales of ICE vehicles made up most of these. Russia, which has a car
industry of its own, is not thrilled. In 2024 it introduced a hefty “recycling fee” on imported
cars, in essence a tariff, to stall China’s advance.
Chinese carmakers are powering ahead elsewhere. They now have 8% of the market in the
Middle East and Africa, 6% in South America and 4% in South-East Asia, according to
Bernstein, up from almost nothing a few years ago. The take-up rate of EVs in these
countries is lower than in rich ones, and most of the cars Chinese firms sell are ICE models.
But, having established themselves, their long-term aim is to electrify these markets, which
legacy carmakers still regard as their ICE fiefs.
Already EVs are picking up speed in some unlikely places. In Latin America they now make
up 6% of total sales, having doubled in 2024, according to BloombergNEF, a research firm.
In Brazil, the world’s sixth-largest car market, it is nearly 7%, with nine out of ten EVs
coming from Chinese brands. In Mexico EVs have hit 8% and in Thailand some 15% (by
comparison, in America the share is 8%). The surge is set to continue. Overall, EVs will
account for more than three-quarters of Chinese car exports in 2030, up from about a
quarter in 2023, according to Citi.
Chinese carmakers will not only ship from home. They want to establish footholds by
building factories abroad, to sidestep tariffs, avoid shipping costs and keep close to
customers. BYD is in the vanguard. It is making vehicles in Thailand and Uzbekistan, with
plants in Brazil, Hungary, Indonesia, Turkey and perhaps Mexico to follow. Others including
Chery, Changan, Great Wall and SAIC all have overseas factories in operation or under
construction. Chinese firms are expected to manufacture 2.5m cars abroad by 2030,
according to Citi, about half in Europe and the rest in the developing world.
Some planned overseas factories may not materialise. There are suggestions that China’s
government will force firms to slow foreign investment to keep facilities at home busy, as
well as to protect Chinese technology from prying eyes. Even so, Rhodium calculates that if
China’s carmakers get to 80% of their planned production in South America by 2027 they
could win up to 15% of the market with locally made vehicles alone.
China’s carmakers are transforming into global enterprises by stealing business from
incumbents in places they had taken for granted. That means a growing headache for
Japanese and South Korean firms in Asia and the Middle East, as well as Western carmakers
such as VW, General Motors and Stellantis (whose largest shareholder, Exor, is a part-
owner of The Economist’s parent company) in South America. If Chinese competition
abroad causes legacy firms to concentrate on protected markets like America and Europe,
competitive pressure will increase there, too.
Building brands, signing on dealers and setting up service networks in smaller markets,
even if it starts with ICE cars, will embed Chinese firms in these places. Elsewhere, it will be
hard to distract car buyers from the allure of Chinese vehicles indefinitely. AutoExpress, a
British motoring magazine, praises the BYD Seal, an electric saloon launched in Europe in
2024, for its “handsome, aerodynamic body and big power”, calling it a “very serious car”.
How times have changed. ■
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Crisis in Standort Deutschland

German business is being suffocated by

high costs and red tape
Many bosses doubt that the upcoming election will change that
2 月 10, 2025 02:38 上午 | WITTENBERG

Editor’s note (February 10th): This article has been updated with comments from Germany’s
interim finance minister.
ON A DRIVE around the vast production site of SKW Stickstoffwerke Piesteritz, Germany’s
largest producer of ammonia, near Wittenberg, a spokesman for the firm points at a giant
yellow valve. “Normally around 2% of Germany’s industrial consumption of natural gas
comes out of this thing,” he says. Last month, however, SKW shut one of the two ammonia
plants at the site and slashed its production of fertiliser.
“The Gasumlage is killing us,” says Petr Cingr, the Czech chief executive of SKW, referring to
the German government’s gas levy. (The 110-year-old firm is owned by Agrofert, a Czech
conglomerate.) The charge, introduced in 2022 to recoup the cost to the government of
filling the country’s strategic reserve after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was increased at
the start of this year by 20%, to €2.99 ($3.10) per megawatt hour. Mr Cingr says his firm is
paying ten times more for natural gas than Russian makers of fertiliser, with which it still
competes, and seven times more than American rivals—and gas makes up 90% of the
production cost. Its price, along with Germany’s high labour costs and the CO2 certificates
SKW must purchase to offset its emissions, mean the company can no longer break even.
Mr Cingr has specific asks of the government that will take over after Germany’s
parliamentary elections on February 23rd: abolish the gas levy and press the European
Union to reform the system of CO2 certificates. On January 28th the bloc announced a
gradual increase in tariffs on fertilisers from Russia and Belarus over the next three years,
from 6.5% to about 100%. That is “too little, too late,” says Mr Cingr. If politicians don’t do
more, he argues, Europe’s production of fertiliser will collapse and farmers will depend
entirely on imports.
SKW is but one example of the crisis gripping German business. At the annual press
conference of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) late last month, Peter Leibinger,
its new leader, said that the mood in business circles is “as bad as I have ever seen it”. Many
bosses doubt that their biggest handicaps—red tape, high taxes and costly social-security
contributions—will improve much following the election, after which Friedrich Merz,
leader of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, is expected to become
chancellor. Bosses are confident that whatever coalition emerges will be friendlier towards
them than the one forged by Olaf Scholz, Germany’s current chancellor. But few believe that
reforms will be fast or deep enough.
Germany’s manufacturing base is shuddering. Industrial output has fallen by about a tenth
over the past two years. Giants such as Volkswagen, the world’s biggest carmaker by sales,
are scaling back production in the country. Matthias Lapp, chief executive of Lapp, a family-
owned maker of cables based near Stuttgart, describes Germany as “our problem child”. On
February 3rd his company reported sales of €1.8bn for its most recent financial year, down
by 5.3% from the year before. Sales in Germany fell by 15%; in Asia, America and the
Middle East business is humming.
In a recent interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine, a daily newspaper, Nikolas Stihl,
head of the supervisory board of Stihl, a chainsaw-maker, gave the next government an
ultimatum. If it creates a more business-friendly environment within the next five years,
the company will build, as planned, a new production site in Ludwigsburg. If not, the
company will move the planned investment to Switzerland, where it is already making
saws, trimmers and blowers.
Toralf Haag, boss of Aurubis, a maker of copper based in Hamburg, thinks this will be “a
make-or-break year for German industry.” Bertram Kawlath, boss of Schubert & Salzer, a
maker of valves, and head of the VDMA, Germany’s association of machinery-makers,
agrees that Germany has reached a pivotal moment, though he is less pessimistic than
other bosses. “Our mid-size companies will not close down, but they will not invest in
Germany if the country doesn’t become more business-friendly,” he says. The VDMA has
3,600 members, most of which are family firms like his. Mr Kawlath’s biggest gripe is red
tape, in particular a law that requires firms with more than 1,000 employees in Germany to
monitor whether their suppliers around the world meet human-rights and environmental
standards.
Mr Merz is aware of the concerns of German bosses. He says that the country is “suffocating
with red tape”, and has promised to lower the headline corporate-tax rate from 30% to
25%. If the CDU wins the election, the party wants to reduce electricity taxes and grid fees
by at least five cents per kilowatt hour, cut bureaucracy, ease rules on working hours, allow
employed pensioners to earn an additional €2,000 a month tax-free and relax building
restrictions, among other things.
Most bosses applaud those commitments, even if some grumble about the absence of a
proposal to reform Germany’s burdensome public-pension system. They worry, though,
that the CDU will be unable to deliver on its promises, given that the country is headed for a
coalition government likely to consist of two or possibly three parties.
Jörg Kukies, Germany’s interim finance minister, is familiar with the challenges presented
by such coalitions. He offers the example of efforts to digitise notaries’ services. Talk to any
startup and they will complain about spending hours sitting in a notary’s office as every
line of a contract is read aloud to them, says Mr Kukies. But notaries tend to vote for the
pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), a junior partner in Mr Scholz’s coalition. That made
the FDP, normally zealous opponents of red tape, less enthusiastic about reform.
If he prevails on February 23rd Mr Merz will have a daunting task. He has business leaders
on his side, but so did Mr Scholz when he took over. The former head of the BDI, Siegfried
Russwurm, now talks of the “lost years” under Mr Scholz. Germany cannot afford more of
them. ■
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Back to petroleum

BP is underperforming and under

pressure
Yet another strategic U-turn is on the cards
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | NEW YORK

EVER SINCE John Browne vowed to turn BP green some 25 years ago, the British oil giant
has experienced a series of embarrassing mishaps. That includes major safety lapses, such
as a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the departure of several bosses. Yet its
biggest blunder has been the bungled attempts to profitably decarbonise its business,
which were made all the worse by its premature promise to go “beyond petroleum”.
The most recent illustration of BP’s woes came in its quarterly earnings report on February
11th. The firm revealed that fourth-quarter profits dropped by 61% compared with the
previous year. Annual profits fell from $13.8bn in 2023 to $8.9bn in 2024 in part because of
lower oil prices and shrinking margins at its refining business. BP’s investments in low-
carbon ventures added to the financial strain. The dismal results coincided with reports
that Elliott Investment Management, an aggressive activist hedge fund, has taken a
substantial stake in the oil giant.
Neither party has commented on the matter, but the rumours were sufficient to lift BP’s
share price, suggesting that shareholders are deeply frustrated with its management. Even
after the gain, however, the company’s market value, of $90bn, is lower than that of Shell,
its European rival.
Murray Auchincloss, BP’s boss, has felt the pressure. He has said that he will unveil a
strategy to “fundamentally reset” the company at an investor event on February 26th. What
might such a makeover entail? BP’s renewables ventures seem to be squarely in the
crosshairs. Elliott’s past interventions at American energy firms suggest that it will push for
financial returns rather than carbon concerns. Irene Himona of Bernstein, a broker, argues
that “BP’s undervaluation needs a ‘Shell-like’ strategic shift.” Wael Sawan, Shell’s boss, has
already cut investment in underperforming green areas, like hydrogen, and boosted
spending on oil and gas.
Profitable hydrocarbon assets may be sold, too. Michele Della Vigna of Goldman Sachs, a
bank, thinks that the “convenience and mobility” division, which includes lubricants and
retail sites at petrol stations, is worth an eye-catching $48bn. The funds raised could be
spent on lucrative upstream prospects, such as BP’s fast-growing shale assets in America,
or on share buybacks, which tend to please investors.

A bolder idea still is that BP lists in New York instead of London. The financial case is
compelling. BP and Shell trade at roughly eight to nine times earnings compared with 14
times for ExxonMobil and Chevron, two American oil giants. European majors face
valuation penalties for underperforming renewables investments. They also miss out on
flows from passive funds which track big indexes such as the S&P 500.
Even though it would be politically challenging, in some ways relocation could suit BP.
Analysis by Mr Della Vigna reveals that BP is even more Yankee than Exxon. It derives
roughly half its profits from the United States (see chart). And the country is also home to
many of BP’s most promising assets—from those in the Permian basin to the Gulf of
Mexico. The firm that started life as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company could end up looking
like an American-Permian petroleum firm instead. ■
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Spoiler alert

Elon Musk’s $97bn offer is a headache for

Sam Altman’s OpenAI
Tesla’s boss is willing to use whatever means he can to hobble his opponent
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午 | PARIS AND LOS ANGELES

FOR MOST startups, a buyout offer nearing $100bn is something to be celebrated. But
OpenAI is not like other startups—and Elon Musk· is not like other acquirers.
On February 11th a consortium led by Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, made an
unsolicited $97bn bid for the assets of the non-profit entity that controls OpenAI, the
leading developer of artificial-intelligence (AI) models. Mr Musk, who helped found the
firm, is in an escalating feud with Sam Altman, OpenAI’s boss, over its transition to a more
orthodox, for-profit corporate structure, which Mr Musk claims would be a betrayal of the
company’s original, safety-first mission. In reality, Mr Musk is bent on hobbling the biggest
competitor to xAI, a rival company he launched in 2023—and seems willing to use
whatever means he can to do so.
Mr Musk’s offer is best understood as a spoiler. OpenAI is raising ever larger sums of
money to fund the vast amount of computing power it needs to make advanced AI. To do
that, it has promised outside investors, of which Microsoft, a tech giant, is the biggest, that
they will get equity stakes in a for-profit company, rather than the murky ownership fudge
that currently exists. Negotiations are under way to determine what share of that new firm
the non-profit receives in return for ceding control over the current arrangement.
OpenAI swiftly rejected the outside bid. On X, Mr Musk’s social network, Mr Altman posted
a facetious counter-offer: $9.7bn to “buy Twitter”, as the site was once called. “OpenAI is
not for sale,” insists Chris Lehane, the firm’s spokesman. That apparently reflects the
position of the non-profit’s board. Jill Horwitz, professor of law at the University of
California, Los Angeles, says the board’s fiduciary duty is to act in line with OpenAI’s legal
purpose, which is to build superhuman intelligence that is “safe and benefits all of
humanity”. That may give it more wriggle room to reject the offer.
Mr Musk’s target audience, though, may not be the board. More probably he is seeking to
ratchet up pressure on the attorneys-general of California and Delaware, where OpenAI is
based and registered. His lawyers have urged them to scrutinise the change in OpenAI’s
ownership structure to ensure the charity surrenders control at fair-market value, and
threatens a bidding war if they do not. Insiders at OpenAI think it absurd that the officials
in the two Democrat-governed states will bow to the will of Mr Musk, a prominent ally of
President Donald Trump. But as Ms Horwitz puts it, they have “clear law to apply”.
It is therefore possible that, even if Mr Musk’s chances of gaining control of OpenAI are
slim, his bid will complicate its future. It will be more difficult to justify valuing the non-
profit’s assets at less than $97bn if there is a concrete offer for that sum. But such a figure
will mean that a smaller share of the equity in the new for-profit company will be left for
outside investors. OpenAI is said to be in the process of raising some $40bn from investors
including SoftBank, a Japanese tech conglomerate. Mr Musk may be hoping to derail those
efforts.
The bid follows acrimony over Mr Altman’s announcement, together with Mr Trump, of the
“Stargate Project” on January 21st, a fund of $100bn backed by OpenAI and SoftBank,
among others, and intended to invest in data centres in America. Mr Musk, who was
reportedly kept in the dark, was quick to argue that the backers did not have the money
(something they have denied).
“I think he’s just trying to slow us down,” Mr Altman said on February 11th. “I feel for the
guy. I don’t think he’s a happy person.” In fact, Mr Musk is never happier than when he is in
the thick of a fight. ■
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Rearmament revolution

Could a German startup disrupt Europe’s

arms industry?
Meet Helsing, Europe’s defence-tech unicorn
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

Not an office job

IN THE 1980S Robert Solow, an economist, remarked that you could see the computer age
everywhere except the productivity statistics. Today it could be said that the revolution in
military affairs, playing out in the skies, trenches and seas of Ukraine, is visible everywhere
except the European defence industry. America boasts three defence-tech “unicorns”,
private firms with a valuation of more than $1bn, if you count SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-
and-satellite company. In Europe there is one: Germany’s Helsing.
Gundbert Scherf founded Helsing with Torsten Reil and Niklas Köhler in 2021. Back then
Europe had “pushed the snooze button” on military preparedness, says Mr Scherf, who is
the firm’s co-CEO. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the following year jolted the continent
awake. Last summer Helsing raised €450m ($468m) at a valuation of $5.4bn, making it one
of Europe’s most valuable startups.
Mr Scherf, a soft-spoken former management consultant, strikes a contrast with America’s
defence-tech titans·. Alex Karp of Palantir, the world’s most valuable defence firm, is a
wiry-haired tech evangelist who assails college students over anti-Israel protests. Palmer
Luckey of Anduril, another American defence-tech darling, wears Hawaiian shirts and flip-
flops and sells 1990s Gameboy emulators as a side project.
Yet Mr Scherf’s firm is no less disruptive than its American cousins. It began life as a
software company, putting its code into others’ weapons, and continues to spends huge
sums on AI talent and computing power. On February 10th it announced a partnership with
Mistral, Europe’s leading maker of AI models.
Recently Helsing has become more involved in building hardware. Its HF-1 strike drones
for Ukraine are built in that country by various local manufacturers. Late last year it began
making more advanced HX-2 drones at a factory of its own in southern Germany, giving it
greater control over supply chains and production.
The war in Ukraine, where the dizzying pace of adaptation on both sides means that
weapons can become obsolete in weeks, requires the arms-maker to be nimble. The
traditional model of building weapons and sending them to clients is insufficient. Instead,
firms are being forced to offer something closer to arms-as-a-service, with engineers
visiting the front lines and tweaking code and hardware based on feedback from soldiers.
Helsing has found its niche in the market. Long-range drones or missiles—the distinction is
increasingly blurry—which require rocket or jet engines demand serious manufacturing
and aeronautical engineering experience that, in Europe at least, remains with the big
legacy defence firms. Meanwhile, Ukrainian firms are churning out ultra-low-cost strike
and surveillance drones, with simple electronics and ranges in the low tens of kilometres.
Helsing is betting instead on weapons with greater autonomy that can strike farther. Its AI-
guided HX-2 drone has a 100km range and is expected to cost around $30,000 a unit. That
is not going to replace a $1m, 300km-range Storm Shadow cruise missile. But it offers 20
times the range of a Javelin anti-tank missile at a sixth of the price.
That epitomises Mr Scherf’s vision of “precise mass”: intelligent systems that are still cheap
enough to produce in big numbers. Helsing believes, for example, that naval drones could
persistently monitor the chokepoints between Greenland, Iceland and Britain for one-
twentieth of the cost of today’s crewed frigates.
Helsing is not the only company working on such things. Anduril has many similar projects,
experience of its own in Ukraine—and deeper pockets. Helsing’s appeal is that it is a
European company in the right place at the right time.
European leaders are alarmed by Donald Trump’s threats to allies, including his effort to
coerce Denmark to sell Greenland, and the risk that he could walk away from Ukraine and
even NATO. Some want to buy more American weapons to placate the president. But many
would like to see Europe become less dependent on its increasingly unreliable ally. That
could be a big opportunity for European upstarts.
There are two challenges, though. One is inertia in how European defence budgets are
allocated. Events like the Munich Security Conference, which was due to begin on February
14th, after we published this, are rammed with sessions on military innovation. But only a
tiny fraction of funding flows to defence-tech firms. “Right now, if you look at budget lines,
it’s still 99% traditional weapon systems from past procurement efforts that are being
pulled through,” laments Mr Scherf.
The other challenge is fragmentation. Whereas America’s defence industry is dominated by
too few firms, Europe has the opposite problem, argues Mr Scherf. European states operate
15 different models of tank, for instance. The result is a constellation of sub-scale
manufacturers.
Mr Scherf believes that mass-produced, AI-enabled weapons could offer a fresh start;
systems like the HX-2 could become “a standard platform across European nations”.
Helsing is already pan-European. Although its headquarters are in Berlin, its largest office
is in London, where AI talent is more plentiful, and it also has a presence in Paris. It hopes
to spread its factories across the continent, making production more resilient to Russian
attacks while appealing to Europe’s growing appetite for self-reliance. “One thing we’ve
learned from Ukraine”, says Mr Scherf, “is that, when push comes to shove, you don’t want
to depend on anyone for weapons.” ■
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Bartleby

How to get people to resign

Without torching the organisation or losing your best employees
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午

THE GUT reaction that a manager has when an employee announces their resignation is
telling. Sometimes it is genuine dismay: the person leaving is a star. Sometimes
disappointment is mixed with irritation at having to recruit and train a replacement. And
sometimes it is relief: the HR equivalent of a pebble being removed from your shoe.
For Elon Musk and his acolytes at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),
employees of the federal government in America are pebbles all the way down. On January
28th the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an email to roughly 2m workers
offering them “deferred resignation”, the chance to resign and get paid until the end of
September. The legality of this offer is uncertain (on February 12th a judge allowed it to
proceed). So is the end-goal: bosses often use voluntary redundancy as a consensual way to
cut headcount but the assumption is usually that they want the organisation itself to
survive. Still, the episode raises an interesting question: is there a good way to get workers
to resign?
The openness of the OPM’s deferred-resignation offer is in its favour. Bosses have long
adopted underhand tactics to encourage individuals to quit rather than have to sack them.
Some types of “quiet firing” reduce stimulation and status: managers give their targets
menial work to do or stick them in smaller and smaller offices until they end up feeling like
a corporate version of Alice. Other approaches set people up for failure: deadlines that
cannot be met, weekly meetings at 3am to suit one colleague in Australia. Nudging people
to resign by making life intolerable will not win you a manager-of-the-year award. Nor is it
an efficient way to thin the ranks.
Giving employees an explicit incentive to leave their jobs can be an effective way to
separate the committed from the time-servers. Zappos and Amazon, two online retailers,
have experimented with pay-to-quit programmes designed to winkle out new hires who
are not motivated to stay. When Mr Musk took over Twitter in 2022, he sent an email with
the same subject-line as the OPM’s missive, asking people to click on a link if they were
ready to embrace his “hardcore” culture. Those that did not click were offered severance
pay, though lawsuits continue from those who say they did not receive the money.
A pay-to-quit scheme makes it more costly for workers to feign enthusiasm for a job. But,
as a paper by Robert Dur and Heiner Schmittdiel of Erasmus University Rotterdam points
out, it can have unintended consequences if it is a standing offer: people may end up joining
a firm in order to resign and get an exit bonus.
There may be a subtler and cheaper way to prompt resignations among people who are not
a good fit. In a recent study by Nava Ashraf and Oriana Bandiera of the London School of
Economics and Virginia Minni and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago, some
employees of a consumer-goods firm were asked to reflect on what mattered to them and
whether their jobs fulfilled their individual sense of purpose. In the months following these
workshops exits from the company increased substantially among participants, compared
with employees who did not take part, and did so particularly among lower performers.
Productivity rose.
The success of a resignation offer depends partly on what kind of future awaits people who
stay. The OPM email warns government employees that there is more downsizing and
restructuring to come. The people most likely to take the money in these circumstances are
often strong performers, who have the best chance of landing a new job.
There is some indirect evidence for this effect in a recent paper by Yuye Ding of the
University of Pittsburgh and her co-authors, which looks at the effect of return-to-office
(RTO) mandates on employee churn. Plenty of people suspect that bosses require people to
come back into the office partly in order to prompt resignations, and the evidence from the
LinkedIn profiles of workers at financial and technology firms in the S&P 500 is that RTO
mandates do cause turnover to spike. The authors also find that churn is greatest among
women and among more experienced and skilled workers, and that firms subsequently
have more trouble filling vacancies.
Such considerations may not matter much to the DOGE folk, whose primary aim seems to
be evisceration. But if you want to encourage resignations and end up with more wheat
than chaff, it helps to have a compelling vision of the future. ■
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Schumpeter

Defence tech is blowing up Silicon Valley’s

beliefs
Hardware is all the rage. So is patriotism
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

IN THE BACK of an unmarked office building close to LAX, the main airport of Los Angeles,
stands a rack of unarmed hypersonic missiles the size of small drainpipes. On February 6th
a camouflaged truck ferried one away to New Mexico for a test launch with the US Air
Force. Such activity used to be common in El Segundo, the LA neighbourhood that was once
a hub of military spaceflight. Then the cold war ended and with it much of the west-coast
weapons business. Now it’s coming back. Castelion, which makes the projectiles, was
founded in 2022 by three alumni of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-and-satellite company,
which was also created in El Segundo.
Los Angeles is not alone in reviving the warrior spirit buried deep in its past. Silicon Valley
is doing so, too. In its early days in the mid-20th century it created reconnaissance
equipment for spy planes and semiconductors for missiles. But then the peaceniks took
over and for decades defence became a dirty word. As recently as two years ago, Castelion
couldn’t open a bank account in Silicon Valley owing to the stigma attached to making
weapons.
Several developments have since stiffened the sinews. One is the war in Ukraine. Another is
America’s deepening rivalry with China. Most alluring, perhaps, is the sweet smell of
financial success. SpaceX has become the most valuable private firm in America, worth
$350bn. Palantir, a supplier of software to Western armies and spooks, has a market value
of more than $250bn, more than Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General
Dynamics, a trio of traditional defence contractors, combined. Anduril, a younger firm that
makes autonomous weapons, is currently raising $2.5bn at a valuation of $28bn. Cue a
cascade of investment into smaller startups making military kit for land, sea, air and space.
PitchBook, a data gatherer, says the value of such deals in America rose by more than a
third over the past two years, to almost $40bn. Venture funding as a whole fell over that
period.
Less remarked upon is how the defence-tech boom challenges core tenets of the venture
industry. Historically, venture investors shied away from supporting hardware industries,
especially those like defence that can gobble up lots of capital. That is changing. So, too, is
the worldview of many in Silicon Valley, who have turned their backs on the libertarian
ethos that prevailed in recent decades in favour of a chest-thumping patriotism that
celebrates American military might.
Silicon Valley’s renewed interest in military hardware reflects the shifting dynamics of
combat on display in Ukraine: smaller weapons, notably drones, have supplemented and
sometimes supplanted heavy armaments. That has left an opening for upstarts that can
make cleverer or cheaper versions. Drones powered by whizzy artificial-intelligence
systems are in vogue. So, too, is thriftiness. Take Castelion as an example. For its missile
systems, it uses several automotive-grade chips, costing a few hundred dollars, rather than
expensive space-grade ones. It manufactures rocket motors itself to keep costs down.
SpaceX’s ability to shuttle satellites cheaply into low-Earth orbit, where they can scrutinise
the planet, has made space an increasingly affordable part of battlefield technologies. Like
many of the defence technologies supported by Silicon Valley, these also serve civilian uses,
boosting their revenue potential.
A revival of the warrior spirit is transforming Silicon Valley’s relationship with America’s
government, too. “The Technological Republic”, a forthcoming book co-authored by Alex
Karp, Palantir’s chief executive, calls on Silicon Valley to work with Uncle Sam on military
programmes. Rather than supporting environmental and social causes, those like Mr Karp
champion patriotism as the new corporate purpose, an idea that will appeal to many in
Donald Trump’s administration.
Meanwhile, the long-established revolving door between the Pentagon and the defence
industry is being extended to venture capitalists and tech firms. That could help speed up
the disruption to America’s military-industrial complex which many in defence tech hope
for·. “If the government doesn’t figure out how to make the venture model work, this will
not be sustainable,” says Shyam Sankar of Palantir. One issue is the meagre share of
spending that is available to startups. Another is the broad-brush approach the Pentagon
takes towards them. Mr Sankar argues that the government needs to come to terms with
Silicon Valley’s “power law”, in which a few big winners generate fortunes, compensating
for the many others that fall by the wayside. The Pentagon also needs to transition away
from “cost-plus” contracts, which are designed to enable big weapons programmes and
guarantee incumbent contractors decades of revenue, in favour of “fixed-price” ones that
outsiders can bid on.
Out of the trenches
In Silicon Valley the overriding question remains not victory or defeat, but exit: how can
venture capitalists emerge from their investments with hypersonic returns? When it comes
to defence tech, the usual route of an initial public offering does not look promising.
Palantir is a rarity in the industry for braving the public markets. Though its stock has
ballooned, it gets little love from Wall Street analysts, who say it is overvalued. The
alternative is to sell to corporate buyers. Yet those with the deepest pockets are the
traditional defence contractors. Some startups loathe the thought of suffocating in such a
quasi-state-owned culture.
There is a glimmer of hope, though. As well as seeding the entrepreneurs building the new
ventures, Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are now rich enough to make acquisitions. Part of
the $2.5bn Anduril is raising is likely to be spent on buying new firms. Market forces are
still the most reliable weapons of war. ■
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Finance & economics

 How AI will divide the best from the rest
Ascension, for some :: Optimists hope the technology will be a great equaliser. Instead, it looks likely to widen social
divides
 Why you should repay your mortgage early
Buttonwood :: For the first time in decades, the arithmetic suggests settling housing loans
 Elon Musk is failing to cut American spending
Bluster-busting :: DOGE has so far disrupted everything in government bar the deficit
 Donald Trump’s Super Bowl tariffs are an act of self-harm
In rust we trust :: Duties on aluminium and steel will throttle American industry and fragment global markets
 Russian inflation is too high. Does that matter?
War economics :: In a strong economy, price pressure can endure for a long time
 Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death
spiral
Sunburst :: Pakistan and South Africa provide a warning for other countries
 The danger of relying on OpenAI’s Deep Research
Free exchange :: Economists are in raptures, but they should be careful

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Ascension, for some

How AI will divide the best from the rest

Optimists hope the technology will be a great equaliser. Instead, it looks likely to widen social
divides
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | Washington, DC

AT A SUMMIT in Paris on February 10th and 11th, tech bosses vied to issue the most
grandiose claim about artificial intelligence. “AI will be the most profound shift of our
lifetimes,” is how Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s boss, put it. Dario Amodei, chief executive of
Anthropic, said that it would lead to the “largest change to the global labour market in
human history”. In a blog post, Sam Altman of OpenAI wrote that “In a decade perhaps
everyone on earth will be capable of accomplishing more than the most impactful person
can today.”
Mr Altman’s prediction taps into an established school of thought. As large language
models first gained popularity in the early 2020s, economists and bosses were hopeful that
they, and other AI tools, would level the playing field, with lower-skilled workers benefiting
most. Software capable of handling tasks such as protein-folding and poetry-writing would
surely democratise opportunity. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, a chip designer,
envisioned a future in which workers “are all going to be CEOs of AI agents”.
More recent findings have cast doubt on this vision, however. They instead suggest a future
in which high-flyers fly still higher—and the rest are left behind. In complex tasks such as
research and management, new evidence indicates that high performers are best
positioned to work with AI (see table). Evaluating the output of models requires expertise
and good judgment·. Rather than narrowing disparities, AI is likely to widen workforce
divides, much like past technological revolutions.
The case for AI as an equaliser was supported by research showing that the tech enhances
output most for less experienced workers. A study in 2023 by Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford
University and Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) found that generative-AI tools boosted productivity by 34% for novice
customer-support workers, helping them resolve queries faster and more effectively.
Experienced workers, by contrast, saw little benefit, as the AI reinforced approaches they
were already using. This suggested the tech could narrow gaps by transferring best
practices from talented to less talented employees.
A similar trend was observed in other knowledge-intensive tasks. Research by Shakked
Noy and Whitney Zhang, both of MIT, found that weaker writers experienced the greatest
improvements in the quality of their work when using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to draft materials
such as press releases and reports. Many saw better quality simply by using the AI’s
unedited output, underscoring its ability to elevate baseline performance. Similarly,
Jonathan Choi of the University of Southern California and co-authors found a general-
purpose AI tool improved the quality of legal work, such as drafting contracts, most notably
for the least talented law students.

The problem is that this is swamped by another effect. A job can be considered as a bundle
of tasks, which tech may either commoditise or assist with. For air-traffic controllers, tech
is an augmentation: it processes flight data while leaving decisions to humans, keeping
wages high. By contrast, self-check-out systems simplify cashiers’ roles, automating tasks
such as calculating change. This lowers the skill requirement, causing wages to stagnate.
Thus despite the early optimism, customer-service agents and other low-skilled workers
may face a future akin to cashiers. Their repetitive tasks are susceptible to automation.
Amit Zavery of ServiceNow, a business-software company, estimates that more than 85%
of customer-service cases for some clients no longer require human involvement. As AI
advances, this figure will probably rise, leaving fewer agents to handle only the most
complex cases. Although AI may at first boost productivity, its long-term impact will be to
commoditise skills and automate tasks.
Unlike earlier automation, which replaced routine jobs such as assembly-line work and
book-keeping, AI may extend its reach to non-routine and creative work. It can learn tacitly,
recognise patterns and make predictions without explicit instruction; perhaps, in time, it
will be able to write entertaining scripts and design useful products. For the moment it
seems as though, in high-wage industries, it is junior staff who are the most vulnerable to
automation. At A&O Shearman, a law firm, AI tools now handle much of the routine work
once done by associates or paralegals. The company’s software can analyse contracts,
compare them with past deals and suggest revisions in under 30 seconds. Top performers
have been best at using the tech to make strategic decisions, says David Wakeling, the
firm’s head of AI.
The shift in recent economic research supports his observation. Although early studies
suggested that lower performers could benefit simply by copying AI outputs, newer studies
look at more complex tasks, such as scientific research, running a business and investing
money. In these contexts, high performers benefit far more than their lower-performing
peers. In some cases, less productive workers see no improvement, or even lose ground.
Intelligent design
Aidan Toner-Rodgers of MIT, for instance, found that using an AI tool to assist with
materials discovery nearly doubled the productivity of top researchers, while having no
measurable impact on the bottom third. The software allowed researchers to specify
desired features, then generate candidate materials predicted to possess these properties.
Elite scientists, armed with plenty of subject expertise, could identify promising
suggestions and discard poor ones. Less effective researchers, by contrast, struggled to
filter useful outputs from irrelevant ones (see chart 2).

Similar results have emerged in other areas. Nicholas Otis of the University of California,
Berkeley, and co-authors found that stronger Kenyan entrepreneurs raised their profits by
over 15% with an AI assistant, and strugglers saw profits fall. The difference lay in how
they applied AI recommendations. Low achievers followed generic advice such as doing
more advertising; high achievers used AI to find tailored solutions, such as securing new
power sources during blackouts (see chart 3).
In financial decision-making, Alex Kim of the University of Chicago and co-authors
conducted an experiment where participants used AI to analyse earnings-call transcripts
before allocating $1,000 in a simulated portfolio. Sophisticated investors achieved nearly
10% higher returns with AI; less sophisticated investors saw gains of 2%. Seasoned
investors made better use of insights from earnings calls such as those concerning R&D
spending, share repurchases and operating profit before depreciation and amortisation.
As AI reshapes work, new tasks are emerging. Rajeev Rajan of Atlassian, an office-software
firm, says that AI tools free up a couple of hours a week for engineers, allowing them to
focus on creative work. Junior lawyers spend less time on chores and more with clients.
“Really smart people who may be bored with analysing routine earnings releases will
benefit the most,” says a boss at a large investment firm. “The skill that is going to be
rewarded most in the short run is imagination in finding creative ways to use AI.” The
grunt work of these industries is being automated, allowing junior employees to take on
advanced tasks earlier in their careers.
Labour markets have always been defined by the destruction of old roles and the creation
of new ones. David Autor of MIT has estimated that 60% or so of work in America in 2018
did not exist in 1940. The job of “airplane designer” was added to the census in the 1950s;
“conference planner” arrived in the 1990s. But who will take AI’s new jobs when they
emerge? History suggests that technological upheavals favour the skilled. In the Industrial
Revolution, engineers who mastered new machinery saw their wages soar as routine
labourers lost out. The computer age rewarded software engineers and rendered typists
obsolete. AI appears poised to follow a similar path, benefiting those with the judgment,
agility and expertise to navigate complex, information-rich environments.
Moreover, today’s AI tools are just the beginning. As the technology grows more
sophisticated, semi-autonomous agents capable of acting independently—of the sort
envisioned by Mr Huang—may transform workplaces. That might make every worker a
CEO of sorts, just as the Nvidia chief executive has predicted. But there will be no levelling-
out: the most talented will still make the best CEOs. ■
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Buttonwood

Why you should repay your mortgage

early
For the first time in decades, the arithmetic suggests settling housing loans
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午

THE HOLIDAY from reality, for the happy few enjoying it, has been delightful. Three years
ago it was still possible to fix a mortgage rate in Britain and much of the euro area at
somewhere near 1%. American housing loans were dearer by just a percentage point or
two. Even as interest rates have risen and borrowing costs for new mortgages have
doubled or tripled, homeowners who locked in the enviable rates of the early 2020s have
been living blissfully in the past. Moreover, the inflation that prompted rates to rise has
bitten chunks out of the real value of their debt.
Alas, the holiday is now over for many. Although American fixed rates often last for
decades, most in Britain and swathes of continental Europe expire after five years or less. It
was in early 2022 that the last of the dirt-cheap loans disappeared, after which borrowing
costs began climbing fast. A large number of mortgage-holders, in other words, have either
seen their interest bills rocket recently or will do soon. For those with spare cash to hand, a
question that seemed remote a few years ago is suddenly a great deal more pressing.
Should they repay the debt early?
To many who owed money during the 1980s, when interest rates soared into the double
digits, the answer is an obvious “yes”. At the time, borrowing costs became so elevated that
merely meeting them, let alone repaying any capital in addition, was a constant struggle.
The risk of that being repeated is simply not worth taking. Better, then, to pay all debt off at
the earliest opportunity, while doing so is still possible. Even if rates stay where they are at
present, that will save money on future interest bills.
Those whose experience was shaped by more recent decades might feel rather differently.
Interest rates have spent most of that time on a downward trend, culminating in the ultra-
loose monetary policy seen during the covid-19 pandemic. Next to that, it is the hikes of the
past few years that look like an aberration.
More important, the opportunity cost of repaying a mortgage has outweighed the potential
savings for years. This is especially obvious to those who fixed near 1% before 2022, then
watched as the rates on simple bank accounts rose to several multiples of that. Under such
circumstances, overpaying a mortgage, rather than depositing the cash and pocketing much
more interest than repaying would have saved, would have been nonsensical.
The opportunity cost over the longer term, and considering the alternative of investing in
shares, has been greater still. Twenty years ago mortgage rates in Britain were not much
higher than they are now, at around 5%. Even with a once-in-a-century financial crisis
looming, buying stocks rather than making early mortgage repayments would have paid off
handsomely. Since the start of 2005, measured in pounds sterling, the MSCI World share
index has generated annualised nominal returns of above 10%. Had your mortgage rate
stayed the same for the next two decades (though in reality it would have fallen), paying off
£1,000 ($1,250) in 2005 would have saved a respectable £1,800 in interest. Investing it in a
global share-tracker fund would have made a profit of £6,500, however.
Today’s mortgage-holders must ask whether such stellar stockmarket returns are still on
offer. Those enjoyed by Britons have been flattered by a steep fall in the value of the pound,
which has boosted the gains from foreign shares as measured in local currency. For
investors around the world, a hefty proportion of recent decades’ high returns has come
from ballooning stock valuations. Twenty years ago, for example, the price of the MSCI
World index was 22 times as high as its companies’ long-run average earnings. Now that
multiple has risen to 30. Put another way, a big share of the gains came from sentiment
rather than earnings. Unless investors continue to assign more and more value to each
dollar of corporate profit, such a multiple limits the scope for future outsize returns.
As a consequence, repaying your mortgage early looks more attractive now than it has in a
very long time, even including those periods when interest rates were at today’s levels or
higher. That is an odd thought for central bankers, so long after they started tightening
monetary policy to quell inflation, and with many of them having spent recent months
loosening it instead. Borrowers who were sufficiently shrewd, or lucky, to secure ultra-low
rates for decades rather than years will be enjoying their holiday for some time to come.
For plenty of others, reality beckons. ■
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Bluster-busting

Elon Musk is failing to cut American

spending
DOGE has so far disrupted everything in government bar the deficit
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午 | Washington, DC

IT ALL SEEMS to add up to something big. On a daily, sometimes hourly, basis, Elon Musk
claims that his team of fiscal commandos has found yet more government fraud,
terminated another wasteful contract or even scrapped an entire agency. Mr Musk’s
supporters believe that, through tech wizardry and sheer willpower, he is slashing the
federal deficit in a way that has eluded politicians for years. But this narrative has a glaring
flaw: our review of official data shows that Mr Musk’s efforts have scarcely made a dent in
spending.
Every working day the Treasury publishes a statement detailing withdrawals of cash from
its primary deposit account, providing the best high-frequency indicator of government
spending. Since Donald Trump took office a little more than three weeks ago, outlays have
averaged $30bn a day. Compare that with the same period last year under Joe Biden:
federal spending back then came to about $26bn a day. Outflows from the Treasury have
actually risen since January 28th, when Mr Musk first claimed his “Department of
Government Efficiency”, or DOGE, was saving the federal government $1bn a day. Looking
at the bigger picture, the government’s spending trajectory in the current fiscal year, which
began in October, basically resembles that of the past two years (see chart).
Such comparisons are far from perfect. Flows in and out of government coffers are volatile.
In nominal terms spending naturally rises over time, pushed up by inflation. Perhaps
outflows would have been even larger in the absence of DOGE. And the agency is still in its
infancy. Nevertheless, the gap between Mr Musk’s declarations and his apparent failure to
cut spending shows the difficulties facing his project. Mr Musk has promised over $2trn in
annual savings for the federal government. He will struggle to get close to that.
In large part this is because of the way America’s budget is structured. The government is
on track to spend $7trn this year. Nearly two-thirds of this consists of mandatory
expenditures on Social Security and health insurance. Interest payments account for over
10%. That leaves a quarter of the budget for discretionary spending, a category which in
theory is somewhat easier to trim—except that half of it goes on defence and Republicans
would like to increase such spending. In other words, no matter how aggressive DOGE is,
its actions are focused on barely more than a tenth of the overall federal budget.
Mr Musk says he will produce vast savings by rooting out fraud and waste. Undoubtedly an
organisation as large as the American government has fat on its bones, and would benefit
from an exercise regime. But it is more accurate to view it as flabby rather than morbidly
obese. The government accountability office, a watchdog, estimates that losses from fraud
have in recent years run between $233bn and $521bn a year. Were it possible to identify
and zap all of that fraud in real time—an extremely tall order—it would still not get Mr
Musk close to his ultra-abstemious targets.
In any case, DOGE’s efforts appear to be pretty scattershot. Many of its spending reductions
have targeted specific things that Mr Trump deems wasteful such as “diversity, equity,
inclusion and accessibility” programmes. Yet these amount to a tiny sliver of the federal
budget. The full value of the savings announced by DOGE (on its account on X, Mr Musk’s
social network) adds up to about $7bn so far. Moreover, some of the reductions came from
scrapping multi-year contracts, meaning that the annual savings amount to less than the
headline figure. If the controversial closing down of USAID, America’s main international-
development agency, counts as a cost-cutting success for DOGE, its total savings would
reach about $45bn per year, or just 0.6% of federal spending.
None of this is to minimise DOGE’s impact. It has already put thousands of government
employees on leave. Armed with a new executive order from Mr Trump, it is now preparing
to make mass lay-offs, though it may lack the legal authority to do so. Civil servants are
disoriented and anxious about their future—an outcome that will surely please Mr Musk,
who relishes his role in the war on bureaucracy.
But the core mission of DOGE is to save money. “It’s not optional to reduce federal
expenses. It’s essential,” Mr Musk said on February 11th. And on that count, he looks likely
to come up woefully short. ■
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In rust we trust

Donald Trump’s Super Bowl tariffs are an

act of self-harm
Duties on aluminium and steel will throttle American industry and fragment global markets
2 月 13, 2025 05:12 上午

LAST YEAR dozens of countries proposed or introduced new tariffs on steel imports. Most
aimed the measures at China, which they accused of flooding international markets with
cheap metal. On February 9th Donald Trump took a different approach: he picked up a
scattergun instead of a sniper’s rifle. As the president flew to the Super Bowl, he told
reporters that he would announce new tariffs of 25% on aluminium and steel imports. On
February 10th the levies duly arrived.
Mr Trump sees tariffs as a way to incentivise foreign investment in America and boost
domestic production. “It’s going to mean a lot of businesses are going to be opening in the
United States,” Mr Trump said as he signed the order, which invokes domestic security as
justification. The new tariffs are due to come into effect on March 12th. They threaten to
punish America’s allies more than its enemies—and will harm America’s own economy.
America imports 25% of the steel it consumes, four-fifths of which is currently free of
tariffs under agreements with Canada, Brazil, Mexico and the EU, its biggest suppliers, as
well as other countries. America also imports 70% of its aluminium, some 60% of which
comes tariff-free from Canada. Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, a Canadian province,
accused Mr Trump of “shifting goalposts”. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, has said
he should stop bashing Europe and focus on China.
Mr Trump’s first term offers a guide to what might happen next. In 2018 the president set a
tariff of 25% on steel and another of 10% on aluminium. Within months he had reached
deals with most of America’s biggest suppliers and granted exemptions; the Biden
administration later agreed to replace some tariffs with quotas. Even blunted, the measures
encouraged investment in domestic steelmaking, where capacity has risen by 6% since
2018. Yet this did not lead to a big boost in production, which remains below levels in
2019, as does the number of people employed by steel mills. Last year output of fresh
aluminium fell to its lowest this century. Even with tariffs, domestic demand simply has not
been strong enough to produce a boom.
In principle, there is now room for metal output to grow. America’s raw-steel mills are used
to 60% or so of capacity (80% is seen as optimum). In reality, America will still lack the
expertise to produce lots of refined products at home, says Matthew Watkins of CRU, a
consultancy. Even after Mr Trump’s first tariffs, America continued to import just as many
high-value-added products—including packaging steel and seamless tubes, which contain
and transport liquids—from Europe as it did before. America has few aluminium smelters;
building new ones can take years. In the interim it will continue to rely on imports.
Domestic producers, which now face less competition, are giddy. The share prices of
Century Aluminum and Nucor, the country’s largest aluminium- and steelmakers
respectively, rose by 10% and 6% the day after Mr Trump’s announcement. The tariffs
could also provide a fillip to US Steel, an ailing giant whose acquisition by Nippon Steel, a
Japanese firm, was blocked by Joe Biden. But this will be more than balanced by higher
prices for consumers and the fact that industrial buyers of aluminium and steel will face
higher costs. Ehsan Khoman and Soojin Kim of MUFG, a bank, estimate that a 25% tariff will
push up the cost of a tonne of steel imported into America from $755 to over $900,
negating a cost advantage that America currently enjoys over Europe. Sheltered from
competition, domestic producers will face less pressure to keep down prices.
Mr Trump’s tariffs could have even more profound implications for global metal markets.
Shares in steel firms outside America have fallen since Mr Trump’s 30,000-feet message.
Many will no doubt try to redirect wares, pushing down prices elsewhere. Other countries
may erect trade barriers to protect their own industries. The resulting glut in aggregate
capacity could, in turn, ensure that international prices remain depressed even as
protected metals firms grow rustier and greedier. In America and elsewhere, Mr Trump’s
metals wars will corrode the economy. ■
Editor’s note (February 11th 2025): This article was updated to note that the duties go into
effect on March 12th.
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War economics

Russian inflation is too high. Does that

matter?
In a strong economy, price pressure can endure for a long time
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

WHILE INFLATION has cooled almost everywhere, in Russia it is hotting up. Consumer
prices rose by 9.5% year on year in December, up from 8.9% the previous month and
uncomfortably above the central bank’s target of 4% (see chart). The prices of fruit and
vegetables have risen by more than 20% on average in the past year. In a normal country,
this sort of high inflation would be unsustainable. But Russia is not a normal country.
The latest bout of inflation is the product of both external and internal factors. In recent
months, as the West has tightened sanctions, the rouble has depreciated, raising the cost of
imports. Russian importers hoping to supply customers with American phones or Italian
handbags have to be increasingly creative, which adds to their costs. There is
circumstantial evidence that French vintners are skirting sanctions by selling to
unscrupulous middlemen in Austria and Greece, among other places. Even so, the price of a
bottle of the 2006 Clos de Tart, a blowout Burgundy at White Rabbit, Moscow’s finest
restaurant, has risen by close to 30% since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
Conscription, meanwhile, has created a labour shortage, exacerbated by the fact that many
Russians have fled the country. Unemployment, at around 2% of the workforce, is the
lowest on record. This, in turn, has forced employers to compete hard for workers. In 2024
nominal pay rose by an astonishing 18%, putting further upward pressure on prices. The
government has also implemented enormous fiscal stimulus, lifting spending on defence,
welfare and infrastructure. Strong demand, says the central bank, “still exceeds companies’
capacities to expand supply”.

A tussle is now under way in Russia’s policymaking establishment. The central bank—
stuffed with orthodox economists—is desperate to cool prices. On February 14th, following
a monetary-policy meeting, it is expected to keep interest rates at 21%, their highest since
the early 2000s. It has also tightened credit rules. But those close to Mr Putin have other
ideas. The vast military budget keeps coming in much higher than planned, and now equals
around 7% of GDP. The government is doling out huge sums, including as signing-on
bonuses to soldiers and compensation to families when their relatives are killed in action.
It is also pressganging the private sector into funding the armed forces, which amounts to a
form of stimulus.
Is Russia’s high inflation sustainable? In a typical emerging market, one of three problems
arises. Sometimes high inflation can make it difficult for a country to service its foreign
debts, as the currency depreciates. Yet Russia runs a large current-account surplus and has
a healthy stock of net foreign assets, making such a scenario unlikely. Alternatively,
spiralling inflation can push up interest rates, which raises the cost to the government of
servicing its debt. Although Russian rates have indeed risen, the government’s debt is low,
making debt-service costs manageable.

A third potential problem is politics. People, fed up with inflation’s impact on their quality
of life, demand change. It is an open question whether Russia’s authoritarian rulers would
switch course in the face of such grumbles. Regardless, people seem reasonably content
with the economy, at least for the time being. In the past year household incomes have
risen by 10%, after adjusting for inflation, with government payments and wages easily
outpacing rising living costs. According to the Levada Centre, an independent pollster,
consumer confidence is near an all-time high (see chart), while complaints about inflation
are no higher than the long-run average. This is translating into how people spend their
money. Real household consumption is at least 6% higher than it was a year ago, according
to our analysis of official data.
Whether this confidence can last is another question altogether. Russians may eventually
reach their limit, and start to complain about rising prices. Meanwhile, the prospect of
peace talks, as suggested by Donald Trump on February 12th, raises a fresh economic
challenge. Russia is producing a lot of goods and services, not least weapons, that a
peacetime economy does not need. Adjusting to the end of war may therefore be a
surprisingly difficult process. Unless the West lifts sanctions, Russia’s long-term outlook is
bleak—whatever happens with inflation. ■
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Sunburst

Cheap solar power is sending electrical

grids into a death spiral
Pakistan and South Africa provide a warning for other countries
2 月 13, 2025 07:20 上午

Packing a punch
IN 1812 FREDERICK WINSOR, a madcap entrepreneur, invented the public utility. The idea
behind his Gas Light and Coke company, which would supply residents of London, was that
instead of each household buying its own energy—bags of coal, bits of firewood—the stuff
would be piped directly to them from a central location. More customers, with differing
patterns of demand, would allow power plants to be used more efficiently. It was a natural
monopoly: scale would spread the cost of the gasworks, the pipes and so on across large
numbers of customers, each spending less than they would individually to consume just as
much. The idea of “energy as a service” spread across the world.
But cheap solar power is now breaking the model. Last year Pakistan became the world’s
third-biggest importer of Chinese solar panels. Many were destined for the roofs of
commercial and industrial outfits or farms, to replace diesel generators. Pakistan has sky-
high energy prices, a legacy of expensive contracts to pay for capacity from often Chinese-
built coal plants. The adoption of cheaper, cleaner solar power is a welcome development.
At the same time, however, it leads to a vicious cycle. The costs of running the grid and
paying for coal power fall on fewer people, who then have more reason to opt out,
undermining the economics of the whole enterprise.
South Africa has seen a similar development. “Load shedding” by Eskom, a state-owned
energy firm, cuts off users when there is insufficient electricity to meet demand. This has
led to a solar boom, causing financial problems for municipal governments, which have to
buy increasingly expensive power from Eskom to sell on to consumers. By November they
had unpaid bills of 95bn rand ($5bn, or 1.2% of GDP) with the firm. In Lebanon, where the
state energy company limited electricity generation to a couple of hours a day in 2019, the
amount of installed solar power rose from 100 to 1,300 megawatts from 2020 to 2023.
Rooftops in Beirut’s richer neighbourhoods are covered by dark panels.
Even in America, high energy prices and blackouts after natural disasters have persuaded
people to go off-grid. Seyyed Ali Sadat and Joshua Pearce, both of Western University, have
found that in parts of five states a mixture of solar panels, batteries and diesel generators is
a cost-effective alternative to relying on the grid. And prices of such systems are falling by
around 9% a year, they estimate, owing to cheaper batteries and solar panels.
For optimists these trends present a vision straight from the green movement of the 1970s.
Back then, Amory Lovins, an energy analyst, coined the term “soft energy path” to describe
a future in which power would be renewable, decentralised and small-scale. “An affluent
industrial economy could advantageously operate with no central power stations at all,” he
wrote. Libertarians cheer the shift, too. Technological change is making electricity markets
more “contestable”, says Lynne Kiesling of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank.
The possibility of disconnecting, even if unused, means that natural monopolies face the
threat of defection.
Daylight robbery
Yet there are drawbacks to the change. One concerns efficiency. Over its lifetime, a solar
farm’s per unit cost of energy comes to around a quarter of that from rooftop solar,
estimates Lazard, a bank. There are economies of scale in installation and maintenance. On
top of this, lots of self-generated power will ultimately be wasted.
Moreover, the upfront cost of quitting the grid typically makes it a viable option only for the
rich. Since wealthier Pakistanis can pay for their own solar systems, poorer ones are forced
to bear more of the costs of the grid or do without electricity altogether. In Lebanon the
lack of regulation has made the country “a dumpster of low-quality solar systems and
batteries”, says Jessica Obeid of the Middle East Institute, a think-tank. The small firms that
crop up to install them go bankrupt and cannot provide maintenance.
Policymakers are now attempting to come up with solutions. “You can make solar play nice
with the grids,” says Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF, a research firm. Pakistan’s problems
emerge from its legacy of high-cost coal power and the way in which customers are
charged: fixed costs arising from transmission and distribution are paid back through
hourly prices, which do not flex much according to demand. For the moment, few people
have energy-storage systems, which means that they use the grid as backup rather than
disconnecting altogether. As a consequence, those who are able to afford a solar system can
free ride, enjoying their own electricity when the sun shines and making use of the grid for
artificially cheap power when it sets. Residential consumers also enjoy “net metering”,
gaining credit for supplying electricity during daytime when it is less valuable. Eliminating
such incentives would help spread the cost of maintaining the grid in a fairer manner.
Yet the best solution would be for energy firms to respond to the competition and sort
themselves out. In Pakistan they often fail to make consumers pay their bills. In South
Africa, as Eskom has at last managed to curtail blackouts, the solar boom has slowed down.
Although decentralised energy production may be destabilising, it does mean that
providers have an incentive to improve. Rooftop solar offers an alternative to a monopoly
that can no longer be considered natural. ■
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Free exchange

The danger of relying on OpenAI’s Deep

Research
Economists are in raptures, but they should be careful
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

IN EARLY FEBRUARY OpenAI, the world’s most famous artificial-intelligence firm, released
Deep Research, which is “designed to perform in-depth, multi-step research”. With a few
strokes of a keyboard, the tool can produce a paper on any topic in minutes. Many
academics love it. “Asking OpenAI’s Deep Research about topics I am writing papers on has
been incredibly fruitful,” said Ethan Mollick of the University of Pennsylvania. Some
economists go further. “I am *sure* for B-level journals, you can publish papers you ‘wrote’
in a day”, said Kevin Bryan of the University of Toronto. “I think of the quality as
comparable to having a good PhD-level research assistant, and sending that person away
with a task for a week or two,” said Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, an economist
with cult-like status in Silicon Valley.
Should you shell out $200 a month for Deep Research? Mr Cowen has hyped fads in the
past, as he did with Web3 and Clubhouse, a once-popular social-media network. On the
other hand, if Deep Research approximates a form of artificial superintelligence, as many
believe, then $2,400 a year is the greatest bargain in the history of the world. To help you
decide, your columnist has kicked the tyres of the new model. How good a research
assistant is Deep Research, for economists and others?
The obvious conclusions first. Deep Research is unable to conduct primary research, from
organising polls in Peru to getting a feel for the body language of a chief executive whose
company you might short. Nor can it brew a coffee, making it a poor substitute for a human
assistant. Another complaint is that Deep Research’s output is almost always leaden prose,
even if you ask it to be more lively. Then again, most people were never good writers
anyway, so will hardly care if their AI assistant is a bit dull.
Use Deep Research as an assistant for a while, though, and three more important issues
emerge: “data creativity”, the “tyranny of the majority” and “intellectual shortcuts”. Begin
with data creativity. OpenAI’s model can handle straightforward questions—“what was
France’s unemployment rate in 2023?”—without breaking step. It can handle marginally
more complex questions—“tell me the average unemployment rate in 2023 for France,
Germany and Italy, weighted by population”—with ease.
When it comes to data questions requiring more creativity, however, the model struggles. It
wrongly estimates the average amount of money that an American household headed by a
25- to 34-year-old spent on whisky in 2021, even though anyone familiar with the Bureau
of Labour Statistics data can find the exact answer ($20) in a few seconds. It cannot
accurately tell you what share of British businesses currently use AI, even though the
statistics office produces a regular estimate. The model has even greater difficulty with
more complex questions, including those involving the analysis of source data produced by
statistical agencies. For such questions, human assistants retain an edge.
The second issue is the tyranny of the majority. Deep Research is trained on an enormous
range of public data. For many tasks, this is a plus. It is astonishingly good at producing
detailed, sourced summaries. Mr Cowen asked it to produce a ten-page paper explaining
David Ricardo’s theory of rent. The output would be a respectable addition to any textbook.
Yet the sheer volume of content used to train the model creates an intellectual problem.
Deep Research tends to draw on ideas that are frequently discussed or published, rather
than the best stuff. Information volume tyrannises information quality. It happens with
statistics: Deep Research is prone to consulting sources that are easily available (such as
newspapers), rather than better data that may be behind a paywall or are harder to find.
Something similar happens with ideas. Consider the question—much discussed by
economists—of whether American income inequality is rising. Unless prompted to do
otherwise, the model blandly assumes that inequality has soared since the 1960s (as is the
conventional wisdom) rather than remained flat or increased only a bit (the view of many
experts). Or consider the true meaning of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, the foundational
idea in economics. In a paper published in 1994, Emma Rothschild of Harvard University
demolished the notion that Smith used the term to refer to the benefits of free markets.
Deep Research is aware of Ms Rothschild’s research but nonetheless repeats the popular
misconception. In other words, those using Deep Research as an assistant risk learning
about the consensus view, not that of the cognoscenti. That is a huge risk for anyone who
makes their income through individual creativity and thought, from public intellectuals to
investors.
The idiot trap
A third problem with employing Deep Research as an assistant is the most serious. It is not
an issue with the model itself, but how it is used. Ineluctably, you find yourself taking
intellectual shortcuts. Paul Graham, a Silicon Valley investor, has noted that AI models, by
offering to do people’s writing for them, risk making them stupid. “Writing is thinking,” he
has said. “In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.” The same is
true for research. For many jobs, researching is thinking: noticing contradictions and gaps
in the conventional wisdom. The risk of outsourcing all your research to a supergenius
assistant is that you reduce the number of opportunities to have your best ideas.
With time, OpenAI may iron out its technical issues. At some point, Deep Research may also
be able to come up with amazing ideas, turning it from an assistant to the lead researcher.
Until then, use Deep Research, even at $200 a month. Just don’t expect it to replace
research assistants any time soon. And make sure it doesn’t turn you stupid. ■
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Science & technology

 How artificial intelligence is changing baseball
AI up to bat :: Moneyball enters its AI era
 AI is being used to model football matches
A game of two graphs :: The mathematics of network analysis helps them follow the action
 A neutrino telescope spots the signs of something
cataclysmic
Whizz-bang :: What could have generated the most energetic neutrino ever detected?
 Forget DeepSeek. Large language models are getting
cheaper still
For a fistful of dollars :: A $6m LLM isn’t cool. A $6 one is
 Does intermittent fasting work?
Well informed :: It does for weight loss. Its other supposed benefits are debatable

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AI up to bat

How artificial intelligence is changing

baseball
Moneyball enters its AI era
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

IMAGINE IF A baseball club had an oracle that could say with certainty how many hits a
batter would compile, or how many runs a pitcher would allow, in the coming year, three
years or decade. The best-performing teams would then be those with the best oracles.
Such oracles don’t exist, of course. But artificial-intelligence (AI) models do. And they don’t
need a crystal ball: they can predict the future simply by looking for mathematical patterns
in reams of historical data.
Such analysis is nothing new. In the 1970s the baseball analyst Bill James pioneered an
empirical approach to the sport, developing a panoply of novel ways to quantify
performance. Such “sabermetrics” (named for the Society for American Baseball Research,
of which James was a member) entered the mainstream in the “Moneyball” era of the early
2000s. As documented in a book and, later, a film of that name, the Oakland Athletics began
applying sabermetric principles to identify (and then sign) players whose statistical
profiles suggested they might be more valuable than competing clubs realised. This paid
off; the Athletics made the playoffs four years in a row despite having one of the lowest
payrolls in North America’s Major League Baseball (MLB).
Moneyball has now entered its AI era. All teams in MLB have at least one analyst, with some
employing dozens. The consistent and clever use of AI-powered analytics is letting teams
with small budgets compete and those with large budgets dominate. More investment and
innovation looks inevitable.
There are good reasons why baseball is such an ideal testing ground for AI-driven analysis.
First, as in most sports, there are clear rules, uncontested winners, and few lives at stake if
things go wrong. Baseball also has certain unique advantages. As Nicholas Kapur at
Teamworks, a sports analytics company, puts it, “Baseball is a series of individual matchups
that masquerades as a team sport.” Studying a series of discrete contests between batters
and pitchers is much simpler than the many-body problem of a rugby scrum or a fast break
in basketball.
Baseball is also overflowing with data. On top of a century and a half of recorded hits and
runs, all pitched baseballs in MLB were simultaneously filmed by three cameras starting in
2006. This provided data about the ball’s origin point, how fast it went, and how much it
curved or sank as well as precisely where it ended up. Now, its newer, radar-based
replacement, TrackMan, is even more reliable. What’s more, all league games are recorded
by several cameras in each stadium. This footage is then processed by algorithms to track
every pitch and swing, along with the joint and body movements of each player.
Innovations in AI models offer tantalising possibilities for how this data could be put to use.
Just as a large language model (LLM) analyses the structure of millions of existing
sentences to suggest new ones, a baseball equivalent could predict the future performance
of a player or team as well as suggest game strategies.
Curve balls
Statistical analysis has led to such changes before. Over the past two decades number-
crunching has led to the increasing use of defensive shifts—where fielders are repositioned
based on the likely outcome of a batter’s swing—becoming more common. (The most
extreme infield defensive shifts were banned in 2023 in an effort to make games more
exciting.) Machine-learning models employed by some teams help coaches make more fine-
grained analyses based on ball data and player tendencies, allowing them to place fielders
in positions where the statistics suggest the opposing batter is most likely to hit the ball.
Other teams, meanwhile, use AI to recommend pitches that will be most effective against
specific batters.
There are a number of ways AI models can do this. One sort plots pitches on a graph with
its own distinctive axes, where pitches that are similar to each other wind up close
together. For instance, two fastballs to the upper right of the strike zone will be close
together in this “pitching space”, whereas a curveball to the same location will end up
somewhere else. This sort of data-crunching lets a batter-v-pitcher model make predictions
even for matchups it has never seen before, by, for example, looking at how a batter has
fared against similar pitchers.
A future goal is to develop an AI model of any given pitcher. Batters could then use this to
study a pitcher’s wind-up and pitching motion, and predict the location and type of the
subsequent pitch. Training such a virtual pitcher would require hours of high-speed video
as well as data about the subsequent pitches. The model would then be repeatedly asked to
predict correlations between wind-up and pitch, hunting for distinctive tells that batters
could use when faced with the real thing.
Such a tool would be in high demand: at present, a number of pitchers consistently
outperform AI-model predictions. This may be because current models, which mainly use
pitch trajectories, lack an understanding of how batters use physical cues to read the
pitcher, and how pitchers use their body to bamboozle batters. Incorporating pitching
motions into these models might fix that.
A related model could also be used to analyse the biomechanics of the throwing motion to
determine the likelihood of injury within the next few months, and over the course of a
career. If an AI model identifies a risky movement, this can be corrected to either keep the
pitcher healthy or stop the team from wasting money on someone prone to injury.
As bat-tracking data become more widely available, equivalent AI batters may come soon
to offer insights into how batters perform the superhuman feat of hitting a ball travelling at
over 150kph from barely 20 metres away, potentially allowing this skill to be more
efficiently taught.
Key to acting on such suggestions, though, is explainability: can the model’s reasoning be
trusted—or even followed? Teams are experimenting with explainability techniques that
allow for such interrogation. One approach uses LLMs as an interface to the projection
model, so that a coach can ask questions directly, without having to learn to code. Some
teams even employ internal “sales reps” that act as intermediaries between the analytics
team and the one on-field. Their job is to work out how to interpret and contextualise the
insights in a way that would be most useful to players and coaches.
The way that models are used should always allow for nuance or questioning, says Dr
Kapur, because they “can miss things and assumptions can be wrong”. Thousands of
unpredictable details can escape an AI model’s predictions—everything from a coach’s
mood to a last-minute change of strategy. Even if such minutiae could one day be modelled,
there is little chance of AI taking the fun out of baseball. “We know computers are better
than humans at playing chess,” says Patrick Lucey at Stats Perform, a sports analytics
company, “but we still love playing chess.” ■
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A game of two graphs

AI is being used to model football matches

The mathematics of network analysis helps them follow the action
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

TO A HUMAN observer of football (the soccer sort), the on-pitch patterns—offence

stretching and squeezing defence, counterattacks coalescing out of thin air—are as
mesmerising as they are easy to follow. For an artificial-intelligence (AI) model, however,
understanding what is going on is far from trivial. Raw video is stuffed with information,
most of it irrelevant. The first thing an AI engineer, therefore, has to do is teach the model
what matters and what doesn’t. For football tactics, player and ball positions are a good
place to start. But a team isn’t just a collection of isolated players; it is a network of
relationships.
Such networks, known to mathematicians as graphs, are made up of nodes connected by
edges. On a football pitch, each player is a distinctive node, with edges capturing
interactions such as passes and tackles. A match can, thus, be represented as an evolving
sequence of graphs, no two alike between kickoff and the final whistle.
AI models capable of parsing such information, known as graph neural networks (GNNs),
can be used to identify which sorts of patterns spell danger for a team, and, consequently,
what to avoid. Many scientific fields find them useful. At an upcoming conference hosted by
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Joris Bekkers and Amod Sahasrabudhe, two
sports analysts, will present a model they devised while at the United States Soccer
Federation. This predicts counterattacks using a method originally devised to predict how
atoms come together to form crystals.
All models are simplifications, and graph-based ones are no exception. For one thing, they
are best at representing interactions between pairs of nodes. To capture a four-person
defensive formation, other, yet more complex, structures may have to be called off the
bench. ■
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Whizz-bang

A neutrino telescope spots the signs of

something cataclysmic
What could have generated the most energetic neutrino ever detected?
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

Particle fishing
ON FEBRUARY 13TH 2023 an object with extraterrestrial origins went screaming through
the Mediterranean Sea off the Sicilian coast. A single, super-energetic subatomic particle
left a sparkling trail of light in the depths. And it did so right in the middle of an odd sort of
telescope that was partway through construction. In a paper published in Nature this week,
the scientists in charge of KM3NET discuss how they detected the signature of the most
powerful neutrino that science has ever seen.
KM3NET is not a conventional telescope. It does not rely on visible light, as astronomers
long have, nor on other bits of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as radio waves or
gamma rays, that were added to their arsenal in the 20th century. Instead it examines the
universe with neutrinos, ghostly but omnipresent subatomic particles that are produced in
nuclear reactions. Scientists had theorised that very-high-energy neutrinos ought to exist,
produced by violent astronomical processes such as gamma-ray bursts or matter falling
into giant black holes. Now they have evidence that they were right.
Detecting neutrinos is difficult. They are aloof particles that rarely deign to interact with
the rest of the universe. They feel only two of the four fundamental forces: the weak
nuclear force, which works over very small distances, and gravity; they are immune to
electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force. Trillions of neutrinos, mostly produced by
the Sun, rain down on each square metre of Earth’s surface every second. The vast majority
sail right through the planet.
Occasionally, though, one will slam straight into another subatomic particle inside an atom.
That will produce a shower of secondary particles that are much easier to spot. A neutrino
telescope, therefore, is a giant exercise in statistics. Observe lots of atoms for a long time
and sooner or later you will see a collision. Detectors like Super Kamiokande, in Japan, or
ICE Cube, in Antarctica, use huge quantities of ultra-pure water and ice respectively. The
secondary particles produced by neutrino collisions produce characteristic flashes of light
as they pass through the detector. KM3NET uses the Mediterranean Sea instead. Two
groups of detectors sit several kilometres deep in the waters off Sicily and Toulon in
France. (A third is planned near Pylos, in Greece.)
The neutrino from 2023 came in from the west, travelling almost horizontally. It passed
through more than 100km of rock before colliding with something and generating a very
energetic muon—a heavier cousin to the electrons that surround atomic nuclei. It was that
muon, rather than the neutrino itself, that flashed through the detector. But by working
backwards, the researchers were able to tentatively conclude that the neutrino that
generated it was packing something like 220 petaelectron-volts of energy—in layman’s
terms, about as much as a ping-pong ball dropped from a height of a metre.
The big question is what could have produced it. Fortunately, the neutrinos’ reluctance to
interact with anything means they chart straight paths through space, unaffected by
magnetic fields or clouds of gas. When KM3NET’s researchers went looking through
archived observations of the patch of space from which the neutrino had come, they
spotted a dozen “blazars”, jets of energy produced by matter falling into black holes,
pointing straight at Earth. Any of those could have been the source.
But they are not sure: the detection was made while KM3NET was about only 10%
complete, and there are other, less exciting, possible explanations. In future, scientists will
be better prepared. An automated system, designed to alert other telescopes to noteworthy
neutrino detections, was not working in 2023. Had it been, scientists could have quickly
trained all manner of other instruments on the relevant patch of the sky, hoping to spot
extra clues. That system should be up and running soon. All that can be done now is wait
and hope that something similar happens again. ■
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For a fistful of dollars

Forget DeepSeek. Large language models

are getting cheaper still
A $6m LLM isn’t cool. A $6 one is
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

AS RECENTLY AS 2022, just building a large language model (LLM) was a feat at the cutting
edge of artificial-intelligence (AI) engineering. Three years on, experts are harder to
impress. To really stand out in the crowded marketplace, an AI lab needs not just to build a
high-quality model, but to build it cheaply.
In December a Chinese firm, DeepSeek, earned itself headlines for cutting the dollar cost of
training a frontier model down from $61.6m (the cost of Llama 3.1, an LLM produced by
Meta, a technology company) to just $6m. In a preprint posted online in February,
researchers at Stanford University and the University of Washington claim to have gone
several orders of magnitude better, training their s1 LLM for just $6. Phrased another way,
DeepSeek took 2.7m hours of computer time to train; s1 took just under seven hours.
The figures are eye-popping, but the comparison is not exactly like-for-like. Where
DeepSeek’s v3 chatbot was trained from scratch—accusations of data theft from OpenAI,
an American competitor, and peers notwithstanding—s1 is instead “fine-tuned” on the pre-
existing Qwen2.5 LLM, produced by Alibaba, China’s other top-tier AI lab. Before s1’s
training began, in other words, the model could already write, ask questions, and produce
code.
Piggybacking of this kind can lead to savings, but can’t cut costs down to single digits on its
own. To do that, the American team had to break free of the dominant paradigm in AI
research, wherein the amount of data and computing power available to train a language
model is thought to improve its performance. They instead hypothesised that a smaller
amount of data, of high enough quality, could do the job just as well. To test that
proposition, they gathered a selection of 59,000 questions covering everything from
standardised English tests to graduate-level problems in probability, with the intention of
narrowing them down to the most effective training set possible.
To work out how to do that, the questions on their own aren’t enough. Answers are needed,
too. So the team asked another AI model, Google’s Gemini, to tackle the questions using
what is known as a reasoning approach, in which the model’s “thought process” is shared
alongside the answer. That gave them three datasets to use to train s1: 59,000 questions;
the accompanying answers; and the “chains of thought” used to connect the two.
They then threw almost all of it away. As s1 was based on Alibaba’s Qwen AI, anything that
model could already solve was unnecessary. Anything poorly formatted was also tossed, as
was anything that Google’s model had solved without needing to think too hard. If a given
problem didn’t add to the overall diversity of the training set, it was out too. The end result
was a streamlined 1,000 questions that the researchers proved could train a model just as
high-performing as one trained on all 59,000—and for a fraction of the cost.
Such tricks abound. Like all reasoning models, s1 “thinks” before answering, working
through the problem before announcing it has finished and presenting a final answer. But
lots of reasoning models give better answers if they’re allowed to think for longer, an
approach called “test-time compute”. And so the researchers hit upon the simplest possible
approach to get the model to carry on reasoning: when it announces that it has finished
thinking, just delete that message and add in the word “Wait” instead.
The tricks also work. Thinking four times as long allows the model to score over 20
percentage points higher on maths tests as well as scientific ones. Being forced to think for
16 times as long takes the model from being unable to earn a single mark on a hard maths
exam to getting a score of 60%. Thinking harder is more expensive, of course, and the
inference costs increase with each extra “wait”. But with training available so cheaply, the
added expense may be worth it.
The researchers say their new model already beats OpenAI’s first effort in the space,
September’s o1-preview, on measures of maths ability. The efficiency drive is the new
frontier. ■
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Well informed

Does intermittent fasting work?

It does for weight loss. Its other supposed benefits are debatable
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

DIETS COME and diets go. One of the most popular today is “intermittent fasting” in which,
as the name suggests, the idea is to limit one’s food intake to certain time windows. One
popular variant, the “5-2 diet”, requires people to eat either very small amounts, or nothing
at all, on two days a week, but imposes no restrictions on the other five.
Intermittent fasting is popular. And as a weight-loss strategy, it has several things going for
it. One is that it is uncomplicated. There is no need to weigh the ingredients of every meal,
as some diets demand, nor to change what you eat drastically. Limiting the restrictions to a
couple of days a week, or several hours a day (most of which are spent asleep) also
requires less willpower, which might make it easier to stick with.
Working out whether that actually translates into greater weight loss than other diets is
difficult. Most studies find limited data and mixed results. The general consensus, says
Nichola Ludlam-Raine, a dietitian and spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association, is
that intermittent fasting seems to work roughly as well for weight loss as traditional
calorie-counting does.
Other health benefits might also beckon. Forcing lab animals to fast (albeit not
intermittently) can increase their lifespans by up to 40%. It also appears to mitigate the
physical decline that comes with old age, boost various markers of metabolic health and
even reduce susceptibility to cancer.
Exactly how it does all that is not entirely clear. One important factor seems to be
autophagy, the process by which cells break down and recycle parts of themselves. Cells
become much keener on autophagy when nutrients are scarce. At the same time, autophagy
seems to have a preference for attacking damaged and degraded parts of cells—and the
accumulation of such cellular detritus is one of several mechanisms thought to underlie the
decrepitude that comes with ageing.
The hope is that intermittent fasting might provoke a similar response in humans. There
are theoretical reasons to think it might: the cellular mechanisms triggered by food
shortages seem to have been conserved by evolution in all sorts of different animals. But
running definitive human trials of the sort done on lab animals is impossible. “When we say
‘calorie restriction’ we mean nearly starving [the animals],” says Adam Collins, a nutrition
researcher at the University of Surrey.
That leaves scientists reliant, for now, on smallish, short-lived studies that use less drastic
diets and which rely on proxy measures of health such as insulin response or cholesterol
levels. Their results are mixed. Dr Collins’s team, for instance, has published a randomised-
control trial (the most rigorous sort) suggesting that intermittent fasting improves the
metabolism of fats more than ordinary dieting does. A review paper published in April
2024 looked at 23 other studies and concluded that intermittent fasting was slightly better
than ordinary dieting for overweight people when it came to improving levels of
cholesterol and insulin. A similar article, published in January, found no meaningful
difference for either weight loss or cardiovascular health.
There are also risks. A study in mice published in Nature in October 2024 found that severe
fasting (where calories were cut by 40%) had downsides, including muscle mass loss and,
possibly, weakened immune systems. Moderation, too, should be taken in moderation. ■
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Culture
 The secret to the success of “Saturday Night Live”
Infinite jest :: The 50-year-old TV show has constantly changed, but always remained the same
 Do societies need more, or less, discretion in enforcing
rules?
By the book :: A philosopher takes a surprising stance
 What explains the enduring appeal of Bridget Jones?
Haplessly ever after :: From spawning “chick lit” to becoming a Gen Z icon
 Faceless influencers are becoming famous online
Face-off :: They are everywhere on social media. Just don’t ask what they look like
 How did the Catholic church go so wrong?
Chapter and (re)verse :: A little-remembered gathering might have changed everything, a new book argues
 Does more education lead to less sex?
The old college try :: Trying to make sense of the sexual “degree divide” in America
 Six of the best films about love
The Economist watches :: Tales of romance won—and lost—to stream this Valentine’s Day

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Infinite jest

The secret to the success of “Saturday

Night Live”
The 50-year-old TV show has constantly changed, but always remained the same
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午 | NEW YORK

IN 1975 A 30-year-old Canadian named Lorne Michaels persuaded the least popular of
America’s three broadcast television networks, NBC, to let him develop a live 90-minute
sketch-comedy show. It would air at 11:30pm on Saturdays. Mr Michaels compared the
time slot to “a vacant lot on the edge of town”, fringe enough to offer him the freedom to
experiment. His cast was described as the “not ready for prime-time players”. Though the
first episode included several actors who would become stars, including Chevy Chase and
John Belushi, most people who tuned in would not have bet on longevity.

But on February 16th “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) will celebrate its 50th birthday on air,
979 episodes after its launch. A slew of tributes is also filling the airwaves. A new film,
“Saturday Night”, dramatises the off-camera struggles of that first show; NBC has released a
four-part behind-the-scenes series, as well as a terrific documentary about its musical
guests.
No other television show has been nominated for, or won, more Emmys: 331 and 90,
respectively. (“Game of Thrones”, in second place, claims 59 wins.) “SNL” has also minted
some of the world’s most famous comedians, who have gone on to write, direct and star in
popular television series and films. Millions of people still watch the show when it airs, and
even more catch it online. More than 540m netizens have liked its videos on TikTok. Its
longevity testifies to how skilfully it has balanced conservatism and innovation.
Start with conservatism. Anyone who watched “SNL” in its first season but not again until
its 50th would find its structure and routines familiar. Each 90-minute episode features
around ten sketches, two music performances and one “Weekend Update”, a parody of a
news programme. Episodes take shape over six intense days in a collegial but competitive
winnowing process. All sketches are run past a network censor, who excises obscene
content as writers complain about oversensitivity. The show still uses handwritten cue
cards instead of a teleprompter.

Hosts change weekly. Most often they are actors or comedians, though politicians, athletes
and musicians have also featured. But the man at the top, Mr Michaels, is still there, 50
years later. In the history of American entertainment, only Alfred Hitchcock rivals him in
longevity, John Mulaney, a comedian, has observed. “Lorne”, a new biography by Susan
Morrison, an editor at the New Yorker, argues that Mr Michaels has a gift for choosing and
shaping comedic talent that has changed the course of TV and popular humour. Phrases
including “It’s always something” and “Well, isn’t that special” have entered the lexicon
thanks to “SNL” skits.
Brought up in a middle-class Jewish home in Toronto, Mr Michaels tried performing
himself but found it was not for him. He loved comedy and the counterculture of the 1960s
but was always the straight man (“He was almost wearing an invisible necktie,” is how
someone remembers him at that time). His personality served him well in the competitive
snake pit that “SNL” often is: he could wrangle and cajole talent without worrying about his
own act.
He has kept the humour of “SNL” clever but accessible, trying for jokes that can resonate
across America, rather than just on the coasts. Mr Michaels still reminds writers, “You’ve
got an audience in all 50 states.” Aiming at the broad centre gives the show licence to tackle
sensitive subjects, including race, as when newscasters, two black and two white, compete
to see which race produced more crime stories. Fans also enjoy it when two “Weekend
Update” hosts, Colin Jost (white) and Michael Che (black), write offensive jokes for each
other that they read aloud on air.
Funny face
Despite its consistency, “SNL” has changed in ways that explain its endurance. It has taken
to making shorter videos that can live online, so viewers can watch highlights and not the
whole show. (These began in 2005, when “SNL” hired Andy Samberg, who made cheap
“digital shorts” with friends. “Lazy Sunday”, a rap about cupcakes and Narnia, became one
of YouTube’s first viral hits.) These digital clips have expanded the show’s audience: this
season some 8.4m viewers have watched the show on TV and NBC’s Peacock app;
meanwhile, online clips are averaging around 216m per episode on social platforms, such
as TikTok, X and YouTube.
Its cast has also grown more diverse. Though the original cohort of actors featured outsize
personalities at war with each other (Mr Chase had a reputation for inspiring hatred),
“SNL” has come to prize low-key versatility. Young comics usually arrive with a background
in stand-up or improv. Many writers also perform, and vice versa. Harper Steele, a former
head writer, has said that one reason alumni have such varied careers as actors, directors,
producers and writers is that on the show, everyone ends up doing a bit of everything. Tina
Fey, for instance, was initially hired as a writer, but ended up performing and anchoring
“Weekend Update”; after leaving “SNL” she wrote “Mean Girls”, a film, and created well-
loved TV series including “30 Rock”.
Politics has been a mainstay of the show, which usually sees a ratings bump in election
years. “SNL” has largely avoided the trap of “The Daily Show”, which attracts sententious
applause by appealing to liberal sentiments. Instead, the show is an equal-opportunity
mocker: James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump is boorish and loopy, and Maya Rudolph
played Kamala Harris as a pandering striver.

Critics have repeatedly (and inaccurately) pronounced “SNL” dead. From the outside, what
the show does looks replicable. But other sketch-comedy shows, including Fox’s “Mad TV”,
have lacked similar staying power. The same is true of the roughly dozen versions of “SNL”
that appeared briefly in other countries, including Canada, Finland, Italy and Japan. No
other show has managed to combine the famous and the funny so consistently.
Larry David, who wrote briefly for “SNL” before creating “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your
Enthusiasm”, has predicted that “SNL” “can go on for another 200 years”. But its fate is tied
to that of its network, NBC, and traditional TV, which is beset by streaming and cord-
cutting.
And there is the question of the show’s next act. Mr Michaels has said he has “no immediate
plan” to retire, but he is 80 years old. The possible successors most often rumoured to take
over are Ms Fey and Seth Meyers, who hosts a different late-night talk show on NBC.
Whoever is selected will need to work out how to keep the show vital while resisting the
temptation to tinker too much with a successful formula. But for now, it’s party time. ■
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By the book

Do societies need more, or less, discretion

in enforcing rules?
A philosopher takes a surprising stance
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

THIEVES SHOULD be punished—but always and maximally? In Victor Hugo’s “Les

Misérables”, Inspector Javert relentlessly pursues Jean Valjean, imprisoned for stealing
bread to feed his starving family. Valjean, a lawbreaker, is the novel’s hero, and Javert, who
pitilessly enforces the law, its antagonist.
In a slim, thoughtful book, Barry Lam, a philosophy professor at the University of California,
Riverside, warns that liberalism’s tendency towards legalism—coming up with impartial
rules to govern all conceivable outcomes—is creating a society of Javerts. He has a point:
well-intentioned rule-making can inadvertently strangle productivity and occlude moral
judgment.
As a general principle, people should prefer enforcers as attuned to the law’s spirit as its
letter. He approvingly tells the story of a police officer who persuaded a shopkeeper not to
press charges against a young man caught stealing food for his starving brother. But some
of the same readers who would support this display of compassion no doubt cheered a
measure passed in San Francisco last year to curtail police discretion by barring them from
stopping drivers with a missing number plate or broken tail-light. The measure’s
proponents say it will reduce racial bias (police stop black and Latino drivers, they argue,
more often than white ones). However, many police stop cars because they suspect the
drivers of more serious crimes; now their hands are tied.
Discretion is as neutral a value as obedience: people like it when they like the outcome. Mr
Lam often ignores that distinction, along with the motivation for rule-making. He complains
that getting a second shot for his daughter’s vaccine was difficult because no record existed
of the first. But a health system that enforces no rules (such as requiring records) would
soon find itself sued.
His opposition to legalism, too, runs to extremes. A bureaucrat at a round-table event
where Mr Lam was speaking refused to approve a coffee purchase at 9.30am, when it was
due to begin, because the preferred vendor started work 30 minutes later. The “by-the-
book bureaucrat”, Mr Lam thunders, is “no less to be feared” than the tyrant. In fact, Josef
Stalin is far more fearsome than the functionary who requires a short wait for coffee.
It is never quite clear which way the book’s title, “Fewer Rules, Better People”, runs. Will
less reliance on rules create better people (unlikely), or should societies have fewer rules
enforced by better people (great, though fantastical)? Either way, this book is as enjoyable
and irritating as a university philosophy seminar. ■
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Haplessly ever after

What explains the enduring appeal of

Bridget Jones?
From spawning “chick lit” to becoming a Gen Z icon
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

Billion dollar baby

THERE ARE only a few fictional characters who have earned more than three outings on
the big screen in the titular role. Mostly they are superheroes (Spider-Man, Superman) or
ruthlessly talented spies (James Bond, Jason Bourne). What they are not, on the whole, is
clumsy, heavy-drinking, unlucky-in-love women with a chronic case of “verbal diarrhoea”.
That is what makes Bridget Jones so unusual. On February 13th she returns to cinemas and
streaming services in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”, the fourth film in her franchise.
She may never be on time or look quite as she would like to, but Bridget is a reliable box-
office draw—even a quarter of a century after her first appearance. “Bridget Jones’s Diary”
(2001) grossed almost $600m in today’s money; the film franchise, including sequels
released in 2004 and 2016, has brought in $1.3bn. In 2020 British women named Bridget
the most inspirational movie heroine—ahead of Erin Brockovich (a paralegal who, in real
life, brought a corporate goliath to heel for contaminating groundwater) and Hermione
Granger (Harry Potter’s brainy friend).
Bridget’s influence on the page is just as significant. Helen Fielding’s novel of 1996 has sold
more than 15m copies in 40 languages, making it more popular than Joseph Heller’s “Catch-
22” and almost as widely read as Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (which inspired Ms
Fielding’s story). “Bridget Jones’s Diary” still sells thousands of copies every year and is
credited with launching an entire subgenre of romance literature dubbed “chick lit”: light-
hearted stories about the quotidian lives of women, in particular their erotic endeavours
and professional goofs.
So what is it about Bridget? Her appeal lies in her familiar haplessness. She strives for
perfection, but invariably falls short. She wants to be impressive at work, but is prone to
blunders. Her attempts to cook result in congealed monstrosities and burnt spaghetti.
(Many of the culinary and professional misadventures are drawn directly from Ms
Fielding’s own life.) Bridget “fails”, said Renée Zellweger, who plays her, “at pretending to
be what she’s not”.
Her joie de vivre was not only refreshing in the late 1990s—when, as Ms Fielding has
observed, single women in their 30s were still likened to Miss Havisham, the lonely, bitter
spinster in “Great Expectations”—but remains so today. Bridget revealed a demand for
flawed female characters: without her, there would surely be no Hannah Horvath in “Girls”
or Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag”.
Today Bridget has won Gen Z fans because she offers a joyous contrast with “Instagram
culture”, Hugh Grant, one of the franchise’s stars, has argued. Forty percent of Gen Z girls
say they feel pressure to be perfect, as they are bombarded with idealised images on social
media. Bridget shows that gaffes are an amusing, everyday part of life. On TikTok, a scene
in which Bridget accidentally dyes a soup blue has scores of comments, such as: “Me when I
cook anything at all.”
Another reason for Bridget’s longevity is Ms Fielding’s comic talents. (She has co-written
each of the four films.) She has a talent for shrewd observations and delightfully crude
jokes. For a film that is largely about bereavement—Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), Bridget’s
husband, was killed on a humanitarian mission—“Mad About the Boy” is also uproariously
funny. A scene in which Bridget bumps into her son’s teacher at the pharmacy as she bulk-
buys condoms is exquisitely cringeworthy.
Ultimately the Bridget Jones franchise delights because it is a winning combination of
reality and fantasy. Bridget faces romantic disappointments, which send her reaching for
ice cream or a bottle of Chardonnay, but she also achieves true happiness. Across the four
films, five attractive men—one of them some 20 years her junior—profess their adoration
of her. Whenever Bridget falls over (which she does, a lot), she finds a way to pick herself
up, dust herself off, have a laugh and seek her happy ending. ■
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Face-off

Faceless influencers are becoming famous

online
They are everywhere on social media. Just don’t ask what they look like
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

THE MOST successful influencers put their lives in the limelight—and their faces all over
your social-media feed. They are relentless at self-promotion. But a new kind of creator is
upending the internet’s traditional model of success. Meet faceless influencers, who are
attracting millions of followers and are quietly conquering social media, turning their
anonymity into commercial gains.
Their aesthetic is usually soothing, minimalist and domestic. Hands with glistening,
manicured nails clasp iced coffees; nondescript figures lounge in cosy bedrooms. Some
accounts may show fleeting glimpses of an influencer’s profile. But all hide their identities
as much as possible.
On TikTok some 200,000 posts are tagged #Faceless; they have a combined 1.1bn views.
Facebook groups such as “Girls Gone Faceless” boast over 100,000 members. Camera-shy
hopefuls can even take courses on becoming anonymous Instagrammers. “Faceless
creators have the same dedicated followings as traditional influencers,” says Julia
Markowitz of Emerald Woods Management, an influencer agency. “The only difference is
that their followers are fascinated with their lifestyle, not their specific life.”
The internet has a history of anonymity, says Brooke Erin Duffy, an academic at Cornell
University. In the early days this meant unnamed bloggers and pseudonymous instant-
messaging handles and meme accounts. However, social media and influencer culture have
always emphasised personal identity.
But viewers are now seeking out these invisible influencers. Removing identity markers
has made faceless influencing a more inclusive space, because the content is neutral. This
often means it is easier to relate to, because audiences can imagine themselves there.
Two things changed to give rise to the new faceless trend. One was the success of Asia’s
unnamed “silent vloggers”, whose cinematic videos of daily life while stuck at home during
the pandemic went viral. The second was the desire of people to make money as
influencers without devoting their whole lives to it. Faceless influencers emerged when
“The Gen Z corporate girl wanted to make money on the side of her nine-to-five without the
effort of getting camera-ready,” says Fallon Lowery, a talent manager for influencers.

Faceless influencers were also drawn to the incognito existence to avoid some of the
harassment and hateful comments with which recognisable influencers are barraged. “The
biggest advantage has been the freedom it provides,” says Victoria Ortega, who goes by
Elysian Living and has around 6m followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. (She
posts about oven deep cleans and even her skincare routine, but without ever showing her
whole face.)
Brands, including Adobe and Amazon, have taken note of the appeal. “We have seen a huge
uptick in brand collaborations with faceless creators,” says Karim Nasri of Digital
Streamers, an influencer marketing agency. Such deals are most common with consumer-
product lines, including technology and home organisation, because they let the items—
instead of the people showing them—take centre stage.
Faceless influencers may be thriving today, but they are not immune to pressures. Some
wonder whether they are more likely to be displaced by accounts that use artificial
intelligence to create content cheaply. Technology is now good enough for virtual
influencers to be believable, cutting out the need for real people. Influencers without
famous personas and unique real-life backdrops can be easily generated by AI.
There is also the risk of imitation by other influencers. “It can be challenging to
differentiate myself since there’s no physical identity attached, so it’s important for me to
always add a personal touch,” such as a playful tone in her captions, says Ms Ortega. But
there is no guarantee of success. After all, faceless influencers’ biggest competition is not
other creators but the recommendation algorithm—the most important invisible
influencer of them all. ■
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Chapter and (re)verse

How did the Catholic church go so wrong?

A little-remembered gathering might have changed everything, a new book argues
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

Heads in the clouds?

THE MOMENT when Pope Pius XII’s nose fell off was awkward, both because the pope’s
body had been put on public display and because the embalmer was none other than Pius’s
own doctor. Many had been suspicious of Pius’s choice of medic: he was, they felt, a quack.
Pius ignored them. A pope, after all, is infallible.
Pius might have been. His doctor clearly was not. Quickly Pius’s skin turned blue-green.
Then it ruptured. Then his nose fell off. The smell became so bad the body had to be
covered in cellophane. A Swiss Guard watching over the corpse collapsed.
Pius was buried in 1958. But the suspicion that something was rotten in the Vatican
remained. It still does, argues a new book by Philip Shenon, formerly a reporter for the New
York Times. To critics the Catholic church, which claims over 1.3bn followers, is irony
incarnate. It was founded by a man who advocated poverty; yet its last pope, Benedict,
wore filigree gold crosses and tailor-made shirts at several hundred dollars a pop. The
Catholic church long declared homosexuality a “depravity”, yet a study published in 1990
estimated that perhaps a fifth of American priests were gay. It is run by celibate men, yet its
priests find time to rule, in Latin, on everything from whether one should use condoms
(non) to whether masturbation is a sin (ita vero).
What it did not find time to do was to stop the abuse of children by Catholic priests. A
church founded by a man who instructed his followers to “suffer little children” is therefore
now better known for making children suffer: in France alone an estimated 200,000
children were abused by priests between 1950 and 2020.
This much is familiar. But Mr Shenon chronicles these failures through the history of the
last seven popes, which is unusual. Medieval histories make much of popes, with good
reason: bad popes are good copy. The classmates of Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict
XVI), who died in 2022, used to play a parlour game: who was the worst pope? Was it
Sergius III, who assassinated his predecessors, or Alexander VI, who held orgies at which
prepubescent boys jumped out of cakes?
Modern histories pay less attention, for many reasons. Partly it is because popes matter
less. Partly it is practicality: many Catholic documents are locked away not merely in
Vatican archives but also in Latin (yet another barrier). The exception was statements on
the cold war, which were drafted in French because Latin lacked a term for “nuclear war”.
It has since been coined: bellum nucleare.
It is also a matter of taste: secular, modern histories tend to focus on secular, modern
powers and on rulers whose reach is geographical rather than spiritual. Popes may also be
ignored because they sometimes seem so silly. They wear dresses and funny hats. They
travel in a popemobile. Until relatively recently the pope’s minions included two men
whose job it was to follow him and fan him with ostrich feathers.
Besides, the Vatican is tiny. It has a population of just 600-odd citizens. It does not have an
army (and certainly no arma nuclearia); instead it is guarded by Swiss Guards, with their
toy-soldier pikes and plumed helmets. The entire place is a mere 108.7 acres. Many
Legolands are larger.
But this toy-town is no game. Though its bureaucracy might not be as riveting as
misbehaving medieval popes, it matters. At the heart of the book is an ecumenical council,
which convened in the 1960s, at the behest of a liberal and reformist pope, John XXIII, to
consider “updating” the church. It was known as Vatican II. To non-Catholics, that title
sounds slightly comic: a film sequel, not serious theology. But it was deeply serious. Had it
succeeded it would have revolutionised the church’s attitudes to everything from birth
control to divorce, homosexuality and heresy.
It did not. John died. The reforms that followed were footling, not revolutionary. Latin mass
was ditched. New musical choices were allowed. As Tom Lehrer, a satirist, observed,
Catholics could now “Do whatever steps you want if/ You have cleared them with the
pontiff”. Though, as Mr Lehrer said, if the church “really wants to sell the product”, its
reforms should have gone further. This gripping and damning book shows how, over the
course of the next five popes, they did not. It is a long history, well summed up by the
shortest verse in the King James Bible that forms this book’s title: “Jesus wept”. ■
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The old college try

Does more education lead to less sex?

Trying to make sense of the sexual “degree divide” in America
2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午

UNIVERSITY LIFE in America is often portrayed as an alcohol-fuelled, sexual free-for-all. In

“The Sex Lives of College Girls”, a TV show created by Mindy Kaling, a comedian, which just
concluded its third season, sexual escapades are as common as beer kegs. In reality,
however, the sex lives of American university students are surprisingly tame. In 2024 one
in five seniors at Harvard revealed to the Crimson, a student newspaper, that they had
never had sex.
This is not unusual. Sexual activity among college-age Americans has dropped by nearly
half in the past 20 years, part of a broader decline in sexual activity that some journalists
have dubbed a “sex recession” (see chart).
An analysis by The Economist suggests that a sexual slowdown is affecting not just
university students but graduates, too. This is creating a “degree divide” in the bedroom.
Between 2002 and 2023, 25- to 35-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree had sex 11% less
often than the average adult; those with a graduate degree had sex 13% less frequently
(see chart). A regression analysis of data from the National Survey of Family Growth, a
survey of nearly 10,000 Americans conducted by the Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention, suggests that, even after controlling for age, drinking habits, employment,
health and marriage status, a university degree is associated with 7-8% less frequent sex,
on average.
This effect is greatest among married couples. But even among single people, degree-
holders are six percentage points less likely to say they had sex in the past year. This trend
also holds true in Britain but not in Ireland, a country with more robust hanky-panky
among the educated.
Little research has been done to answer conclusively why educated Americans would be
having less frequent fun in the bedroom. The most popular theories for why people are
having less sex in general, from technological distractions to young adults delaying moving
out of their parents’ house, fail to explain the inactivity among university graduates
specifically. Young people are marrying later and less often, and there is no doubt that this
is leading to less lovemaking (married couples do it around twice as often as single people).
But those with degrees marry at higher rates than those without; their marriages last
longer, too.
Screen time is associated with lower sex rates. But graduates do not stream or play video
games more often than the rest of the population; in fact, they do so less often. Americans
may be reporting higher rates of depression and anxiety than in previous decades—which
can lead to lower libido—but higher education is associated with better mental health, not
worse.
So what could be going on? Perhaps the most obvious theory is that well-educated people
work more, on average, and therefore have less free time. “Certainly a percentage of people
with college degrees just seem busier with professional pursuits than sex,” says Nicholas
Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah. This degree-donning group also spends
more time taking care of children, on average. Add in streaming platforms—“more Netflix,
less chill”, as Lyman Stone, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies puts it—and
educated professionals have very little time left for romance.
Another theory holds that better-educated women face a smaller pool of eligible suitors,
which may make it harder for them to find a mate (and mate regularly). “We have this
situation where women perform better in education, and in some settings, they have better
jobs, more money, which leads to a scarcity of suitable men, making it harder for people to
match,” says Peter Ueda of the Karolinska Institute, a medical university in Sweden.
Magdalene Taylor, a sex and culture writer, argues that college graduates, who marry later,
may also be better at delaying gratification, which could influence their sexual behaviour.
Meanwhile, other experts posit that some traits that contribute to excellent academic
performance in the classroom may lead to worse performance in the bedroom (sorry,
bookworms). “There’s certainly no question young adults who are more focused on
education, career and their long term success are more risk-averse, more careful, and that
seems to be expressed as having less sex,” says Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University
of Virginia. Those skilled at spreadsheets may still have a lot to learn in the bed sheets. ■
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The Economist watches

Six of the best films about love

Tales of romance won—and lost—to stream this Valentine’s Day
2 月 13, 2025 05:41 上午

LITTLE IS KNOWN about Saint Valentine. He may have been a Roman priest or the bishop
of Terni. He may have performed secret weddings and a miracle on a blind girl before he
was martyred. What is certain, however, is that Valentine lends his name to one of the most
divisive events in the calendar. Valentine’s Day, a celebration of love, often gives rise to
feelings of animosity. Every year netizens criticise it as a festival of overwrought
sentimentality and needless consumption. But if you are the sort of person who secretly
enjoys seeing men and women on the street clutching bouquets for their beloveds, then
here are six films that will woo you.
“Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001)Helen Fielding says she “nicked” the plot of “Pride and
Prejudice” for her own tale—she figured that Jane Austen’s novel had been “very well
market-researched for a number of centuries”—but retold it in an enjoyably modern way.
The heroine’s misadventures are frequently cringeworthy but usually hilarious; Bridget
has become a patron saint of sorts to women who are ungainly, undomestic and liable to
make poor choices. Hugh Grant is memorable as the rakish Daniel Cleaver, but it is Mark
Darcy (Colin Firth) who eventually earns Bridget’s love.
“Brokeback Mountain” (2005)Ang Lee won the Academy Award for Best Director for this
love story (pictured), which is at once grand and intimate. Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis
(Heath Ledger) meet on a job herding sheep in Wyoming in the summer of 1963.
Homophobia makes it impossible for them to be together openly, so for the next 20 years
they sporadically steal away from their wives and children for precious weekends in the
wilds. As Jack laments: “There ain’t never enough time.”
“Casablanca” (1942)During the second world war Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is going
about his business as the avowedly neutral owner of a nightclub in Casablanca. One night a
patron hands him two letters of transit—which would allow the holders to travel
unimpeded through Nazi-occupied countries—and is promptly arrested and dies in
custody. At the same time, Rick’s former lover, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), and her husband,
Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a resistance leader, arrive, hoping to flee to America. This is a stylish,
suspenseful film that explores the conflict between self-interest and duty.

“Past Lives” (2023)Na Young and Hae Sung, classmates at school in Seoul, lose contact
when Na Young moves to Canada with her family and changes her name to Nora Moon.
Years later they reconnect via social media and return to the easy intimacy of their youth.
Hae Sung eventually goes to New York to visit Nora (who by then is married). Like “La La
Land”, this is a film about what might have been, but it is more powerful for its ruminative
restraint. (Pictured above.)

“A Star Is Born” (2018)A chance visit to a bar one night brings Jack (Bradley Cooper), a
country-music star, into the orbit of Ally (Lady Gaga), an aspiring singer-songwriter. Her
success, and their love for each other, proceed in harmony for a time. But Jack starts to sink
deeper into alcoholism, to the detriment of his career and hers. There have been four film
versions of this story, but the acting and musical performances in this iteration are
particularly good. It is a moving portrait of a relationship blighted by addiction and a
reminder that love does not always conquer all.
“When Harry Met Sally…” (1989)Nora Ephron, who died in 2012, excelled at writing
about food, womanhood and love. This film combines all those elements. (Even if you have
never seen it, you will know the scene in Katz’s Deli, or have had your own version of the
debate about whether men and women can be friends.) The dynamic between the wry,
sarcastic Harry (Billy Crystal) and the sincere, highly strung Sally (Meg Ryan) is delightful
to watch, as their friendship slowly transmutes into something more.■

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Economic & financial indicators

 Economic data, commodities and markets
Indicators ::

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Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

2 月 13, 2025 05:13 上午
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financial-indicators/2025/02/13/economic-data-commodities-and-markets
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Obituary
 Donald Shoup knew how to get cities going
Aparkalypse Now :: The parking-and-traffic expert died on February 6th, aged 86

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Aparkalypse Now

Donald Shoup knew how to get cities

going
The parking-and-traffic expert died on February 6th, aged 86
2 月 13, 2025 07:47 上午

OF ALL THE levels of the dismal science, his was the lowliest of all. At the very mention of
the words “traffic” or “parking”, academics sniffed. What could be more trivial or
uninteresting than jams on the freeway, or seas of near-identical cars in a Walmart lot?
Merrily, Donald Shoup shook them off. It was true; he was a bottom-feeder, moving through
the sludgy water everybody else ignored. But first, he had it all to himself, and second,
there was really good food down there.
There was fame, too. Over the 41 years he spent as associate and then full professor of
urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, his students and fans outside
made quite a cult of him. They called him “Shoupdogg”, a rapper name he gladly grabbed
for his website, and themselves “Shoupistas”. He was “Yoda”, too, a guru who trained jedi
for 800 years: by chance the very number of pages in his most famous book, “The High Cost
of Free Parking” (2005). He lacked Yoda’s pointy ears, but made up for them with a full
beard and the tweedy outfits in which he cycled to campus on an old-fashioned sit-up bike.
He was no pushover, however. The sparkly blue eyes soon got steely, because traffic policy
was far from unimportant. How to cope with cars was the biggest issue cities faced, not
only in America but worldwide. The most valuable asset cities had was land, and cars took
up too much of it. They did not merely congest and pollute the inner streets; motor vehicles
had made cities sprawl ever outwards, creating oceans of unproductive asphalt wherever
people gathered to shop, learn, work or have fun.
In America in the mid-20th century most city councils, meaning well, had brought in
parking minimums. The number was calculated, originally, from haphazard surveys by the
Institute of Transportation Engineers, and later on even more randomly by cities just
copying each other. For every 300 square feet (28 square metres) of retail or commercial
space, there had to be one parking space. For a hospital, one space for every two beds. For a
church, one for every five seats in a pew. For a bowling alley, seven per lane. (Car-sharing
not even imagined!) Minimums were decreed for bingo parlours, slaughterhouses,
junkyards and tennis courts until, in Los Angeles County for one, 14% of the land area was
given over to parking. Such schemes, Professor Shoup thought, were clearly a product of
the reptilian cortex, the most primitive part of the brain, and they well deserved one of the
best of his large collection of puns: “Aparkalypse Now!”
The brains of motorists, though, frustrated him just as much. They now saw free parking as
an entitlement, even a human right. But it was not a right, he reminded them, and it was not
free, except for the person driving. In all other aspects of their lives, “free” parking imposed
a cost—first on developers and businesses, then on everyone else. “Free parking” pushed
up user fees, rents and prices in the places that offered it, including for the poor, who might
well not have cars. It was hugely unfair. Besides, as a keen Georgist—a disciple of Henry
George, who had advocated a land tax in the 19th century—Professor Shoup believed that
land should be taxed to ensure it was put to its best use. What he himself wanted to see,
instead of unneeded lots, were more affordable houses for the poor and more public
gardens. He was out to save the world, one space at a time.
So the first task was to banish parking minimums. His idea caught on: they vanished from
35 American cities, including Austin, Raleigh and Seattle. Mexico City abandoned them, too.
His attention then turned to another realm of free parking, curb space. Other people’s
research had shown that in any line of slowly moving traffic, at least 8% of drivers (rising
to 74% in some places) were simply circling, and polluting, in hopes of finding a spot. In his
own 15-block neighbourhood of Westwood Village, next to UCLA, it usually took no more
than three minutes to nab a free space; but if everyone in the village did this over a year it
would add up to about 1m vehicle miles, or four trips to the moon.
His answer was parking meters: smart ones, varying their charges according to the peaks
and valleys of the working day and week. They would charge the lowest price possible to
achieve a vacancy rate on any street of 15% (or an occupancy rate of 85%) at all times:
about two curb spaces per block. Drivers would then feel sure they could find a space, but
they would have to pay more the closer they got to a popular destination. He called this the
Goldilocks effect. Charges were not set too high, nor too low; there were neither too many
spaces, nor too few. Just enough.
The realist in him knew this would be tricky to achieve. He admitted that outside factors
might turn the regular peaks and troughs on his graph paper into something more like
kittens fighting under a blanket. However, he persevered. The great virtue of parking
meters was that they brought money into city coffers. He kept before him the shining
model of Pasadena, once a dump of shuttered shops, now transformed by meters into a
vibrant city again. If that money simply went into the general fund, people might not
properly see the effect of it. So he proposed Parking Benefit Districts, in which money from
local meters would go specifically to local public services: graffiti removal, plantings, street
repairs. Meters would be loved then, and cities transformed.
His ideas, in summary, were to put cars in their place. And that place was not necessarily
the garage, either. Many suburb-dwellers with garages used them for all manner of bulky
and unsightly household stuff, from ladders to paint to home-brewing kits, but not the car.
That sat in the driveway, and Professor Shoup thought that was where it should belong.
Garages could then become micro-apartments for people without cars, who would ride by
e-scooter, bike or bus towards a new urban world. And he, smiling broadly, would lead the
way. ■

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