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<p>[9月 20, 2024]</p><p>The world this week</p><p>Leaders</p><p>Letters</p><p>By Invitation</p><p>Briefing</p><p>United States</p><p>The Americas</p><p>Asia</p><p>China</p><p>Middle East & Africa</p><p>Europe</p><p>Britain</p><p>International</p><p>Technology Quarterly</p><p>Business</p><p>Finance & economics</p><p>Science & technology</p><p>Culture</p><p>The Economist reads</p><p>Economic & financial indicators</p><p>Obituary</p><p>| Next section | Main menu |</p><p>The world this week</p><p>Politics</p><p>Business</p><p>The weekly cartoon</p><p>This week’s covers</p><p>The Economist :: How we saw the world</p><p>| Next section | Main menu |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>The world this week</p><p>Politics</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>At least 12 people were killed, including two children, and 2,800 injured</p><p>when thousands of pagers used by members of Hizbullah, an Iranian-</p><p>backed militia, exploded in Lebanon and Syria. The next day walkie-talkies</p><p>blew up across Lebanon, killing another 20 people and injuring 450. Israel</p><p>is assumed to be behind the attacks. It is thought that Israeli agents planted</p><p>explosive substances inside the devices before they were imported into</p><p>Lebanon. Israel had just expanded its war aims to include the safe return of</p><p>60,000 evacuees, displaced by Hizbullah rockets, to the country's north.</p><p>A 2,000km punch</p><p>A missile fired by the Houthis in Yemen struck central Israel for the first</p><p>time. Going by shrapnel from the blast, it seems that Israel’s air-defence</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/17/a-pager-bomb-attack-causes-disarray-for-hizbullah</p><p>systems failed to destroy the missile before it entered the country’s airspace.</p><p>A terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for attacks in</p><p>Bamako, the capital of Mali. Militants stormed a military-police school and</p><p>an air base where aircraft and mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a</p><p>Russian network, were present.</p><p>Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Senegal’s president, dissolved parliament. The</p><p>anti-corruption crusader wants a fresh slate of MPs to carry out reforms,</p><p>such as renegotiating oil and gas contracts with foreign firms. The</p><p>dissolution worried investors and sent Senegal’s bond yields jumping, but</p><p>Mr Faye's party is expected to win an election in November.</p><p>South Sudan postponed until 2026 elections that were due to take place in</p><p>December, adding to a growing sense of crisis in the country. Since it took</p><p>office after independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan’s government</p><p>has repeatedly avoided going to the polls.</p><p>Arvind Kejriwal stepped down as chief minister of Delhi’s regional</p><p>government, after India’s Supreme Court freed him on bail from six</p><p>months detention in an alleged corruption case. Mr Kejriwal says the</p><p>allegations against him are politically motivated and he wants a clean</p><p>mandate from voters in a forthcoming election. Mr Kejriwal is from the</p><p>Aam Aadmi Party and is a fierce critic of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which</p><p>heads India’s federal government.</p><p>The initial stage of voting began in the first regional election in Jammu &</p><p>Kashmir for a decade. The results are expected on October 8th.</p><p>The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that at least 5,350</p><p>civilians had been killed by Myanmar’s army since the coup that brought</p><p>the junta to power in 2021, and that 2,414 of those had been killed between</p><p>April 2023 and June 2024 alone. Adding to the country’s misery, at least</p><p>260 people have died in floods and landslides in the aftermath of Typhoon</p><p>Yagi. In Vietnam the death toll from the storm rose to almost 300.</p><p>Joe Biden and Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, held talks at the</p><p>White House aimed at finding a way of allowing Ukraine to use Western</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/15/america-keeps-ukraine-fighting-with-its-hands-tied</p><p>missiles against targets inside Russia. The talks were inconclusive.</p><p>Vladimir Putin said recently that permitting Ukraine to fire the weapons at</p><p>Russia would be a direct act of war. In an attempt to increase pressure on</p><p>Britain, Russia expelled six British diplomats shortly before the White</p><p>House meeting.</p><p>Meanwhile, Ukraine expanded its drone attacks inside Russia. People were</p><p>evacuated from the town of Toropets, which lies 470km (292 miles) north</p><p>of the border with Ukraine, after a weapons warehouse targeted in the</p><p>attacks exploded. Russia continued to bombard Ukrainian cities.</p><p>Mr Putin issued a decree to increase the number of active troops in Russia’s</p><p>armed forces by 180,000 to 1.5m. If the order is fulfilled, Russia would</p><p>have the second-biggest contingent of regular combat forces in the world,</p><p>behind China and ahead of America and India.</p><p>Georgia’s parliament approved a law curtailing the few rights gay people</p><p>have in the country. If enforced it will outlaw Pride marches, ban the</p><p>rainbow flag and censor films and books with a gay theme.</p><p>Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission,</p><p>unveiled her new commissioners. The biggest surprise was the resignation</p><p>of Thierry Breton, a French heavyweight who was in charge of the internal</p><p>market. He had fallen out with Mrs von der Leyen and she reportedly said</p><p>she could no longer work with him. Teresa Ribera, an environmental</p><p>minister in Spain, is the new competition commissioner. She will replace</p><p>Margrethe Vestager, who imposed huge fines on American tech firms.</p><p>FBI agenst at the crime scene outside the Trump International Golf Club</p><p>in Florida following an assassination attempt</p><p>America’s Secret Service came under pressure again, after a gunman hid</p><p>undetected for 12 hours on Donald Trump’s golf course in Florida. Agents</p><p>saw the man and fired shots at him, with Mr Trump on the course about 350</p><p>metres away. The FBI said it was an attempted assassination, the second</p><p>in two months to target the Republican. The suspect, who is reportedly a</p><p>fervent supporter of Ukraine and tried to recruit Afghans to help its fight</p><p>against Russia, was arrested.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/15/america-keeps-ukraine-fighting-with-its-hands-tied</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/16/another-attempt-to-kill-trump-raises-fears-of-political-violence</p><p>The Teamsters union will not endorse either Kamala Harris or Mr Trump</p><p>in the election, the first time it has not supported a presidential candidate</p><p>since 1996. The decision is a particular blow to Ms Harris, as the union will</p><p>now not join voter-mobilisation efforts in the crucial Midwest states.</p><p>Faced with a demographic crisis and looming pension shortfalls, China said</p><p>it would raise its strikingly low retirement ages for men and women for the</p><p>first time since the 1950s. Starting next year, the pensionable age for most</p><p>workers will begin to move closer to rich-world norms.</p><p>Canada’s ruling Liberal Party lost another by-election in what had hitherto</p><p>been a safe seat, this time in Montreal. The defeat adds to the pressure on</p><p>Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, to call an early federal election before</p><p>the next one is due in October 2025.</p><p>The widely accepted winner of Venezuela’s presidential election in July,</p><p>Edmundo González, said he had been forced to sign a letter accepting that</p><p>Nicolás Maduro had been re-elected to power. Mr González, who has fled</p><p>to Spain, said senior members of the Maduro regime had used “coercion,</p><p>blackmail and pressure” to get him to sign the document while he was in</p><p>the Spanish embassy in Caracas.</p><p>In Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president, signed into law a</p><p>constitutional amendment that will see judges elected instead of appointed.</p><p>The overhaul has been roundly condemned as a blow to democracy by</p><p>business groups, academics and NGOs. But Mr López Obrador is</p><p>committed to pushing through a raft of reforms in his last month in power.</p><p>Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, presented a proposal to amend the</p><p>constitution to once again allow foreign military bases in the country. For</p><p>years Ecuador has been wracked by clashes between drug gangs and Mr</p><p>Noboa wants international help. The United States operated a military base</p><p>to combat drug-trafficking in Ecuador until 2009, when it was asked to</p><p>leave.</p><p>He knows his audience</p><p>In an unusual gesture Javier Milei, Argentina’s</p><p>statements” from job applicants. Critics have assailed these personal</p><p>meditations on the importance of inclusivity as ideological litmus tests.</p><p>Earlier this year several prominent universities, including Harvard and the</p><p>Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave in to pressure from donors and</p><p>alumni and dropped them. Others, such as the University of California,</p><p>have faced lawsuits over their continuing use.</p><p>Wokeness is also in retreat in corporate America, even though it appeared</p><p>there only relatively recently. Mentions of DEI in earnings calls shot up</p><p>almost five-fold between the first and third quarters of 2020, in the</p><p>aftermath of Mr Floyd’s death. They peaked in the second quarter of 2021,</p><p>by which point they were 14 times more common than in early 2020,</p><p>according to data from AlphaSense, a market-research company. They have</p><p>since begun to drop sharply again. In the most recent data, from the second</p><p>quarter of 2024, mentions were only around three times higher than before</p><p>Mr Floyd’s death.</p><p>The share of new job listings that mention diversity continues to grow,</p><p>however, as ever more firms add boilerplate about inclusivity at the bottom</p><p>of ads. But the evidence also suggests that firms are less willing to put their</p><p>money where their mouth is, DEI-wise. The number of people employed in</p><p>DEI has fallen in the past few years. According to Revelio, which tracks</p><p>labour statistics at a group of big American firms, DEI roles as a share of</p><p>overall employment doubled from the beginning of 2016 to the end of 2022</p><p>(to 0.02% of all employees, or around 12,600 roles). But in the most recent</p><p>estimates, from July, these numbers were down by 11% from their peak (to</p><p>0.018% of employees, or 11,100 roles). According to Farient Advisers, a</p><p>pay consultancy, the share of S&P 500 companies that tied bosses’</p><p>remuneration to diversity targets peaked in 2022 (at 53%) and dropped in</p><p>2023 (to 48%).</p><p>The fall in corporate enthusiasm for DEI could have several causes. First, in</p><p>any belt-tightening, support functions are the first to suffer cuts. This is how</p><p>DEI consultants explain away the recent shrinkage of DEI departments at</p><p>big tech firms such as Meta and Microsoft. Second, after the Supreme</p><p>Court’s ruling on affirmative action in education, companies are scared that</p><p>they may be sued for any practices that could be construed as</p><p>discriminating against certain groups. A third possibility is that firms are</p><p>taking note of declining public enthusiasm for corporate social activism.</p><p>Gallup detected a big drop between 2022 and 2023 in the share of</p><p>Americans who like companies to take a stand on matters of public debate.</p><p>Less than half, for instance, think businesses should speak out on racial</p><p>issues or LGBT rights. Bud Light, a popular brand of beer, suffered a big</p><p>drop in sales last year after a promotional collaboration with a transgender</p><p>social-media star. Its parent company’s shares have only recently recovered.</p><p>Asked why firms that two years ago were happy to talk up their DEI</p><p>credentials were now ghosting The Economist, Johnny Taylor, from SHRM,</p><p>an association for people working in human resources, says with a laugh,</p><p>“Two years ago Budweiser was the number-one-selling beer in the country.”</p><p>Other big brands including Disney, a media firm, and Target, a retailer, have</p><p>also experienced backlashes for behaviour some customers considered too</p><p>woke. Robby Starbuck, an activist who campaigns for firms with relatively</p><p>conservative customers to abandon DEI, says he wants to “Make Corporate</p><p>America Sane Again”. Egged on by the likes of Elon Musk, a billionaire</p><p>conspiracy theorist, he has won concessions and grovelling apologies from</p><p>Coors, Ford, Harley Davidson, Jack Daniel’s and John Deere. Mr Starbuck</p><p>claims that whereas his first targets relented only after he posted castigating</p><p>videos about them online, these days firms are beginning to drop DEI</p><p>initiatives pre-emptively.</p><p>The wake of woke</p><p>Although our analysis shows a clear subsidence in wokery, there are several</p><p>reasons for caution. For one thing, although all our measures are below</p><p>their peak, they remain well above the level of 2015 in almost every</p><p>instance. What is more, in some respects, woke ideas may be less discussed</p><p>simply because they have become broadly accepted. According to Gallup,</p><p>74% of Americans want businesses to promote diversity, whatever the</p><p>troubles of DEI.</p><p>Over time, attitudes to wokeness will doubtless change again. It’s easy to</p><p>see how Mr Trump might prompt a revival in woke activism on the left if</p><p>he wins the presidency again. By the same token, if Kamala Harris, the</p><p>Democratic candidate, becomes president next year, she may spur a reaction</p><p>among anti-woke activists. After all, some of the biggest differences in</p><p>opinion between Democrats and Republicans concern social issues: 80% of</p><p>likely Democratic voters believe the legacy of slavery still affects black</p><p>people, for example, compared with only 27% of Mr Trump’s supporters,</p><p>according to Pew. There is also a chance that Gen Z, the most woke</p><p>generation, retains this outlook as it ages, which would lead to a gradual</p><p>increase in woke views among the broader population.</p><p>For now, however, advocates of woke thinking are in despair. Ms Jackson,</p><p>from Race2Dinner, thinks things have got “much worse”, particularly when</p><p>looking at “what’s going on with banning books, banning LGBTQ, banning</p><p>trans folks, stopping DEI”. She thinks Mr Trump has “given everybody</p><p>permission to just be an asshole”. Critics are exultant: Ruy Teixeira of the</p><p>American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, says, “I think people will one</p><p>day look back on the 2015 to 2025 era as being a bit of a moment of</p><p>madness.” But even though Mr Teixeira thinks the woke wave has set social</p><p>progress back, he does note that, over the long run, America has been</p><p>reducing discrimination and improving opportunity for minorities of all</p><p>sorts. That trend, he believes, is lasting. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/09/19/america-is-becoming-less-woke</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/09/19/america-is-becoming-less-woke</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>United States</p><p>Pennsylvania, the crucial battleground in America’s</p><p>election</p><p>Swing states :: Buckets of money, vicious advertising and consultants galore have left the race</p><p>for the state a virtual tie</p><p>Who is Ryan Routh, Donald Trump’s would-be assassin?</p><p>The man behind the gun :: His 291-page screed on Ukraine’s “unwinnable war” offers some</p><p>clues</p><p>Eric Adams’s friends keep having their phones taken away</p><p>The Adams families :: It can be hard to keep track of all the people around New York’s mayor</p><p>who are under investigation</p><p>What has been the effect of the Supreme Court’s ban on</p><p>affirmative action?</p><p>Admit it :: Making sense of the drip-drip of admissions data from American universities</p><p>Kamala Harris’s post-debate bounce is now visible in the</p><p>polls</p><p>Campaign calculus: now you see it :: But it comes with two big caveats</p><p>The never-Trump movement has leaders. What about</p><p>followers?</p><p>Rebels with a cause :: For some dissident Republicans, backing Kamala Harris seems a step</p><p>too far</p><p>How the right is taking culture war to culture itself</p><p>Lexington :: A new “mockumentary” satirises anti-racist activism</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Swing states</p><p>Pennsylvania, the crucial</p><p>battleground in America’s election</p><p>Buckets of money, vicious advertising and consultants galore have left the</p><p>race for the state a virtual tie</p><p>9月 19, 2024 10:12 上午 | HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA</p><p>ON JULY 21st Matt Roan, chair of the Cumberland County Democratic</p><p>Committee, hosted a meeting with volunteers. The event took a turn when</p><p>Mr Roan stopped to read a statement from Joe Biden announcing his</p><p>departure from the presidential race. “There was this sort of sense of</p><p>sadness—and then immediate hope,” Mr Roan recalls in his office, which</p><p>overlooks the Pennsylvania state capitol. The activist</p><p>speaks highly of Mr</p><p>Biden but acknowledged that “things were not looking good” at the time.</p><p>The rise of Kamala Harris attracted a surge of volunteers to a county that</p><p>favoured Donald Trump by around 18 points in 2016 but only 11 points in</p><p>2020. If such improvements hold there and in other areas like it, Ms Harris</p><p>would probably win the state and the presidency.</p><p>Both campaigns see Pennsylvania as a fulcrum of the 2024 election, and for</p><p>good reason. The Economist’s forecast model suggests that the state—with</p><p>its 19 electoral-college votes, the most of any swing state—is the tipping-</p><p>point in 27% of the model’s updated simulations, meaning it decides the</p><p>election more often than any other state. Mr Trump wins only 7% of the</p><p>time when he loses the Keystone State. Indeed, he narrowly won</p><p>Pennsylvania in 2016, and then he lost by 80,000 votes out of nearly 7m</p><p>cast in his unsuccessful re-election bid four years later.</p><p>No state has drawn more money. Of the $839.5m that the Harris campaign</p><p>and allied organisations already have spent or committed to advertising,</p><p>$164.1m has gone to this state of 13m people. The less well-heeled Trump</p><p>operation has directed $135.7m of $458.8m to Pennsylvania. Turn on the</p><p>television, watch a YouTube video or listen to the radio inside Pennsylvania</p><p>and it won’t be long before spots for Ms Harris or Mr Trump begin to play.</p><p>The messaging war is a study in contrasts. Ms Harris seeks to define herself</p><p>in uplifting ads while warning in others about Mr Trump’s effect on the</p><p>economy, reproductive rights and American democracy. As one of the most</p><p>famous people in human history, Mr Trump doesn’t spend time introducing</p><p>himself to voters. His ads and rhetoric relentlessly seek to paint Ms Harris</p><p>as an out-of-touch leftist responsible for inflation and migrant crime. Such</p><p>fear campaigns have found success before in presidential elections, but J.J.</p><p>Abbott, a Pennsylvania Democratic strategist, argues that “there may be</p><p>some limitations on how much these dark, brutal ads on those issues may</p><p>work” this time, citing similar unsuccessful efforts mounted by Republicans</p><p>in recent statewide races.</p><p>Mr Trump has also drawn attention to Ms Harris’s past opposition to</p><p>natural-gas fracking, an important industry in western Pennsylvania, which</p><p>she now supports. The issue may be top of mind in those energy-producing</p><p>regions but elsewhere voters often express indifference. “It is not a slam</p><p>dunk for any politician…to think that Pennsylvania is monolithically in</p><p>support of further energy exploration,” says Stephen Bloom, vice-president</p><p>of the Commonwealth Foundation, a centre-right think-tank. “No one has</p><p>ever said the word fracking to me” while campaigning, says Stella Sexton,</p><p>vice-chair of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee. She says she</p><p>hears more about the cost of living and reproductive rights.</p><p>For many years a blue state that also elected moderate Republicans,</p><p>Pennsylvania voted about three points to the right of the country in 2016</p><p>and 2020. Since 2008, the percentage of voters registered as Democrats has</p><p>declined while the share of Republicans has grown. Republican</p><p>registrations outpaced Democratic ones this year until Ms Harris entered the</p><p>race (see charts). Democrats argue that some of the Republican gains have</p><p>been offset by a rise in left-leaning independents.</p><p>Harris supporters are particularly proud of their ground game. The</p><p>campaign has over 350 staffers across 50 offices in Pennsylvania, 16 of</p><p>which are located in rural areas that Mr Trump won by double digits four</p><p>years ago. The idea is to chip away at support in heavily Republican areas</p><p>even when Ms Harris doesn’t have a chance to win outright. “They’re play-</p><p>acting at trying to do better in the rural counties,” argues Mark Harris, a</p><p>Republican strategist. “This will once again be an extraordinarily divided</p><p>election between densely populated suburbs versus exurban and rural</p><p>communities.”</p><p>Republican efforts appear more scattered, with a constellation of groups</p><p>working on turnout efforts. Postal voting is a priority. In 2020 Mr Trump</p><p>actively discouraged mail-in voting but has since shifted his rhetoric, albeit</p><p>inconsistently, in the hope of cutting down the Democrats’ advantage.</p><p>If Mr Trump wins Pennsylvania, it will show that he put together a coalition</p><p>of low-propensity white working-class voters and religious voters, says</p><p>Ryan Shafik, a Republican strategist, and would probably also have</p><p>attracted “a good amount of newer minority voters”. Ms Harris will have to</p><p>reassemble Mr Biden’s coalition built on strength among urban and</p><p>minority voters, as well as continuing to make inroads into the state’s</p><p>suburbs. Her current lead in Pennsylvania, according to a polling average</p><p>maintained by FiveThirtyEight, a data-journalism outfit, is less than two</p><p>percentage points. For all the money pouring in, the race remains a virtual</p><p>tie. ■</p><p>Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter</p><p>with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and</p><p>Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the</p><p>state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-</p><p>states/2024/09/19/pennsylvania-the-crucial-battleground-in-americas-election</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/19/pennsylvania-the-crucial-battleground-in-americas-election</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The man behind the gun</p><p>Who is Ryan Routh, Donald</p><p>Trump’s would-be assassin?</p><p>His 291-page screed on Ukraine’s “unwinnable war” offers some clues</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:42 上午 | LOS ANGELES</p><p>RYAN WESLEY ROUTH was prepared for a stakeout. The lanky 58-year-</p><p>old from Hawaii waited behind the fence of Donald Trump’s golf course in</p><p>West Palm Beach, Florida, for 12 hours, according to mobile-phone records.</p><p>He had packed a bag of food, a camera, a semi-automatic rifle and a scope.</p><p>A Secret Service agent spotted Mr Routh’s gun and opened fire before he</p><p>could attempt to shoot the former president, who was playing an</p><p>unscheduled round. The agency says Mr Routh did not have sight of Mr</p><p>Trump, but the apparent assassination attempt was the second in just over</p><p>two months.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/16/another-attempt-to-kill-trump-raises-fears-of-political-violence</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/07/17/the-trump-shooting-has-made-a-mockery-of-the-secret-service</p><p>Mr Routh has been charged with two violations of federal gun laws and he</p><p>could serve up to 20 years in prison. He already has a criminal record,</p><p>including a conviction in North Carolina in 2002 for possessing a machine</p><p>gun. His motive for wanting to kill Mr Trump remains unclear. But unlike</p><p>Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed while attempting to gun down Mr</p><p>Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania in July, Mr Routh’s biography and</p><p>opinions can be divined from the public record. Social-media profiles and a</p><p>self-published e-book (available for $2.99 online) paint a picture of a man</p><p>with changeable political opinions, hatred for Mr Trump, a predilection for</p><p>violence and profound naivety.</p><p>Mr Routh’s book, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War”, was published in 2023</p><p>following what he describes as a five-month stint in the country. After</p><p>claiming that he failed to join the International Legion, a branch of the</p><p>Ukrainian army filled with foreign soldiers (the legion denies any</p><p>association), he says he tried to recruit fighters to help wage war against</p><p>Russia. The book’s rambling subtitle—“The Fatal Flaw of Democracy,</p><p>World Abandonment and the Global Citizen: Taiwan, Afghanistan, North</p><p>Korea and the End of Humanity”—offers a sense of its broad scope and</p><p>incoherent prose. The 291-page text is something between a diary and a</p><p>political treatise.</p><p>Mr Routh admits in the book that he voted for Mr Trump in 2016. He</p><p>suggests that he was “fooled” by the “idiot” former president, and felt let</p><p>down by his foreign-policy blunders, including pulling America out of the</p><p>Iran nuclear deal, which was brokered by President Barack Obama in 2015.</p><p>It is on Iran’s behalf that Mr Routh apologises for voting for Mr Trump, and</p><p>he offers the country a bloody solution that now looks like foreshadowing.</p><p>“I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and</p><p>Iran I apologise,” he writes. “You are free to assassinate Trump as well as</p><p>me for that error in judgement …No one here in the US seems to have the</p><p>balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.”</p><p>Mr Routh seems to have abandoned his support for Mr Trump at some point</p><p>during his first term in office. Posts on X suggest that in 2020 he backed the</p><p>short-lived presidential campaign of Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic</p><p>congresswoman, and that he hoped Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy</p><p>might team up to defeat Mr Trump in the Republican primary earlier this</p><p>year. He commends President Joe Biden for his support for Ukraine, though</p><p>not without calling him “frail” and criticising him for the disastrous</p><p>withdrawal from Afghanistan. He never mentions Kamala Harris, as the</p><p>book was written before she became the Democratic presidential nominee.</p><p>But he does suggest that “we must get to a place where every leader is</p><p>always a woman so that we can avoid this testosterone driven insanity and</p><p>macho bullshit.”</p><p>While much of Mr Routh’s derision seems reserved for Mr Trump, his book</p><p>reveals a man disillusioned by politics more broadly and unencumbered by</p><p>his own contradictions. He condemns the storming of the Capitol on</p><p>January 6th 2021 but then advocates for Mr Trump’s assassination and</p><p>mulls whether Democrats and Republicans are destined to “slaughter the</p><p>entire opposing party”. He offers to be “kidnapped by North Korea…to</p><p>show them one by one that Americans are not the enemy”. There is a</p><p>revealing reference to “Homage to Catalonia”, George Orwell’s memoir</p><p>about his time on the front lines of the Spanish civil war. Mr Routh seems</p><p>to fancy himself a latter-day Orwell, wanting to fight for freedom in</p><p>Ukraine only to feel ineffective in the end.</p><p>In 1995 Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber”, advocated a revolution against</p><p>industrial society in a 35,000-word manifesto. His bombs targeted people he</p><p>believed to be complicit in the advancement of technology. Mr Routh may</p><p>have similarly hoped that shooting Mr Trump could force a reckoning. At</p><p>the end of his book, he writes that he did not expect to make it out of 2023</p><p>alive. “I am certain likewise that my end will go unnoticed…but I will</p><p>dream and imagine that perhaps it would spark motivation in at least one</p><p>person to take up arms and fight against the hatred that ended me.” In</p><p>crafting his dangerous message to others, he may have emboldened himself.</p><p>“If you want to be one of those action heroes in the movies”, he wrote,</p><p>“now is your time to shine.”■</p><p>Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter</p><p>with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and</p><p>Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the</p><p>state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-</p><p>states/2024/09/17/who-is-ryan-routh-donald-trumps-would-be-assassin</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/17/who-is-ryan-routh-donald-trumps-would-be-assassin</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The Adams families</p><p>Eric Adams’s friends keep having</p><p>their phones taken away</p><p>It can be hard to keep track of all the people around New York’s mayor who</p><p>are under investigation</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | NEW YORK</p><p>ERIC ADAMS, New York City’s mayor, likes to talk about his devotion to</p><p>the job: “The goal is stay focused, no distractions, and grind for New</p><p>Yorkers.” Yet the distractions keep coming.</p><p>The list of people being investigated by federal agents includes two deputy</p><p>mayors, the schools chancellor and a former police commissioner, who</p><p>resigned on September 12th. The list of federal agencies poking around</p><p>includes the Justice Department, the FBI and the IRS. The city’s own</p><p>Department of Investigation is busy too. No indictments have come down,</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2022/07/27/what-to-read-to-understand-new-york</p><p>and no one has been accused or charged with any wrongdoing, but as</p><p>federal agents raid the homes and scoop up the phones of top officials,</p><p>questions are multiplying about some of the people Mr Adams has chosen</p><p>to help him manage America’s biggest city. The investigations are not</p><p>related to one another, but the same cannot be said of all those caught up in</p><p>them.</p><p>Federal investigators have taken the phones of three brothers close to the</p><p>mayor. David Banks, the schools chancellor, had his phone seized at the</p><p>home he shares with his fiancée Sheena Wright, the first deputy mayor. Her</p><p>phone was also taken. She says she is “co-operating fully with any</p><p>investigation” and that she is “confident that I have done nothing wrong”.</p><p>Mr Banks said he is co-operating with investigators and is not the target of</p><p>their inquiry. His brother Philip is deputy mayor for public safety. His</p><p>phone was also seized in early September. According to press reports the</p><p>third brother, Terence, who runs a government-relations firm, is also under</p><p>scrutiny. His lawyer says: “We have been assured by the government that</p><p>Mr Banks is not a target of this investigation.” The brothers deny any</p><p>wrongdoing.</p><p>Another separate investigation involves another set of brothers. Edward</p><p>Caban, the former police commissioner, resigned a week after his phone</p><p>was seized as part of a federal investigation, reportedly into the consulting</p><p>business run by his brother James. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.</p><p>James’s lawyer says his work as a liaison between the NYPD and a private</p><p>company is “perfectly legal”. Edward said he was prompted to resign “for</p><p>the good of the city” because the investigation was “a distraction” for the</p><p>department.</p><p>It does not end there. Timothy Pearson, an adviser to the mayor, also had a</p><p>phone seized this month as part of a federal probe. The mayor is under</p><p>pressure to fire Mr Pearson, who allegedly assaulted security guards at a</p><p>migrant shelter and also faces sexual-harassment lawsuits. Mr Pearson’s</p><p>lawyer has said he denies the allegations in all the suits. The FBI searched</p><p>the home of another senior staffer in February. Last year the FBI looked</p><p>into donations made to Mr Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign. At issue was</p><p>whether any campaign money came from foreign donors, which would be</p><p>illegal. His top campaign fund-raiser later resigned, and the investigation</p><p>appears to be continuing.</p><p>Mr Adams’s own mobile devices were seized by federal agents in</p><p>November 2023. The mayor has repeatedly said he has done nothing wrong.</p><p>When the police commissioner resigned, Mr Adams told New Yorkers he</p><p>was “as surprised as you to learn of these inquiries”. He went on to say, “I</p><p>spent more than 20 years in law enforcement, and so, every member of the</p><p>administration knows my expectations that we must follow the law.”</p><p>But Mr Adams also brags about his loyalty to his team and says he himself</p><p>is “perfectly imperfect”. His friendships with the Banks and Caban families</p><p>go back decades. Mr Adams worked with the fathers of both sets of</p><p>brothers when he was a police officer, and Mr Pearson was once his own</p><p>commanding officer. “City government is a family affair”, says John</p><p>Kaehny of Reinvent Albany, a good-government group. “The mayor’s</p><p>responsibilities are to the people who elected him, not the people he has</p><p>employed the longest,” says Susan Lerner of Common Cause, a government</p><p>watchdog. That is not always the impression Mr Adams has given. ■</p><p>Stay on top of American politics with The</p><p>US in brief, our daily newsletter</p><p>with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and</p><p>Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the</p><p>state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-</p><p>states/2024/09/18/eric-adamss-friends-keep-having-their-phones-taken-away</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/18/eric-adamss-friends-keep-having-their-phones-taken-away</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Admit it</p><p>What has been the effect of the</p><p>Supreme Court’s ban on</p><p>affirmative action?</p><p>Making sense of the drip-drip of admissions data from American</p><p>universities</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | WASHINGTON, DC</p><p>IN JUNE 2023 the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions at</p><p>American universities. Many supporters of the practice feared that black</p><p>and Hispanic enrolment at the nation’s most selective colleges would</p><p>plunge, too, when members of the class of 2028 arrived on campus.</p><p>So when some colleges released data this month showing a decrease in</p><p>black and Hispanic enrolment, many were quick to blame the Supreme</p><p>Court. Harvard University, Amherst College and the University of Virginia</p><p>reported decreases in black enrolment from last year. Brown University and</p><p>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) showed declines in enrolment</p><p>of both black and Hispanic students. But assuming that these dips can be</p><p>blamed solely on the ban would be a mistake.</p><p>Public universities in America are obliged to disclose demographic data but</p><p>many have yet to do so for the new academic year. Private universities do</p><p>not have to publish numbers, but many do so anyway. The picture so far is</p><p>mixed. Yale, Tufts and the University of Virginia reported slightly higher</p><p>enrolment among Hispanic students compared with last year. Dartmouth</p><p>College, Princeton University, and Yale University reported decreases in</p><p>Asian-American student enrolment—the group that the Supreme Court</p><p>decision was supposed to help (see chart).</p><p>College presidents continue to value diversity, but must operate within the</p><p>constraints of the court’s ruling. Yet so many other factors have affected</p><p>college applications that isolating the court’s impact is hard. “I’m a</p><p>neuroscientist by training, and when you are doing an experiment, you</p><p>never tinker with two or three factors at the same time, right?” says Joanne</p><p>Berger-Sweeney, the president of Trinity College, a liberal-arts university in</p><p>Connecticut.</p><p>Those factors include the botched roll-out of the Free Application for</p><p>Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, says Angel Pérez, who heads the National</p><p>Association for College Admission Counselling. (FAFSA is a form that</p><p>families must complete to qualify for financial aid.) They include laws</p><p>passed by some Republican state legislatures, which took things a step</p><p>further than the Supreme Court did by passing laws banning diversity,</p><p>equity and inclusion initiatives altogether. Meanwhile, some colleges made</p><p>admissions tests, such as the SAT, mandatory after a brief hiatus during the</p><p>pandemic. Black and Hispanic students tend to perform worse on these</p><p>tests, and so could have been put off by them.</p><p>Finally, with race no longer mattering in admissions, some students chose</p><p>not to report theirs. It is possible that some of the reported losses among</p><p>black and Hispanic students may actually be hidden in the “unknown”</p><p>racial category. Some private colleges have stopped collecting race data</p><p>altogether, says Bryan Cook of the Urban Institute, a think-tank. “If you</p><p>don’t collect the racial data of your applicant pool, you can’t be accused of</p><p>using race in your admissions process.” ■</p><p>Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter</p><p>with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and</p><p>Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the</p><p>state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-</p><p>states/2024/09/19/what-has-been-the-effect-of-the-supreme-courts-ban-on-affirmative-</p><p>action</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/19/what-has-been-the-effect-of-the-supreme-courts-ban-on-affirmative-action</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Campaign calculus: now you see it</p><p>Kamala Harris’s post-debate</p><p>bounce is now visible in the polls</p><p>But it comes with two big caveats</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:41 上午</p><p>LIKE BIRD-WATCHERS with binoculars, observers of America’s</p><p>presidential race have had their eyes trained on the opinion polls to see</p><p>whether they can spot a post-debate bounce for either candidate. Now they</p><p>can. According to The Economist’s poll tracker, Kamala Harris’s</p><p>nationwide lead over Donald Trump has widened to 4.5 percentage points,</p><p>from 3.8 points on September 10th, the day of their debate. A 0.7-point</p><p>improvement is small but potentially significant, and gives Ms Harris her</p><p>biggest lead yet in our tracker (see chart).</p><p>https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/trump-harris-polls</p><p>Contrary to Mr Trump’s claims, Ms Harris clearly won the debate. Several</p><p>surveys have confirmed what CNN’s flash poll suggested on the night: that</p><p>a large majority of Americans thought Ms Harris bested Mr Trump, who</p><p>repeatedly waded into the traps his rival laid for him and came across as</p><p>angry and rambling. A YouGov poll reported that 55% of debate-watchers</p><p>thought Ms Harris won, against 25% for Mr Trump; ABC’s scored it 58%</p><p>to 36% for Ms Harris. A good night for the Democrat was capped by an</p><p>endorsement from Taylor Swift.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/11/kamala-harris-makes-donald-trump-look-out-of-his-depth</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2024/09/12/will-taylor-swifts-endorsement-of-kamala-harris-matter</p><p>The Harris campaign got an immediate financial boost, reporting that it</p><p>raised fully $47m in the 24 hours after the debate. Will a debate victory</p><p>have a real impact on the race? History suggests presidential jousts rarely</p><p>make a difference. But President Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance</p><p>against Mr Trump on June 27th was a game-changer, and this time the</p><p>novelty of Ms Harris’s candidacy meant that Americans were paying</p><p>attention: some 67m of them tuned in, 16m more than watched the Trump-</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2024/09/07/will-the-debate-between-kamala-harris-and-donald-trump-matter</p><p>Biden showdown. It takes a while for new polls to show whether the debate</p><p>moved the needle on polling averages. The needle has now budged.</p><p>The true picture may be even rosier for Ms Harris than aggregated scores</p><p>suggest, since her bounce is still held down by pre-debate polling. Some of</p><p>the latest surveys are striking. Morning Consult shows Ms Harris leading</p><p>nationwide among likely voters by six points, compared with three before</p><p>the debate; The Economist/YouGov shows Ms Harris improving by four</p><p>points while Mr Trump remains steady. Of 12 fully pre- and post- polls, Ms</p><p>Harris has improved her share by 1.2 points on average and Mr Trump has</p><p>worsened by 0.3 points, so the margin has moved by 1.5 points in Ms</p><p>Harris’s direction.</p><p>Voters’ views of Ms Harris have kept improving. Before Mr Biden dropped</p><p>out her net-favourability rating was a dismal minus 17 points. This week,</p><p>according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregator, positive views of her</p><p>equalled negative ones for the first time since mid-2021 (Mr Trump is at</p><p>minus ten).</p><p>The good post-debate news for Ms Harris comes with two caveats,</p><p>however. One is that it is not the popular vote that determines who wins, but</p><p>the electoral college, where the outcome will hinge on a handful of swing</p><p>states. State-level polling since the</p><p>debate is still scarce and the results so</p><p>far have been more mixed. The race remains extremely close. Even so,</p><p>overall the polling shifts have been enough to nudge our election-forecast</p><p>model a few notches in Ms Harris’s favour. The model now gives her a 57%</p><p>chance of winning (her highest yet), against 43% for Mr Trump, compared</p><p>with a 53-47 edge on September 10th. Broadly speaking, whereas before</p><p>the debate the model pointed to a toss-up, now it gives Ms Harris a nearly</p><p>three-in-five chance of victory.</p><p>The second caveat is that a lot could still change. The latest polls were</p><p>conducted before the apparent assassination attempt on Mr Trump in</p><p>Florida on September 15th. Since June the contest has been full of big</p><p>surprises. They surely won’t be the last.■</p><p>Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter</p><p>with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/11/the-systemic-bias-kamala-harris-must-overcome-in-order-to-win</p><p>https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/prediction-model/president/</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the</p><p>state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-</p><p>states/2024/09/18/kamala-harriss-post-debate-bounce-is-now-visible-in-the-polls</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/18/kamala-harriss-post-debate-bounce-is-now-visible-in-the-polls</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Rebels with a cause</p><p>The never-Trump movement has</p><p>leaders. What about followers?</p><p>For some dissident Republicans, backing Kamala Harris seems a step too</p><p>far</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:42 上午 | Atlanta</p><p>GEOFF DUNCAN knew “The Beast” from the inside. Ahead of the 2020</p><p>election he rode in the president’s aptly named limousine whenever Donald</p><p>Trump came to Atlanta. But when Mr Trump claimed that Georgia’s</p><p>election was rigged, Mr Duncan, then the state’s lieutenant-governor,</p><p>rebutted him. Death threats soon arrived from Trump loyalists. Mr Duncan</p><p>chose not to run for re-election after watching the former president “hijack</p><p>the conservative agenda” in the Georgia legislature and “sidetrack multiple</p><p>sessions” by infecting lawmakers with his baseless vote-fraud obsessions.</p><p>In August Mr Duncan joined a chorus of Republican politicians</p><p>campaigning against Mr Trump when he endorsed Kamala Harris on stage</p><p>at the Democratic National Convention. “It was like the first day getting</p><p>traded from the Yankees to the Red Sox,” he says of sitting in the green</p><p>room waiting for his debut. Since then Liz Cheney, once the third-most</p><p>powerful Republican in the House, and her father, former vice-president</p><p>Dick Cheney, have said that they, too, will vote for Ms Harris.</p><p>Yet the never-Trump movement of anti-Trump conservatives is not quite</p><p>what it was. Four years ago it contributed to Joe Biden’s victory as</p><p>thousands of Americans who voted for Mr Trump in 2016 abandoned him.</p><p>They were encouraged to do so by an array of generals, press officers and</p><p>administration officials who had worked under Mr Trump during his</p><p>presidency. Democratic mega-donors financed groups like the Lincoln</p><p>Project, a conservative PAC, to run ads warning fellow right-wingers of Mr</p><p>Trump’s con-man proclivities and fondness for authoritarianism.</p><p>This time around the movement’s influence appears more muted. Mr Trump</p><p>unleashed a campaign of vengeance against Republicans who voted to</p><p>impeach him. A Trump-backed candidate crushed Ms Cheney by 37 points</p><p>in a Republican primary in 2022. When Mitt Romney announced last year</p><p>that he would not run again, the movement lost its legs in the Senate. The</p><p>question in 2024 is whether its leaders’ voices will matter in battleground</p><p>states.</p><p>They are certainly going to try. This cycle Republican Voters Against</p><p>Trump is planning to spend $40m to air testimonials in swing states from</p><p>former-MAGA voters, which would be a four-fold increase from 2020. The</p><p>Lincoln Project is targeting two voter blocs it hopes will flip. One is “Red</p><p>Dawn conservatives” (named after a cold-war film in which the Russians</p><p>invade America), baby-boomers who came of age politically during Ronald</p><p>Reagan’s presidency and are uncomfortable with Mr Trump’s cosiness with</p><p>Russia. The other is “Dobbs dads”, conservative millennials struggling to</p><p>justify abortion bans to their daughters. The activists reckon that hearing</p><p>from more people like Mr Duncan will create a “permission structure” for</p><p>voters to quietly leave the top of the ticket blank or cast a ballot for Ms</p><p>Harris.</p><p>“Cowardice” over Kamala</p><p>However, the never-Trump movement is divided over whether it should</p><p>explicitly endorse Ms Harris. Stephen Hayes, co-founder of the Dispatch, a</p><p>centre-right online news outlet, is adamant that journalists in his orbit</p><p>should be warning Americans of the threat of Mr Trump without resorting</p><p>to “partisan boosterism” by backing the Democratic nominee. Pat Toomey,</p><p>a former senator from Pennsylvania and self-described “never-again-</p><p>Trumper”, says that he will vote for neither candidate, mostly out of disdain</p><p>for Ms Harris’s economic policies. “The outcome is very likely binary, but</p><p>that doesn’t mean my choice is necessarily binary,” he explains.</p><p>Sarah Longwell, who runs Republican Voters Against Trump and publishes</p><p>the Bulwark, another news outlet, calls that “the kind of cowardice I have</p><p>seen play out over and over again in the Republican Party”. If never-</p><p>Trumpers believe Mr Trump is a singular threat to democracy, she thinks</p><p>they should work not just to deprive him of votes but to give Ms Harris</p><p>more.</p><p>Never-Trump has become “a movement of leaders without followers”, says</p><p>Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk-show host and author of “How</p><p>the Right Lost Its Mind”. Weekly Economist/YouGov polls show that since</p><p>2016 the percentage of Republicans who plan to vote for Mr Trump rose</p><p>from roughly 80% to 90%. When it comes to swing voters, more</p><p>importantly, the share of Republican-leaning independents who plan to back</p><p>him has nudged slightly upwards since April, but overall has barely budged</p><p>since 2020. Why?</p><p>The Republican traditionalists most aligned with never-Trumpers probably</p><p>already crossed partisan lines. Eight years into Trumpism those who remain</p><p>in the Grand Old Party may be less influenced by its elite old-timers. And,</p><p>says Kyle Kondik of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia,</p><p>persuadable voters tend to be the ones paying the least attention.</p><p>Sitting in his backyard in Forsyth County, Georgia’s wealthiest, Mr Duncan</p><p>contemplates his future. He hopes his Georgia colleagues will admit to</p><p>backing the wrong guy if Mr Trump loses again. On the other hand, “If this</p><p>whole Republican thing just implodes on itself maybe there’s a place for me</p><p>over there,” he says, referring to the Democratic Party. In October he will</p><p>go on the road with Ms Harris.</p><p>But campaigning comes with risks. Two weeks ago the town sheriff called</p><p>and told Mr Duncan not to go home one evening. Someone called in</p><p>claiming there was a sniper waiting on his rooftop. ■</p><p>Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter</p><p>with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and</p><p>Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the</p><p>state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-</p><p>states/2024/09/14/the-never-trump-movement-has-leaders-what-about-followers</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/14/the-never-trump-movement-has-leaders-what-about-followers</p><p>| Next</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Lexington</p><p>How the right is taking culture war</p><p>to culture itself</p><p>A new “mockumentary” satirises anti-racist activism</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>THE WOMAN has a confession to make. Over an elegant dinner, she</p><p>admits to her companions that sometimes when she is out with her husband</p><p>and he is “really loud” she shushes him. A normal exchange within a</p><p>marriage, one might think. But she is white and he is black. Her impulse,</p><p>she worries, is “probably my white supremacy talking”.</p><p>The scene appears in the new mockumentary “Am I Racist?” by Matt</p><p>Walsh. A conservative podcaster and film-maker, Mr Walsh wants, he has</p><p>said, to expose “the so-called-anti-racist hustle” of the diversity, equity and</p><p>inclusion movement. Among the interviews and gags in the film—some</p><p>outrageous or funny, others silly—this moment registers as poignant, an</p><p>unsettling glimpse into a couple’s life: “white supremacy” appears to be</p><p>harming a marriage that seems to be proof of racial progress. Is that because</p><p>the reality of white supremacy has penetrated so deeply into the woman’s</p><p>subconscious mind that it warps her behaviour? Or because the idea of</p><p>white supremacy has penetrated so deeply into her conscious mind that she</p><p>must forever second-guess how she speaks with her husband?</p><p>The movie dismisses the first question and resoundingly answers “yes” to</p><p>versions of the second. It luxuriates in the paradoxes of some anti-racist</p><p>activists, who while purporting to want to overcome racism can also treat it</p><p>as immutable. “America is racist to its bones,” one consultant tells Mr</p><p>Walsh. Clad in tweed and bewigged with a man bun, he pretended to be a</p><p>solemn white leftist and paid thousands of dollars in fees to beguile anti-</p><p>racist experts into embarrassing, extreme assertions and acts on-camera.</p><p>“Republicans are Nazis,” declares one of the two moderators of the dinner,</p><p>at which they schooled the white women in their racism. America, she says,</p><p>“is not worth saving. This country is a piece of shit.” A loud crash startles</p><p>her as Mr Walsh, a masked waiter, drops a stack of plates. He then leads the</p><p>women in a toast. “Just raise a glass if you’re racist,” he says, and they do.</p><p>Mr Walsh contrasts the anger, not to say nihilism, of the activists, which he</p><p>sees as fomenting racism, with the hopeful, accepting views of some just</p><p>plain folks. “Why would you want to forget they’re black?” growls a white</p><p>man in a biker bar, after Mr Walsh, in his earnest DEI persona, tries to</p><p>explain what he has learned. “You should embrace them being black.” In</p><p>another scene, a black woman tells Mr Walsh, “We didn’t see colours, baby,</p><p>because we grew up together and there was a lot of love.”</p><p>Those dissonant yet harmonious messages might warrant a hearing on the</p><p>right now more than on the left, as Springfield, Ohio, quakes beneath fact-</p><p>free claims by the Republican presidential ticket that Haitian immigrants</p><p>are eating pets. Indeed, the movie seems countercyclical. As The Economist</p><p>reports this week, concerns over such matters as “white privilege” peaked</p><p>three years ago, after the protests against the police killing of George Floyd.</p><p>Yet “Am I Racist?” is finding a sizeable audience. Released on September</p><p>13th, it was fourth at the box office in its first weekend, bringing in $4.5m</p><p>and beating out a new action movie, “The Killer’s Game”. Lexington saw</p><p>the film in Times Square, the very belly of the blue beast; the small theatre</p><p>was filled with a youngish audience, mostly but only mostly white. Critics</p><p>panned “The Killer’s Game”. By contrast, “Am I Racist?” has not been</p><p>reviewed by a mainstream publication, though it has received a 99%</p><p>audience rating on the fan site Rotten Tomatoes. Predictably, silence from</p><p>left-of-centre publications has sharpened interest from the right. Elon Musk</p><p>has tweeted in solidarity.</p><p>The film is the first wide theatrical release from the Daily Wire, a</p><p>conservative media company. It adds a new dimension to the parallel right-</p><p>wing cultural universe encompassing everything from rap music to fashion.</p><p>“We say often on the right that politics is downstream of culture, but we’re</p><p>afraid to actually make culture—we just like to critique it all day,” Jeremy</p><p>Boreing, a founder of the Daily Wire, said at the premiere. “The Daily Wire</p><p>is making culture.” Maybe, as the film-makers hope, the movie will attract</p><p>and amuse people disinclined at first to agree with its messages. More likely</p><p>this cultural parallelism will lead to more mockery and caricature on both</p><p>sides, uncomplicated, like the polarisation of the news media, by much</p><p>engagement or debate.</p><p>Mr Boreing praised Mr Walsh for “using the left’s own playbook against</p><p>them”, deploying “tricks” devised by Sacha Baron Cohen, whose</p><p>mockumentaries embarrassed prominent conservatives among others. The</p><p>genre is largely lost on Lexington; laughing at the manipulation and</p><p>humiliation of the unwitting, however annoying they may be, can leave an</p><p>unpleasant taste.</p><p>White gullibility</p><p>Like Mr Baron Cohen, Mr Walsh is a quick-witted impostor; unlike him, he</p><p>is a soothingly mild one. His most sensational trick ensnares Robin</p><p>DiAngelo, the author of “White Fragility”, a bestseller. Though she is</p><p>clearly uneasy he prompts her to take cash from her wallet to give to his</p><p>producer, who is black, as reparations. Subsequently learning she was</p><p>fooled, Ms DiAngelo said she donated Mr Walsh’s fee of $15,000 to the</p><p>NAACP Defence Fund. Of Mr Walsh and his allies, she said, “They will not</p><p>prevail in their efforts to stop the work for racial justice.”</p><p>But what has become of that work? The left is due for a reckoning over the</p><p>reckoning on race. The protesters have moved on, the book sales have dried</p><p>up, the DEI departments are emptying, and the elite white grovelling and</p><p>self-flagellation recorded by Mr Walsh have been, on the left, politely</p><p>memory-holed. Yet a movement concerned with structural injustice has</p><p>achieved little structural change, whether to policing or the black-white</p><p>wealth gap. Was it all, in the end, just a performance? ■</p><p>Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter</p><p>with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and</p><p>Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the</p><p>state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-</p><p>states/2024/09/19/how-the-right-is-taking-culture-war-to-culture-itself</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/us-in-brief</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/checks-and-balance</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/09/19/how-the-right-is-taking-culture-war-to-culture-itself</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>The Americas</p><p>Can the voluntary carbon market save the Amazon?</p><p>Rainforest rewards :: Entrepreneurs in Brazil are betting big on planting trees</p><p>How Brazilian lawmakers won extra powers to waste</p><p>money</p><p>Who’s in charge? :: Congress’s capture of the budget is making Brazil less governable</p><p>A by-election loss puts Justin Trudeau on the ropes</p><p>Canadian politics :: For how much longer can the Liberal leader hold on?</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Rainforest rewards</p><p>Can the voluntary carbon market</p><p>save the Amazon?</p><p>Entrepreneurs in Brazil are betting big on planting trees</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:52 上午 | MÃE DO RIO AND MARACAÇUMÉ</p><p>A TRACTOR WITH a subsoiler loosens the earth and carves out deep</p><p>holes. A dozen men follow, dropping tree seedlings into them. This</p><p>industrious scene in a deforested part of the Amazon is more reminiscent of</p><p>the paper-and-pulp industry than the voluntary carbon market, in which</p><p>companies buy carbon credits to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions.</p><p>Brazil can be to carbon removal what Saudi Arabia was to carbon</p><p>production, claims Peter Fernandez of Mombak, the company that runs the</p><p>project. “And I want Mombak to be the Saudi Aramco of that,” he says.</p><p>This is big</p><p>talk for a market with a serious reputation problem. In 2023 the</p><p>volume of credits traded on the voluntary carbon market was less than half</p><p>that in 2022; and the market’s value shrank from $1.9bn to $723m (see</p><p>chart). Corporate buyers have been put off by scandals: some project</p><p>developers claimed credits for protecting forests that were not at risk of</p><p>being cut down.</p><p>Yet in Brazil optimists like Mr Fernandez abound. Rather than protecting</p><p>standing forest, as many carbon-credit projects do, they are focusing on</p><p>large-scale reforestation. A ten-hour drive from Mombak’s farm, re.green,</p><p>another Brazilian firm, is planting trees on 8,500 hectares (21,000 acres) of</p><p>degraded pastureland. In May Microsoft, which plans to be carbon negative</p><p>by 2030, signed a deal to buy 3m tonnes of carbon credits over 15 years</p><p>from re.green for an undisclosed price (the company has a similar</p><p>agreement with Mombak). Google is expected to announce a deal with</p><p>Mombak at the end of this month, its first foray into reforestation credits.</p><p>Believers say there are two reasons to bet on the market. First, most of the</p><p>world’s big listed companies now have targets to reduce their emissions, as</p><p>shareholders and regulators press them to become greener. Heavy industry,</p><p>airlines and energy-hungry technology firms cannot fully cut their</p><p>emissions, so to achieve net zero they will need to pay to remove carbon</p><p>dioxide from the atmosphere.</p><p>Second, many governments are regulating emissions more aggressively.</p><p>The World Bank tallies 75 carbon-pricing schemes around the world,</p><p>covering an estimated 24% of global emissions, up from 7% a decade ago.</p><p>Although the voluntary market is separate from the compliance market, the</p><p>two do sometimes dovetail. California’s cap-and-trade system allows</p><p>participants to use some credits issued on the voluntary market.</p><p>Only 2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide per year are being removed from the</p><p>atmosphere by human-led efforts, mostly through reforestation. In order to</p><p>limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the rate of</p><p>extraction needs to rise to between 5bn and 10bn tonnes per year by 2050,</p><p>researchers at the University of Oxford estimate. At 10bn tonnes, the size of</p><p>the carbon-removal market would be between $300bn and $1.2trn,</p><p>according to McKinsey, a consultancy.</p><p>Carbon-dioxide removal can be done through natural methods—such as</p><p>planting trees or restoring wetlands—or tech-based ones, such as direct air</p><p>capture and storage (DACS), in which machines claw carbon dioxide from</p><p>the air. Tech-based projects are less prone to scammers. They are designed</p><p>to put carbon dioxide away indefinitely, for example by storing it</p><p>underground, whereas forests can be burned or cut down. However, they are</p><p>expensive. To sequester a tonne of carbon dioxide using DACS costs</p><p>around $1,000, compared with $10-40 by planting trees.</p><p>This makes reforestation, and Brazil, attractive in the short term. Brazil is</p><p>home to vast tracts of degraded land and its tropical climate favours quick</p><p>tree growth. Mombak and re.green’s projects are on former cattle ranches</p><p>whose owners sold their land when it became unproductive. Others may be</p><p>tempted to follow suit. Assuming a carbon credit price of $30 in 2030—a</p><p>price already being used or exceeded in high-quality reforestation deals</p><p>today—it would become more financially attractive to swap cattle-raising</p><p>for reforestation on roughly half of Brazil’s pastureland, according to</p><p>calculations by McKinsey.</p><p>Rebuilding Earth’s lungs</p><p>All told, restored Brazilian forests could account for 15% of the world’s</p><p>potential for carbon removal through reforestation (the only other country</p><p>that could plausibly match this is Indonesia). Brazil—currently the world’s</p><p>sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases—could be the only large country</p><p>to become carbon negative.</p><p>There is excitement in Brazil. The national development bank thinks that</p><p>the country could lease 2.5m hectares of public land to reforestation</p><p>companies, generating a huge number of carbon credits (their value would</p><p>depend on the market). Brazil’s Congress is discussing a law that would</p><p>create an emissions-trading system.</p><p>Developments beyond Brazil also offer reasons for hope. It is becoming</p><p>easier to tell good credits from junk. Since 2020 rating agencies have</p><p>popped up to evaluate projects. Rival credit issuers are challenging Verra,</p><p>the dominant one. Insurance firms have emerged to protect buyers against</p><p>events like wildfires.</p><p>Yet formidable challenges remain. The greatest is finding land to buy. Land-</p><p>grabbers in Brazil often forge titles in cahoots with local authorities, and</p><p>many private owners lack deeds. It will take re.green years to carry out due</p><p>diligence on the nearly 2,000 farms it is considering buying. To scale up</p><p>reforestation, industrial seed production and sapling nurseries producing</p><p>Amazonian trees are needed.</p><p>A trillion-dollar market is unlikely to emerge without a lot more</p><p>transparency. Most decisions on pricing remain confidential. Rating</p><p>agencies publish overall scores for projects but often charge hefty fees for</p><p>the underlying data. That is fine for the likes of Microsoft, which enjoys</p><p>monopsony power in carbon removal. The firm, which has bought credits to</p><p>remove at least 5m tonnes of carbon dioxide, has a department dedicated to</p><p>finding projects. Smaller companies, by contrast, will struggle to do the</p><p>same.</p><p>Doubts also linger about how to measure sequestration. Many credit issuers</p><p>use methodologies based on temperate forests in Scandinavia and</p><p>California, which capture less carbon than tropical jungles. Some</p><p>companies are beginning to use satellite imagery and lidar–laser scans that</p><p>build three-dimensional images to estimate carbon stocks. But such</p><p>sophisticated tools are not yet widespread.</p><p>Market-watchers are waiting for one law that could rev up the industry.</p><p>Since the Paris agreement on climate change in 2015, countries have been</p><p>negotiating rules for an integrated global carbon market to allow them to</p><p>buy credits from one another to offset their emissions—possibly including</p><p>from the voluntary carbon market. The last and most complicated part of</p><p>the agreement to be hashed out is how to avoid double-counting offsets. If</p><p>that ever gets done, restoring the Amazon will be good for business and for</p><p>the world. ■</p><p>Sign up to El Boletín, our subscriber-only newsletter on Latin America, to</p><p>understand the forces shaping a fascinating and complex region.</p><p>For more coverage of climate change, sign up for the Climate Issue, our</p><p>fortnightly subscriber-only newsletter, or visit our climate-change hub.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-</p><p>americas/2024/09/19/can-the-voluntary-carbon-market-save-the-amazon</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/el-boletin</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-climate-issue</p><p>https://www.economist.com/climate-change</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/19/can-the-voluntary-carbon-market-save-the-amazon</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Who’s in charge?</p><p>How Brazilian lawmakers won</p><p>extra powers to waste money</p><p>Congress’s capture of the budget is making Brazil less governable</p><p>9月 19, 2024 12:12 下午 | SÃO PAULO</p><p>PRESIDENT LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA is exasperated. “In no other</p><p>country in the world has Congress kidnapped part of the budget” as has</p><p>happened in Brazil, he fumed in August. He has a point. In the past decade</p><p>Brazil’s Congress has become one of the most powerful in the world by</p><p>giving itself ever greater control of the country’s federal budget. The</p><p>Supreme Court and Lula, as the president is universally known, are trying</p><p>to curb legislators’ extravaganza of pork-barrel spending, which fosters</p><p>corruption and imperils the country’s fiscal targets. In response, Congress is</p><p>threatening a power grab.</p><p>At stake are billions of reais of federal spending. Since Brazil’s constitution</p><p>was adopted in 1988, Congress has had the power to participate in the</p><p>drafting of the annual budget. Most</p><p>of the money is taken up by mandatory</p><p>spending on things such as public salaries and pensions. The remaining</p><p>11%, which represented 226bn reais ($41bn) last year, is discretionary.</p><p>Lawmakers are allowed to present amendments to discretionary spending</p><p>for projects in their constituencies such as new roads or schools. Today such</p><p>“earmarks” make up 24% of discretionary spending, up from less than 2%</p><p>in 2015.</p><p>These powers are an anomaly. Among the 38 countries of the OECD, a club</p><p>of mostly rich countries, 20 do not allow their legislatures to co-draft the</p><p>budget, according to Marcos Mendes of Insper, a university in São Paulo. In</p><p>those that do, earmarks generally do not account for more than 1% of</p><p>discretionary spending. The United States, which caps them at 1%, has</p><p>strict rules against legislators or their families benefiting financially from</p><p>them.</p><p>The purpose of earmarks was partly to make governing easier. In Brazil’s</p><p>most recent election, in 2022, 23 parties won seats in Congress. Presidents</p><p>used to have the power to decide which earmarks to approve, and would use</p><p>them to reward allies who helped them pass laws.</p><p>But offers of pork shrank in the 2010s, thanks to a string of presidents who</p><p>had poor relations with Congress and a crippling recession. In 2015</p><p>Congress amended the constitution to force the president to allocate at least</p><p>1.2% of the government’s annual net revenues to earmarks. In 2019 the</p><p>then-president Jair Bolsonaro let lawmakers run amok to win their</p><p>protection as impeachment motions piled up against him. Legislators made</p><p>it obligatory for the government to allocate an additional 2% of its annual</p><p>net revenues for “collective earmarks”, which are proposed by</p><p>congressional committees or caucuses.</p><p>When Congress began to give itself increasingly obscure budget powers,</p><p>the Supreme Court struck them down. But legislators have found creative</p><p>fixes. In 2019 they established a new type of grant, colloquially named Pix</p><p>amendments after a popular instant-payments system. These allow deputies</p><p>to send money to their constituencies without specifying what the funds will</p><p>be used for. Beatriz Rey of POPVOX Foundation, a think-tank in the</p><p>United States, calls them “a blank cheque for corruption”.</p><p>According to Transparency International, a watchdog, of the 8bn reais that</p><p>were approved in Pix grants last year, less than 1% included information</p><p>about the projects they would fund. The destination of some earmarks may</p><p>be dodgy. In March Chiquinho Brazão, a legislator from Rio de Janeiro,</p><p>was arrested as part of investigations into the murder of a political rival in</p><p>2018. During their enquiries federal police found evidence suggesting that</p><p>Mr Brazão and a clique of allies had diverted millions of reais in earmarks</p><p>via a charity. Federal police have requested a probe be opened. (Mr Brazão</p><p>denies any wrongdoing.)</p><p>All this is altering the balance of power. Since the president has lost the</p><p>ability to approve earmarks, the costs of being in the opposition have</p><p>declined. Congress is becoming bolshier and increasingly challenging</p><p>presidential vetoes. Earlier this month legislators forced through a law—</p><p>that Lula had vetoed—to further defer the introduction of payroll taxes for a</p><p>raft of industries. Such moves will make it harder for the government to</p><p>control spending, just as investors fret about Brazil’s debt and deficits.</p><p>On August 16th Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended Pix grants, citing the</p><p>lack of transparency, and called a meeting between Congress and the</p><p>executive. The two sides agreed that the executive should be obliged to set</p><p>aside an unspecified amount of money to fund Pix grants, but that these</p><p>should “respect criteria of transparency and traceability”. The details have</p><p>yet to be hashed out.</p><p>Congress was infuriated by the Supreme Court’s decision. The day after the</p><p>court’s ruling, the speaker of the lower house, Arthur Lira, proposed a bill</p><p>that would amend the constitution to allow Congress to overturn some</p><p>decisions made by the court. Due to term limits, Mr Lira cannot be re-</p><p>elected as house speaker in a vote next February. Early indications suggest</p><p>that his successor could be a machine politician just as keen to protect</p><p>Congress’s new powers. Lula’s job is not about to get any easier. ■</p><p>Sign up to El Boletín, our subscriber-only newsletter on Latin America, to</p><p>understand the forces shaping a fascinating and complex region.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/el-boletin</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-</p><p>americas/2024/09/19/how-brazilian-lawmakers-won-extra-powers-to-waste-money</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/19/how-brazilian-lawmakers-won-extra-powers-to-waste-money</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Canadian politics</p><p>A by-election loss puts Justin</p><p>Trudeau on the ropes</p><p>For how much longer can the Liberal leader hold on?</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | OTTAWA</p><p>ADD A POLITICAL beast to Canada’s endangered species list: Justin</p><p>Trudeau’s Liberal party. On September 16th the prime minister’s party lost</p><p>a by-election in his hometown of Montreal, an area that it had represented</p><p>almost uninterruptedly since the second world war. That was the second</p><p>supposedly impregnable Liberal fortress to fall in just three months,</p><p>following the loss of a seat in Toronto in June. The message is</p><p>unmistakable. Voters are horribly disenchanted with Mr Trudeau and the</p><p>Liberals. The consequence is less clear: whether Mr Trudeau will resign.</p><p>Mr Trudeau himself is the main target of voters’ bile. He has won three</p><p>successive general-election victories since 2015, but his popularity has been</p><p>waning for over a year. In part voters have simply grown tired of the</p><p>longest-serving leader in the G7. But many see him as ignoring their</p><p>concerns, including over a housing crisis, inflation that exceeded 8% at the</p><p>tail end of the pandemic, and levels of immigration. Urban constituents who</p><p>should be strong supporters of the Liberals are telling their MPs that</p><p>they’ve had enough of the prime minister. “I didn’t hear it from two, three</p><p>people. I heard it from dozens and dozens of people,” says Alexandra</p><p>Mendès, a Liberal MP. “He’s no longer the right leader.”</p><p>The Liberals are almost certain to lose at the next general election, which</p><p>must take place by October 2025, though not to Bloc Québécois, the</p><p>regional separatist party that narrowly won the seat in Montreal. A recent</p><p>poll suggested just 26% of Canadians would vote for Mr Trudeau compared</p><p>to 45% of voters who would back his Conservative rival, Pierre Poilievre.</p><p>(Quebec, home to Montreal, is the only area where the Conservatives do not</p><p>have a lead in the polls.) Since winning the leadership of his party in 2022,</p><p>Mr Poilievre has done a good job of appealing to voters by talking about</p><p>their woes.</p><p>The first Liberal by-election loss in June caused some lawmakers, who</p><p>realise their fate is linked to an unpopular leader, to call for Mr Trudeau to</p><p>step aside; more may now follow. But Mr Trudeau will be hard to dislodge.</p><p>Prior to the vote in Montreal he said he would lead his party into a general</p><p>election whatever the by-election result. Canada’s Liberals are one of the</p><p>most successful political parties in the Western world. A Liberal prime</p><p>minister has been in power in Canada for 92 of the past 128 years. But it</p><p>was Mr Trudeau who single-handedly resuscitated it from irrelevancy a</p><p>decade ago. Others interested in leading the party, including Mark Carney, a</p><p>former governor of the Bank of England, are loth to openly knife him.</p><p>Economic issues are not the only ones bedevilling the Liberal party. It is</p><p>wracked by bitter divisions over the war in Gaza. They were laid bare</p><p>during the Montreal by-election, when dozens of campaign workers quit in</p><p>the middle of the election effort, criticising the prime minister for not</p><p>condemning Israel strongly enough. A Liberal leadership campaign would</p><p>almost certainly be dominated by a destructive debate about the conflict in</p><p>the Middle East. The</p><p>day after the result Mr Trudeau again vowed to stay</p><p>on in the job, and to “work harder”. But restless lawmakers stoked by angry</p><p>voters may soon take the matter out of his hands. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-</p><p>americas/2024/09/19/a-by-election-loss-puts-justin-trudeau-on-the-ropes</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/19/a-by-election-loss-puts-justin-trudeau-on-the-ropes</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Asia</p><p>What does Modi 3.0 look like?</p><p>A weakened strongman :: India’s prime minister is 100 days into his third term. It’s not smooth</p><p>sailing</p><p>China and Australia are beefing up their Pacific policing</p><p>Not waving but plodding :: In the competition to police the waves, who will win?</p><p>The Taliban is removing every shred of freedom from</p><p>women</p><p>No country for women’s rights :: Three years after America’s withdrawal, the situation is grim</p><p>Private tutoring is booming across poorer parts of Asia</p><p>Cramming culture :: Governments are struggling to keep up with an educational arms race</p><p>The private sector won’t save America’s Indo-Pacific</p><p>policy</p><p>Banyan :: More needs to be done to repair the economic relationship with South-East Asia</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>A weakened strongman</p><p>What does Modi 3.0 look like?</p><p>India’s prime minister is 100 days into his third term. It’s not smooth sailing</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Delhi</p><p>FOR MANY Indians, the general election result in June was a stunning</p><p>repudiation of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. But to hear him</p><p>speak of it, that isn’t the case. He insists that, despite the loss of his party’s</p><p>parliamentary majority, which has forced him to rely on coalition partners,</p><p>the vote was for “continuity”. He has barely changed his cabinet since</p><p>cobbling together a government. He has doubled down on pledges to turn</p><p>India into a developed country by 2047, the centenary of its independence.</p><p>And his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is campaigning for imminent regional</p><p>elections on a familiar platform of development and Hindu nationalism.</p><p>The new government also claims to have completed a plan for its first 100</p><p>days that Mr Modi and his ministers started to compile as soon as</p><p>campaigning started. Mr Modi ordered all ministries to report their</p><p>progress, details of which were published on September 17th, the 100th day</p><p>of his third term and also his birthday. They included approving</p><p>infrastructure projects worth $39bn, expanding an affordable-housing</p><p>programme and launching a new national pension scheme.</p><p>On the surface, Modi 3.0 may look much like his first two terms. Dig</p><p>deeper, however, and a change becomes apparent. Mr Modi’s new</p><p>government has, in fact, withdrawn a series of politically important</p><p>initiatives under pressure from an emboldened opposition and from pressure</p><p>groups. India’s courts have been showing their mettle, too, challenging the</p><p>government or the BJP in a number of high-profile cases. And, even within</p><p>his own political camp, Mr Modi is facing demands to adjust his leadership</p><p>style, as well as some policies.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/05/a-triumph-for-indian-democracy</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/08/28/narendra-modi-faces-a-new-threat-his-hindu-nationalist-patrons</p><p>Further hazards loom. The BJP faces bruising contests in all five regional</p><p>elections due in the next six months. One in Jammu & Kashmir, starting on</p><p>September 18th, is the first since Mr Modi scrapped the Muslim-majority</p><p>region’s semi-autonomous status in 2019. The BJP may struggle to retain</p><p>control of Haryana, which votes on October 5th, and Maharashtra, where a</p><p>November poll is likely. The opposition, meanwhile, is likely to hold on to</p><p>Jharkhand and Delhi in elections due by January and February, respectively.</p><p>To Mr Modi’s supporters, his recent record demonstrates sound leadership.</p><p>They say he has learned from the election result and is willing to consult</p><p>more broadly, even as he advances his reform agenda. He is still popular,</p><p>they add, and deserves credit as the first Indian politician to win three</p><p>consecutive terms as prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s</p><p>and 1960s. Besides, the BJP controls many more seats in parliament than</p><p>the Congress party, its main national rival, did while leading coalition</p><p>governments from 2004 to 2014.</p><p>But can Mr Modi really turn from strongman to consensus-builder? He has</p><p>never had to share power before. While campaigning he suggested he could</p><p>be of divine birth and sidelined many political allies. This led to some</p><p>unusually public criticism from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),</p><p>the Hindu-nationalist organisation from which the BJP grew. And even if he</p><p>makes the transition, a more collaborative approach might force him to</p><p>scrap some promised reforms and offer some expensive handouts.</p><p>The compromise candidate?</p><p>Mr Modi may yet master consultative government, ultimately leading to</p><p>better policymaking, says Rahul Verma of the Centre for Policy Research, a</p><p>think-tank in Delhi. But results will be slower. And early signs suggest he</p><p>has yet to adjust fully: he could, for example, have consulted more broadly</p><p>on the recently withdrawn initiatives before putting them forward. Failure</p><p>to adapt, meanwhile, could lead to further electoral losses and even a</p><p>challenge to Mr Modi’s leadership from within.</p><p>One of the government’s first climb-downs came in early August, when it</p><p>referred new legislation on Muslim charitable endowments to a joint</p><p>parliamentary committee. That was remarkable because Mr Modi rammed</p><p>most laws through parliament in the past decade. Opposition and Muslim</p><p>leaders denounced the bill as a curb on religious freedom. More tellingly,</p><p>one of Mr Modi’s key coalition partners also backed referral to the</p><p>committee.</p><p>Soon after that came a U-turn on a broadcasting-services bill. The</p><p>government published one draft in November, aiming to tighten regulation</p><p>of digital and other media. A beefed-up version was then circulated among</p><p>stakeholders in July but suddenly recalled in mid-August following</p><p>objections from many. They feared it would stifle social-media platforms</p><p>such as YouTube, now widely used by Mr Modi’s critics. A new draft may</p><p>not appear for two years, people involved say.</p><p>Then, on August 20th, the government withdrew an advertisement inviting</p><p>people from outside the civil service to apply for senior bureaucratic posts.</p><p>The advertisement was part of a Modi initiative to bring expertise into</p><p>government. But it, too, caused an outcry as no posts were reserved for</p><p>lower Hindu castes and other minorities, as is usually the case under an</p><p>affirmative-action scheme. The episode sparked fresh calls for a national</p><p>caste census (the opposition had pledged one while campaigning for the</p><p>general election). The BJP has long opposed such an exercise but may be</p><p>preparing another U-turn: the RSS voiced support for a caste census for the</p><p>first time on September 2nd.</p><p>That may appease some lower-caste voters but it could alienate upper-caste</p><p>Hindus, many of whom are BJP stalwarts. If a caste census is conducted, its</p><p>results could undermine BJP claims about improved social mobility. And</p><p>such policy reversals come at the expense of Mr Modi’s public image as a</p><p>muscular, infallible leader. “We have finished Modi psychologically,” Rahul</p><p>Gandhi, the leader of the opposition, said on September 4th. “I sit in front</p><p>of him in parliament and I know his confidence is gone.”</p><p>Another boost for the opposition came on September 13th when the</p><p>Supreme Court granted bail to Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi</p><p>and leader of an opposition party. That will allow him to contest the Delhi</p><p>election more aggressively. It is also the court’s latest move to rein in</p><p>investigative agencies that have targeted several opposition leaders. Mr</p><p>Kejriwal was arrested in March on corruption charges that he says are</p><p>politically motivated. Since his release, he has resigned as Delhi’s chief</p><p>minister</p><p>and called for its election to be brought forward to November.</p><p>Although India’s courts are still susceptible to government pressure, the</p><p>Supreme Court has been more assertive in other politically charged cases,</p><p>too. In July it blocked three BJP-ruled states from requiring shops and</p><p>eateries on a Hindu pilgrimage route to display their owners’ names (a</p><p>policy clearly aimed at Muslim owners). In September the court also</p><p>warned state governments against demolishing the property of those</p><p>accused of crimes before they are convicted. Such demolitions often target</p><p>Muslims in BJP-ruled states.</p><p>From 100 days to five years</p><p>As for Mr Modi’s 100-day plan, he has hit many of his targets. But he had</p><p>to adjust several parts. One omission was a proposal to privatise at least two</p><p>state-owned companies. That apparently faced opposition from some</p><p>coalition members. He also added new details, including a review of a</p><p>scheme to recruit soldiers for fixed four-year terms. That scheme was</p><p>designed to lower pension costs, which absorb more than a fifth of military</p><p>spending. But it was hated by recruits, who were previously hired for at</p><p>least 15 years with a full pension. Another of Mr Modi’s coalition partners</p><p>demanded a review.</p><p>None of this spells disaster for Mr Modi. It is early days, and he has scored</p><p>some important wins, quickly winding up government-forming talks with</p><p>coalition partners and then tweaking his budget to allocate more money to</p><p>job creation. India is still the world’s fastest-growing major economy: on</p><p>September 3rd the World Bank upgraded its GDP forecast for this financial</p><p>year from 6.6% to 7%. Still, Modi 3.0 clearly needs more than continuity. It</p><p>demands compromise, too. ■</p><p>Correction: An earlier version of this article suggested Mr Modi leads a</p><p>minority government. In fact India is governed by a coalition. Sorry.</p><p>Stay on top of our India coverage by signing up to Essential India, our free</p><p>weekly newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/16/what-does-modi-30-look-like</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/essential-india</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/16/what-does-modi-30-look-like</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Not waving but plodding</p><p>China and Australia are beefing up</p><p>their Pacific policing</p><p>In the competition to police the waves, who will win?</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Sydney</p><p>A SMALL TEAM of Chinese police has been stationed in Honiara, the</p><p>Solomon Islands’ capital, since 2022, when the two countries signed a</p><p>security agreement that shocked America and its allies. The cops train local</p><p>officers in riot control and shooting, and give their families lessons in kung</p><p>fu. Since their arrival, China’s law-and-order footprint in the Pacific region</p><p>has grown. Last year it sent police advisers to Vanuatu, north-east of</p><p>Australia. In February officials in Kiribati, a neighbour of Hawaii, said that</p><p>Chinese police were now embedded with its forces. China’s attempts to</p><p>establish police stations abroad were part of “transnational repression</p><p>efforts”, said an American official.</p><p>As well as deploying police, China hosts Pacific officers for training and is</p><p>showering cash-strapped forces with equipment. Those advances have</p><p>caused jitters in Australia, which has long been what Anthony Albanese, its</p><p>prime minister, calls the “security partner of choice” for Pacific nations. His</p><p>Labor government is having to spend lavishly to remain the region’s go-to</p><p>power. It scored a much-needed win on August 28th, when Pacific leaders</p><p>unanimously endorsed a plan for Australia to beef up regional policing.</p><p>Australia will build several new training centres for Pacific police,</p><p>including one in Brisbane, and finance a multinational unit of Pacific</p><p>officers to be deployed during riots or natural disasters. The details are</p><p>being thrashed out, but Australia has allocated A$400m ($270m) over five</p><p>years to the “Pacific Policing Initiative”. This is in addition to A$1.4bn over</p><p>four years promised last year for Pacific “peace and security”.</p><p>The security needs of island states are glaring. Their vast Pacific Ocean,</p><p>covering an area bigger than every continent combined, is by one estimate</p><p>the world’s largest unpoliced space. Illegal fishing boats pillage its rich</p><p>stocks of tuna. Drug-trafficking is growing. Criminals use the Pacific as a</p><p>transit route for methamphetamine and cocaine headed from the Americas</p><p>to Australia and New Zealand. Gangs are putting down roots in Fiji and</p><p>Tonga, fuelling local crime and addiction. Rather than cracking down, some</p><p>police are cashing in.</p><p>But big powers are also lavishing attention on police because most Pacific</p><p>countries do not have armies. China’s interests in policing co-operation are</p><p>political as well as strategic, argues Graeme Smith of the Australian</p><p>National University in Canberra. Chinese officers are expected to protect or</p><p>control Chinese diaspora communities, he says. (A big settler community in</p><p>the Solomons has been targeted in past riots.) China may also hope to gain</p><p>influence over national-security decisions.</p><p>Against that backdrop, Australia’s new policing deal is a strategic win. “It</p><p>was an explicit endorsement of Australia’s role as the main security</p><p>provider for Pacific island countries,” says Mihai Sora, a former diplomat</p><p>now working for the Lowy Institute, a think-tank in Sydney. But Australia</p><p>has had to tread carefully. Unsurprisingly, Pacific countries do not want to</p><p>be treated like pawns or bullied by their neighbours. They are concerned</p><p>about the militarisation of their islands. Regional policing plans should be</p><p>“framed to fit our purposes”, warned Charlot Salwai, Vanuatu’s prime</p><p>minister, last month. For his part, Mr Albanese was at pains to stress that</p><p>the plan was being “led by” Pacific police.</p><p>Australia has had some other wins. In April Mr Albanese’s government</p><p>managed to fend off, for now, the possibility of Papua New Guinea signing</p><p>a sweeping security agreement with China, after it also promised A$200m</p><p>to the country. And Fiji has ejected Chinese officers formerly embedded</p><p>with its police.</p><p>Even so, China still has more to offer. When it failed to push through a</p><p>regional security deal with Pacific countries in 2022 it seemed it might have</p><p>overplayed its hand. But on September 11th it hosted several Pacific</p><p>ministers for a forum on policing, and opened a facility for training Pacific</p><p>police forces in Fuzhou. China’s “strategy of picking countries off one by</p><p>one…seems to be working”, says Mr Sora. As in other areas, many Pacific</p><p>nations see the benefits of playing both sides. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/china-and-australia-are-beefing-up-their-</p><p>pacific-policing</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/china-and-australia-are-beefing-up-their-pacific-policing</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>No country for women’s rights</p><p>The Taliban is removing every</p><p>shred of freedom from women</p><p>Three years after America’s withdrawal, the situation is grim</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>LAST MONTH the Taliban published a new consolidated code of religious</p><p>laws. It has left Afghan women reeling, with many now searching for ways</p><p>to leave. It also has implications for the Taliban’s quest for legitimacy and</p><p>relations with the world. Three years after America’s withdrawal from the</p><p>country, the situation in Afghanistan looks worse than ever.</p><p>Even before the announcement in late August, women were banned from</p><p>attending secondary schools, universities, parks and female-only spaces</p><p>such as beauty salons. They were not allowed to work in most professions.</p><p>Now they are banned from raising their voices or reciting the Koran in</p><p>public. They are prohibited from looking at any man other than their</p><p>relatives, and have to cover their faces fully.</p><p>Nasiba (not her real name), a 28-year-old midwife in Badghis, in the north-</p><p>west of the country, says that after three years under the Taliban</p><p>president, presented the</p><p>government’s budget to Congress himself. In a televised set-piece speech he</p><p>railed against the profligate “miserable rats” in the opposition and</p><p>repeatedly said there would be “zero deficit”. Any legislation which</p><p>threatens that would be vetoed, he promised. Markets cheered the speech,</p><p>sending one measure of the risk of default to its lowest level in three</p><p>months.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-world-</p><p>this-week/2024/09/19/politics</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/19/politics</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The world this week</p><p>Business</p><p>9月 19, 2024 08:22 上午</p><p>The Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time since March 2020,</p><p>reducing its key rate by half a percentage point to a range of between 4.75%</p><p>and 5%. The central bank suggested it would cut rates again later this year.</p><p>With inflationary pressures easing, the Fed is pivoting to tackle a cooler</p><p>labour market.</p><p>The Bank of England left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 5%,</p><p>having lowered the rate in August for the first time since March 2020.</p><p>Britain’s headline annual inflation rate has held steady at 2.2%, though</p><p>price pressures are still evident in the services sector.</p><p>As America began to ease monetary policy, Brazil started to tighten it,</p><p>raising interest rates for the first time in two years to tackle stubbornly high</p><p>inflation. The central bank lifted its main rate by a quarter point to 10.75%,</p><p>and indicated that more rises were to come.</p><p>Workers in Boeing’s biggest union went on strike, after they resoundingly</p><p>rejected an offer to raise pay by 25% over four years. The union has been</p><p>pushing for a 40% increase. It is the first strike to hit Boeing since 2008. It</p><p>has suspended hiring and furloughed white-collar staff to cut its costs</p><p>during the industrial action. The strike “jeopardises our recovery in a</p><p>significant way”, said the company.</p><p>Succession obsession</p><p>A hearing got under way at a courtroom in Reno, Nevada, to determine who</p><p>will control Rupert Murdoch’s media empire when he dies. The 93-year-</p><p>old mogul reportedly wants to change the terms of the family trust so that</p><p>his eldest son, Lachlan, takes full control of News Corporation and Fox.</p><p>The trust currently transfers voting shares to four of his children. The</p><p>court’s judge has refused access to the press, determining that the</p><p>Murdochs’ confidential personal and financial information needs to be</p><p>protected.</p><p>BP decided to get out of the wind-power business in America and put its</p><p>operational wind farms, spread across seven states, up for sale. The energy</p><p>company wants to focus on solar energy in its renewables portfolio instead.</p><p>Solar capacity is expected to vastly exceed that of wind in America over the</p><p>next decade.</p><p>BlackRock launched a $30bn investment fund aimed at expanding the</p><p>infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence at data centres and the new</p><p>energy sources needed to support AI. The fund, one of the biggest of its</p><p>type ever in America, is backed by Microsoft, Global Infrastructure</p><p>Partners, an investment fund, and MGX, an investment firm in Abu Dhabi.</p><p>Nvidia will offer its expertise. The $30bn that the fund raises from private</p><p>capital swells to a potential $100bn when debt financing is included.</p><p>With its share price down by more than half this year, Intel said it would</p><p>pause the expansion of its chipmaking capacity in Germany and Poland for</p><p>two years. The company wants to focus on turning its foundry business,</p><p>which produces processors for other chipmakers, into an independent</p><p>subsidiary. The German government had promised €10bn ($11bn) in</p><p>subsidies to Intel to build a new factory.</p><p>The European Union’s General Court ruled that Google should not pay a</p><p>€1.5bn ($1.7bn) fine imposed on it by the European Commission in 2019</p><p>for forcing websites to use its AdSense platform to place search ads. The</p><p>court found that the commission’s antitrust regulator had failed to show</p><p>how innovation had been hampered. It was a big win for Google, coming a</p><p>week after the European Court of Justice upheld a €2.4bn penalty against it</p><p>in a separate case.</p><p>Amazon ordered its employees to return to the office five days a week, the</p><p>toughest such edict yet among America’s big tech firms. Staff had been</p><p>required to turn up three days a week. An option of working anywhere for</p><p>four months a year has also been scrapped. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief</p><p>executive, said the change was needed so that workers could “invent,</p><p>collaborate and be connected”. Employees in America will at least get their</p><p>own offices back: Mr Jassy also scrapped hot-desking.</p><p>TikTok launched its appeal against the Biden administration’s plan to ban it</p><p>in America unless it separates from ByteDance, its Chinese parent</p><p>company. Lawyers for the video-sharing app told the appellate judges that</p><p>the government was imposing an “extraordinary speech prohibition” on a</p><p>single entity, which was unconstitutional. The government says ByteDance</p><p>is a national-security threat. Both sides have asked for a decision by</p><p>December 6th, so that the Supreme Court can hear the case before the ban</p><p>comes into force on January 19th.</p><p>Meta banned RT (formerly Russia Today) from its platforms, after the</p><p>American government accused the Russian broadcaster of trying to sway</p><p>foreign politics. Two employees at state-backed RT have been charged with</p><p>attempting to influence Americans through social media.</p><p>Taking a bite in the Big Apple</p><p>Pret A Manger reported annual global sales above £1bn ($1.3bn) for the</p><p>first time. The purveyor of coffee, sandwiches and snacks has 690 shops,</p><p>480 of which are in Britain, its home country. But the Pret empire is</p><p>spreading and international expansion is driving growth. The firm describes</p><p>New York as the “overseas capital” for customers.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-world-</p><p>this-week/2024/09/19/business</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/19/business</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The world this week</p><p>The weekly cartoon</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:43 上午</p><p>Dig deeper into the subject of this week’s cartoon:</p><p>Israel has bloodied Hizbullah but is stuck in a war of attrition</p><p>Israel and Hizbullah play with fire</p><p>The Biden administration is trying to walk a fine line in arming Israel</p><p>The editorial cartoon appears weekly in The Economist. You can see last</p><p>week’s here.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-world-</p><p>this-week/2024/09/19/the-weekly-cartoon</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/08/25/israel-and-hizbullah-play-with-fire</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/05/16/the-biden-administration-is-trying-to-walk-a-fine-line-in-arming-israel</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/12/the-weekly-cartoon</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/19/the-weekly-cartoon</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The Economist</p><p>This week’s covers</p><p>How we saw the world</p><p>9月 19, 2024 08:20 上午</p><p>THIS WEEK WE had two covers. In the EU, the Middle East and Africa</p><p>we looked at how the world’s poor stopped catching up. During the two</p><p>decades after around 1995 gaps in GDP narrowed, extreme poverty</p><p>plummeted and global public health and education improved vastly. With a</p><p>big fall in malaria deaths and infant mortality and a rise in school</p><p>enrolment. But extreme poverty has barely fallen since 2015. Measures of</p><p>global public health improved only slowly in the late 2010s, and then went</p><p>into decline after the pandemic. Malaria has killed more than 600,000</p><p>people a year in the 2020s, reverting to the level of 2012. What went</p><p>wrong? The biggest problem is that home-grown reform has ground to a</p><p>halt. With some notable exceptions, such as President Javier Milei’s efforts</p><p>in Argentina, the world’s leaders are more interested in state control,</p><p>industrial policy and protectionism than</p><p>she feels “a</p><p>sense of hopelessness, loneliness”. When she leaves the house, she does so</p><p>“with fear, shaking, that someone might say something to me or stop me”.</p><p>Some women have reacted to the latest announcement by reducing how</p><p>much they go out; others ensure they are never alone outside. Amina, a</p><p>widow in Kabul, the capital, locks her daughter and son inside. Her children</p><p>eat once a day, if at all: “If there’s food they eat, if not they wait.”</p><p>The new religious code is a “pivotal moment”, says Richard Bennett, the</p><p>UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, who is barred from</p><p>the country by the Taliban. He wants “gender apartheid” to be considered a</p><p>crime against humanity. Activists want the Taliban to be tried at the</p><p>International Criminal Court (Afghanistan has signed up to the Rome</p><p>statute). That seems unlikely. Outrage in the West has been muted, not least</p><p>as many are distracted by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.</p><p>Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s choice to be permanent representative to the</p><p>United Nations, says the new code was introduced to “limit” the powers of</p><p>the morality police, who have become more present in the country. Mr</p><p>Shaheen insists that the law banning women from speaking outside had</p><p>been “misinterpreted”. He says that the Taliban has issued thousands of</p><p>licences for women interpreters. The ban applied to women singing at large</p><p>gatherings of men, he claims. He adds that women can study midwifery or</p><p>go to a religious school.</p><p>That is of little comfort to many women. Nasiba says that she has started to</p><p>think about leaving the country, mostly for the sake of her ten-year-old</p><p>daughter but also of her five-year-old son, who admires the Taliban. “He</p><p>sees [the Taliban] at the shopping centre, he sees their rangers and wants to</p><p>take a photo...maybe he’ll become a Talib,” she says, with a grim laugh.</p><p>“When there’s no education...no computer classes, or English, just religious</p><p>education, what else is he going to become?” ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/the-taliban-is-removing-every-shred-of-</p><p>freedom-from-women</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/the-taliban-is-removing-every-shred-of-freedom-from-women</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Cramming culture</p><p>Private tutoring is booming across</p><p>poorer parts of Asia</p><p>Governments are struggling to keep up with an educational arms race</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Delhi and Singapore</p><p>THE MORAL of the story is clear in “12th Fail”, a recent Bollywood hit</p><p>about a poor farm boy, Manoj, bent on passing India’s ruthless police exam.</p><p>Persevere and be richly rewarded, it suggests. Yet for a film about education</p><p>and meritocracy, the portrayal of Indian schools is dismal: teacher-abetted</p><p>cheating is rife at Manoj’s local school. Where he ultimately finds success,</p><p>and love, is not at school, but at a jam-packed tutoring centre in Delhi.</p><p>Private tutoring is well known as an East Asian phenomenon. Apart from in</p><p>China, most students in East Asia get it: 72% in Hong Kong; 79% at South</p><p>Korea’s hagwons; 52% of lower-secondary schoolers, Japan’s main test-</p><p>crammers, in the country’s juku. In China, where 38% of students (and 45%</p><p>in cities) took private tutoring before a 2021 clampdown, many centres</p><p>have simply gone underground. These businesses, whatever their flaws,</p><p>exist alongside education systems that are highly effective and well-funded.</p><p>The hard way</p><p>But now private tutoring is on the rise in poorer parts of Asia. The scale is</p><p>huge. Although the data are scattered and shoddy, we have tried to estimate</p><p>tutoring’s prevalence in South and South-East Asia, excluding Singapore,</p><p>where the education system more closely resembles those in East Asia.</p><p>From Pakistan to Indonesia, we reckon that roughly 258m children get</p><p>private tuition.</p><p>The biggest market is in India. Fully 31% of rural Indian schoolchildren</p><p>under 15 now get private tutoring, up from 23% in 2010; in some poorer</p><p>states, three in four do (see chart). Tax revenue from Indian tutoring centres</p><p>has more than doubled since 2019. But even removing India from the mix</p><p>still leaves a tutoring tally of 131m children, by our estimate.</p><p>The first reason for the growth is gaps left by formal education systems. In</p><p>poorer parts of Asia, the state often struggles to provide good schools. In</p><p>this century, as primary education has neared universality, the share of</p><p>children enrolled in secondary school rose by 24 points in South Asia and</p><p>by 16 percentage points in the rest of Asia, according to the World Bank.</p><p>Yet over the same period, government education spending as a share of</p><p>GDP has stagnated or fallen across much of the region.</p><p>In many places this has led to cuts to teachers’ salaries and textbooks. In</p><p>Cambodia, one of Asia’s poorest countries, an estimated 82% of students</p><p>take private tutoring, mostly from their own low-paid teachers seeking a</p><p>salary top-up. Schools end up less equipped to deliver results, and the worst</p><p>fall apart. Yet many Asian systems sort children through high-stakes exams.</p><p>So parents turn to tutors.</p><p>A second factor is heightened social competition, driven by a growing</p><p>middle class and a greater demand for a limited number of university</p><p>places. Urbanisation also plays a role: children in cities are likelier to get</p><p>private tutoring than rural ones, thanks to the greater supply of tutors and</p><p>better internet access. In India, where cities have added 200m residents in</p><p>20 years, many newly urbanised parents think that buying their children</p><p>tutoring will help them get a professional-class job. In Delhi, Mohammad</p><p>Shahzad, a supervisor at a generator manufacturer, pays 2,800 rupees ($33)</p><p>a month to have his two daughters tutored, a 30% addition to the usual</p><p>school fees. His daughters’ teachers are competent, but Mr Shahzad feels</p><p>that tutoring, despite its expense, is worth it. “It’s like having one meal: you</p><p>survive, but with two or three, you’re healthier,” he says.</p><p>The final factor is an arms-race dynamic. Private tutoring is an anxiety</p><p>industry: if your neighbour’s children get private tutoring and yours don’t,</p><p>they risk falling behind. This holds whether tutoring demand originates</p><p>from the pressures of a rigorous schooling system or the desire to flee a</p><p>failing one. The availability of online tutoring, supercharged by the</p><p>pandemic, has made it easier to get in on that arms race.</p><p>Even so, research measuring the effectiveness of tutoring has produced</p><p>mixed results, says Mark Bray, an expert on Asian private tutoring. Partly</p><p>this is because of its enormous diversity. One study in rural India found that</p><p>students who had private tuition got higher reading and maths scores than</p><p>those who did not, on a par with an extra year of school. But other research,</p><p>in Sri Lanka and China, finds little or no effect on results.</p><p>Another brick in the wall</p><p>The costs of private tutoring can be large. Studies show some children in</p><p>private tutoring sleep less well. The stresses extend to parents’ wallets.</p><p>Umesh Sharma, a chauffeur in Delhi, spends 1,200 rupees a month to have</p><p>his two sons tutored: 4% of the city’s average monthly income and about as</p><p>much as their school fees. In other parts of India, it is worse. In West</p><p>Bengal nearly half of all education spending, public and private, goes on</p><p>coaching.</p><p>One big worry is that in some places private tutoring is eroding public</p><p>education. In Nepal and Cambodia, schoolteachers withhold parts of the</p><p>curriculum for their own paid tutoring after school. The incentive is clear:</p><p>in Cambodia, low-paid teachers who offered tutoring doubled their salaries.</p><p>In Bihar, India’s poorest state, a recent survey by JJSS, an NGO, found that</p><p>dozens of dilapidated government schools had almost entirely outsourced</p><p>their educational functions to private centres. Government schools have</p><p>been reduced to “merely providing a midday meal and arranging</p><p>examinations”.</p><p>What to do? South Korea spent four decades trying and failing to suppress</p><p>private tutoring, before such efforts</p><p>were ruled unconstitutional in 2000.</p><p>Similarly interventionist approaches, like China’s rash crackdown, succeed</p><p>only in driving tutoring underground. Some governments are relaxed: the</p><p>education ministry in Thailand says that “the state must begin with an</p><p>assumption that private tutoring does not reduce social welfare.” Others are</p><p>experimenting. In response to a recent string of suicides, this year India’s</p><p>education ministry introduced rules banning bigger coaching centres from</p><p>enrolling students aged younger than 16. Private tuition is here to stay. But</p><p>it could be managed more effectively. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/private-tutoring-is-booming-across-poorer-</p><p>parts-of-asia</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/private-tutoring-is-booming-across-poorer-parts-of-asia</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Banyan</p><p>The private sector won’t save</p><p>America’s Indo-Pacific policy</p><p>More needs to be done to repair the economic relationship with South-East</p><p>Asia</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>AMERICA WANTS South-East Asians to know that it is the region’s best</p><p>friend. In summits, white papers, speeches and private asides since coming</p><p>to office in 2021, officials of the Biden administration have told them that</p><p>America, not China, is the top source of foreign direct investment into the</p><p>region. It is Uncle Sam who is going to make them rich.</p><p>Their audience could be forgiven for feeling gaslit. The most visible</p><p>investments in these countries in recent years have come from China, not</p><p>America. It is China that is building new high-speed trains, ports and public</p><p>buildings, in a bid to win favour in the region. So why the empty boast?</p><p>America’s pitch to South-East Asia is part of a creative effort by President</p><p>Joe Biden’s administration to compete for economic influence without</p><p>offering Asian countries new access to American markets. To do this, it has</p><p>sought to emphasise investment rather than trade, and to highlight the</p><p>American private sector’s part in the region’s economic growth since the</p><p>second world war.</p><p>There is some truth in what American officials say. America has built up at</p><p>least twice as large a stock of investment as China has in South-East Asia,</p><p>the heart of geopolitical competition in the continent. But the bulk of these</p><p>investments arrived decades ago. A new report from the Lowy Institute, a</p><p>think-tank in Sydney, shows that over the past decade China invested</p><p>$218bn in the region. America invested only $156bn.</p><p>It is the marginal dollar that matters to local business leaders, and to</p><p>politicians keeping an eye out for their next ribbon-cutting opportunity. The</p><p>goodwill and influence that investment confers must fade as decades pass.</p><p>The prospect of future returns is more potent—and here China has the</p><p>advantage.</p><p>In an earlier era, America might have hoped to compete on quality, if not</p><p>quantity. America invested in projects that moved Asian industries up the</p><p>value chain, such as advanced manufacturing and semiconductors. Mr</p><p>Biden often talks about America as a provider of high-quality investment.</p><p>The contrast with China, whose investments once focused on things like</p><p>garments, is implicit.</p><p>But China now competes on quality, too. Firms from both countries are</p><p>investing in data centres to power the boom in artificial intelligence. Of the</p><p>two, only China is bringing South-East Asian firms into its electric-vehicle</p><p>supply chain. Only China is investing in processing critical minerals in</p><p>South-East Asia which will go into batteries to power those vehicles.</p><p>That is not to say that American firms cannot still play a helpful role in</p><p>reducing Chinese influence. Where an investment makes sense, they can</p><p>provide an alternative to Chinese financing. Competition between the two</p><p>can lead to better terms for borrowers. The problem is that American firms</p><p>are rarely interested in investing in these projects, which they regard as</p><p>riskier.</p><p>Nor can America simply tell its firms to invest in unprofitable projects in</p><p>South-East Asia, as China can. Asian countries know that private-sector</p><p>investment is not directed by bureaucrats in Washington, so they don’t</p><p>worry that they will get less if they fall out of favour.</p><p>Chinese investment, however, can be won or lost over geopolitics. Aides to</p><p>Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s president, say that he has been reluctant to</p><p>criticise China over its actions in the South China Sea or Xinjiang for fear</p><p>of losing its backing for his infrastructure splurge.</p><p>In sum, private-sector investment will not preserve declining American</p><p>economic influence in Asia. America has no clear advantage on quantity or</p><p>quality. And it cannot convert capital into political capital in the way that</p><p>China can.</p><p>What would work better? Mr Biden, like Donald Trump before him, has</p><p>said no to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal signed by Barack</p><p>Obama. Mr Trump attacked it in 2016 as a bad deal, and Democrats fear</p><p>that it sank Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency. Kamala Harris, too, has</p><p>long been sceptical of such deals. But only its offer of greater access to the</p><p>world’s largest market offers any prospect of reversing the ebb of American</p><p>influence in the region.</p><p>In the meantime, American officials will keep trying to benefit from</p><p>nostalgia for investments past. This is no great offence; they are working</p><p>with what they have. The only real harm would be if they began to believe</p><p>it themselves. That would delay their own much-needed reckoning of</p><p>America’s declining economic influence in Asia.■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/the-private-sector-wont-save-americas-</p><p>indo-pacific-policy</p><p>https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/19/the-private-sector-wont-save-americas-indo-pacific-policy</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>China</p><p>Anger abounds as China raises its strikingly low retirement</p><p>age</p><p>Sunset delayed :: Old people will have to toil a little longer, assuming they can keep their jobs</p><p>By raising the retirement age, has China created a care</p><p>crisis?</p><p>The trade-off :: Older women tend to look after the country’s young children</p><p>China has freed an American pastor. Does it want anything</p><p>in return?</p><p>Heading home :: The move followed much pleading by American officials</p><p>A typhoon hits Shanghai and the Chinese economy groans</p><p>Battered :: Consumers are stuck inside during a three-day holiday</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Sunset delayed</p><p>Anger abounds as China raises its</p><p>strikingly low retirement age</p><p>Old people will have to toil a little longer, assuming they can keep their jobs</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>CHINA’S LEADER, Xi Jinping, boasts that his political system has a</p><p>matchless ability to get difficult things done. “For anything that benefits the</p><p>party and the people,” he has said, “we must act boldly and decisively.” Yet</p><p>it was not until September 13th, after years of indecision, that China</p><p>announced the first raising of its retirement age since the 1950s. From</p><p>among the world’s lowest, it will begin to creep closer to rich-world norms.</p><p>Having seen the unhappy reaction to similar changes elsewhere, Mr Xi may</p><p>have had reason to hesitate. Turmoil in the West is normally something that</p><p>China’s propagandists exploit. But huge protests in France last year against</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2021/06/22/chinas-average-retirement-age-is-ridiculously-low-54</p><p>a higher pension age triggered anxious and angry comments in China over</p><p>the government’s repeated mutterings about doing something similar. “The</p><p>common people are cursing behind closed doors,” wrote one user of Weibo,</p><p>a social-media platform, referring to the contrast between public anger in</p><p>France and its furtive form in China.</p><p>When China at last bit the bullet and published its own timetable, it did so</p><p>with little fanfare. State-run television mentioned the move below several</p><p>other headlines on its main</p><p>evening news. Viewers had to wait more than 35</p><p>minutes (and sit through nearly 20 minutes telling of Mr Xi’s activities) for</p><p>just a bare outline. The retirement age for female blue-collar workers will</p><p>rise from an astonishingly low 50 to 55, for female white-collar workers</p><p>from 55 to 58, and for men from 60 to 63 (see chart 1). These changes will</p><p>begin in January 2025 and be phased in over 15 years. For men and female</p><p>white-collar workers, the pension age will rise by a month every four</p><p>months. For blue-collar women it will rise by a month every two months.</p><p>The evening news did not bother with a follow-up report. But Chinese</p><p>netizens were very much bothered by the government’s actions. Posts with</p><p>the hashtag “reform to delay the statutory retirement age” have garnered</p><p>more than 870m views and over 240,000 comments on Weibo. Censors</p><p>have been swift to move in. More than 5,100 of these comments were</p><p>posted below an early report by Xinhua, the government’s main news</p><p>agency. Try reading these now; fewer than 30 remain, none of them</p><p>disapproving.</p><p>But anger abounds among comments still visible on less-filtered accounts.</p><p>“Capitalist exploitation has reached the common people. Brilliant!” wrote</p><p>one in a typical thread. “So, who was the People’s Congress representing?”</p><p>asked another, referring to the country’s rubber-stamp legislature that</p><p>suddenly approved the reform without public consultation. A third weighed</p><p>in: “Corrupt officials would love to work for ever.” And another: “If this</p><p>continues, society will descend into chaos.”</p><p>That is unlikely. Surveillance is so intense and the police so determined to</p><p>crush unrest that even if there are demonstrations, they are almost sure to be</p><p>small and far from the country’s most politically sensitive locations. It</p><p>would be hard to imagine China tolerating the kind of protests that erupted</p><p>in Russian cities in 2018 over pension-age reform.</p><p>China paid attention to those events, including the concessions made by</p><p>Russia’s ruler, Vladimir Putin. Russia’s original plan was to raise the</p><p>retirement age for women from 55 to 63. Mr Putin revised that to 60,</p><p>though he stuck to 65 for men (up from 60). It had long been expected that</p><p>when China made its own move, it would announce gradual steps towards</p><p>65 for men and women. This would be just over the average in the OECD, a</p><p>club of mostly rich countries, which in 2022 was 64.4 for men and 63.6 for</p><p>women. In the end, China settled on a plan that will see men required to</p><p>work until they are 63, though they may go on until 66 if they choose.</p><p>Women will enjoy similar flexibility.</p><p>So why, if China is so capable of preventing protests, did it not act earlier?</p><p>After all, it faces a demographic crunch and looming pension-fund crisis no</p><p>less fearsome than those of other countries that have raised their retirement</p><p>ages. Life expectancy has risen from 35 when the Communist Party seized</p><p>power in 1949 to 77 today, less than three years below the OECD average.</p><p>People over 60 already make up more than a fifth of the population. By</p><p>2035 that ratio will be closer to a third (see chart 2). The working-age</p><p>population—from which pension contributions are drawn—is falling. Some</p><p>experts have said that without any change, the state’s pension fund, on</p><p>which most retired people rely (private pensions have yet to take off),</p><p>would have run out of money by 2035.</p><p>Concerns raised by critics of reform may have resonated among</p><p>policymakers. In many households, the retired play a crucial role in</p><p>providing child care. Keep them at work longer, a common argument goes,</p><p>and young people will be even less inclined to have babies.</p><p>Another oft-heard objection to reform is that forcing people to work longer</p><p>will make it harder for young people to get jobs. Youth unemployment in</p><p>China is eye-wateringly high. It reached 21.3% among urban residents in</p><p>June 2023. The government then spent months rejigging its calculations and</p><p>came up with a somewhat less embarrassing rate. In July it was 17.1%. But</p><p>this argument against raising the retirement age holds less water: making</p><p>people work for longer could encourage them to consume more, which</p><p>could boost the economy and create jobs.</p><p>For every person who is anxious about youth unemployment there is</p><p>someone who frets that raising the retirement age will cause the same</p><p>problem among the elderly. Age discrimination is rampant in China.</p><p>Working longer may be fine for people in secure jobs, such as in the civil</p><p>service or state-owned firms. But in the private sector people worry they</p><p>will be forced out before they reach retirement age because they are</p><p>considered too old. On social media, commenters seethe about state</p><p>employees for another reason, too: their pensions are much higher.</p><p>Amid this debate a huge part of the population is often ignored. More than</p><p>half of China’s citizens have a rural hukou, or household registration,</p><p>including most of the 300m or so people who have moved from the</p><p>countryside to work in cities. Many are only entitled to a pension that is a</p><p>tiny fraction of the amount given to those registered as urbanites. It is about</p><p>200 yuan ($28) per month on average.</p><p>No change to this has been announced. The pensionable age for many rural</p><p>hukou-holders will remain at 60. One user of Weibo pointed out a reason for</p><p>the silence. “If pensions were distributed evenly across the entire</p><p>population, including farmers, I bet everyone’s pension would be less than</p><p>it is now,” he wrote. (By “everyone”, he meant “urban people”.) Mr Xi’s</p><p>calls for “common prosperity” do not, it seems, imply equality for farmers</p><p>and migrants. ■</p><p>Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to</p><p>understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the</p><p>world.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/17/anger-abounds-as-china-raises-its-</p><p>strikingly-low-retirement-age</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/drum-tower</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/17/anger-abounds-as-china-raises-its-strikingly-low-retirement-age</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The trade-off</p><p>By raising the retirement age, has</p><p>China created a care crisis?</p><p>Older women tend to look after the country’s young children</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>CHINA’S PENSIONS are underfunded and its population is getting older.</p><p>So the government’s recent decision to raise the retirement age for state</p><p>pensions seemed overdue. But it may create other problems, most notably</p><p>in the field of child care. And these challenges may lead young people to</p><p>have fewer babies, exacerbating the country’s demographic crisis.</p><p>According to state media, under 8% of Chinese toddlers are enrolled in</p><p>nurseries. Most families rely on grandparents to care for them. That is true</p><p>in cities, where nearly 80% of households are thought to do so. And it is</p><p>also the case in rural areas. Parents from the countryside often work far</p><p>from home, leaving their children behind. Walk around some villages and</p><p>all you will see are the elderly and the young.</p><p>So raising the retirement age risks creating a child-care deficit, which may</p><p>affect the decisions of young women. China’s fertility rate, or the number of</p><p>children that each woman is expected to have, is 1.1. That is among the</p><p>lowest in the world and well below the 2.1 needed to keep the population</p><p>stable. In a study published last year, Jing Zhang of Erasmus University in</p><p>Rotterdam found that women who lean on grannies for care are four times</p><p>more likely to have a second child than women who do not.</p><p>Many women face a choice between starting a family or continuing their</p><p>careers. Chinese women are increasingly choosing the latter. But the</p><p>availability of grandparent-provided child care might mean that women</p><p>need not choose. Research published in 2019 showed that access to such</p><p>care increased the labour-force participation of mothers with young children</p><p>in cities by around 40%.</p><p>Another area likely to be affected by the higher retirement age is care</p><p>of the</p><p>elderly. It is common for Chinese women in their 50s to look after the old</p><p>as well as the young. On social media some commenters wonder how</p><p>society will cope with all this change. He Lin-shan, a popular poster on</p><p>Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, asked: “If women can’t retire, will the</p><p>policy experts take care of their families for them?”■</p><p>Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to</p><p>understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the</p><p>world.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/19/by-raising-the-retirement-age-has-china-</p><p>created-a-care-crisis</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/drum-tower</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/19/by-raising-the-retirement-age-has-china-created-a-care-crisis</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Heading home</p><p>China has freed an American</p><p>pastor. Does it want anything in</p><p>return?</p><p>The move followed much pleading by American officials</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>DAVID LIN had been trying to help an underground Christian group build a</p><p>church in Beijing when he was detained by the Chinese government in</p><p>2006. The ruling Communist Party does not look kindly on spiritual</p><p>activities it does not control. So Mr Lin, an American pastor, was charged</p><p>with contract fraud, a common pretext for jailing religious leaders. As</p><p>expected, he was convicted and condemned to life in prison. Though his</p><p>sentence was later reduced, he was not due to be released until 2029.</p><p>Yet on September 15th the American State Department announced that Mr</p><p>Lin, 68, had been freed and was heading home. The move came after much</p><p>diplomacy. President Joe Biden raised the issue of detained Americans in</p><p>China during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in</p><p>November. So did Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, in talks</p><p>with China’s chief diplomat, Wang Yi, in July. When Jake Sullivan,</p><p>America’s national security adviser, visited Beijing last month, he is</p><p>thought to have pressed Mr Lin’s case.</p><p>The pastor was “wrongfully detained” by China, says the State Department,</p><p>using a designation that may imply he was being held in order to influence</p><p>American policy. Two other American prisoners still fit that bill, according</p><p>to the department. A businessman from Texas called Mark Swidan has been</p><p>held since 2012 on drug-related charges. Kai Li, another businessman, from</p><p>New York, was detained in 2016 and later convicted of espionage. Both</p><p>men deny the charges against them.</p><p>In total there are more than 200 Americans under various forms of</p><p>“coercive measures” in China, according to estimates from the Dui Hua</p><p>Foundation, an American NGO that lobbies on their behalf. Some of these</p><p>people are in prison. Others have been hit with “exit bans”, meaning they</p><p>are allowed to travel within China, but cannot leave. The most unfortunate</p><p>among this group only discover they have been banned from exiting China</p><p>upon trying to check in at the airport.</p><p>China denies engaging in hostage diplomacy. But it likes to have an</p><p>“inventory” of foreign prisoners it can use when negotiating with other</p><p>countries, says Peter Humphrey, a China analyst. These detainees come in</p><p>handy when China wants to get back its own citizens who are locked up</p><p>abroad, or when it tries to retrieve people who have fled for various reasons,</p><p>such as officials hoping to avoid corruption probes. China has signed</p><p>prisoner-transfer agreements with several countries.</p><p>Mr Humphrey, who is British, spent 23 months in a Chinese prison between</p><p>2013 and 2015 for allegedly violating laws protecting personal data (he</p><p>denies this). But it was a more high-profile case, in 2018, that put China’s</p><p>detention policies in the spotlight. In December of that year two Canadians</p><p>—Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman</p><p>—were taken into custody and later charged with spying. This seemed to be</p><p>in retaliation for the detention in Canada of a Chinese businesswoman,</p><p>Meng Wanzhou, on suspicion of violating sanctions against Iran. The</p><p>Justice Department in Washington had sought her arrest so that she could be</p><p>extradited to America.</p><p>The “two Michaels”, as the Canadians became known, spent more than</p><p>1,000 days in prison. Both men were released in 2021, at the same time as</p><p>Ms Meng. “So hostage diplomacy ended with a cold-war-style prisoner</p><p>exchange, with the skies between China and Canada serving as the frontier</p><p>bridge,” we wrote back then. On the next two episodes of our “Drum</p><p>Tower” podcast, Mr Kovrig shares the story of his detention for the first</p><p>time.</p><p>The release of Mr Lin has been celebrated by American officials. But the</p><p>State Department continues to warn Americans to reconsider travel to</p><p>China because of the “risk of wrongful detentions” and the “arbitrary</p><p>enforcement of local laws”. China calls this unreasonable. It is desperate to</p><p>attract tourists and foreign investors to boost its sluggish economy, so it</p><p>wants the travel warning to go away.</p><p>There have been hints recently that America might tone down its language.</p><p>Perhaps the homecoming of Mr Lin will lead to action. His release is a rare</p><p>bit of good news from the world of Sino-American diplomacy. ■</p><p>Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to</p><p>understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the</p><p>world.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/19/china-has-freed-an-american-pastor-does-</p><p>it-want-anything-in-return</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/drum-tower</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/19/china-has-freed-an-american-pastor-does-it-want-anything-in-return</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Battered</p><p>A typhoon hits Shanghai and the</p><p>Chinese economy groans</p><p>Consumers are stuck inside during a three-day holiday</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>SHANGHAI WAs hit by Typhoon Bebinca on September 16th. Hundreds</p><p>of thousands of residents were evacuated in what state media called the</p><p>strongest storm to rip through the financial hub in 75 years. Fierce winds</p><p>uprooted trees and toppled billboards. The weather also disrupted the three-</p><p>day mid-autumn festival. Officials had hoped to see a big increase in</p><p>consumption during the holiday. Faced with a sluggish economy, the</p><p>government is encouraging people to spend more. But Shanghai’s residents</p><p>were stuck inside during much of the festival. Even elsewhere, consumer</p><p>demand has been soggy.■</p><p>Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to</p><p>understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the</p><p>world.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/19/a-typhoon-hits-shanghai-and-the-chinese-</p><p>economy-groans</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/drum-tower</p><p>https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/19/a-typhoon-hits-shanghai-and-the-chinese-economy-groans</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Middle East & Africa</p><p>Israel has bloodied Hizbullah but is stuck in a war of</p><p>attrition</p><p>Electronic warfare :: Two attacks on the Shia militia may not change Israel’s strategic dilemma</p><p>in Lebanon</p><p>A theatre in Jenin offers a different kind of Palestinian</p><p>resistance</p><p>Staging protests :: It is a target for both Israel and Palestinian militants</p><p>Israel’s government is again trying to hobble its Supreme</p><p>Court</p><p>Politicians v judges :: While at war, Israel is facing a constitutional crisis</p><p>Nairobi’s reputation for crime is outdated</p><p>Daylight robbery :: That is only in part thanks to its notorious police</p><p>Floods in Nigeria’s north-east are aggravating a</p><p>humanitarian crisis</p><p>A perfect storm :: The region had already been devastated by the Boko Haram insurgency</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Electronic warfare</p><p>Israel has bloodied Hizbullah but is</p><p>stuck in a war of attrition</p><p>Two attacks on the Shia militia may not change Israel’s strategic dilemma</p><p>in</p><p>Lebanon</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:34 上午 | DUBAI AND JERUSALEM</p><p>Editor’s note (September 19th): This article has been updated.</p><p>FIRST IT WAS pagers; then, walkie-talkies. On September 18th another</p><p>wave of explosions rocked Lebanon: two-way radios detonated in homes,</p><p>offices and even at a funeral, a day after some 3,000 pagers blew up across</p><p>the country and in Syria. In both cases the devices were used by members</p><p>of Hizbullah, the Shia militia that has fired rockets at Israel for almost a</p><p>year.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/17/a-pager-bomb-attack-causes-disarray-for-hizbullah</p><p>Some 20 people were killed and 450 injured in the latest attack, on top of at</p><p>least 12 killed and nearly 3,000 hurt, many badly, in the pager blasts.</p><p>Hundreds of people were blinded because they looked at their pagers just</p><p>before the devices exploded. Others lost fingers and hands.</p><p>Israeli officials have not said much, and they surely will not claim</p><p>responsibility. But no one else has both means and motive to carry out such</p><p>attacks. “I said that we would return the residents of the north safely to their</p><p>homes, and that is exactly what we will do,” said Binyamin Netanyahu, the</p><p>Israeli prime minister, in a statement after the second round of explosions.</p><p>Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, said the war had entered a “new phase”</p><p>focused on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.</p><p>All of this raises three questions: how these devices were made to explode;</p><p>why Israel would have detonated them now; and what this means for its</p><p>year-long conflict with Hizbullah.</p><p>The answer to the first question leads from a bunker in Beirut to an office</p><p>park outside Taipei. Earlier this year Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of</p><p>Hizbullah, urged the group’s rank and file to stop using mobile phones,</p><p>warning that Israel could hack the devices for surveillance and to target</p><p>assassinations. Instead the militia ordered pagers that seemed leakproof:</p><p>they can only receive messages, not transmit them.</p><p>In photos from Lebanon, the devices that exploded on September 17th</p><p>seemed to bear the trademark of Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company. But</p><p>the firm denied making the pagers and said a Hungarian firm, BAC</p><p>Consulting KFT, had a “long-term partnership” to produce them. “Our</p><p>company only provides the brand trademark authorisation and is not</p><p>involved in the design or manufacturing,” Gold Apollo said in a statement</p><p>the day after the blasts.</p><p>From there, the story gets weirder. Before it was taken offline, BAC’s</p><p>buzzword-laden website said the firm was a consultancy working on</p><p>sustainability and development. A LinkedIn profile for its “CEO” says that</p><p>she worked for the UN’s nuclear agency, supported small businesses in</p><p>Libya and helped women in rural Niger adapt to climate change. It makes</p><p>no mention of a side business in pager manufacturing. The firm’s address is</p><p>listed as a villa on a residential street in Budapest. Calls to the number listed</p><p>went unanswered.</p><p>Wherever they were built, it seems clear that Israeli agents hid explosives</p><p>inside the pagers before they reached Lebanon, and did the same with the</p><p>walkie-talkies. Thousands of the militia’s operatives were unknowingly</p><p>carrying small bombs on their bodies, which Israel then detonated almost</p><p>simultaneously.</p><p>Despite the operational success, the timing underscores Israel’s strategic</p><p>dilemma. Wounding lots of Hizbullah members and damaging the group’s</p><p>communications would have been an ideal prelude to a major Israeli</p><p>offensive. Since October 7th there have been voices calling for this, in order</p><p>to reduce Hizbullah’s arsenal of long-range missiles and occupy a buffer</p><p>zone inside Lebanon. But the government has not approved an incursion;</p><p>instead, a low-level war of attrition has set in.</p><p>Israeli generals still talk of war in terms of when, not if, but the timing is</p><p>hotly debated. Some want to take advantage now of the presence nearby of</p><p>American aircraft-carriers and fighter squadrons, which would help shield</p><p>Israel from Hizbullah’s missiles. But with their army still fighting in Gaza,</p><p>albeit at a lower intensity, others would rather take time to rest and refit.</p><p>That Israel activated the bombs without any further action indicates that, for</p><p>now, it is not rushing to all-out war. It may also suggest that Israeli spies</p><p>feared that Hizbullah would soon discover the vulnerability, and they</p><p>decided to act before the militia swapped out the pagers.</p><p>Hizbullah may not rush to war either. People close to the group describe a</p><p>state of shock. It has been obvious for months that Israel had penetrated the</p><p>militia: it has had no trouble assassinating a string of top commanders. But</p><p>the back-to-back bombings are by far the biggest security breach in its</p><p>history. “Hizbullah’s military arsenal is virtually paralysed,” says Lina</p><p>Khatib of Chatham House, a think-tank.</p><p>The group will need to spend months repairing its communications network</p><p>and searching for leaks—hardly ideal conditions for a major attack against</p><p>Israel. The attack also highlights a broader vulnerability for Iran and its</p><p>allies: their reliance on imported electronics. Militias across the region will</p><p>be nervous about what other devices might be compromised.</p><p>Members of Hizbullah often keep their affiliation secret. Mothers, wives</p><p>and siblings will have discovered this week that their loved ones were part</p><p>of the militia. That could cause tensions between Hizbullah and its</p><p>constituents, some of whom are frustrated with the group’s war against</p><p>Israel. It could also produce new intelligence for Israel in intercepted phone</p><p>calls and social-media videos from Lebanon.</p><p>None of this, though, changes Israel’s dilemma. On September 16th the</p><p>Israeli cabinet updated the official aims of the war. They had been to defeat</p><p>Hamas in Gaza and free the Israeli hostages held there. Now ministers also</p><p>pledge to “return the residents of the north safely to their homes”. It seems</p><p>no coincidence that the pagers exploded the next day.</p><p>Since October 8th, when Hizbullah began firing rockets at Israel, the</p><p>prevailing view has been that only a ceasefire in Gaza will end those</p><p>hostilities. But the prospects of a deal look dim. Israel thus wants to</p><p>decouple the two fronts. It hopes the exploding pagers and radios will</p><p>remind Mr Nasrallah of the damage that Israel can do to his militia and its</p><p>standing in Lebanon.</p><p>Not surprisingly, the Hizbullah chief has other ideas. In a speech on</p><p>September 19th, his first after the attacks, he promised that Hizbullah would</p><p>not stop fighting until Israel ended its war in Gaza. But he looked tired, and</p><p>his tone was unusually subdued: not a leader bent on expanding the war. As</p><p>he spoke Israeli jets broke the sound barrier over Beirut, and the Israeli</p><p>army said other planes were carrying out air strikes in southern Lebanon.</p><p>For Lebanese, all of this reinforced a feeling of despair. Many drew</p><p>comparisons to the massive explosion at Beirut’s port in 2020, another</p><p>ordinary Tuesday on which death seemed to arrive from nowhere. Whatever</p><p>their views on Hizbullah, they are nervous about what comes next and feel</p><p>powerless to do anything about it. ■</p><p>Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in</p><p>the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/middle-east-dispatch</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-</p><p>and-africa/2024/09/18/israel-has-bloodied-hizbullah-but-is-stuck-in-a-war-of-</p><p>attrition</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/18/israel-has-bloodied-hizbullah-but-is-stuck-in-a-war-of-attrition</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Staging protests</p><p>A theatre in Jenin offers a different</p><p>kind of Palestinian resistance</p><p>It is a target for both Israel and Palestinian militants</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | JENIN</p><p>THE EXISTENCE of a theatre in the middle of any refugee camp would be</p><p>unusual. But in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, it is particularly striking.</p><p>The camp</p><p>and its adjacent city have long been a symbol of deadly terror for</p><p>Israelis and fierce—often violent—resistance for Palestinians. And yet the</p><p>Freedom Theatre has become the symbol of a different kind of Palestinian</p><p>struggle.</p><p>The theatre was established in 2006 by Zakaria Zubeidi, a former militant,</p><p>and Juliano Mer-Khamis, an actor born to a Jewish Israeli and a Christian</p><p>Palestinian. Their vision was of cultural resistance. “We are like fighters,</p><p>but our weapon is the theatre,” says Ranin Odeh who runs the theatre’s</p><p>youth programmes. They put on everything from Shakespeare to plays</p><p>written by those living in the camp.</p><p>And yet today the thespians of Jenin are caught between an increasingly</p><p>aggressive Israel which is pursuing deadlier raids into the restive camp, and</p><p>a growing number of uncompromising Palestinian militants who see an</p><p>armed struggle as the only way to respond.</p><p>Those involved in the theatre have become targets—for both sides. Mr</p><p>Zubeidi is serving a lengthy sentence in Israel for attacks committed during</p><p>the second intifada. Mr Mer-Khamis was assassinated by a masked gunman</p><p>thought to have links to Hamas in 2011. Another of the theatre’s staff has</p><p>been in an Israeli prison since December.</p><p>It is growing ever harder for the theatre to function. Israel’s most recent raid</p><p>on the camp left 21 people dead. The theatre survived unscathed, but</p><p>around it the streets are filled with craters and stained with blood. And it is</p><p>hard to justify its role when the bullets are flying, Ms Odeh admits.</p><p>And yet the weekly workshops for children are still full. Dozens of</p><p>youngsters relish a few hours’ relief from the grinding misery of the camp.</p><p>That in itself is a kind of resistance.■</p><p>Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in</p><p>the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-</p><p>and-africa/2024/09/19/a-theatre-in-jenin-offers-a-different-kind-of-palestinian-</p><p>resistance</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/middle-east-dispatch</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/19/a-theatre-in-jenin-offers-a-different-kind-of-palestinian-resistance</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Politicians v judges</p><p>Israel’s government is again trying</p><p>to hobble its Supreme Court</p><p>While at war, Israel is facing a constitutional crisis</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:53 上午 | JERUSALEM</p><p>FOR NEARLY a year Israel’s Supreme Court has been without a president,</p><p>as the country’s right-wing government has tussled with the judiciary over</p><p>the court’s powers. As soon as it was elected at the end of 2022, the</p><p>government of Binyamin Netanyahu presented plans for “judicial reforms”</p><p>which would limit the powers of the Supreme Court and give politicians</p><p>control of the appointment of judges. The proposals prompted huge protests</p><p>and were abandoned when the war in Gaza began. But they are back on the</p><p>agenda.</p><p>The justice minister, Yariv Levin, has provoked the new crisis. Mr Levin</p><p>wants the judicial-appointments committee, which he co-chairs, to abandon</p><p>the tradition whereby the senior serving judge on the Supreme Court is</p><p>appointed president. His reason? He is determined to keep the current top</p><p>judge, Yitzhak Amit, a vocal opponent of his reforms, from the job.</p><p>Having tried—and failed—to change the make-up of the committee, Mr</p><p>Levin has refused to convene it since the previous president retired. The</p><p>Supreme Court has now ordered him to present his candidate by September</p><p>22nd and then convene the committee. So far, he has refused to do so,</p><p>accusing the judges of “an unlawful usurpation of the minister’s powers”.</p><p>Mr Levin and other members of Mr Netanyahu’s government have long</p><p>sought to rein in what they regard as an activist court. In the past it has</p><p>overridden government decisions and laws on grounds of constitutionality.</p><p>With Israel now at war, the role of the Supreme Court has become even</p><p>more contentious. It is the only forum where questions about how Israel is</p><p>conducting the war, such as its obligations to supply humanitarian aid to the</p><p>civilian population in Gaza and the treatment of prisoners, are being</p><p>investigated, a fact that has not endeared it to hardliners in the governing</p><p>coalition.</p><p>The court’s president has a crucial role in scheduling such hearings, and in</p><p>appointing any national commissions of inquiry. So far Mr Netanyahu has</p><p>withstood public pressure to create such a body. If the prime minister were</p><p>to relent, perhaps to fend off his possible prosecution in the International</p><p>Criminal Court, the president would decide who is on the commission.</p><p>If Mr Levin persists in his obstructionism, the court could order the other</p><p>committee members to convene without him. But that would be an</p><p>unprecedented clash between the branches of government and could in turn</p><p>provoke other ministers to defy legal rulings. That is already happening.</p><p>Itamar Ben-Gvir, the hard-right politician in charge of the police, has</p><p>proceeded with the promotion of a police officer accused of throwing a</p><p>stun-grenade at protesters, despite instructions from the attorney-general</p><p>and a court order to wait until an investigation is concluded.</p><p>The government and court are also at odds over a ruling to draft rabbinical</p><p>students into the army and end funding for their seminaries. This is a red</p><p>line for the ultra-Orthodox parties in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition and his</p><p>ministers are in no rush to carry out the court’s orders.</p><p>“The Supreme Court judges created this confrontation at a time of war,”</p><p>insists Simcha Rothman, chair of the law committee in the Knesset, Israel’s</p><p>parliament and one of the architects of the coalition’s judicial reforms.</p><p>“Instead of trying to reach a compromise with the justice minister, they are</p><p>forcing a vote. This constitutional crisis is on their heads.”</p><p>Others disagree. Yaniv Roznai, an expert in constitutional law at Reichman</p><p>University in Tel Aviv, says: “Beneath the radar, while the guns are firing,</p><p>the government is taking advantage of the lack of attention to legal issues to</p><p>try once again to achieve the objective of the legal reform—power without</p><p>limits.” ■</p><p>Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in</p><p>the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-</p><p>and-africa/2024/09/19/israels-government-is-again-trying-to-hobble-its-supreme-court</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/middle-east-dispatch</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/19/israels-government-is-again-trying-to-hobble-its-supreme-court</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Daylight robbery</p><p>Nairobi’s reputation for crime is</p><p>outdated</p><p>That is only in part thanks to its notorious police</p><p>9月 19, 2024 08:42 上午 | NAIROBI</p><p>THERE IS AN era in the history of many cities that is inextricably linked,</p><p>in the public imagination, to crime and lawlessness—think 1920s Chicago</p><p>or 1980s New York. For Nairobi that period is the 1990s. In the old</p><p>business district, carjackings were a daily occurrence, remembers Farida</p><p>Ali, a shop-owner there. Violent crime was so common that residents</p><p>dubbed the Kenyan capital “Nairobbery”.</p><p>For years Nairobi was spoken of in the same breath as Johannesburg or</p><p>Lagos, two of Africa’s most dangerous cities. A survey in 2000 suggested</p><p>that Nairobians were more likely to be robbed or assaulted than people who</p><p>lived in central Johannesburg. Not much had changed by the 2010s. Robert</p><p>Ochala, a Kenyan security wonk, says the gangs which emerged in the</p><p>middle of that decade were so lawless “they would rob their own relatives.”</p><p>Kenyan tabloids still paint their capital as hopelessly crime-ridden. And</p><p>official statistics suggest little improvement. But speak to experts as well as</p><p>ordinary residents—not to mention the city’s perennially security-conscious</p><p>expats—and a different picture emerges.</p><p>Stories of “home invasions” in</p><p>wealthy neighbourhoods are much rarer than a decade ago. It is now</p><p>generally considered safe to drive, if not yet walk, at night in all but the</p><p>most notorious neighbourhoods. Mrs Ali’s part of the central business</p><p>district is no longer deemed a no-go zone. “Violent crime has gone down</p><p>overall,” says Mutuma Ruteere, director of the National Crime Research</p><p>Centre and the country’s foremost crime expert. “We’ve come from</p><p>‘Nairobbery’ to a fairly safe city.”</p><p>What might explain this? New technologies, including the spread of CCTV,</p><p>have probably helped. More controversial is whether Kenya’s police force</p><p>can take any credit. In 2009 its reputation for corruption and lawlessness</p><p>was so terrible that the UN dispatched a special rapporteur to investigate it.</p><p>(The resulting report denounced the use of police death squads to eliminate</p><p>suspects and a “climate of impunity”.) Even today few Kenyans believe</p><p>their cops do much to prevent crime. Statistics on wrongdoing are so</p><p>unreliable largely because most poor Kenyans do not trust the police</p><p>enough to report it.</p><p>Kenyans do, however, seem often to approve of their more heavy-handed</p><p>tactics. When lawlessness in the central business district runs amok, says</p><p>Benjamin Maina, a shop-owner there, the police “kill two to three people,</p><p>and once they do that, crime completely goes down.” These kinds of</p><p>execution-style killings have a long history, dating back to the early days of</p><p>Kenya’s independence (and, indeed, before). In the 2000s an undercover</p><p>squad of killer cops was credited with dismantling some of Kenya’s most</p><p>notorious gangs, such as the Mungiki sect, which at its peak is thought to</p><p>have had over a million members. Sometimes they killed innocent people,</p><p>but overall “these guys were really effective at combating crime,” argues</p><p>Mr Ochalo.</p><p>The current government has tried to scrub up the police’s image. William</p><p>Ruto, Kenya’s president since 2022, disbanded an elite special unit soon</p><p>after taking office, accusing it of “killing Kenyans arbitrarily”. He also</p><p>offered to send 400 officers to gang-racked Haiti to lead an international</p><p>peacekeeping mission. In June America designated Kenya a “major non-</p><p>NATO ally”, the first in sub-Saharan Africa.</p><p>But their overseas deployment has put Kenya’s police in the international</p><p>spotlight just as they have been dealing with demonstrations back home</p><p>against Mr Ruto’s proposed tax rises. The ensuing crackdown, in which</p><p>police have so far killed scores of protesters, and abducted dozens more,</p><p>reveals how little there actually is to show for 15 years of police reform.</p><p>And a growing number of police are involved in criminality themselves,</p><p>such as human trafficking or lending their guns to gangs.</p><p>Still, there have been some improvements. Over the past two decades the</p><p>police have received gradually higher pay and more resources. This has</p><p>helped reduce some of the worst corruption in their ranks, says John</p><p>Githongo, an anti-graft campaigner. Others point to the growth of</p><p>community policing, initiatives to improve relations between cops and the</p><p>people they serve. Giving residents more ownership over their own security</p><p>has helped make poorer areas safer, argues Kennedy Odede of SHOFCO, an</p><p>NGO working in Kenyan slums. In such places the spread of</p><p>neighbourhood watches, community justice centres and self-help groups</p><p>among former gang members may have done more than the police to reduce</p><p>crime.</p><p>Some local efforts simply fill a vacuum where the state should be. In rich</p><p>areas, security is overwhelmingly the job of private firms, not the police.</p><p>Streetlights, which make it safer to walk around at night, are typically</p><p>installed by residents, not the government. And in some areas, justice is</p><p>often handed down by vigilantes, not the courts. Mrs Ali reckons “mob</p><p>justice” is the main reason crime is down in her neighbourhood. Videos of</p><p>lynchings in which suspected criminals are forced inside burning tyres</p><p>appear on social media.</p><p>The prevalence of such practices points to a deeper problem. Currently,</p><p>when crime spikes in one area, the police or local mobs move in and use</p><p>force to contain it. That may work temporarily. But the more fundamental</p><p>causes of crime—which include high levels of inequality and youth</p><p>unemployment—are far harder to fix. ■</p><p>Sign up to the Analysing Africa, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the</p><p>loop about the world’s youngest—and least understood—continent.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-</p><p>and-africa/2024/09/19/nairobis-reputation-for-crime-is-outdated</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/analysing-africa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/19/nairobis-reputation-for-crime-is-outdated</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>A perfect storm</p><p>Floods in Nigeria’s north-east are</p><p>aggravating a humanitarian crisis</p><p>The region had already been devastated by the Boko Haram insurgency</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:51 上午 | Maiduguri</p><p>THE AMBULANCE rolled into the main teaching hospital in Maiduguri,</p><p>the capital of Borno state in north-east Nigeria. Through the open back door</p><p>two limp, swollen legs were visible. Skin that was once brown was ashen</p><p>and wrinkled. The body had the telltale signs of drowning. Medics took it to</p><p>the mortuary, one of the few parts of the hospital still functioning.</p><p>Flood warnings had been ringing out across Nigeria’s north-east for weeks.</p><p>Schools in Maiduguri were closed for a fortnight as the torrential rains</p><p>came. The reservoir of the Alau Dam began to overflow; yet the state</p><p>government continued to insist that the area was safe. But in the early hours</p><p>of September 10th, the dam collapsed and brought the worst floods the city</p><p>has seen in 30 years. Houses and farms have been completely submerged</p><p>and livestock have drowned. Corpses floated out of the cemetery and</p><p>reptiles escaped from the zoo. Flooded roads have left entire towns</p><p>inaccessible. So far, around 400,000 people are estimated to have been</p><p>displaced and more than 30 to have died. The true numbers are almost</p><p>certainly higher. Rescue efforts are still going on.</p><p>Many people in Maiduguri had already been forced to flee from their homes</p><p>to avoid murder or kidnap by Boko Haram, a jihadist group. The</p><p>government had tried to close refugee camps in the city’s centre in hope of</p><p>restoring some sense of normality. Now those camps have had to reopen.</p><p>They are already overwhelmed by crowds of newly displaced people</p><p>seeking shelter.</p><p>Children shout “hunger!” at the trucks bringing in food. Even before the</p><p>floods, hunger was the worst it has been in north-eastern Nigeria for nearly</p><p>15 years, according to the World Food Programme. Its treatment facilities</p><p>have seen a 70% increase in the number of malnourished people from last</p><p>year, with children and mothers worst affected. Hopes that the upcoming</p><p>harvest would provide relief have faded; over 115,000 hectares of farmland</p><p>throughout the country have been ruined by the deluge so far. “Goats, rams,</p><p>sheep, turkeys, chickens, most of the domestic animals we rear, we couldn’t</p><p>rescue them,” says Balad Mutiza, a teacher, who fled his home with his</p><p>family in the middle of the night when the floods came.</p><p>One camp is currently hosting over 16,000 people. Buses of those who have</p><p>been rescued from the floods are still arriving. Overcrowding and disrupted</p><p>water supplies have increased the risk of cholera and other waterborne</p><p>diseases. With Borno’s biggest hospitals still only partially open, those who</p><p>become ill have limited options. A nine-day-old baby who had not been</p><p>able to breastfeed for three days was turned away at the teaching hospital.</p><p>Medical staff cannot make it to work.</p><p>Much of the city is expected to remain waterlogged for weeks, as heavy</p><p>rains continue. A dam in neighbouring Cameroon, which has also been</p><p>damaged by the rains, could wreak further devastation on other parts of</p><p>north-eastern Nigeria. This year’s rainy season has been particularly bad in</p><p>Nigeria, as it has</p><p>been in much of the Sahel. The country’s National</p><p>Emergency Management Agency says that almost 1m people have been</p><p>affected nationwide. A region reeling from one humanitarian crisis has been</p><p>pitched into another. ■</p><p>Sign up to the Analysing Africa, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the</p><p>loop about the world’s youngest—and least understood—continent.</p><p>For more coverage of climate change, sign up for the Climate Issue, our</p><p>fortnightly subscriber-only newsletter, or visit our climate-change hub.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-</p><p>and-africa/2024/09/19/floods-in-nigerias-north-east-are-aggravating-a-humanitarian-</p><p>crisis</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/analysing-africa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-climate-issue</p><p>https://www.economist.com/climate-change</p><p>https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/19/floods-in-nigerias-north-east-are-aggravating-a-humanitarian-crisis</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Europe</p><p>Near-shoring is turning eastern Europe into the new China</p><p>Bringing it all back home :: With firms moving production closer to market, CEE is the place</p><p>to be</p><p>Germany’s conservatives choose the country’s probable</p><p>next leader</p><p>Friedrich the Great :: Friedrich Merz is in pole position to take over as chancellor at the</p><p>election in 2025</p><p>Ukraine is a booming market for Balkan arms makers</p><p>The cogs of war :: It’s not just gangsters buying Serbian and Bosnian ammo these days</p><p>Can a new crew of European commissioners revive the</p><p>continent?</p><p>Brussels reboot :: Ursula von der Leyen picks her team</p><p>Aland is lovely, weapon-free and too close to Russia</p><p>Temptation islands :: Finland worries the demilitarised islands could fall prey in a conflict</p><p>Europe is bidding a steady farewell to passport-free travel</p><p>Charlemagne :: Germany is the latest Schengen country to reintroduce border checks</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Bringing it all back home</p><p>Near-shoring is turning eastern</p><p>Europe into the new China</p><p>With firms moving production closer to market, CEE is the place to be</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>THE EUROPEAN UNION has tried hard lately to restrict Chinese imports.</p><p>Yet this summer China made it easier to import one European product:</p><p>Polish poultry. The gesture was economically insignificant. But it is part of</p><p>a broader push by China to cultivate and invest in central and eastern</p><p>Europe (CEE).</p><p>China is not alone. CEE countries are benefiting from firms shifting</p><p>production closer to the European market (near-shoring) or to places</p><p>considered politically reliable (friend-shoring), as well as old-fashioned</p><p>offshoring for lower costs. In his recent report on European</p><p>competitiveness, Mario Draghi, a former head of the European Central</p><p>Bank, argued that the EU needs to build more resilient supply chains and</p><p>invest in domestic production of key goods such as semiconductors.</p><p>Globalisation in the early 2000s fuelled impressive growth in the EU’s</p><p>newer members. Now they are set to benefit again.</p><p>Take Poland, which has not had a recession since 1991, except during the</p><p>pandemic. Its real consumption levels per person have caught up with</p><p>Spain’s. Net foreign direct investment has doubled from an already large</p><p>$10bn per year in the mid-2010s to about $20bn these days. A survey by</p><p>Kearney, a consultancy, ranks Poland in the top 25 destinations for FDI in</p><p>the coming years, behind Mexico and Taiwan.</p><p>There are three reasons to expect more investment into the region. The first</p><p>is the global transition to climate neutrality. From electric vehicles (EVs)</p><p>and batteries to heat pumps and windmills, new production capacities have</p><p>to be built. Upgrading legacy factories in Germany or France costs about as</p><p>much as building a new plant in Poland or Hungary. Rich countries may</p><p>offer more subsidies, but CEE countries have cheaper land and labour,</p><p>looser regulations and lower taxes.</p><p>The second reason is Chinese overcapacity. As growth slows, China is</p><p>doubling down on its outsized manufacturing sector, especially in new areas</p><p>such as EVs. The EU is the only market still fairly open to Chinese imports,</p><p>increasing the pressure on European producers to compete. That pushes</p><p>them to lower-cost regions of the single market. In a decade, “most of the</p><p>car production in Europe could be in CEE countries and other, cheaper</p><p>places such as Portugal and Spain,” says Zoltan Torok of Raiffeisen Bank</p><p>Hungary.</p><p>Finally, tension between America and China, with Europe in between, can</p><p>disrupt supply chains. This is why firms have started to bring production</p><p>closer to markets (near-shoring). Chinese EV makers will try to produce in</p><p>Europe, using Hungary as their bridgehead. The biggest announcements of</p><p>Chinese FDI in the past three years were in Hungary and Serbia, according</p><p>to fDi Intelligence, a consultancy; Hungary got the first European factory of</p><p>BYD, a Chinese EV producer. Western firms are doing it too. Olaf Scholz,</p><p>Germany’s chancellor, went to Serbia on July 19th to sign a deal to mine</p><p>lithium for EVs. Intel, a chipmaker, picked Poland for a $4.6bn plant,</p><p>though it has paused European investments amid financial woes.</p><p>But the FDI boom also carries risks. Foreign investors are not exactly</p><p>popular. A big chunk of the region’s economy is already foreign-owned.</p><p>The value added in car production is almost entirely in foreign hands. Two</p><p>of the top four banks in Poland are subsidiaries of ING, a Dutch bank, and</p><p>Santander, a Spanish bank. Populist parties like Poland’s Law and Justice</p><p>claim the FDI model leads to lower wage growth and rising inequality. (In</p><p>fact Polish wages have grown handily.)</p><p>Weaning countries off foreign firms, capital and know-how is hard, though.</p><p>CEE countries spend much less on research and development than western</p><p>European ones do, and lack deep capital markets. Poland’s attempt to build</p><p>an EV of its own has barely started, even after it joined forces with Geely, a</p><p>Chinese EV maker, for much of the technology. The country’s biggest bus</p><p>manufacturer, Solaris, was recently acquired by CAF, a Spanish firm.</p><p>CEE countries must compete for FDI with countries such as Germany and</p><p>France, which can afford bigger subsidies, and those with much cheaper</p><p>energy, such as the Nordics and Spain. Labour costs are still lower in CEE</p><p>countries but the gap is narrowing: their wages are set to go from 44% of</p><p>the western EU average today to 59% by 2035, according to Tomas Dvorak</p><p>and Mateusz Urban of Oxford Economics, a consultancy. To compete, CEE</p><p>governments offer foreigners cheap land, which displeases local firms;</p><p>subsidised energy, which other consumers pay for; and lighter regulation,</p><p>which enrages environmental groups. “Battery assembly with lots of</p><p>imported inputs is locally a low value-added activity that on top requires a</p><p>lot of energy and water,” says Gergely Tardos of OTP Bank in Budapest.</p><p>“There is debate about whether it is good for the country or not.”</p><p>Foreign investors also need assurances that they can find workers. That is a</p><p>challenge for countries with declining working-age populations. Millions of</p><p>their citizens have moved to richer economies in the West. “Importing</p><p>labour for blue-collar jobs is now common,” says Mr Torok. Firms turn to</p><p>private agencies and governments for help. “We go as far as India, even</p><p>Laos to find them,” says Jakub Fekiac of Edgar Baker, an agency in</p><p>Slovakia. Foreign services firms do not show up much in FDI numbers, but</p><p>analysts say they employ as many people as industrial ones do. The number</p><p>of foreign students at Hungarian universities has doubled over the past</p><p>decade, lured by European visas. Importing workers may not play out well</p><p>in countries where voters oppose immigration.</p><p>The investment boom in CEE countries will boost their standing in the EU</p><p>along with their economic prospects. It will also make them more friendly</p><p>towards China and other authoritarian countries seeking to nearshore to</p><p>Europe. Already, Hungary is</p><p>resisting EU tariffs on Chinese EVs. Some</p><p>analysts worry that CEE countries’ chicken exports will prove a poor trade</p><p>for a Chinese Trojan horse. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our</p><p>weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/near-shoring-is-turning-eastern-europe-</p><p>into-the-new-china</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cafe-europa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/near-shoring-is-turning-eastern-europe-into-the-new-china</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Friedrich the Great</p><p>Germany’s conservatives choose</p><p>the country’s probable next leader</p><p>Friedrich Merz is in pole position to take over as chancellor at the election</p><p>in 2025</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | BERLIN</p><p>“FRIEDRICH MERZ is doing it, and I’m fine with that.” This brief</p><p>statement by Markus Söder, the head of Bavaria’s governing Christian</p><p>Social Union (CSU), was enough to confirm what had long been clear in</p><p>German political circles: that Mr Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian</p><p>Democratic Union (CDU), the CSU’s larger sibling, would be the parties’</p><p>joint candidate at next year’s federal election. Mr Merz will thus lead the</p><p>opposition conservatives’ bid to unseat Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic</p><p>(SPD) chancellor.</p><p>If the decision came earlier than many expected, it was also no surprise. Mr</p><p>Söder is an ill-disciplined sort who has never worked out how to convert his</p><p>regional success into the national leadership he craves. Many in the CDU</p><p>blame him for hobbling the CDU/CSU’s disastrous election campaign in</p><p>2021 by pursuing the nomination even after it was clear he could not win it.</p><p>At a hastily assembled joint appearance in Berlin on September 17th,</p><p>Messrs Merz and Söder made it clear that there would be no repeat of that</p><p>debacle. Germany’s next election is due on September 28th 2025. That</p><p>leaves Mr Merz, who has bags of political experience but none of the</p><p>governing sort, a year to introduce himself to a sceptical electorate.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/04/17/the-battle-to-succeed-angela-merkel-gets-nastier</p><p>Germans are deeply unhappy with their current government, leaving Mr</p><p>Merz in pole position to win the next vote. The CDU/CSU is polling at</p><p>around 33% (see chart), more than the combined figure for the three parties</p><p>in Mr Scholz’s disputatious “traffic-light” coalition (comprising the SPD,</p><p>Greens and liberal Free Democrats, or FDP). The CDU did reasonably well</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05/15/germanys-government-is-barely-holding-together</p><p>at state elections in Germany’s east earlier this month: it retained control of</p><p>Saxony, holding off a surge from the hard-right Alternative for Germany</p><p>(AfD), and looks set to take over the government in neighbouring</p><p>Thuringia, though in both places it will have to govern with awkward</p><p>partners.</p><p>A sprightly 68-year-old private-jet-owning millionaire with multiple lives in</p><p>politics, business and law, Mr Merz has shifted the CDU, the party of</p><p>Angela Merkel, rightward since taking the reins in 2022. Two previous</p><p>botched bids to lead the party, and a reputation for arrogance and grudge-</p><p>holding, left many in the CDU wondering whether he had what it took. His</p><p>dreadful relationship with Mrs Merkel—he never forgave her for besting</p><p>him in an intra-CDU power struggle two decades ago—worried many who</p><p>appreciated her talent at winning elections. He has sometimes seemed</p><p>unsure whether he wanted the top job himself.</p><p>Yet Mr Merz has silenced the doubters, at least for now. He has diligently</p><p>worked to win over the CDU’s moderate or “social” wing, whose members</p><p>include important state premiers, while stamping his own brand of crunchy</p><p>conservatism on the party. “As old as he is, he is able to learn from his</p><p>mistakes,” says Johann Wadephul, a deputy chair of the CDU/CSU</p><p>Bundestag group. In May he was re-elected by nearly 90% of CDU</p><p>delegates.</p><p>The unpopularity of the traffic-light coalition has helped Mr Merz’s cause,</p><p>and his bombastic rhetorical style offers a sharp contrast to Mr Scholz’s</p><p>reticence. He has hammered the government on everything from its</p><p>budgetary proposals to what he considers its halting support for Ukraine: he</p><p>decries Mr Scholz’s refusal to donate German Taurus cruise missiles to</p><p>Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces, for example.</p><p>In recent weeks Mr Merz has been especially strident on irregular</p><p>migration, following the murder of three Germans by a Syrian asylum-</p><p>seeker who had evaded a deportation order. Last week he led a CDU</p><p>walkout of a “migration summit” with the governing parties. Having found</p><p>receptive ears for that message, Mr Merz can be expected to stick to it as</p><p>the election approaches (he also hopes talking tough on immigration will</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/01/the-hard-right-takes-germany-into-dangerous-territory</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/01/22/friedrich-merz-takes-over-as-leader-of-germanys-christian-democrats</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/10/31/germanys-ruling-party-is-making-a-hash-of-choosing-its-next-leader</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2024/03/12/why-germany-is-reluctant-to-send-taurus-missiles-to-ukraine</p><p>stunt the growth of the AfD). But he said on September 17th that his</p><p>election priority will be Germany’s faltering economic performance.</p><p>Mr Merz may also need to offer some hint of his preference for coalition</p><p>partners, in a fragmented party landscape in which populist parties of left</p><p>and right command growing vote-shares. Mr Söder has declared the Greens</p><p>beyond the pale, a potentially troublesome stance that infuriates those CDU</p><p>premiers who lead successful coalitions with the Greens in states like North</p><p>Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. But the FDP, the traditional</p><p>partner of the CDU/CSU, is polling so low that it may not make it into the</p><p>Bundestag in the next election. Since the CDU/CSU will not govern with</p><p>the AfD or other fringe outfits, that would probably leave a Merkel-style</p><p>“grand coalition” with the SPD as the only option.</p><p>As for Mr Scholz, he proclaims himself up for the fight. The chancellor’s</p><p>advisers think Mr Merz is a deeply flawed candidate. They aim to portray</p><p>him as a reckless, out-of-touch sort who will slash pensions and undermine</p><p>workers’ rights; they will seek to exploit his relative unpopularity with</p><p>women and younger voters. (They may also hope to goad him into a hot-</p><p>tempered remark or two in the heat of the campaign). Although the SPD’s</p><p>ratings are dismal, for now voters seem no more keen on either man as</p><p>chancellor. A large plurality would prefer neither of them to run the country</p><p>(see chart).</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/05/germanys-party-system-is-coming-under-unprecedented-strain</p><p>Yet without an unpopular record to defend, Mr Merz is in a better position</p><p>than his rival. Indeed, Mr Scholz’s own candidacy is not even assured.</p><p>Should the SPD fail to take first place at an election in Brandenburg,</p><p>another eastern state, on September 22nd, some in the party will call for the</p><p>chancellor to make way for new blood. Mr Merz’s position is more secure.</p><p>Having won over his party, and now the CSU, his biggest challenge awaits:</p><p>to convert himself, in voters’ eyes, from an opposition leader to a</p><p>chancellor-in-waiting. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our</p><p>weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/17/germanys-conservatives-choose-the-</p><p>countrys-probable-next-leader</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cafe-europa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/17/germanys-conservatives-choose-the-countrys-probable-next-leader</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The cogs of war</p><p>Ukraine is a booming market for</p><p>Balkan arms makers</p><p>It’s not just gangsters buying Serbian and Bosnian ammo these days</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:38 上午</p><p>TERRORISTS AND gangsters</p><p>enjoyed a weapons bonanza after the</p><p>breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Now it is Western governments’ turn.</p><p>With war raging in Ukraine, they are hoovering up the region’s ammunition</p><p>and mortars. Western Balkan arms-makers are booming. Serbian arms</p><p>exports have quadrupled since 2020; some €800m ($890m)-worth of its</p><p>ammo has gone to Ukraine since the invasion. Bosnia’s exports in the first</p><p>four months of 2024 nearly doubled compared with the same period last</p><p>year. Its ammunition factories are working around the clock, says Jasmin</p><p>Mujanovic of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a think-tank.</p><p>During the cold war, security-paranoid Yugoslavia had a large army</p><p>supported by a sprawling military-industrial complex. Vestiges of its</p><p>defence industry are now concentrated in Bosnia and Serbia, which account</p><p>for over 90% of the western Balkans’ military exports. Of particular interest</p><p>to Ukraine and its backers is the industry’s ability to churn out both Soviet-</p><p>and NATO-standard munitions and equipment. Its wares are also generally</p><p>cheap: a Bosnian shell may go for a quarter the price of a Western one.</p><p>Both Bosnia and Serbia have laws that restrict them from hawking weapons</p><p>to war zones. But they have found workarounds through third parties.</p><p>America, for example, is the main buyer of Bosnian bullets, which it</p><p>reroutes to Ukraine. Serbia, despite its refusal to impose sanctions on</p><p>Russia, has funnelled thousands of artillery rounds via the Czech Republic,</p><p>Turkey and a thicket of shell companies. Balkan NATO members—Croatia,</p><p>Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia—have transferred much of their</p><p>inventories of old Soviet kit. Recent reports suggest that Croatia could</p><p>refurbish clapped-out Kuwaiti M-84 tanks (Yugoslavia’s version of the</p><p>Soviet T-72) to be sent to Ukraine.</p><p>For some regional governments it is an opportunity to win political credit</p><p>with America and the European Union. That is especially true of those</p><p>aspiring to join the EU, such as Bosnia and Albania. Ukraine is tapping into</p><p>that sentiment. In February Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky,</p><p>called for joint arms production with western Balkan countries to ensure</p><p>Ukraine’s “survival”. Economic motives are also at play, suggests Katarina</p><p>Djokic of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, another</p><p>think-tank. Bosnian ammunition factories, once on the verge of shutting</p><p>down, are now fully staffed.</p><p>For Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s president, weapons sales to Ukraine are part</p><p>of a delicate balancing act between the West and Russia. But they are also</p><p>good business. “I adore it when we export arms,” he once crowed, “it is a</p><p>pure influx of foreign currency.” Serbian weapons tend to show up in far-</p><p>flung conflicts. In July Amnesty International, a human-rights watchdog,</p><p>reported finding vast quantities of Serbian arms in war-torn Sudan. An</p><p>investigation by BIRN, a network of Balkan reporters, and Haaretz, an</p><p>Israeli newspaper, found a spike in Serbian weapons flown to Israel since</p><p>the October 2023 attacks.</p><p>Serbia’s arms exports do not always suit its nationalists’ tastes. Milorad</p><p>Dodik, who as leader of the Republika Srpska (the Serb-dominated part of</p><p>Bosnia) calls for an ethnic Serbian superstate, criticises the sale of weapons</p><p>to Ukraine. Some ethnic Serbs have gone to fight for Russia. Others in the</p><p>region worry about Serbia’s arms imports, not its exports: its recent</p><p>purchase of French-built Rafale fighter jets delighted Western governments,</p><p>but has made Croatia and Kosovo jittery. In any case, decades after the end</p><p>of the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Balkan arms trade</p><p>is still going strong. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our</p><p>weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/ukraine-is-a-booming-market-for-balkan-</p><p>arms-makers</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cafe-europa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/ukraine-is-a-booming-market-for-balkan-arms-makers</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Brussels reboot</p><p>Can a new crew of European</p><p>commissioners revive the</p><p>continent?</p><p>Ursula von der Leyen picks her team</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Brussels</p><p>FOR A SENSE of what Europeans fret about, look at the job titles given to</p><p>European commissioners in Brussels. Five years ago a Greek official was</p><p>put in charge of “protecting our European way of life”—a job that largely</p><p>entailed keeping migrants out. (After a furore he was merely asked to</p><p>“promote” this elusive way of life.) The recurring theme of the job titles</p><p>handed out to a new set of commissioners on September 17th is that the</p><p>European Union is now fretting about its place in the world, particularly its</p><p>economy. One commissioner has been asked to look after not just trade but</p><p>also “economic security”, another aims to promote “tech sovereignty”, yet</p><p>another to deliver “prosperity”. To add to the anxious vibe, for the first time</p><p>the bloc will have a straight-up defence commissioner.</p><p>The fretful tone is warranted. War is still raging in neighbouring Ukraine,</p><p>whose prospects will dim if Donald Trump wins the American election in</p><p>November. Last week Mario Draghi, a former Italian prime minister, issued</p><p>a gloomy report on the EU economy, spelling out reforms needed to</p><p>rekindle the bloc’s growth. Politically, Europe is rudderless. Governments</p><p>in France and Germany, the bloc’s two biggest countries, are unpopular and</p><p>crippled by coalition woes.</p><p>Ursula von der Leyen, who in June was picked by national leaders to serve</p><p>a second term as the European Commission’s president, thus has lots of</p><p>scope to shape the EU’s executive arm. Each of the 27 countries nominates</p><p>one commissioner, but it is up to the president to decide who does what.</p><p>(The European Parliament will grill the nominees in the coming weeks.) In</p><p>the past many top jobs went to politicians from small, open countries in</p><p>northern Europe. This time it is officials from big countries with statist</p><p>instincts in southern Europe that dominate.</p><p>The most important fresh face in Brussels will be Teresa Ribera, until now</p><p>the Spanish ecology minister. One of six vice-presidents of the commission,</p><p>her sprawling portfolio includes Europe’s flagship decarbonisation efforts.</p><p>Once known as the Green Deal, it is now to become a “clean, just and</p><p>competitive transition”—a concession to those who think environmental</p><p>rules have burdened businesses and imposed costs on consumers, too.</p><p>Included in her brief will be the EU’s powers to enforce antitrust rules, and</p><p>to prevent national governments from showering favoured companies with</p><p>subsidies. Such “state aid”, in Eurocratese, soared in recent years as the EU</p><p>faced first covid-19 and then an energy crisis linked to the war. The</p><p>outgoing competition enforcer, Margrethe Vestager, a Dane with liberal</p><p>instincts, often stood in the way of the dirigiste policies egged on notably</p><p>by France. But it has been an increasingly lonely fight.</p><p>In recent years the chief proponent in Brussels of the statist approach was</p><p>Thierry Breton, a former French finance minister. He had been expected to</p><p>return for another five years as the commission’s point man on industry,</p><p>regulating and subsidising EU firms to do politicians’ bidding. But a spat</p><p>with Mrs von der Leyen led her to suggest to Emmanuel Macron that he be</p><p>dumped. Instead it will be Stéphane Séjourné, a close ally of the French</p><p>president, who will take over the job. Defence—meaning mainly trying to</p><p>co-ordinate the continent’s fragmented arms industry—will be the purview</p><p>of Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister.</p><p>Another prominent southern European will be Raffaele Fitto, until now a</p><p>minister in the hard-right government of Giorgia Meloni in Italy. His</p><p>“cohesion and reforms” brief includes oversight of the vast Next Generation</p><p>fund, which involved national governments deploying €750bn ($835bn) of</p><p>money jointly borrowed in the aftermath of the pandemic. Mr Draghi</p><p>in the 1990s. For the more than</p><p>700m people who are still in extreme poverty—and the 3bn who are merely</p><p>poor—this is grim news.</p><p>Leader: How the world’s poor stopped catching up</p><p>Finance & economics: The world’s poorest countries have experienced a</p><p>brutal decade</p><p>By Invitation: Bill Gates on how feeding children properly can transform</p><p>global health</p><p>In the rest of the world we considered the breakthrough that AI needs. Two</p><p>years after ChatGPT took the world by storm, improvements in generative</p><p>artificial intelligence seem to be slowing. Large language models have a</p><p>keen appetite for electricity. The energy used to train OpenAI’s GPT-4</p><p>model could have powered 50 American homes for a century. And as</p><p>models get bigger, costs rise rapidly. On top of this, asking a model to</p><p>answer a query comes at a computational cost—anything from $2,400 to</p><p>$223,000 to summarise the financial reports of the world’s 58,000 public</p><p>companies. In time such “inference” costs, when added up, can exceed the</p><p>cost of training. If so, it is hard to see how generative AI could ever become</p><p>economically viable. Our leader argues that there is no need to panic. Plenty</p><p>of other technologies have faced limits and gone on to prosper thanks to</p><p>human ingenuity. Already researchers and entrepreneurs are racing for ways</p><p>around the constraints.</p><p>Leader: The breakthrough AI needs</p><p>Technology Quarterly: Silicon returns to Silicon Valley</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-world-</p><p>this-week/2024/09/19/this-weeks-covers</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/19/this-weeks-covers</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Leaders</p><p>The breakthrough AI needs</p><p>Power, chips and constraints :: A race is on to push artificial intelligence beyond today’s limits</p><p>How the world’s poor stopped catching up</p><p>Held back :: Progress stalled around 2015. To restart it, liberalise</p><p>Let Ukraine hit military targets in Russia with American</p><p>missiles</p><p>Biden dithers :: Hitting back at the forces blasting Ukrainian cities is legal and proportionate</p><p>Britain should let university tuition fees rise</p><p>Painful lessons :: Domestic students have been paying less in real terms every year</p><p>After peak woke, what next?</p><p>The left’s doctrine of original sin :: The influence of a set of illiberal ideas is waning. That</p><p>creates an opportunity</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Power, chips and constraints</p><p>The breakthrough AI needs</p><p>A race is on to push artificial intelligence beyond today’s limits</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>TWO YEARS after ChatGPT took the world by storm, generative artificial</p><p>intelligence seems to have hit a roadblock. The energy costs of building and</p><p>using bigger models are spiralling, and breakthroughs are getting harder.</p><p>Fortunately, researchers and entrepreneurs are racing for ways around the</p><p>constraints. Their ingenuity will not just transform AI. It will determine</p><p>which firms prevail, whether investors win, and which country holds sway</p><p>over the technology.</p><p>Large language models have a keen appetite for electricity. The energy used</p><p>to train OpenAI’s GPT-4 model could have powered 50 American homes</p><p>for a century. And as models get bigger, costs rise rapidly. By one estimate,</p><p>today’s biggest models cost $100m to train; the next generation could cost</p><p>$1bn, and the following one $10bn. On top of this, asking a model to</p><p>answer a query comes at a computational cost—anything from $2,400 to</p><p>$223,000 to summarise the financial reports of the world’s 58,000 public</p><p>companies. In time such “inference” costs, when added up, can exceed the</p><p>cost of training. If so, it is hard to see how generative AI could ever become</p><p>economically viable.</p><p>This is frightening for investors, many of whom have bet big on AI. They</p><p>have flocked to Nvidia, which designs the chips most commonly used for</p><p>AI models. Its market capitalisation has risen by $2.5trn over the past two</p><p>years. Venture capitalists and others have ploughed nearly $95bn into AI</p><p>startups since the start of 2023. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is</p><p>reportedly seeking a valuation of $150bn, which would make it one of the</p><p>biggest private tech firms in the world.</p><p>There is no need to panic. Plenty of other technologies have faced limits</p><p>and gone on to prosper thanks to human ingenuity. The difficulty of getting</p><p>people into space led to innovations that are now used on Earth, too. The</p><p>oil-price shock in the 1970s encouraged energy efficiency and, in some</p><p>countries, alternative means of generation, including nuclear. Three decades</p><p>later, fracking made it possible to reach oil and gas reserves that had</p><p>previously been uneconomical to extract. As a consequence, America now</p><p>produces more oil than any other country.</p><p>Already, developments in AI are showing how constraints can stimulate</p><p>creativity. As our Technology Quarterly this week sets out, companies are</p><p>developing chips especially for the operations needed to run large language</p><p>models. This specialisation means that they can run more efficiently than</p><p>more general-purpose processors, such as Nvidia’s. Alphabet, Amazon,</p><p>Apple, Meta and Microsoft are all designing their own AI chips. More</p><p>money has flowed into funding AI-chip startups in the first half of this year</p><p>than in the past three combined.</p><p>Developers are also making changes to AI software. Bigger models that</p><p>rely on the brute force of computational power are giving way to smaller</p><p>and more specialised systems. OpenAI’s newest model, o1, is designed to</p><p>be better at reasoning, but not generating text. Other makers are employing</p><p>less onerous calculations, so as to make more efficient use of chips.</p><p>Through clever approaches, such as using a mixture of models, each suited</p><p>to a different type of problem, researchers have drastically cut down on</p><p>processing time. All this will change how the industry operates.</p><p>Investors and governments have become used to the idea that, among tech</p><p>companies, the incumbent has a natural advantage. For AI, that assumption</p><p>can no longer be taken for granted. Today Nvidia sells four-fifths of the</p><p>world’s AI chips. But other more specialised rivals could well eat into its</p><p>share. Already Google’s AI processors are the third-most-used in data</p><p>centres around the world.</p><p>OpenAI may have launched the pioneering large language model. But as</p><p>resource constraints have struck, other big modelmakers such as Anthropic,</p><p>Google and Meta are catching up. Although a gap between them and the</p><p>second-tier models, such as France’s Mistral, still exists, it may close. If the</p><p>trend towards smaller and more specialised models continues, then the AI</p><p>universe could contain a constellation of models, instead of just a few</p><p>superstars.</p><p>This means that investors are in for a rocky ride. Their bets on today’s</p><p>leaders look less certain. Nvidia could lose ground to other chipmakers;</p><p>OpenAI could be supplanted. The big tech firms are hoovering up talent,</p><p>and many of them make the devices through which, they hope, consumers</p><p>will reach their AI assistants. But competition among them is fierce. Few</p><p>firms yet have a strategy for turning a profit from generative AI. Even if the</p><p>industry does end up belonging to one winner, it is not clear who that will</p><p>be.</p><p>Governments, too, will need to change their thinking. Their fondness for</p><p>industrial policy focuses on handouts. But progress in AI is as much about</p><p>having the right talent and a flourishing ecosystem as it is about amassing</p><p>capital and computing power. Countries in Europe and the Middle East may</p><p>find that the hard graft of cultivating ingenuity matters as much as buying in</p><p>computer chips. America, by contrast, is blessed with chips, talent and</p><p>enterprise. It has many of the world’s best universities and, in San Francisco</p><p>and Silicon Valley, an enviable and long-established cluster of talent.</p><p>Chipped away</p><p>Yet America’s attempt to restrain China is backfiring. Hoping to prevent a</p><p>strategic rival from gaining the lead in a crucial technology,</p><p>in</p><p>effect recommended rebooting the scheme to invest hundreds of billions</p><p>more euros into making the EU more productive. His advice, often echoing</p><p>the dirigiste faction, has been adopted wholesale by Mrs von der Leyen.</p><p>Perhaps Mr Draghi is the official who will have mattered most of all:</p><p>incoming commissioners have been asked to implement his suggestions. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our</p><p>weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/can-a-new-crew-of-european-</p><p>commissioners-revive-the-continent</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cafe-europa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/can-a-new-crew-of-european-commissioners-revive-the-continent</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Temptation islands</p><p>Aland is lovely, weapon-free and</p><p>too close to Russia</p><p>Finland worries the demilitarised islands could fall prey in a conflict</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Aland</p><p>“EVERYTHING HAS become more intense,” murmurs Juri Jalava as his</p><p>coastguard cutter plies the waters of the Aland Islands. Tension with Russia</p><p>means he is spending longer at sea than ever: “We do not want to be caught</p><p>out.” Aland, a Skye-sized island surrounded by 7,000 islets and rocks, is</p><p>awkward for Finland. Over 95% of its trade passes through or near the</p><p>islands, as do crucial data and electricity cables linked to the rest of Europe.</p><p>But Finland is bound by treaty to keep these Swedish-speaking islands</p><p>demilitarised in peacetime. They have been so since the Crimean War, when</p><p>Britain and France tried to strangle Russian trade through the Baltic.</p><p>With Finnish soldiers banned from training or storing weapons on the</p><p>islands, security types worry they may be unprepared. Russia would need to</p><p>take Aland to dominate the Baltic in any conflict with the West. Sweden</p><p>remilitarised nearby Gotland after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014; Russian</p><p>soldiers have practised seizing both islands.</p><p>“Why should we leave this hole in our defences that benefits only Russia?”</p><p>asks Pekka Toveri, a former head of Finnish military intelligence. He</p><p>worries a small Russian force could disrupt NATO reinforcements bound</p><p>for Finland. Kjell Torner, who once commanded the force tasked with</p><p>racing to Aland during wartime, worries about undercover agents sent to</p><p>cause trouble. He claims there are weapons in the cellar of Aland’s Russian</p><p>consulate. “It just makes life so much more difficult,” snaps an official</p><p>involved in planning Aland’s defence. The Russians may have prepared to</p><p>cut the cables around Aland, another warns.</p><p>Yet reopening long-standing agreements risks opening a can of worms, says</p><p>Matti Pesu from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Russia, which</p><p>is party to two deals forced on a defeated Finland in 1940 and 1947, would</p><p>surely object. “Would it not be more dangerous to start ripping up</p><p>international treaties?” asks Mats Lofstrom, a local MP. Among some two</p><p>dozen pensioners protesting against the war in Ukraine in front of the</p><p>clapboard Russian consulate, none wanted Aland remilitarised. “It makes us</p><p>safer,” said Sonja Nordenswan.</p><p>Alanders are supposedly the happiest people in the happiest country on</p><p>Earth. It is not hard to see why, after walking the coastal paths lined with</p><p>boat houses and bird-watching haunts. Most dismiss mainlanders’</p><p>discussions about remilitarisation as populism at their expense. “It is all</p><p>pretty absurd,” snorts Michele Ferrari, a local politician. “We are</p><p>demilitarised and shall remain so. The world needs more demilitarised</p><p>places.” ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our</p><p>weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/aland-is-lovely-weapon-free-and-too-</p><p>close-to-russia</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cafe-europa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/aland-is-lovely-weapon-free-and-too-close-to-russia</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Charlemagne</p><p>Europe is bidding a steady farewell</p><p>to passport-free travel</p><p>Germany is the latest Schengen country to reintroduce border checks</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>STARING OUT over France and Germany from the vine-covered hills of</p><p>Schengen, a village at the southern tip of Luxembourg, it is hard to tell</p><p>where one country ends and the other begins. That is in no small part thanks</p><p>to a deal signed there in 1985, which committed the Benelux countries,</p><p>France and Germany to abolish the frontiers separating them. The Schengen</p><p>passport-free travel area has since grown to include most of the 450m</p><p>citizens of the European Union’s 27 countries, and some neighbours too.</p><p>Keen to capture the mysterious essence of Euro-federalism, a trickle of</p><p>tourists still flock to the village where it all started, as Charlemagne did this</p><p>week. Alas, visitors face three kinds of disappointment. First, a museum</p><p>celebrating the agreement is currently under renovation. Second, the village</p><p>has turned into a Saudi prince’s fantasy: with just a few hundred</p><p>inhabitants, it has eight sprawling petrol stations in its vicinity, serving</p><p>motorists keen to fill their tanks before leaving low-tax Luxembourg.</p><p>Finally, and most distressingly, the freedom of travel that put the place on</p><p>the map is steadily being chipped away. A symbol of the EU’s success at</p><p>bringing countries together risks succumbing to reinvigorated nationalism</p><p>across the bloc.</p><p>Starting this week, Schengen will have a Germany-shaped hole at its heart.</p><p>On September 16th Europe’s most populous country opted out of passport-</p><p>free travel by reintroducing controls at all its borders, initially for a period</p><p>of six months but probably for longer. To those committed to an ever-closer</p><p>union, this raising of drawbridges in a country that sits squat in the middle</p><p>of the continent bodes ill for one of the EU’s signature achievements. On</p><p>the ground, to be sure, little seems to have changed. Wandering on foot</p><p>across the Moselle into Saarland on the first morning the new measures</p><p>were in place, your columnist saw no sign of border posts; they have long</p><p>since been removed. (Germany has promised “targeted” checks that will not</p><p>disrupt the many workers who commute across borders. Woe betide anyone</p><p>inconveniencing a Luxembourgeois asset manager on his way back from</p><p>the office.)</p><p>Still, the new measures are yet another blow to a system that has endured a</p><p>thousand cuts, and may not be able to withstand many more. Like other</p><p>European grands projets, such as the euro or the single market, Schengen</p><p>requires each national government to trust that their counterparts in the</p><p>union are doing the right thing. Increasingly, they do not. That is</p><p>particularly true when it comes to migration, which worries voters (and thus</p><p>politicians) from Athens to Dublin. Germany reintroduced restrictions not</p><p>because it worries about Danes or even Frenchmen visiting. Rather, it has</p><p>lost faith in its neighbours’ policing of their own borders: their propensity</p><p>for letting in migrants from farther afield, who then make their way to</p><p>Germany.</p><p>This highlights Schengen’s central flaw. The implicit deal when internal</p><p>frontiers were abolished in 1995 was that those countries bordering non-EU</p><p>countries would have to police them assiduously, in a way that others could</p><p>count upon. That is only occasionally true: nearly 400,000 illegal crossings</p><p>into the EU occurred in 2023, the highest since a wave of migration in</p><p>2015-16. Once in the Schengen zone, migrants can travel uncontrolled</p><p>wherever they please. Often that means making their way from a poorer</p><p>country like Italy to a richer one like Germany. A continued flow of</p><p>migrants that authorities are powerless to do much about is fertile ground</p><p>for hard-right politicians, who are keen to denounce both migrants and the</p><p>EU. The German Schengen measures come after a surge in support for the</p><p>Alternative for Germany, a xenophobic party</p><p>that has done well in recent</p><p>state elections.</p><p>In theory, Germany could enforce the safeguards to Schengen that already</p><p>exist. Irregular migrants found to have travelled across European internal</p><p>borders can be sent back to the first EU country in which they set foot,</p><p>which has to either grant them asylum or send them back to their place of</p><p>origin. In practice the system doesn’t work. The countries meant to take</p><p>back migrants, such as Italy, Greece and Hungary, say they cannot cope</p><p>with migration flows outside their control. The bolstering of Frontex, a pan-</p><p>European border force, since 2016 has thus far made only a marginal</p><p>difference. A wide-ranging “migration pact” agreed last year is meant to</p><p>improve matters, for example by building facilities at the EU’s borders to</p><p>process irregular arrivals quickly (and thus send many of them home before</p><p>they can travel on to places like Germany). But implementation is at least</p><p>two years away. German national elections, in contrast, are next year.</p><p>Your papers, please</p><p>Thus the last-straw solution for frustrated interior ministers: reintroducing</p><p>border controls within Europe. This goes against the spirit of Schengen, and</p><p>indeed some of its formal rules. In theory suspensions of passport-free</p><p>travel are authorised only for up to six months. In practice some countries,</p><p>like France and Denmark, have quietly accumulated years of such</p><p>“temporary” restrictions. Many fear Germany will do the same. The EU</p><p>authorities in Brussels ought to protest but have tacitly allowed countries to</p><p>reimpose controls in the hope of preserving the system.</p><p>Seen from Luxembourg, the raising of the German drawbridge seems</p><p>manageable for now. Léon Gloden, the country’s interior minister (and for</p><p>many years mayor of a town just up the road from Schengen, bordering</p><p>Germany) says that EU member states should ideally refrain from unilateral</p><p>measures, even temporary ones. Luxembourgeois authorities are working</p><p>with their German counterparts to prevent traffic blockages. It is an irritant,</p><p>but far from the hard German border he remembers from his childhood,</p><p>which has long since been forgotten. “If I tell my children [about border</p><p>posts] now, they think I lived in the 19th century.” ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our</p><p>weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/europe-is-bidding-a-steady-farewell-to-</p><p>passport-free-travel</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cafe-europa</p><p>https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/europe-is-bidding-a-steady-farewell-to-passport-free-travel</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Britain</p><p>The broken business model of British universities</p><p>Grads and grind :: Frozen fees + fewer foreigners = big trouble</p><p>Ten years on from Scotland’s independence referendum</p><p>Good times :: The 2014 campaign has been mythologised by nationalists</p><p>Britain’s nuclear-test veterans want compensation</p><p>Atomic number :: Other countries have accepted the argument for redress</p><p>Treasure-hunting on England’s Jurassic Coast</p><p>Rock and goal :: Fossils on a conveyor belt</p><p>British farms are luring the Instagram crowd</p><p>Photo crops :: More and more farmers are diversifying into hospitality</p><p>How will Labour reform Britain’s public services?</p><p>The vision thing :: Last time it had a philosophy. This time, not so much</p><p>The bungee-jumping, sandal-clad right-wingers of British</p><p>politics</p><p>Bagehot :: If the Liberal Democrats want to replace the Conservatives, they must move further</p><p>right on the economy</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Grads and grind</p><p>The broken business model of</p><p>British universities</p><p>Frozen fees + fewer foreigners = big trouble</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Reading</p><p>THE LABOUR PARTY barely talked about higher education in the run-up</p><p>to the general election in July. In government, universities’ problems are</p><p>harder to ignore. In a dour speech on September 10th Sir Keir Starmer, the</p><p>prime minister, included universities among a list of public services that he</p><p>said were “crumbling” and “worse than we expected”.</p><p>Rising costs, combined with a fall in the number of more lucrative foreign</p><p>students, are forcing cuts: some 70 institutions are retrenching in one way</p><p>or another, according to a list compiled by the University and College</p><p>Union, a trade union. In May the Office for Students (OfS), a regulator, said</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/07/18/muddled-policies-are-harming-british-universities</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/05/14/advisers-to-british-government-dont-mess-with-graduate-visas</p><p>that 40% of universities and colleges expected to be in deficit by the end of</p><p>the 2023-24 financial year. In a “reasonable worst-case scenario” that could</p><p>rise to 80% in three years. At least one or two universities are rumoured to</p><p>be close to insolvency. On September 17th the BBC reported that</p><p>Universities UK, a lobby group, had asked for more funding to fill financial</p><p>holes.</p><p>At the root of universities’ difficulties lies insufficient funding for domestic</p><p>undergraduates (see chart 1). The tuition fee they may charge British</p><p>students was capped at £9,000 ($11,880) a year in 2012, and has scarcely</p><p>risen since. Inflation has gobbled away at its value: it is now worth less than</p><p>£6,500 in 2012 prices.</p><p>A crunch might have come sooner but for a sudden and sharp influx of</p><p>foreign students, whose fees are not capped and who can often pay double</p><p>what their English peers are charged. Their numbers began to soar five</p><p>years ago, in response to a change in visa rules that permitted foreign</p><p>students to remain in Britain for two years after their courses ended. This</p><p>unleashed demand from students in places such as India and Nigeria (who</p><p>find it much easier to pay for rich-world courses if they come with the right</p><p>to stay and work once they have finished). They flocked to universities that</p><p>until then had not taken many foreigners, and enrolled mostly in one-year</p><p>masters courses.</p><p>But the foreigner boom is now turning into a bust. Arrivals from abroad</p><p>peaked in the 2022-23 academic year, and are falling fast (see chart 2). So</p><p>far this year the government has granted 17% fewer student visas than it did</p><p>during the same period of 2023. One vice-chancellor thinks that the worst-</p><p>affected universities could be facing falls of 30-50%. Some of the reasons,</p><p>such as an economic crisis in Nigeria, lie outside anyone’s control. But</p><p>government policy has also played a role. At the start of this year the</p><p>Conservatives, seeking to bring down net migration, began forbidding most</p><p>foreign students from bringing their spouses or children. That is having a</p><p>bigger impact than most had expected.</p><p>This is not just a problem for universities that are highly reliant on</p><p>foreigners. As a hedge against trouble, many institutions have this year</p><p>sought to enroll more British undergraduates than they usually would.</p><p>Prestigious ones have found this easiest: the number of British youngsters</p><p>winning places in “high-tariff” institutions, such as those in the Russell</p><p>Group collection of universities, is up by around 13% this autumn. That has</p><p>left universities lower down the food chain short of new domestic entrants.</p><p>(It doesn’t help that rising living costs make student life less appealing.)</p><p>The financial risks are rising as a result. “I would be surprised if, after this</p><p>round of annual reports, there is not one university that has to have some</p><p>form of significant intervention,” says Jonathan Simons of Public First, a</p><p>think-tank. Things will get a bit clearer once term starts—when universities</p><p>are able to count how many successful applicants have actually turned up—</p><p>but conversations with creditors are already happening. “Some institutions</p><p>are talking to banks about potential breaches of covenant on loans,” says</p><p>John Rushforth, executive secretary of the Committee of University Chairs,</p><p>a charity that advises university leaders.</p><p>“And we know that there have</p><p>been some discussions with auditors about ‘going concern’.”</p><p>Failure and fees</p><p>For Labour, two questions stand out: how to handle a university that runs</p><p>out of money and how to put the sector onto firmer ground. On the first</p><p>issue, the official line is that failing institutions should not expect</p><p>government help. On August 15th Jacqui Smith, the minister for skills, said</p><p>that “if it were necessary” the government would let a university go bust.</p><p>That line might just about hold should problems strike at institutions that</p><p>are fairly small or in a city such as London, which has several dozen</p><p>universities that could soak up displaced students. In many cases, however,</p><p>the government would probably find the fallout from a collapse intolerable.</p><p>Administrators would neither prioritise refunds for students nor make much</p><p>effort to help them continue their studies elsewhere. Local bigwigs, terrified</p><p>of losing one of their biggest employers, would scream for help. Spooking</p><p>foreigners would only deepen universities’ malaise.</p><p>During the covid-19 pandemic the then government set up a process, the</p><p>“higher education restructuring regime”, whereby universities that risked</p><p>running into financial trouble could discuss their options with the</p><p>government. Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a</p><p>think-tank, believes Labour should create something similar. “It wasn’t a</p><p>perfect process, by any means, but it was a process—and what we have at</p><p>the moment is nothing.” If the government is really willing to contemplate</p><p>wind-downs then it ought to rig up a “special administration” regime of a</p><p>sort that already exists for colleges of further education, reckons Mr</p><p>Simons. That would grant administrators permission to consider the</p><p>interests of students, in addition to those of big creditors.</p><p>Even if Labour sidesteps a university bankruptcy in the coming months, the</p><p>party will still have to decide what to do about the sector’s overall financial</p><p>footing. Since coming to power the government has confirmed that it has no</p><p>plans to further tighten visa rules. But it is very unlikely to reverse the ban</p><p>on foreign learners bringing relatives with them.</p><p>The problem is not just that dependants were boosting net migration</p><p>figures: between 2019 and 2022 the number of dependants arriving with</p><p>students rose from 16,000 to 134,000. It was also feared that the system was</p><p>being gamed. Under the old regime spouses were permitted to work in</p><p>Britain while their partners studied as well as for the two years after they</p><p>graduated. Politicians began to worry that students from poorer countries</p><p>were enrolling in British universities solely to gain these working rights.</p><p>The other obvious way to steady the ship would be to push up funding for</p><p>British undergraduates. There are two ways to achieve that. The</p><p>government currently doles out about $1bn annually in “teaching grants”</p><p>designed to help fund high-cost courses such as medicine and dentistry.</p><p>Widening and increasing these payments would please people who think</p><p>Britain loads too much of the cost of higher education onto its students</p><p>(public spending provides only about 25% of all funding for universities</p><p>and colleges, compared with an average of 67% in the OECD club of rich</p><p>countries). Higher teaching grants was one recommendation in the last big</p><p>government review of university funding, in 2019.</p><p>The cheaper, and therefore much likelier, approach is to increase tuition</p><p>fees. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, another think-tank, reckons that this</p><p>would cost the government only about a quarter as much as expanding</p><p>teaching grants (because graduates would cough up the lion’s share of the</p><p>extra cash in student-loan repayments). Only a few years ago Labour was</p><p>promising to abolish fees entirely; it would not relish the prospect of raising</p><p>them. But policymakers have overestimated the furore this would cause,</p><p>says Mr Hillman: “The funding system is not broken; what’s broken is</p><p>politicians’ bravery.”</p><p>Were it to go down this path, Labour could perhaps dampen discontent by</p><p>bundling a higher fee with reforms to the loan system. In opposition Bridget</p><p>Phillipson, now the education secretary, said that she was interested in ways</p><p>to reduce monthly repayments for newer graduates, so as to give them more</p><p>“breathing space at the start of their working lives”.</p><p>She has also claimed that changes made by the Conservatives last year,</p><p>which increased the amount of student debt that low-earning graduates pay</p><p>back to the government while reducing lifetime costs for well-paid ones, are</p><p>“desperately unfair”. The party is said to be interested in alternative</p><p>repayment models that might use sliding interest rates to dramatically</p><p>increase the sums high-earning graduates are asked to contribute. In theory</p><p>this might generate money that the government could then spend</p><p>reintroducing grants to cover living costs for poorer students, which the</p><p>previous government junked in 2016.</p><p>Universities fret that Labour will end up deciding all these options are</p><p>unappealing and put off decisions by setting up a meandering independent</p><p>review. On September 12th Lady Smith, the skills minister, sought to</p><p>reassure the House of Lords that her party would not be hanging about.</p><p>Fixing university funding “will take some time to get right”, she said. “But I</p><p>do not believe that it will take as long as some people fear.” If institutions</p><p>start to get into real trouble, Labour may not have much choice but to act</p><p>fast. ■</p><p>For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,</p><p>our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/17/the-broken-business-model-of-british-</p><p>universities</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/17/the-broken-business-model-of-british-universities</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Good times</p><p>Ten years on from Scotland’s</p><p>independence referendum</p><p>The 2014 campaign has been mythologised by nationalists</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Glasgow</p><p>TEN YEARS ago George Square in Glasgow buzzed with campaigners for</p><p>Scottish independence. The anniversary of the referendum, which fell on</p><p>September 18th, passed somewhat more discreetly. Scottish political leaders</p><p>made pro forma speeches. Bob Doris, a Scottish National Party (SNP)</p><p>politician representing north-east Glasgow, says that activists planned to</p><p>talk to local people about the anniversary, but delicately: “We’ll do it very</p><p>quietly, in a dignified fashion.”</p><p>Neither supporters nor opponents of independence have much to crow</p><p>about. A YouGov poll suggests that, excluding those who do not know, 44%</p><p>https://www.economist.com/blighty/2014/09/19/britain-survives</p><p>of Scots would vote to leave the UK today, almost the same as the 45% who</p><p>voted that way ten years ago. But with no clear route to a second</p><p>referendum, pro-independence “Yes” supporters are gloomy. Another poll,</p><p>by More in Common, finds that only 47% of them think that Scotland will</p><p>become independent in their lifetimes. Fully 74% of “No” voters think it</p><p>will not.</p><p>Politically, the separatists have run out of steam. After the 2014 referendum</p><p>many “Yes” voters swapped their blue-and-white badges for the yellow and</p><p>black of the SNP, pushing it to a series of spectacular victories in Scottish</p><p>and British elections. But the SNP has endured a period of intense turmoil,</p><p>including the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as leader and the short-lived</p><p>tenure of Humza Yousaf, and has been sullied by the experience of</p><p>government. In the general election in July, under the new leadership of</p><p>John Swinney, it sank from 43 to nine seats in Scotland, partly because</p><p>some “Yes” supporters defected to Labour.</p><p>Even so, the nationalist myth-making machine is still humming. On</p><p>September 17th the National, a pro-independence newspaper, held a</p><p>screening in Glasgow of a skilful film by Jane McAllister about the 2014</p><p>campaign. “To</p><p>See Ourselves” depicts independence campaigners as decent</p><p>and music-loving, and their opponents as thuggish, English-accented and</p><p>not infrequently drunk. The film suggests that the referendum was lost</p><p>because Scots were too timid and believed too many unionist lies. The</p><p>audience loved it.</p><p>If they are to regain momentum, nationalists would do well to think more</p><p>seriously about why they failed to convince a majority of Scots in 2014. But</p><p>it is nicer to tell a simple story of plucky underdogs taking on the mighty</p><p>British state. “Wasn’t it the best of times?” asked Suzanne McLaughlin,</p><p>who created the Yesbar, a one-time pro-independence watering hole, at the</p><p>screening. A group that talks so often about Scotland’s bright future is</p><p>growing comfortable reminiscing about the past. ■</p><p>For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,</p><p>our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/02/15/nicola-sturgeons-resignation-is-part-of-britains-great-moderation</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/04/29/the-wider-lessons-of-scotlands-political-turmoil</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/18/ten-years-on-from-scotlands-</p><p>independence-referendum</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/18/ten-years-on-from-scotlands-independence-referendum</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Atomic number</p><p>Britain’s nuclear-test veterans want</p><p>compensation</p><p>Other countries have accepted the argument for redress</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>FIRST CAME a flash that lit “the sky on fire”. Then Gordon Coggon saw</p><p>the bones in his hands and blood pumping through his veins, as if he were</p><p>looking at an X-ray. Next he felt an intense heat, like someone was</p><p>“pushing a fire through his belly”. Around him men were shouting for their</p><p>mums. He soon turned to look at the dark red, blue and green mass before</p><p>him. The mushroom cloud “was a very awesome sight. But frightening at</p><p>the same time.”</p><p>More than 20,000 servicemen were present at British nuclear tests in</p><p>Australia and the South Pacific between 1952 and 1967; Mr Coggon’s</p><p>experience came on Christmas Island as an 18-year-old on national service.</p><p>In the years since, some nuclear-test veterans like him say they have</p><p>suffered health problems, including cancers, which they worry were caused</p><p>by radiation from the blasts. “Everything went wrong after them bombs,”</p><p>reckons Mr Coggon, now 85, who says all his teeth “started dropping out”,</p><p>and that he has suffered a “bent spine” and cancer.</p><p>British atomic veterans have been seeking redress since at least the 1980s.</p><p>Their campaign is gaining momentum. Andy Burnham, the mayor of</p><p>Greater Manchester, is among those now backing a public inquiry. In 2021</p><p>Sir Keir Starmer became the first party leader to meet test veterans.</p><p>But winning an inquiry or compensation will be tricky. In 2012 Britain’s</p><p>Supreme Court narrowly ruled against around 1,000 veterans seeking to</p><p>launch claims against the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which denies</p><p>liability. The court said too much time had passed. It is difficult to prove</p><p>that a specific exposure to radiation caused a specific instance of an illness</p><p>as common as cancer. Veterans say this makes it hard to assign legal</p><p>liability or to receive a regular war pension, which compensates people with</p><p>illnesses or injuries “caused or made worse by service”.</p><p>Studies of veterans’ health outcomes also complicate the campaign. One</p><p>mortality study, commissioned by the MoD and published by the National</p><p>Radiological Protection Board in 2003, found some evidence that British</p><p>men who took part in nuclear-weapons tests had a higher risk of leukaemia</p><p>compared with a control group. But it also found that overall rates of</p><p>mortality and other cancers were similar. Alan Owen of Labrats, a veterans</p><p>campaign group, complains that researchers have not measured PTSD,</p><p>fertility problems or the pain of “seeing fathers die young”, as his did. Most</p><p>people who witnessed tests are dead, making it harder to do new studies.</p><p>Other countries have acted. Under a plan introduced in 1990 American</p><p>atomic veterans who developed any of a list of 19 cancers were entitled to</p><p>one-time payments of $75,000. (That particular scheme expired in June</p><p>after an extension failed to pass the House of Representatives.) Canada and</p><p>France have also offered compensation to some veterans. But in July Sir</p><p>Keir refused to promise an investigation into what happened. And although</p><p>Labour promised in 2019 to pay £50,000 ($66,000) to each surviving</p><p>veteran, the pledge was not included in its manifesto this year.</p><p>Money matters less to some veterans than a wish to know what happened to</p><p>them. Their latest case, brought by around 300 servicemen and their</p><p>families, seeks access to blood-test records that they claim are held by the</p><p>MoD and that they argue would provide either evidence of harm or peace of</p><p>mind. The MoD has said no information is being withheld. Many veterans</p><p>just want an apology. Last year Roger Grace, an 86-year-old Briton,</p><p>reunited with other veterans for a showing of “Oppenheimer”, a blockbuster</p><p>film about America’s atom bomb. He was “quite moved. As young lads, we</p><p>didn’t know what we were seeing. Now we know more…it would be nice to</p><p>get some better recognition.” ■</p><p>For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,</p><p>our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/19/britains-nuclear-test-veterans-want-</p><p>compensation</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/07/14/realism-with-oppenheimer-or-escapism-with-barbie</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/19/britains-nuclear-test-veterans-want-compensation</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Rock and goal</p><p>Treasure-hunting on England’s</p><p>Jurassic Coast</p><p>Fossils on a conveyor belt</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | Charmouth</p><p>ALONG A STRETCH of England’s southern shoreline, gangs of small</p><p>children roam the beaches wielding hammers and searching for remains in</p><p>the rocks. This is not some post-apocalyptic scene, a day at the seaside via</p><p>Cormac McCarthy, but the mark of an increasingly popular pastime.</p><p>The hammering hordes are scouring the Jurassic Coast for fossilised</p><p>ammonites that swam in a shallow, tropical sea hundreds of millions of</p><p>years ago. The fossils are often preserved in pyrite, a mineral also known as</p><p>fool’s gold. And for prehistoric prospecting, this particular stretch of the</p><p>coast is paradise. Not only does it have a near-perfect geological record</p><p>https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/06/14/cormac-mccarthy-was-the-great-novelist-of-the-american-west</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/05/18/trade-in-dinosaur-fossils-is-good-for-science</p><p>from the Mesozoic era (some 66m-252m years ago), but frequent landslides</p><p>transport the cliff and its contents down to the beach. “Fossils on a</p><p>conveyor belt” is the way that Paul Davis, a curator at Lyme Regis</p><p>Museum, describes it.</p><p>Those remains are drawing more and more people. The Charmouth</p><p>Heritage Centre, where visitors can learn about local finds and identify their</p><p>own fossils, claimed record turnover in 2023, driven largely by its expert-</p><p>guided fossil walks. Social-media videos fuel people’s enthusiasm. They</p><p>often show rocks breaking open after one or two light taps with a hammer</p><p>to reveal perfectly formed fossils. If only it were so easy, says Lizzie</p><p>Hingley, a professional fossil-hunter who spends days carefully chiselling</p><p>remains from rocks. She attributes the popularity of fossil-hunting to a</p><p>mixture of therapy (“everything else melts away”) and thrill (“it is treasure-</p><p>hunting”).</p><p>The treasure can lead day-trippers astray. Emergency services on the</p><p>Jurassic Coast occasionally have to rescue fossil-hunters from cliff edges</p><p>and mudslides. Stuart Godman, a fossil warden, is employed by the local</p><p>councils and Jurassic Coast Trust to persuade people to hunt on safer</p><p>ground. Although he says that the vast majority of rule-breakers are polite,</p><p>occasionally someone “throws a wobbly”. Mr Godman has been told to “go</p><p>away”, using language “not as polite as that”.</p><p>He puts the rudeness down to the rewards on offer. The bounty may be</p><p>encased in fool’s gold but the returns are real. In August fossils advertised</p><p>as from Lyme Regis were listed on eBay for an average price of almost</p><p>£100 ($131); some were on sale for as much as £1,650. That may explain</p><p>some of the more egregious behaviour to be seen on the British coastline. In</p><p>November 2023 police apprehended two fossil-hunters on a protected beach</p><p>in south-western England who were attempting to break apart boulders</p><p>using a rock saw and angle grinder. In Scotland one landowner restricted</p><p>fossil-hunting “to an absolute minimum” after the area was “attacked by</p><p>fossil collectors”.</p><p>As long as everyone follows the rules and stays safe, Ms Hingley is</p><p>passionate about sharing the excitement of fossil-hunting. More searching</p><p>also saves more specimens that would otherwise be lost to sea. In 2017 she</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/05/18/trade-in-dinosaur-fossils-is-good-for-science</p><p>and a fellow fossilist, Paul Turner, discovered a prehistoric crocodile that</p><p>had previously been unknown to science. They came across it “sitting</p><p>sunbathing in front of the landslide”, no cliff-climbing required. ■</p><p>For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,</p><p>our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/16/treasure-hunting-on-englands-jurassic-</p><p>coast</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/16/treasure-hunting-on-englands-jurassic-coast</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Photo crops</p><p>British farms are luring the</p><p>Instagram crowd</p><p>More and more farmers are diversifying into hospitality</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>PETERLEY MANOR FARM, in the Chiltern Hills, has moved a long way</p><p>from conventional farming. When Roger Brill, a fourth-generation farmer,</p><p>and his wife, Jane, took over the derelict turkey farm in 1982, they set out</p><p>to grow and sell fruit and vegetables from the farm gate. Now the 40-acre</p><p>farm boasts a “wild spa” with outdoor ice baths and a log-fired sauna, yoga</p><p>classes in a Mongolian yurt and a café in a converted tractor barn. Produce</p><p>from the fields, including Christmas trees and apple juice, accounts for a</p><p>vanishingly small share of the farm’s income. It made up less than a tenth of</p><p>revenue last year.</p><p>“Instagram has changed everything,” according to Katy Brill, who took</p><p>over the day-to-day running of Peterley Manor Farm from her parents in</p><p>2014. Novel experiences and scenic backdrops do very well on social-</p><p>media platforms. In addition to the spa, the farm also hosts fitness boot</p><p>camps, an outdoor cinema and farm-themed messy play for kids—all</p><p>overlooking rolling fields. Plans have been approved for a new nature-based</p><p>nursery.</p><p>Branching out has become the norm for modern farmers. Nearly 70% of</p><p>farms in England are pursuing other business ventures, up from 56% a</p><p>decade ago. Out of those with additional income streams, one in five earn</p><p>more than half of their revenue from diversified initiatives. Some activities,</p><p>such as letting land to other farmers, are linked to traditional agriculture.</p><p>But many farms are venturing into new fields entirely. Half of farm-owners</p><p>let out space for other activities, according to figures from the Department</p><p>for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA); a fifth generate income</p><p>from solar energy (see chart).</p><p>Consumer-focused services in particular are booming. Social-media use and</p><p>a shift towards sustainability and wellness after the pandemic have driven</p><p>demand for farm experiences. Sales at most farm shops have surpassed their</p><p>pre-pandemic levels, according to the Farm Retail Association, a trade</p><p>body. Barns and farm venues across Britain outperformed hotels as wedding</p><p>venues in 2023, according to data from Hitched, a wedding-planning</p><p>website. Many farms offer glamping—camping for people who don’t like</p><p>camping—in luxury shepherd’s huts.</p><p>The decision to diversify may not be new: farmers have sought alternative</p><p>income streams for decades. But the need has become more urgent. Farms</p><p>have been squeezed by huge rises in energy costs following Russia’s full-</p><p>scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the soaring cost of agricultural labour</p><p>in the years since Brexit. Increasingly unpredictable weather, including</p><p>record amounts of rainfall, has made harvests less reliable. Changing</p><p>subsidy arrangements add to the uncertainty. DEFRA estimates that up to</p><p>42% of all farms are unprofitable without the Basic Payment Scheme</p><p>(BPS), a subsidy that was introduced in 2015 and is now being wound</p><p>down. New payment schemes require farmers to make their operations</p><p>greener.</p><p>Diversification brings new business for struggling farms. But adapting to</p><p>consumer demands leaves them exposed to wider economic cycles. It also</p><p>requires them to find workers with new skills. In future Peterley Manor</p><p>Farm will need more marketers and chefs, for instance, and fewer farm</p><p>hands. In one respect, though, things are not that different from old-</p><p>fashioned farming. “The hospitality business is notoriously difficult,” says</p><p>Ms Brill. “It’s hard work and long hours.” ■</p><p>For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,</p><p>our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/19/british-farms-are-luring-the-instagram-</p><p>crowd</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/19/british-farms-are-luring-the-instagram-crowd</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The vision thing</p><p>How will Labour reform Britain’s</p><p>public services?</p><p>Last time it had a philosophy. This time, not so much</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>“CHOICE IS CHOICE!” exclaimed Tony Blair. Shortly after the 2001</p><p>election, the prime minister had gathered his advisers at Chequers, his</p><p>grace-and-favour residence, to discuss public-sector reform. Three</p><p>principles—setting standards, devolving budgets and reducing barriers</p><p>between professions—had already been established. But someone had</p><p>objected to a fourth, the idea that parents and patients should be offered</p><p>choice. Perhaps “preference” would go down better with the trade unions</p><p>and the Labour Party? “Why mince our words?” asked Sir Tony.</p><p>Labour has entered office, as it did in 1997, with public services in a mostly</p><p>dire state. Its prospects at the next election in five years’ time will depend,</p><p>perhaps above all, on how much voters feel that has changed. The Blair</p><p>government’s approach was to develop a rigid set of ideas about how to run</p><p>schools and hospitals and apply them rigorously. The Starmer government’s</p><p>plans are, at best, inchoate.</p><p>To see why that could become a problem, it helps to recall New Labour’s</p><p>approach. Among those in the room at Chequers was Sir Michael Barber,</p><p>an education adviser whom Sir Tony would soon poach to run a new “prime</p><p>minister’s delivery unit”. Having spent years trying to reform failing</p><p>schools, Sir Michael was disdainful of the idea—popular among unions and</p><p>the wider Labour movement—that teachers or doctors should simply be</p><p>trusted to run things. Too often, that meant accepting mediocrity.</p><p>At a minimum, Sir Michael argued, ministers needed three things: a clear</p><p>strategy, a view of standards and capacity, and the data to monitor</p><p>outcomes. This became the basis of the delivery unit. Ministers would be</p><p>hauled into Number 10 and grilled on progress against tightly defined</p><p>targets like reducing waiting times or improving exam results. They, in turn,</p><p>published league tables and penalised underperformers. Underpinning all of</p><p>this was a belief that the left had got two</p><p>big things wrong: seeing public-</p><p>sector workers as motivated purely by altruism and public-sector users as</p><p>passive beneficiaries.</p><p>The method produced some brilliant results. Waiting times for operations</p><p>fell much faster in England than in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland,</p><p>which all rejected the reforms. English schools pulled ahead of Welsh ones.</p><p>One study found that the drive to reduce A&E waiting times saved</p><p>thousands of lives, especially among those who had suffered strokes. New</p><p>Labour proved to be adept at turning bad schools and hospitals into</p><p>adequate ones.</p><p>The approach was less good at freeing adequate or good performers to</p><p>innovate, says Ben Glover of Demos, a think-tank. It could be “stultifying”.</p><p>It also tilted spending towards short-term goals: in the case of health care,</p><p>more money went into hospitals than into prevention of illness. It led to</p><p>https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2015/03/26/delivery-man</p><p>some gaming of the rules. And although results improved many doctors and</p><p>teachers disliked the mix of “targets and terror”.</p><p>If New Labour’s ideas risked being too rigid, the current government’s</p><p>problem is the reverse. It is hard to discern well-developed ideas about</p><p>public services in the speeches of Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and</p><p>Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the exchequer. High-profile failures in</p><p>areas like probation have made politicians wary of applying market</p><p>methods to the public sector. If ministers do talk about reform, many prefer</p><p>to talk about making services more “personalised” and “relational”, voguish</p><p>but vague ideas developed in local government.</p><p>The government’s missions, which include ones focused on health and</p><p>opportunity, are very high-level. They lay out near- and longer-term goals—</p><p>such as reducing waiting lists and improving healthy life expectancy—with</p><p>little sense of how they will be reached or how resources will be prioritised.</p><p>On September 12th, responding to a grim review into the National Health</p><p>Service (NHS), the government floated some ideas about developing</p><p>financing models that would shift money towards prevention. But there will</p><p>be no detailed plan for NHS reform until next year.</p><p>There have been some signals of the government’s preferences. Ministers</p><p>are closer to the trade unions than in Sir Tony’s day. Ms Reeves has agreed</p><p>to large pay rises for public-sector workers without asking for anything in</p><p>return. In education, Labour has decided to end one-word judgments of</p><p>schools by Ofsted, a regulator. Unions had long argued that they put</p><p>teachers under extreme strain. Yet they were hugely popular with parents.</p><p>The problems could have been tackled by making changes to the inspection</p><p>process and how the judgments were used, says Nick Davies of the Institute</p><p>for Government, another think-tank. It is hard to imagine Sir Tony, who saw</p><p>extending choice to parents as critical to winning the support of middle</p><p>classes, making the same decision.</p><p>The absence of a clear strategy for the public sector is a big risk for the new</p><p>government. Before raising taxes to fund the NHS, Sir Tony insisted that</p><p>the government had a strong case that it would be “investment with</p><p>reform”. The current government cannot simply reheat New Labour’s ideas:</p><p>for one thing, the public finances are in much worse shape. But without a</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/07/18/can-britains-mission-led-government-defy-gravity</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/10/the-harmony-between-labour-and-britains-trade-unions</p><p>philosophy of its own and with tax rises expected in Ms Reeves’s budget</p><p>next month, it will be vulnerable to attack. ■</p><p>For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,</p><p>our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/19/how-will-labour-reform-britains-public-</p><p>services</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/19/how-will-labour-reform-britains-public-services</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Bagehot</p><p>The bungee-jumping, sandal-clad</p><p>right-wingers of British politics</p><p>If the Liberal Democrats want to replace the Conservatives, they must move</p><p>further right on the economy</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>IT WAS ALL worth it. The paddle-boarding, the alpaca-stroking, the</p><p>thrusting in the Zumba class, the makeover on morning television, the</p><p>rollercoasters, the falling off the surfboard, the falling off the paddleboard,</p><p>the falling off an obstacle course, the bungee-jumping. Every gimmick that</p><p>Sir Ed Davey, the usually serious-to-the-point-of-pompous leader of the</p><p>Liberal Democrats, endured during the election campaign was worth it</p><p>when, on July 4th, the party enjoyed its best result in a century.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/07/10/the-new-front-line-of-british-politics-is-just-lovely</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/07/11/britains-general-election-was-its-least-representative-ever</p><p>The Lib Dems won 72 seats, snatching 60 of them from the Conservatives.</p><p>Nearly all their gains came from the loveliest, and most prosperous, parts of</p><p>southern England. The party’s task at the next election is to replace the</p><p>Tories as the main opposition. The party finished in second place in 27</p><p>seats, 21 of which are Conservative-held. Conquer them and the two parties</p><p>would be almost-level pegging for the first time since the Edwardian era.</p><p>“Let’s finish the job,” said Sir Ed at the party’s annual conference in</p><p>Brighton on September 17th.</p><p>As a strategy, it is clear. But the consequences of pursuing it are</p><p>overlooked. Britain has a two-party system designed, broadly, to produce</p><p>one party more to the left economically and another more to the right</p><p>economically. Labour has sewn up the left. The Conservatives have only a</p><p>loose grip on the right. There is only one place for the Lib Dems to go on</p><p>economics: right.</p><p>Pointing this out to a Liberal Democrat triggers outrage or confusion. The</p><p>party’s MPs and activists put themselves somewhere between the centre and</p><p>beyond Labour’s left on the political spectrum. Partly this is a trauma</p><p>response: bad things happen to Liberal Democrats when they drift right</p><p>economically. In 2004 high-flyers in the party published the “Orange</p><p>Book”. It was a radical manifesto, which ranged from a tax lock, insisting</p><p>that no one should ever pay a marginal tax rate above 50%, to turning the</p><p>National Health Service into an insurance system.</p><p>The Orange Book did not have a happy ending. Its authors enjoyed mixed</p><p>fortunes. Three, Sir Ed among them, have become party leader. Others were</p><p>less lucky. One ended up in jail for perverting the course of justice.</p><p>Another’s career ended after he was embroiled in a scandal that the now-</p><p>defunct News of the World described as a “bizarre sex act too revolting to</p><p>describe”. More important, the party’s economic shift to the right paved the</p><p>way for it to enter into a coalition with the Conservative Party in 2010.</p><p>Voters deserted the party at the next election in 2015. Luring them back</p><p>took both the best part of a decade and Sir Ed repeatedly hurling himself</p><p>into bodies of water.</p><p>It is natural, then, that shifting right makes Lib Dems nervous. Yet Britain’s</p><p>third party does not have to move far. It may be socially liberal, but on the</p><p>economy it is already further to the right than people think. Ostensibly left-</p><p>wing policy is often, on closer inspection, anything but. For instance, Sir Ed</p><p>wants the very richest to pay more inheritance tax. The example given by</p><p>his team is that estates worth tens of millions often avoid inheritance tax</p><p>altogether. A crackdown on the mega-rich would allow lower rates for those</p><p>lucky enough to own a £1.5m home in, say, Oxfordshire. The most likely</p><p>result would be that the extremely rich find ways to avoid paying, and that</p><p>prosperous Lib Dem voters in the home counties toast Sir Ed’s generosity.</p><p>Opposing VAT on private schools is another case in point. This is a matter</p><p>of principle,</p><p>according to Sir Ed. Politically, it makes sense too. The sort of</p><p>parent who would send their child private is likely to be a prosperous</p><p>professional who lives in the south-east. In short, the archetype of the new</p><p>Lib Dem voter.</p><p>The bulk of Lib Dems may feel closer to their Labour peers. But it is Tory-</p><p>to-Lib-Dem switchers who will determine the party’s fate. The seats gained</p><p>in July include some of the most conservative places in the country, such as</p><p>Surrey Heath, a wealthy web of commuter villages outside London. Tory</p><p>voters who jumped ship to the Lib Dems were ever so slightly more</p><p>economically right-wing than the ones who opted for Reform UK,</p><p>according to Paula Surridge from Bristol University. Clinging on to them is</p><p>key.</p><p>From FBPE to FDP</p><p>Drifting right need not interfere with the long-held concerns of Britain’s</p><p>third party. Why should returning to the EU necessarily be a left-wing</p><p>thing? European integration was a centre-right project, with a cabal of</p><p>Christian Democrats trying to ensure that the continent did not do that</p><p>again. It evolved into a neoliberal project, with strict rules constraining state</p><p>action. Electoral reform, another long-held Lib Dem goal, is not an</p><p>inherently leftie project either. An obsession of sandal-wearing, pony-tailed</p><p>pensioners who dominate Lib Dem land it may be. But it is also a</p><p>preoccupation of Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK.</p><p>The Liberal Democrats are left-wing in one crucial way. They want—or,</p><p>rather, need—a second Labour term. The party does not control its own</p><p>destiny. Labour must be competent enough for wavering centre-right voters</p><p>to be prepared to gamble on the Lib Dems, and thereby give Sir Keir</p><p>Starmer another term, rather than reverting to the Tories. Meanwhile, the</p><p>Conservatives must stay crackers. If the state of the Tory party’s leadership</p><p>election is anything to go by, Sir Ed is in luck.</p><p>What the Lib Dems do have to decide is if they are happy to ensconce</p><p>themselves on the centre-right. For those members and MPs who wince at</p><p>memories of the coalition, or who were never on board with the Orange</p><p>Book, it is an uneasy shift. For all the campaign gimmicks, Sir Ed admitted</p><p>one idea went too far. An aide thought it would be fun for him to shove his</p><p>arm up a cow. Mercifully, party wallahs thought better of it. Some things</p><p>are too much, even for a Lib Dem. Drifting further right may be another. ■</p><p>For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,</p><p>our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/18/the-bungee-jumping-sandal-clad-right-</p><p>wingers-of-british-politics</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/09/18/the-bungee-jumping-sandal-clad-right-wingers-of-british-politics</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>International</p><p>A UN vote on Palestine underlines America’s weakening</p><p>clout</p><p>UNintended consequences :: Russia and China are riding a surge of support for the</p><p>Palestinians since the Gaza war started</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>UNintended consequences</p><p>A UN vote on Palestine underlines</p><p>America’s weakening clout</p><p>Russia and China are riding a surge of support for the Palestinians since</p><p>the Gaza war started</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | NEW YORK</p><p>“THE RUSSIANS are not the bad guys any more. Now it’s the</p><p>Americans.” Thus, explains a European diplomat at the UN, the war in</p><p>Gaza is eclipsing the one in Ukraine. These days many countries are wary</p><p>of criticising Russia’s aggression. Instead their outrage is directed at Israel</p><p>and, increasingly, at America for arming and protecting the Jewish state.</p><p>The accusation of Western double standards, gleefully amplified by Russia</p><p>and China, resonated across the halls of UN headquarters on September</p><p>18th as the General Assembly adopted a far-reaching resolution to exert</p><p>pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories within a</p><p>year. It passed with an overwhelming 124 votes in favour to 14 against (and</p><p>43 abstentions).</p><p>The war is hastening the broader realignment of global forces: America,</p><p>stretched by multiple crises, is losing its old supremacy. Russia has</p><p>recovered the military initiative and is determined to disrupt the America-</p><p>built order. China hopes to refashion it to its liking, convinced of its own</p><p>inexorable rise. And lesser states seek opportunity in the space created by</p><p>competition among the big powers.</p><p>This new world disorder will be on display as leaders gather in New York</p><p>this week for the UN’s annual summitry. Much about the talkfest is,</p><p>inevitably, theatre. The Security Council is increasingly paralysed by the</p><p>rivalry between the big powers. Even so, the diplomatic battles reflect the</p><p>shifting power balance of the world beyond, and affect it.</p><p>Lawfare and warfare</p><p>As Hamas battles Israeli troops in the ruins of Gaza, its rival, the Palestine</p><p>Liberation Organisation (PLO), which runs a patchwork of autonomous</p><p>territories in the West Bank, has been waging a diplomatic and legal fight</p><p>against Israel in international courts and institutions. Doubling as the</p><p>Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the PLO may be weak, corrupt and</p><p>besieged at home. It is nevertheless advancing abroad in the face of</p><p>opposition from Israel and America.</p><p>Palestine is the oldest obsession at the UN. In 1947 the organisation voted</p><p>to partition the British-ruled territory into a Jewish state, creating Israel; and</p><p>a Palestinian one, which neither diplomacy nor war has yet been able to</p><p>establish. Many members regard Palestine as the last great anti-colonial</p><p>cause; many in Israel see the UN as anti-Israeli, if not antisemitic. The</p><p>recently departed Israeli ambassador, Gilad Erdan, wore a yellow star, a</p><p>symbol used by the Nazis to identify Jews, to protest against the UN’s</p><p>failure to condemn Hamas formally for its attack on October 7th.</p><p>One front in the international battle has been the creeping recognition of</p><p>Palestine as a quasi-state at the UN. It currently ranks as a non-member</p><p>observer, akin to the Holy See. In May, after America vetoed Palestine’s bid</p><p>to become a full member, the General Assembly conferred several new</p><p>privileges on the Palestinians, including the right to submit resolutions.</p><p>Another front has been legal. Two recent rulings by the International Court</p><p>of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s judicial body, have turbocharged the campaign</p><p>against Israel. In January an interim ruling appeared to give some credence</p><p>to South Africa’s submission that Israel was committing acts of genocide</p><p>(the case is separate from war-crimes accusations against Israeli and Hamas</p><p>leaders by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court). In July the ICJ</p><p>issued an advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East</p><p>Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip—territories it captured in 1967—was illegal.</p><p>Using their new privileges, the Palestinians tabled a resolution at the</p><p>General Assembly, intended to give force to the ruling. It tells Israel to</p><p>withdraw from all Palestinian land, sea- and air-space; dismantle Jewish</p><p>settlements; return seized property; and pay reparations. It also calls on</p><p>countries to create an international register of damages, similar to one being</p><p>set up by the Council of Europe, a regional group, to prepare Ukrainian</p><p>claims against Russia. Furthermore, countries are urged to impose arms</p><p>embargoes on Israel; restrict trade in products from Jewish settlements; and</p><p>impose travel bans and asset freezes against “natural and legal persons”</p><p>maintaining Israel’s occupation.</p><p>The resolution was passed with the support of Russia and China, but also</p><p>some American allies, including France and Japan. Israel and its small band</p><p>of loyal friends—among them America and some Pacific island states—</p><p>opposed it. Britain, Canada and Australia abstained.</p><p>The resolution will not end the bloodletting in Gaza. Nor will it create a</p><p>Palestinian state. General Assembly</p><p>texts are not binding on members, and</p><p>would be vetoed by America if presented to the Security Council. Still, it</p><p>could encourage more countries to recognise Palestine as a state, as Ireland,</p><p>Norway and Spain did in May. It could also encourage more arms</p><p>embargoes against Israel, such as the partial one imposed by Britain this</p><p>month.</p><p>More extreme upheavals are possible. The Palestinians could make another</p><p>bid for full membership, which America would again veto. The General</p><p>Assembly might then resort to the nuclear option: stripping Israel of its</p><p>voting rights in the body, as it did with apartheid-era South Africa in 1974.</p><p>Such a move would provoke fury from America’s Congress, which could</p><p>decide to halt its funding for the UN. An existing law already commits</p><p>Congress to stop payments to any UN body that treats Palestine as a full</p><p>member. America remains the UN’s biggest contributor, paying for about a</p><p>third of its spending, counting both mandatory and voluntary contributions.</p><p>Palestinian officials say legal and political pressure on Israel is the best</p><p>alternative to a wider war. For Israel, it is the flip-side of a campaign to</p><p>delegitimise and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. “The Palestinians work</p><p>with both arms,” says Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN.</p><p>“Hamas commits terrorism on the ground. The Palestinian Authority</p><p>commits diplomatic terrorism.”</p><p>American officials, struggling to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, say the</p><p>Palestinian move is “unhelpful”. They argue a Palestinian state can be</p><p>created only by agreement with Israel, not by outsiders imposing a</p><p>settlement. It does not help that the resolution comes ahead of the UN</p><p>summit and in the final weeks of the American presidential election</p><p>campaign. But discomfiting America may be precisely the point.</p><p>Having thrice vetoed Security Council resolutions demanding a halt to</p><p>fighting, America in June secured the council’s support for its own three-</p><p>phase ceasefire plan to stop the war, release Israeli hostages and Palestinian</p><p>prisoners, and rebuild Gaza. America hopes there will later be a “credible</p><p>path” to Palestinian statehood. For months American officials have claimed</p><p>that the deal is close, yet the fighting goes on. Both Binyamin Netanyahu,</p><p>Israel’s prime minister, and Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader hiding in</p><p>Gaza’s tunnels, seem to think time is on their side. America seems unable or</p><p>unwilling to impose a ceasefire on Israel; has little purchase on Hamas; and</p><p>President Joe Biden’s hand is weakening as his term comes to an end.</p><p>As for the war in Europe, Ukraine enjoyed Palestine-like levels of support</p><p>at the General Assembly for the first year of Russia’s all-out invasion, such</p><p>was the shock at the blatant breach of the UN Charter’s injunction against</p><p>taking territory by force. Until February 2023 Ukraine won a succession of</p><p>votes, with more than 140 countries supporting it and no more than seven</p><p>backing Russia—a rogue’s gallery including Belarus, North Korea and</p><p>Syria.</p><p>The theatre of summitry</p><p>By the summer of 2023, as Ukraine’s counter-offensive faltered, support for</p><p>Ukraine began to fade. Martin Kimani, a recently retired Kenyan</p><p>ambassador to the UN, now at the Centre on International Co-operation, a</p><p>think-tank in New York, notes that Russia’s narrative—that the war was</p><p>provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion—“found a ready ear” among</p><p>many in the global south, where suspicions of Western imperialism still run</p><p>deep. The memory of America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought charges</p><p>of hypocrisy. Since the war in Gaza, though, anti-American feeling has</p><p>intensified. The West stands accused of caring more about carnage inflicted</p><p>by Russia than by Israel.</p><p>On the back foot, Western diplomats these days urge Ukraine not to submit</p><p>resolutions, fearing they would expose falling support for it. It does not help</p><p>that Ukraine abstained in a General Assembly vote in May seeking to</p><p>advance Palestine’s full membership of the UN. Nevertheless, in July</p><p>Ukraine presented a resolution about the safety of the Russia-occupied</p><p>Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. It passed with 99 votes to nine, but many</p><p>Arab and Islamic countries abstained.</p><p>Forget me not</p><p>Though the Security Council holds frequent and competing meetings on</p><p>Ukraine, Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN, admits that</p><p>“We have to fight to keep Ukraine meaningfully on the radar.” Once</p><p>friendly to Israel, Russia now positions itself as the champion of the</p><p>Palestinian cause. “The Russians behave as though they have been</p><p>exonerated,” says Mr Kyslytsya. For instance, at a session of council on</p><p>September 16th, the Russian ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, denounced the</p><p>“horrific” conditions in Gaza, the “arrogance” of Israel, America’s</p><p>“unconditional support” and the “hypocritical” West. The same day, a</p><p>Russian glide-bomb struck a block of flats in Kharkiv, killing at least one</p><p>person and injuring 42.</p><p>For all its swagger, Russia has yet to recover from repeated diplomatic</p><p>snubs, such as losing its seats at the ICJ and bodies such as the Human</p><p>Rights Council and UNESCO (the education, scientific and cultural body).</p><p>That said, Russia has thrown its weight around on a growing number of</p><p>issues. It has helped to push UN peacekeepers out of Mali; halted the</p><p>supply of UN humanitarian aid to areas of Syria controlled by rebels; and</p><p>blocked the work of a panel monitoring North Korea’s compliance with UN</p><p>sanctions. Russia, it seems, does not mind being the spoiler. “We see</p><p>instability as a risk, as something to fix,” says a Western diplomat. “The</p><p>Russians see it as an opportunity, and something to exploit.”</p><p>China plays an altogether different game, often supporting Russia but at</p><p>times co-operating with the West, for instance on how to regulate artificial</p><p>intelligence (AI). In March it co-sponsored an American resolution on AI;</p><p>America reciprocated by supporting a Chinese one in July.</p><p>At the UN, China stands as a defender of state sovereignty against the</p><p>intrusions of outsiders, for example, in the use of economic sanctions. It</p><p>reinterprets human rights as the expectation of economic development,</p><p>rather than individual liberties; and democracy as equality among states</p><p>rather than the right of people to choose their leaders. It sees itself as the</p><p>vanguard of the developing world, where it often finds a receptive audience</p><p>for its interests-first, values-second approach. “Russia does not mind being</p><p>seen as a wrecker of the system. China wants to remake it in its own</p><p>image,” says the diplomat.</p><p>As the big powers jostle, others seek space to manoeuvre. For instance,</p><p>India pursues a “multi-aligned” foreign policy, triangulating between its old</p><p>Russian friend and its newer Western pals. It has refused to impose</p><p>sanctions on Russia, benefiting handsomely from the resulting trade.</p><p>Turkey, though a member of NATO, has similarly stood apart from the</p><p>West.</p><p>It is difficult to measure influence. Despite its troubles, “America is still the</p><p>main game in town,” says Mr Kimani. But Western countries “are much</p><p>easier to resist now than they were a few years ago”.</p><p>Yet many countries, especially those that feel threatened by bullying</p><p>neighbours, are also drawing closer to America for protection. The war in</p><p>Ukraine has fortified the NATO alliance. Similarly in Asia, where Japan,</p><p>Australia and the Philippines have bound themselves more tightly to</p><p>America, and to each other, fearing China’s military build-up.</p><p>In the Middle East mighty Israel has relied heavily on the presence of</p><p>America’s armed forces to deter a regional war with Iran and its “axis of</p><p>resistance”, and to help shoot down missiles fired at it. Gulf monarchies,</p><p>which dislike Hamas, still seek American protection against Iran and</p><p>several maintain ties with Israel. As for Gaza, only America has any chance</p><p>of negotiating an end to the war.</p><p>Hobbled hegemon</p><p>America has belatedly woken up to competition with China for support in</p><p>the global south amid signs that sentiment is shifting. An opinion survey of</p><p>31 countries, conducted for The Economist</p><p>by GlobeScan, found strong</p><p>support for Ukraine in many of them. But respondents in India, Indonesia,</p><p>Vietnam, Egypt and Saudi Arabia sided more with Russia. The survey also</p><p>found strong support for American leadership in the world, though places</p><p>like Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia leaned towards China.</p><p>A separate annual survey of elite opinion in South-East Asia, by the ISEAS-</p><p>Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, for the first time recorded a majority</p><p>saying that if asked to choose between America and China, they would side</p><p>with China in a crisis. Western diplomats say it has become harder to meet</p><p>senior figures in Muslim-majority countries such as Malaysia and</p><p>Indonesia. Some in America’s Congress worry the damage to America’s</p><p>standing is becoming irreparable, though they also think showing loyalty to</p><p>an embattled ally will reassure friends worldwide.</p><p>A more anarchic world has thrown the UN into a profound crisis. The body</p><p>is busy, for instance, providing humanitarian aid to afflicted peoples, but it</p><p>is increasingly marginalised. Even as conflicts rage from Mali to Myanmar,</p><p>the Security Council is hamstrung. “The challenges we face are moving</p><p>much faster than our ability to solve them,” warned António Guterres, the</p><p>UN secretary-general, on September 12th.</p><p>Mr Guterres hopes two big talkfests this month will lead to a “stronger and</p><p>more effective multilateralism”. The Summit of the Future on September</p><p>22nd-23rd will seek agreement on a “pact” that would, among other things,</p><p>steer a path towards the difficult, perhaps impossible, reform of the UN.</p><p>Then, starting on September 24th, leaders will take part in the “high-level”</p><p>meeting of the General Assembly—a week of pretentious speeches and</p><p>quiet diplomacy. Expectations are low. “The UN now suffers from a surfeit</p><p>of summits,” says Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group, a</p><p>think-tank. “It is still quite good at getting leaders together to pledge things.</p><p>The follow-up is typically meagre.”</p><p>The Security Council, complains Mr Guterres, is “stuck in a time warp”. It</p><p>grants veto powers to five permanent members—the “P5” of America,</p><p>China, Russia (as heir of the Soviet Union), Britain and France—</p><p>representing the victors of the second world war. Ten elected members, who</p><p>lack the power to veto decisions, are selected for two-year stints. As great-</p><p>power enmity deepens, the number of vetoes has risen. Since the start of</p><p>2020 Russia has cast a veto 13 times, America six times and China five</p><p>times (see chart).</p><p>The flaws are ever more glaring. There is no permanent seat for India, the</p><p>world’s most populous country; nor for Japan and Germany which, though</p><p>not nuclear powers, have larger economies and populations than either</p><p>Britain or France. America has long supported giving each of these three</p><p>countries a permanent seat. It has also endorsed a permanent seat for Latin</p><p>America and the Caribbean, and one for Africa (without specifying which</p><p>countries should hold them). On September 12th Linda Thomas-Greenfield,</p><p>America’s ambassador to the UN, went further, saying the US supported the</p><p>establishment of two permanent African seats, as well as one for small</p><p>island states, such as Pacific countries, threatened by climate change. Few</p><p>believe America or any other P5 members want to share power, but</p><p>America’s move seems calculated to wrong-foot China.</p><p>Crucially, America says none of the new permanent members should have a</p><p>veto. That may upset India, in particular, which is pushing hard for equality</p><p>with the P5. “If we expand that veto power across the board, it will make</p><p>the council more dysfunctional,” said Ms Thomas-Greenfield. Instead, she</p><p>suggested, countries should focus on reducing the use of the veto. In 2022</p><p>the General Assembly changed its rules so that countries wielding the veto</p><p>had to come before it to explain why. This mild shaming has had little</p><p>effect.</p><p>Seeking order in the chaos</p><p>Diplomats say Russia, ever the spoiler, has entered 135 amendments and</p><p>reservations to the draft text of the Pact for the Future. They include</p><p>removing mention of the evils of “aggression” and of climate change as a</p><p>threat to peace and stability. It also wants to excise calls for the total</p><p>elimination of nuclear weapons. Others will have objections, too. In the</p><p>end, however, members will probably weaken the text and then, as one</p><p>diplomat puts it, “hold our nose” and adopt it.</p><p>Meanwhile, alternative international institutions are emerging. The BRICS</p><p>group of non-Western states, dominated by China and Russia, has expanded</p><p>to nine countries, and will hold a summit in Russia next month. Though a</p><p>disparate lot, one thing that binds them is the common desire to break their</p><p>dependence on the American dollar and Western payment systems.</p><p>A fluid, multipolar international order, says Mr Kimani, is welcomed by</p><p>many states. “Competition among big powers offers countries many</p><p>opportunities. What one power will not give you, another might.” That may</p><p>explain why some at the UN seem to be untroubled by the possible return to</p><p>power of Donald Trump. But would an increasingly transactional</p><p>international system with a weakened America really create a more</p><p>equitable world? Instead, as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza seem to warn, it</p><p>may be one that is far more chaotic and dangerous for all. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/international/2024/09/18/a-un-vote-on-palestine-</p><p>underlines-americas-weakening-clout</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/international/2024/09/18/a-un-vote-on-palestine-underlines-americas-weakening-clout</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Technology Quarterly</p><p>AI has returned chipmaking to the heart of computer</p><p>technology</p><p>Putting the silicon back in the valley :: And the technological challenges are bigger than the</p><p>political ones, argues Shailesh Chitnis</p><p>The semiconductor industry faces its biggest technical</p><p>challenge yet</p><p>Shrink to fit :: As Moore’s law fades, how can more transistors be fitted onto a chip?</p><p>Node names do not reflect actual transistor sizes</p><p>The names are meaningless :: A favourite way of measuring progress in the chip industry is</p><p>detached from reality</p><p>How to build more powerful chips without frying the data</p><p>centre</p><p>Getting to one trillion :: Runaway energy consumption remains a problem</p><p>AI has propelled chip architecture towards a tighter bond</p><p>with software</p><p>A Cambrian moment :: It has also been pushed farther towards specialisation</p><p>Researchers are looking beyond digital computing</p><p>OK (analogue) computer :: They are using biology and light to design powerful, energy-</p><p>efficient chips</p><p>The end of Moore’s law will not slow the pace of change</p><p>The relentless innovation machine :: Semiconductors are likely to continue their</p><p>transformational role</p><p>Sources and acknowledgments</p><p>Chipmaking ::</p><p>Silicon returns to Silicon Valley</p><p>Chipmaking :: AI has returned chipmaking to the heart of computer technology, says Shailesh</p><p>Chitnis</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Putting the silicon back in the valley</p><p>AI has returned chipmaking to the</p><p>heart of computer technology</p><p>And the technological challenges are bigger than the political ones, argues</p><p>Shailesh Chitnis</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>A CENTURY AGO, 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View, California,</p><p>was the site of an apricot-packing shed. Today it is just one of the many</p><p>low-rise office blocks on busy roads that house Silicon Valley’s tech</p><p>startups and wannabe billionaires. In front of it, though, stand three large</p><p>and peculiar sculptures, two-legged and three-legged forms that bring to</p><p>mind water towers. They are giant versions of two diodes and a transistor,</p><p>components of electronic circuitry. In 1956, 391 San Antonio Road became</p><p>the home to the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, a startup devoted to</p><p>the idea of making such components entirely out of silicon. It is the</p><p>birthplace of Silicon Valley.</p><p>The firm, founded by William Shockley, a coinventor of the transistor, was</p><p>a</p><p>commercial flop. The embrace of silicon was not. In 1957 eight of Mr</p><p>Shockley’s employees, whom he dubbed the “traitorous eight”, defected to</p><p>start Fairchild Semiconductor less than two kilometres away. Among them</p><p>were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, future co-founders of Intel, a</p><p>chipmaking giant, and Eugene Kleiner, co-founder of Kleiner Perkins, a</p><p>ground-breaking venture-capital firm. Most of the storied tech companies in</p><p>Silicon Valley can trace their roots, directly or indirectly, back to those early</p><p>Fairchild employees.</p><p>Before semiconductor components were invented, computers were room-</p><p>size machines that used fragile and finicky vacuum tubes. Semiconductors,</p><p>solid materials in which the flow of electrical current can be controlled,</p><p>offered components that were more sturdy, more versatile and smaller. And</p><p>when such components were made mostly from silicon, it became possible</p><p>to make a whole raft of them on a single piece of the stuff. Tiny transistors,</p><p>diodes and the like on silicon “chips” could be wired together into</p><p>“integrated circuits” designed to store or process data.</p><p>In 1965 Moore, while still at Fairchild, noted that the number of transistors</p><p>that could be put into an integrated circuit at a given cost doubled every</p><p>year (he later relaxed the doubling time to every two years). His</p><p>observation, codified as “Moore’s law”, mattered. Chips produced in 1971</p><p>had 200 transistors per square millimetre. In 2023 the MI300, a processor</p><p>built by AMD, an American semiconductor firm, crammed 150m transistors</p><p>into the same area. The smaller the transistors got, the faster they could</p><p>switch on and off. The MI300’s components are thousands of times faster</p><p>than their predecessors were 50 years ago.</p><p>All major breakthroughs in computing, from personal computers and the</p><p>internet to smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI), can be traced to</p><p>transistors getting smaller, faster and more affordable. The transistor’s</p><p>progress has driven technology’s progress.</p><p>For a while, the technological centrality of silicon chips was mirrored by</p><p>the importance of the businesses that made them. In the 1970s IBM, which</p><p>made chips, the computers that used them and the software that ran on</p><p>them, was a giant beyond compare. In the 1980s Microsoft proved that a</p><p>company selling only software could be even more attractive. But Intel,</p><p>which made the chips on which Microsoft’s software ran, was a huge force</p><p>in its own right. Before the dotcom bust of 2000 Intel was the sixth-biggest</p><p>company in the world by market capitalisation.</p><p>After the bust, though, the “Web 2.0” services offered by firms like Google</p><p>and Meta took centre stage, with the semiconductors on which their</p><p>platforms were built increasingly commodified. To describe the dynamic</p><p>underlying the growth of big tech, it was software, not silicon, that Marc</p><p>Andreessen, a venture capitalist, credited in 2011 with “eating the world”.</p><p>The boom in AI has changed that; its progress depends on immense</p><p>computational power. Before 2010 the amount of computing needed to train</p><p>leading AI systems grew roughly in line with Moore’s law, doubling every</p><p>20 months. Since then it has doubled every six months (see chart 1). That</p><p>means there is ever more demand for ever more powerful chips. Nvidia, an</p><p>American company which specialises in chips of a sort peculiarly well</p><p>suited to the needs of the large language models (LLMs) that dominate AI,</p><p>is now the third-most valuable company in the world. Since late 2023 the</p><p>MSCI index of chipmaking firms has outperformed its index of software</p><p>firms by a wide margin for the first time in over a decade (see chart 2).</p><p>As AI makes chipmaking important again, companies with AI ambitions are</p><p>getting into the game themselves. The driver is not just training, but</p><p>subsequent use (also called “inference”). Answering queries with LLMs,</p><p>though not as demanding as training them in the first place, is still a big</p><p>computational task, and one that needs to be undertaken billions of times a</p><p>day. Because bespoke circuits can do this more efficiently than the general-</p><p>purpose ones sold by most semiconductor providers, some companies</p><p>running LLMs are choosing to design chips just for this purpose. Apple,</p><p>Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have all invested in building their own</p><p>custom AI chips; there are more processors designed by Google and used in</p><p>data centres than by any other company but Nvidia and Intel. Seven of the</p><p>ten most valuable firms in the world are now in the chipmaking business.</p><p>The sophistication of a chip depends mostly on how small its features are;</p><p>currently the cutting edge is defined as having “process node”</p><p>measurements of less than seven-billionths of a metre (seven nanometres, or</p><p>7nm—see box on later page for a pinch of salt with which to take this).</p><p>That is where the AI action is centred. But over 90% of semiconductor</p><p>manufacturing capacity works with process nodes of 7nm or more. These</p><p>chips are less technologically challenging, but more widespread, found in</p><p>everything from televisions and refrigerators to cars and machine tools.</p><p>In 2021, at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, an acute shortage of such</p><p>chips disrupted production across various industries, including electronics</p><p>and cars. The industry’s pursuit of efficiency had seen it become globally</p><p>distributed, with different regions specialising in different bits of the chain:</p><p>chip design in America; chipmaking gear in Europe and Japan; the fabs</p><p>where that gear is used in Taiwan and South Korea; the packaging of the</p><p>chips and their assembly into devices in China and Malaysia. When the</p><p>pandemic disrupted these supply chains, governments took note.</p><p>In August 2022 the American government dangled a $50bn package of</p><p>subsidies and tax credits to lure chip manufacturing back to America. Other</p><p>regions have followed suit, with the EU, Japan and South Korea promising</p><p>almost $94bn in handouts. Things have been made more complicated by</p><p>America’s attempts to cut off China’s access to cutting-edge chips and the</p><p>tools with which they are made by means of export bans. China has</p><p>responded to those bans by restricting exports of two materials vital for</p><p>chipmaking.</p><p>But the chipmakers’ biggest worries are not industrial policy or national</p><p>rivalries. They are technological. For five decades, shrinking transistors</p><p>boosted performance without increasing energy consumption. Now, as chips</p><p>get denser and AI models bigger, energy use is soaring. To maintain</p><p>exponential gains in performance, chipmakers need new ideas. Some, like</p><p>tighter integration between hardware and software, are incremental. Others</p><p>are radical: rethinking silicon or ditching digital processing for other</p><p>techniques. This Technology Quarterly will show how such advances can</p><p>keep the exponential engine humming. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/ai-has-returned-chipmaking-to-the-heart-of-computer-technology</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/ai-has-returned-chipmaking-to-the-heart-of-computer-technology</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Shrink to fit</p><p>The semiconductor industry faces</p><p>its biggest technical challenge yet</p><p>As Moore’s law fades, how can more transistors be fitted onto a chip?</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:39 上午</p><p>INSIDE A STERILE, cavernous building in the Dutch city of Eindhoven,</p><p>the latest monster dreamed up by ASML, a maker of chipmaking gear, is</p><p>quietly humming away. Weighing 150 tonnes and the size of a double-</p><p>decker bus, the tool offers humans the latest way to do something they have</p><p>been doing since the ice age—writing on stone, otherwise known as</p><p>lithography. The stone here is silicon; the writing is done with light.</p><p>The machine fires 50,000 droplets of tin into a vacuum chamber every</p><p>second. A laser heats each drop to 220,000°C, 40 times hotter than the</p><p>surface of the Sun. This transforms droplets into plasma that emits light of</p><p>extremely short wavelength (extreme ultraviolet, or EUV).</p><p>it has sought to</p><p>restrict China’s access to cutting-edge chips. By doing so it has</p><p>unintentionally stimulated the growth of a research system in China that</p><p>excels at working round constraints.</p><p>When ingenuity counts for more than brute force, a better way to ensure</p><p>America’s lead would be to attract and keep top researchers from</p><p>elsewhere, for example through easier visa rules. The AI era is still in its</p><p>infancy, and much remains uncertain. But the breakthroughs AI needs will</p><p>come from giving ideas and talent the space to flourish at home, not trying</p><p>to shut down rivals abroad. ■</p><p>For subscribers only: to see how we design each week’s cover, sign up to</p><p>our weekly Cover Story newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/the-breakthrough-ai-needs</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cover-story</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/the-breakthrough-ai-needs</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Held back</p><p>How the world’s poor stopped</p><p>catching up</p><p>Progress stalled around 2015. To restart it, liberalise</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>SINCE THE Industrial Revolution, rich countries have mostly grown faster</p><p>than poor ones. The two decades after around 1995 were an astonishing</p><p>exception. During this period gaps in GDP narrowed, extreme poverty</p><p>plummeted and global public health and education improved vastly, with a</p><p>big fall in malaria deaths and infant mortality and a rise in school</p><p>enrolment. Globalisation’s critics will tell you that capitalism’s excesses</p><p>and the global financial crisis should define this era. They are wrong. It was</p><p>defined by its miracles.</p><p>Today, however, those miracles are a faint memory. As we report this week,</p><p>extreme poverty has barely fallen since 2015. Measures of global public</p><p>health improved only slowly in the late 2010s, and then went into decline</p><p>after the pandemic. Malaria has killed more than 600,000 people a year in</p><p>the 2020s, reverting to the level of 2012. And since the mid-2010s there has</p><p>been no more catch-up economic growth. Depending on where you draw</p><p>the line between rich and poor countries, the worst-off have stopped</p><p>growing faster than richer ones, or are even falling further behind. For the</p><p>more than 700m people who are still in extreme poverty—and the 3bn who</p><p>are merely poor—this is grim news.</p><p>To judge what has gone wrong, first ask what previously went right. In the</p><p>poorest countries education and (especially) health have depended on</p><p>donors writing big cheques. But even if aid has curbed disease, it has not</p><p>unleashed sustainable growth. Likewise with pro-market technocrats in the</p><p>IMF and the World Bank. Western institutions were most involved in Africa</p><p>and Latin America, where growth has been patchy and has varied with</p><p>commodities prices.</p><p>Critics of the “neoliberal era” conclude that globalisation therefore failed.</p><p>However, the most successful liberalisations came from within countries,</p><p>rather than in response to donors’ advice. In the 1990s global convergence</p><p>was powered by a few big successes: China’s rapid growth after it opened</p><p>up under Deng Xiaoping, a similar—albeit less spectacular—process in</p><p>India after reforms dismantling the “licence Raj”, and the integration of</p><p>countries in eastern Europe into the global market economy after the fall of</p><p>communism. All that amounts to a powerful endorsement of capitalism.</p><p>Just as the rich world did not make convergence happen, it is not to blame</p><p>for the stalling of development today. It is true that the West’s efforts are as</p><p>flawed as ever. The IMF and World Bank are juggling promoting reform</p><p>and development with fighting climate change, and are caught in the middle</p><p>of the power struggle between America and China, which is making it</p><p>fiendishly hard to restructure poor countries’ debts. Aid budgets have been</p><p>squeezed, hurting global public-health campaigns, as Bill Gates argues in</p><p>our online By Invitation column. Cash has been diverted from helping the</p><p>poorest to other causes, such as greening power grids and helping refugees.</p><p>Of what aid money remains, much is wasted rather than being spent after</p><p>careful study of what works. The “Sustainable Development Goals”, by</p><p>which the UN judges human progress, are hopelessly sprawling and vague.</p><p>The biggest problem, though, is that home-grown reform has ground to a</p><p>halt. With some notable exceptions, such as President Javier Milei’s efforts</p><p>in Argentina, the world’s leaders are more interested in state control,</p><p>industrial policy and protectionism than the examples of the 1990s—and it</p><p>is no accident that such policies boost their own power. Indices of economic</p><p>freedom have been broadly flat in sub-Saharan Africa since the mid-2010s</p><p>and in South America since the turn of the century. Nigeria, where nearly a</p><p>third of the population is extremely poor, still wastes a fortune on petrol</p><p>subsidies; textile bosses in Bangladesh get special treatment at the expense</p><p>of manufacturers who might otherwise create better jobs; and Pakistan’s</p><p>inefficient state-backed mining, oil and gas conglomerates are allowed to</p><p>stagger on.</p><p>Despite its past growth, a quarter of China’s population still lives on less</p><p>than $2,500 per year; its present economic slowdown, made worse by Xi</p><p>Jinping’s centralisation and the censorship of economic data, is reducing</p><p>their chances of a better life. Even India and Indonesia, which have</p><p>successfully liberalised in the past but still contain many poor people, are</p><p>now interfering with market forces to try to bring supply chains home.</p><p>According to Global Trade Alert, a think-tank, the 2020s have seen five</p><p>times as many harmful trade measures as liberalising ones.</p><p>Many of the West’s interventions in the Global South failed, but in the era</p><p>of catch-up, it did at least preach the virtues of free markets and free trade.</p><p>These ideas spread because communism was proved to be backward in</p><p>comparison with America’s prosperity and power. Today, though, America</p><p>is increasingly taken with interventionism, disdaining the old order and</p><p>trying to replace it. Many countries instead look to the Chinese model of</p><p>industrial policy and state-owned enterprises, drawing entirely the wrong</p><p>lessons from the country’s growth.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/08/are-politicians-brave-enough-for-daredevil-economics</p><p>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/08/01/indias-economic-policy-will-not-make-it-rich</p><p>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/08/01/indias-economic-policy-will-not-make-it-rich</p><p>As the world has turned towards intervention, so the chosen instrument for</p><p>poor countries has become trade restrictions, as IMF research shows. This</p><p>contains an uncomfortable echo of the failed development plans of the</p><p>1950s, built around freezing out imports rather than embracing global</p><p>competition. Fans of industrial policy will point to East Asia’s “tiger</p><p>economies” such as South Korea and Taiwan. Yet both embraced harsh</p><p>global competition. And several African countries that tried to copy their</p><p>industrial policies in the 1970s failed miserably.</p><p>You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone</p><p>The world will pay for its failure to learn from history. Rich countries will</p><p>cope, as they usually do. For the poorest people, however, growth can be</p><p>the difference between a good life and penury. It should not be a surprise</p><p>that development has stalled as governments have increasingly rejected the</p><p>principles that powered a golden era. Nobody will suffer more as a result</p><p>than the world’s poor. ■</p><p>For subscribers only: to see how we design each week’s cover, sign up to</p><p>our weekly Cover Story newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/how-the-worlds-poor-stopped-catching-up</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cover-story</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/how-the-worlds-poor-stopped-catching-up</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Biden dithers</p><p>The narrow</p><p>beam of light is reflected, using a series of mirrors that are smooth down to</p><p>tens of picometres (trillionths of a metre) to hit a mask that contains</p><p>blueprints of the chip’s circuits.</p><p>The EUV rays bounce from the mask and project the design onto a silicon</p><p>wafer coated with a thin layer of sensitive material called photoresist. The</p><p>wafer is moved very precisely so that the pattern can be printed again, and</p><p>again; a wafer can be used to make hundreds of chips. Typically, the</p><p>exposed photoresist (hit by the light) is washed off, creating a ‘stencil’ on</p><p>the silicon wafer. Subsequent machines etch away material, implant ions or</p><p>deposit metals onto the ‘stencil’ to create a layer of the chip. A new layer of</p><p>photoresist is then added, a new pattern projected onto it, and a new layer of</p><p>etching takes place. A modern chip can require dozens of such layers of</p><p>printing.</p><p>The latest EUV lithography machines from ASML cost more than $350m</p><p>each. They thus highlight a dynamic of the semiconductor industry: as</p><p>transistors, the main type of electronic component found in chips, have</p><p>become smaller, the tools and factories to make them have become bigger</p><p>and pricier. Brian Potter of the Institute for Progress, an American think-</p><p>tank, estimates that in the late 1960s a semiconductor fabrication plant (or</p><p>fab) cost about $31m in today’s money to build and equip. The newest fabs</p><p>that TSMC, a Taiwanese giant, is building in Arizona, will cost $20bn each.</p><p>Itsy bitsy teeny weeny</p><p>The transistors these fabs now make by the trillion are switches. Each one</p><p>has terminals called the source and the drain that are separated by a channel</p><p>of silicon. A third terminal, called the gate, sits atop this channel and</p><p>regulates the flow of current between the source and drain. When voltage is</p><p>applied to the gate, current flows from the source to the drain. Without</p><p>voltage, the current stops. These on and off states correspond to the 1s and</p><p>0s of binary notation.</p><p>However magical a computer program may be, the hardware it runs on is, at</p><p>heart, a set of such switches turning on and off according to the way they</p><p>are tied together by circuitry. Simple circuits called logic gates combine</p><p>transistors to offer the basic functions of binary logic: AND, in which the</p><p>output is 1 if both inputs are 1; OR, in which the output is 1 if any input is</p><p>one; and NOT, in which a 1 becomes a zero (or vice versa). Such logic</p><p>gates can be combined to form more complex circuits, and these circuits in</p><p>turn can be combined to form powerful processing chips.</p><p>Gordon Moore’s original observation, in 1965, was that as the making of</p><p>chips got better, the transistors got smaller, which meant you could make</p><p>more for less. In 1974 Robert Dennard, an engineer at IBM, noted that</p><p>smaller transistors did not just lower unit costs, they also offered better</p><p>performance. As the distance between source and drain shrinks, the speed</p><p>of the switch increases, and the energy it uses decreases. “Dennard scaling”,</p><p>as the observation is known, amplifies the amount of good that Moore’s law</p><p>does.</p><p>In 1970 the gate length, a proxy for the distance between the source and</p><p>drain, was ten microns (ten millionths of a metre, or 10,000nm). By the</p><p>early 2000s this was down to 90nm. At this level, quantum effects cause</p><p>current to flow between the two terminals even when the transistor is off.</p><p>This leakage current increases the power used and causes the chip to heat</p><p>up.</p><p>For chipmakers that was an early indication that their long, sort-of-free ride</p><p>was ending (see chart). Transistors could still be made smaller but the</p><p>leakage current placed a limit on how low a chip’s voltage could be</p><p>reduced. This in turn meant that the chip’s power could not be reduced as</p><p>before. This “power wall” marked the end of Dennard scaling—transistor</p><p>sizes shrank, but chip speeds no longer got quicker and their power</p><p>consumption was now an issue. To keep improving performance, designers</p><p>started arranging logic gates and other elements of their chips in multiple,</p><p>connected processing units, or “cores”. With multiple cores, a processor can</p><p>run many applications simultaneously or run a single application faster by</p><p>splitting it into parallel streams.</p><p>This allowed performance to keep climbing even though the speed at which</p><p>the switches worked was no longer increasing. But it did not solve the</p><p>problem that the power used by each transistor was no longer falling. As the</p><p>transistor count continued to rise, chip designers shut down parts of the</p><p>chip, known as dark silicon, to prevent waste heat from melting it.</p><p>Getting around the problem of leakage current meant abandoning the old</p><p>structure for transistors, in which the conducting channel sat flush to the</p><p>surface of the chip and the controlling gate sat on top of it. In 2011 Intel</p><p>introduced a design in which the channel stood proud, like a fin above</p><p>water, and passed through the gate, not below it (see diagram). This allowed</p><p>the gate to exert greater control over the channel, even when off. These</p><p>“finFETs” allowed chipmakers to continue shrinking their transistors. The</p><p>new transistors leaked less current and consumed about half as much power</p><p>as the previous generation. Most leading-edge processes now have two or</p><p>three fins per transistor to boost speed. FinFETs allowed the gate length to</p><p>shrink further, to around 16nm. But only so many fins can be placed side by</p><p>side.</p><p>To shrink the gate length further, the next step is to lift the channel off the</p><p>surface of the chip altogether, so that the gate surrounds it on all sides.</p><p>Samsung, a South Korean giant, was the first to build such transistors,</p><p>called “gate all around” (GAA), in its latest chips. Intel and TSMC are</p><p>expected to follow soon. IMEC, a chip-research organisation in Belgium,</p><p>expects GAA to take the industry to the end of this decade, at which point</p><p>gate lengths will approach the smallest feature size that can be etched with</p><p>existing techniques.</p><p>One contender to replace silicon is the carbon nanotube</p><p>Beyond this point the only way to increase transistor density is to redesign</p><p>chips so that some of the transistors which used to sit side by side are</p><p>instead stack one atop the other. Going three-dimensional allows</p><p>chipmakers to pack in more gates than the horizontal approach. Intel, for</p><p>example, says that by stacking transistors it can build the simplest kind of</p><p>logic gate, an inverter, in half the space usually needed.</p><p>Even with stacked transistors, the need to squeeze persists. Once a</p><p>transistor’s gate length approaches 10nm, the thickness of the silicon</p><p>channel along which the current passes through the gate needs to be less</p><p>than 4nm, making leakage issues even more pronounced. The industry’s</p><p>answer to this is to replace silicon with materials available in sheets of</p><p>almost no thickness at all. Circuits made of materials just a few nanometres</p><p>thick—the width of a few atoms—could allow chipmakers to shrink</p><p>transistors without concern about current leaking through when they are off.</p><p>Thinning out</p><p>Among the two-dimensional (2D) contenders to replace silicon are</p><p>materials called transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) which can be</p><p>prepared in layers just three atoms thick. Of the hundreds of TMD</p><p>semiconductors that could replace silicon, three look most promising—</p><p>molybdenum disulfide, tungsten disulphide and tungsten diselenide.</p><p>But such 2D materials have difficulties to overcome before they can</p><p>challenge silicon. The first is that the thinness of the materials makes them</p><p>hard to connect with metal wiring. Another is reliably fabricating chips</p><p>using these materials across a 300mm wafer, the standard size for chip</p><p>fabrication. Also, chip design relies on two different types of transistor.</p><p>Making either type is easy in silicon, whereas the new materials tend to be</p><p>better suited to just one type.</p><p>Another contender to replace silicon is the carbon nanotube (CNT), a</p><p>rolled-up sheet of carbon atoms that forms a cylinder with a diameter of</p><p>1.5nm (six times the diameter of a water molecule).</p><p>A CNT transistor is</p><p>built like an ordinary transistor with source, drain and gate terminals made</p><p>of regular semiconductor. But the channel is made up of tiny, parallel</p><p>nanotubes instead of the silicon channel in an ordinary transistor. The</p><p>smooth structure of the nanotube allows electric charge to be switched on</p><p>and off three times faster than through a silicon channel. The thinness of the</p><p>channel also allows the gate more control over the channel, reducing</p><p>leakage current and making it more energy efficient.</p><p>Eric Pop of Stanford University believes that foundries are leaning towards</p><p>2D semiconductors over CNTs, because they are easier to manufacture and</p><p>integrate with silicon. Though CNTs could offer superior performance and</p><p>are ideal for GAA transistors, they are harder to control due to</p><p>manufacturing challenges.</p><p>Nanotubes are not easy to build. CNTs are prone to imperfections in the</p><p>fabrication process which change their electrical properties. Most turn out</p><p>as semiconductors that turn on and off depending on the gate voltage.</p><p>About a third are metallic structures that are on all the time and cannot be</p><p>controlled by the gate. And growing a group of parallel nanotubes as clear</p><p>parallel lines between the source and drain is hard.</p><p>In 2013 Max Shulaker, now at MIT, with Subhasish Mitra and Philip Wong,</p><p>both of Stanford University, built the first microprocessor using CNT</p><p>transistors. The researchers designed an “imperfection-immune” processor</p><p>that functions even if a certain number of CNTs misbehave. By 2019 Mr</p><p>Shulaker had devised a microprocessor built with 14,000 CNT transistors</p><p>(half the number found in the 8086, a chip released by Intel in 1978). In</p><p>2023 researchers at Peking University built a transistor using CNTs on</p><p>manufacturing technology that can be scaled down to the size of a 10nm</p><p>silicon node. The results may seem basic, but they underscore the potential</p><p>of CNTs as an alternative to silicon.</p><p>In 1959 Richard Feynman, a physicist, gave a lecture that presaged the</p><p>nanotechnology era. He wondered, “What would happen if we could</p><p>arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them?” With semiconductor</p><p>device features now atomic lengths, the world has its answer: build smaller</p><p>transistors. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/the-semiconductor-industry-faces-its-biggest-technical-</p><p>challenge-yet</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/the-semiconductor-industry-faces-its-biggest-technical-challenge-yet</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The names are meaningless</p><p>Node names do not reflect actual</p><p>transistor sizes</p><p>A favourite way of measuring progress in the chip industry is detached from</p><p>reality</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>PAT GELSINGER, boss of Intel, a chipmaker, loves to brag that his firm is</p><p>leading the charge in semiconductor technology by entering the “angstrom</p><p>era”. The angstrom, named in honour of Anders Jonas Ångström, a 19th-</p><p>century Swedish physicist, is a somewhat archaic unit equal to a tenth of a</p><p>nanometre (0.1nm, or a ten billionth of a metre). The “process nodes” of</p><p>Intel’s latest chips are referred to as “20A” and “18A”. If you take those</p><p>suffixed As as denoting “angstrom”—which Intel never flat out says that</p><p>they do—that suggests dimensions of just 2nm or so. And at one point,</p><p>process node was pretty much synonymous with transistor gate length.</p><p>But banish any visions you may have of transistors just nine or ten atoms</p><p>wide. The transistors in the “20A” architecture, which the troubled</p><p>company has just abandoned so as to double down on the 18A, have gate</p><p>lengths of around 14nm—140 angstroms, or 140Å.</p><p>The “20A” node with a 140Å gate length is just one example of a</p><p>widespread trend. In the past decade and a bit, the dimensions that</p><p>companies make reference to in their marketing and the dimensions of the</p><p>structures on their chips have diverged.</p><p>In the 1970s the size of the process node was taken to be the distance</p><p>between the two terminals of a transistor, the source and drain, also known</p><p>as the gate length. In practice this meant the process node was also the</p><p>chip’s “metal half pitch”. The half pitch is half the distance between the end</p><p>of one metal line (a connecting wire that shuttles data) and the start of the</p><p>next, which means, roughly speaking, half the distance between the chip’s</p><p>components.</p><p>In the mid-1990s, gate length started shrinking much faster than the half</p><p>pitch. Then, in the 2000s, problems with power and waste heat saw progress</p><p>in shrinking gate lengths slow down sharply. The measurements referred to</p><p>by the companies caught up with the gate lengths and moved on down</p><p>below them (see chart). The marketing departments were going to be</p><p>Moore’s-law-abiding corporate citizens regardless of engineering</p><p>constraints.</p><p>This was considered defensible, in part, because gates were developing</p><p>internal structures smaller than their overall length. At one point Intel was</p><p>making chips in which the metal half pitch was 40nm, the gate length 26nm</p><p>and the fins within the finFET transistors were 8nm wide. They were</p><p>referred to, somewhat arbitrarily, as “22nm”.</p><p>Most in the industry believe gate lengths will bottom out at around 12nm</p><p>and metal pitches at 14nm. That is about as small as is printable using</p><p>ASML’s best lithography machines. But the industry cannot give up talking</p><p>about its advances in terms of increasingly small and entirely notional node</p><p>sizes. In 2021 Intel rebranded its “10nm” node to “Intel 7”, dropping the</p><p>“nm”. TSMC talks of 3nm and now 2nm nodes (which it says are more</p><p>advanced than Intel’s 18A). In March ZDNet, an online publication,</p><p>reported that Samsung had rebranded its 3nm process to 2nm. The</p><p>incredible shrinking rhetoric continues. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/node-names-do-not-reflect-actual-transistor-sizes</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/node-names-do-not-reflect-actual-transistor-sizes</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Getting to one trillion</p><p>How to build more powerful chips</p><p>without frying the data centre</p><p>Runaway energy consumption remains a problem</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>THE BLACKWELL chip from Nvidia, shovel-maker for the artificial-</p><p>intelligence (AI) gold rush, contains 208bn transistors spread over two</p><p>“dies”, pieces of silicon each about 800 square millimetres in area, that</p><p>house the processor circuitry. The two dies are linked by a blazing 10</p><p>terabytes (ie, ten thousand gigabytes) per second chip-to-chip connection.</p><p>Each die is flanked by four blocks of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips</p><p>that together store 192 gigabytes of data. The advanced packaging methods</p><p>used to build this megachip are now in the spotlight, with some speculating</p><p>that they may lead to production delays.</p><p>Blackwell’s putting together of different parts show the limits to which</p><p>chipmakers must push their technology to boost computing power while</p><p>keeping energy consumption in check. Over the course of a year one of</p><p>these megachips, which cost $70,000, will consume 5.2MWhrs—about half</p><p>the energy of an average American household. Adding more transistors is</p><p>the best way to boost a chip’s processing power: communication within a</p><p>single chip may be a thousand times faster and use a hundred times less</p><p>energy than shuttling data between chips. But since Dennard scaling hit a</p><p>wall in the mid-2000s, shrinking transistors has not significantly improved</p><p>energy efficiency. Gordon Moore suggested two other tricks to pack in</p><p>more transistors: increase the die size (ie, make chips bigger) and use</p><p>“device and circuit cleverness”. In 1971 the 4004, an Intel processor, had a</p><p>die size of 12 square mm. Current lithographic tools cannot build chips</p><p>bigger than 800 square mm, about the size of each Blackwell die. Circuit</p><p>cleverness is the only other path.</p><p>One clever idea is to use the chip area more efficiently.</p><p>In profile, a</p><p>semiconductor chip is like a multi-layer cake, with the layers which make</p><p>up the transistors at the bottom and 10-20 layers of metal wiring stacked on</p><p>top. Leading-edge chips can use almost 100km of tiny metal wires (the sum</p><p>of connections between billions of transistors). This turns the chip into a</p><p>crowded highway of data and power lines. At the top layer are thick metal</p><p>lines that distribute power across the chip. Since these beefy power lines</p><p>burrow down from the top layer all the way to the bottom layer to connect</p><p>to the transistors, they can hog nearly a fifth of the area used for routing</p><p>electrical signals.</p><p>Baking the cake</p><p>To create more space, leading foundries are now working on “backside</p><p>power delivery” which moves the thick power lines to a layer below the</p><p>transistors, known as the “back” side of the chip. This has three benefits.</p><p>First, it frees up space, allowing all the area above the transistors to be used</p><p>for routing data. With less congestion in the metal wires, groups of</p><p>transistors, called gates, can be packed more tightly in the same space.</p><p>Second, the power lines below the transistors need shorter connections to</p><p>link up with them, and those connections can be thicker, which makes</p><p>power delivery more energy efficient. Finally, these robust power lines are</p><p>less susceptible to voltage spikes during demand surges, ensuring faster</p><p>switching for the transistors. The result is a faster, more power-efficient</p><p>chip without having to shrink the transistor size.</p><p>But moving the power wires below the transistor introduces additional steps</p><p>in the manufacturing process. Normally, once the multi-layer cake of the</p><p>chip has been built, the wafer is flipped and enclosed in a package that</p><p>connects internal circuits to the outside world. With backside power</p><p>delivery, the flipping has to be followed by polishing and the addition of the</p><p>power lines. The additional steps are worth the hassle. In 2023 Intel used</p><p>backside power delivery and the smarter placement of components which it</p><p>allows to get improvements of 6% in transistor speed and 10% in packing</p><p>density with components no smaller than the ones it was using before.</p><p>Another tactic is not to cram all functions onto a single chip, but to pick the</p><p>best manufacturing technology for each task. Though the whizzy processors</p><p>need the most advanced nodes, other parts of the chip, like the modules that</p><p>communicate with the outside world, don’t need the tiniest transistors.</p><p>Breaking a chip into smaller blocks called “chiplets”, and then packaging</p><p>them together, lets chipmakers use the maximum area on a die for the</p><p>processing units, because the rest of the circuitry is moved onto other</p><p>chiplets. Communication between chiplets in the same package is much</p><p>faster and uses less energy than with circuitry outside the package.</p><p>Packaging was long the poor relation of chipmaking. Foundries focused on</p><p>producing wafers of silicon. But with the rise of chiplets, packaging is in</p><p>the spotlight (see diagram). Chiplets are assembled by placing multiple dies</p><p>from different process technologies side by side on a layer called the</p><p>interposer. These dies are then bonded to the interposer with ”microbumps”.</p><p>The interposer, which sits on a substrate typically made of organic resin,</p><p>acts as a bridge, connecting the dies to each other with high-density wiring,</p><p>and connecting them to the outside world through the package. This allows</p><p>for fast data transfer between chiplets and improves power efficiency.</p><p>Nvidia’s Blackwell processor uses TSMC’s version of this to combine its</p><p>two dies and eight HBM chips into a superchip. TSMC plans to develop</p><p>interposers six times the size of the largest dies, to host multiple processing</p><p>chiplets and stacks of HBM.</p><p>Intel, meanwhile, has unveiled plans to ditch resin and stack its chiplets on</p><p>glass instead. The ultra-flatness of glass is better for fine-pitch, high-density</p><p>wiring and it has better thermal and mechanical stability, especially at larger</p><p>sizes. The firm says this switch could increase connection density ten-fold</p><p>over organic interposers.</p><p>The next big leap in chiplet technology is stacking dies directly on top of</p><p>each other, slashing the distance between them. Memory-makers have been</p><p>early pioneers in such 3D stacking. HBM, used in specialist AI chips,</p><p>typically stacks eight to 12 memory chips connected by high-capacity</p><p>routing lines, boosting bandwidth between the memory and processor.</p><p>Training AI models requires hundreds of processors linked together</p><p>Now AI chips are following suit. 3D packaging can provide 10,000</p><p>connections per square millimetre, compared with 25 for side-by-side</p><p>packaging. More connections means smoother data traffic between chiplets.</p><p>It is also more energy efficient, using less than 1% of the energy of the</p><p>previous version to move each bit. The MI300x, a competitor to Nvidia’s</p><p>H100 made by AMD, another chip designer, stacks eight accelerator</p><p>chiplets on four interposer dies, along with eight stacks of HBM, in one</p><p>package.</p><p>These gains come at a cost. Samuel Naffziger of AMD notes that, because</p><p>multiple chips need to be tested before being combined into a single</p><p>package, 3D packaging adds time and complexity to the manufacturing</p><p>process. Packing chiplets together also increases the heat density in the</p><p>chip. To facilitate heat dissipation, chip designers locate the layers that</p><p>make the most heat at the top of the stack, and place less heat-generating</p><p>components, such as memory, below.</p><p>Training AI models requires huge systems in which hundreds of processors</p><p>are linked together. Even after cramming chiplets into packages, vast</p><p>amounts of data still need to zip between these separate processors and their</p><p>connected memory chips. Copper wires, the usual method for connecting</p><p>components on a motherboard, are sluggish and waste energy. So some</p><p>firms are turning to light to speed things up.</p><p>Fibre-optic cables are the backbone of the internet, carrying 99% of</p><p>intercontinental internet traffic. These cables are also used over short</p><p>distances to connect racks in data centres. In both cases, equipment at each</p><p>end of the fibre turns signals from electrical pulses into light and vice versa.</p><p>Now optical communication is making its way to silicon as well. Ayar Labs,</p><p>an American startup, is among the firms that is building a chiplet offering</p><p>optical communication between processors. Its chiplets sit on the edge of a</p><p>package and turn electrical signals into light, which is then sent through the</p><p>fibre. At the receiving end, another set of chiplets converts light back into</p><p>electrical signals and feeds data to processors in the package. The firm</p><p>claims this improves chip-to-chip bandwidth up to tenfold with eight times</p><p>more power efficiency.</p><p>Suburbs and skyscrapers</p><p>The ultimate leap in energy-efficient, high-speed chip-to-chip</p><p>communication would be to collapse all the chiplets into one single chip,</p><p>multiple layers of processors, memory and sensors. This packs even denser</p><p>connections between different parts of the chip. Subhasish Mitra of</p><p>Stanford University likens this to moving from a sprawling suburban layout</p><p>to a towering skyscraper.</p><p>Just as a skyscraper has lifts shuttling people up and down, this megachip</p><p>would need millions of connections whisking data between layers of</p><p>compute and memory. These lifts could also help keep the chip cool,</p><p>channelling heat to the bottom layers. Eventually, chipmakers could cluster</p><p>these chip towers side by side. Mr Mitra believes that this could boost</p><p>energy efficiency as much as a thousand-fold.</p><p>Making such a chip would be hard. Fabrication temperatures for</p><p>conventional transistors can exceed 1,000°C. With transistors located in</p><p>multiple layers, the metal lines criss-crossing the skyscraper transistors</p><p>would melt. To realise the vertical-chip vision, the logic and memory</p><p>technologies on upper layers must be fabricated at temperatures below</p><p>400°C. Newer transistor technologies like carbon nanotubes and 2D</p><p>materials, which can be processed below 400°C, might</p><p>be better suited to</p><p>this than silicon. Mr Mitra has demonstrated a version of this chip on a</p><p>90nm node, built with layers of carbon nanotubes and memory.</p><p>Speaking in 2015, Gordon Moore admitted he was “amazed” by how long</p><p>his prediction had held. But he felt that extending his namesake law for a</p><p>few more decades would require “a lot of good engineering”. TSMC</p><p>believes that a combination of these approaches could yield a trillion</p><p>transistors on a chip by 2030. Chipmakers are clearly not done yet. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/how-to-build-more-powerful-chips-without-frying-the-data-centre</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/how-to-build-more-powerful-chips-without-frying-the-data-centre</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>A Cambrian moment</p><p>AI has propelled chip architecture</p><p>towards a tighter bond with</p><p>software</p><p>It has also been pushed farther towards specialisation</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:42 上午</p><p>EXACTLY WHEN the process started no one knows, but fossils from the</p><p>Cambrian period some 540m years ago show life on Earth going through a</p><p>remarkable period of diversification. The point at which it became clear that</p><p>a similarly transformational diversification was kicking off in the world of</p><p>chips can be dated much more precisely. In May 2016, at Google’s annual</p><p>event for developers, Sundar Pichai, the firm’s boss, casually mentioned</p><p>that “We have started building specialised custom hardware.”</p><p>In the 2000s, software companies like Google, Microsoft and Meta were</p><p>content with the incremental processing gains that chipmakers delivered</p><p>every few years. But in the early 2010s, Google realised that enthusiasm for</p><p>artificial intelligence (AI) applications based on machine learning could</p><p>overwhelm it. If everyone with an android phone were to use its voice-</p><p>control feature for three minutes a day, one executive calculated, the firm</p><p>would need double its data-centre capacity. By 2015 newer machine-</p><p>learning algorithms were demanding 100 times more processing power than</p><p>previous versions. Because the chipmaking industry did not have any idea</p><p>that would make “everything better” quickly enough, says David Patterson</p><p>of the University of California Berkeley, who is also an adviser to Google,</p><p>there was little alternative but specialisation, working on chips that did only</p><p>a few things, but did them very much better.</p><p>Most machine-learning algorithms are based on artificial neural networks—</p><p>programs inspired by the structure of the human brain. A neural network is</p><p>made of simulated layers of nodes or “neurons” which accept a set of</p><p>inputs. Each input is multiplied by a weight and the products are added for a</p><p>single value. If the value clears a certain threshold, it is passed to the next</p><p>layer. This continues until the output layer spits out the final answer. Deep-</p><p>learning networks can be a few layers deep or over 100. While “training”,</p><p>the model’s weights and thresholds are tuned until the network’s output</p><p>aligns with the training data. During “inference”, the weights are locked,</p><p>and the trained model responds to user queries.</p><p>Neural networks require specific calculations, a series of additions and</p><p>multiplications known as matrix multiplication, on a large number of nodes.</p><p>They can be “parallelised”, that is, batches of them can be done at the same</p><p>time. In the early days of machine learning, central processing units (CPUs)</p><p>were used to run these algorithms. A CPU is an “everything machine” that</p><p>can run any software, from word processing and email to spreadsheets and</p><p>browsers. But CPUs are not designed for the large-scale parallel processing</p><p>needed by neural networks. For every operation, they sequentially load one</p><p>data item from memory, process it in the core, and store the results back in</p><p>memory.</p><p>Big firms are not the only ones making AI chips</p><p>To speed up machine-learning algorithms, specialist AI chips known as</p><p>accelerators split tasks into multiple parallel “threads” that run</p><p>simultaneously. A graphics processing unit (GPU), the earliest example of</p><p>this approach, has thousands of specialised cores for arithmetic operations</p><p>crucial for neural networks. By focusing on specific tasks like</p><p>multiplication and addition, GPUs can outperform CPUs by orders of</p><p>magnitude. Nvidia’s GPUs, originally designed to speedily render video-</p><p>game images by processing countless pixels simultaneously, turned out to</p><p>be very well suited to running neural networks too. But even with this</p><p>massive processing power, GPUs still need to access memory to store the</p><p>intermediate results of their computations.</p><p>Most processors have a small but zippy memory on the chip called a cache</p><p>and a much larger but slower-to-access memory unit off the chip. Accessing</p><p>the “off chip” memory takes about a thousand times longer than accessing</p><p>“on chip” memory, and uses nearly 200 times as much energy. As AI</p><p>models have become bigger, the volume of data that they process has grown</p><p>exponentially. SK Hynix, a South Korean memory-chip maker, estimates</p><p>that more than nine-tenths of the processing time for inference (that is,</p><p>using a model to respond to user queries) of OpenAI’s GPT-4 was spent on</p><p>just shuttling data back and forth. This “memory wall” throttles a</p><p>processor’s speed by tying it to the pace at which data trickles in from the</p><p>memory.</p><p>CPU, GPU, TPU</p><p>To tackle this bottleneck, Google took the parallel approach of a GPU even</p><p>further. The firm built a chip specifically for neural networks. Its AI</p><p>processor, known as the tensor processing unit (TPU), contains thousands</p><p>of multiply-and-add units directly connected in a giant grid. The TPU loads</p><p>the data from external memory into its grid, where it flows through in</p><p>regular waves, similar to how a heart pumps blood. After each</p><p>multiplication the results are passed to the next unit. By reusing data from</p><p>previous steps, the TPU reduces the need to access the off-chip memory.</p><p>TPUs are a type of “domain-specific architecture” (DSA), processors that</p><p>are hard-wired for one purpose (see diagram). DSAs designed for AI</p><p>algorithms are typically faster and more energy-efficient than generalist</p><p>CPUs or even GPUs. Newer versions of Nvidia’s GPUs now sport hundreds</p><p>of these units alongside their traditional cores. Hardware-makers, mindful</p><p>of battery life, have also joined the fray. Apple, which as a hardware maker</p><p>started designing its own silicon well before the TPU days, has integrated a</p><p>neural processing unit (NPU), akin to the TPU, into its smartphones, iPads</p><p>and laptops to speed up AI tasks. In these devices, the NPU is not a separate</p><p>chip but a block within the main chip, which also houses CPU and GPU</p><p>cores.</p><p>Big firms are not the only ones making AI chips. According to PitchBook, a</p><p>research firm, since 2017 investors have poured over $24bn into AI-chip</p><p>startups. In the first half of this year alone, upstart chipmakers have</p><p>attracted $9.7bn, matching the total raised in the preceding three years.</p><p>These startups have devised their own tricks to break through the memory</p><p>bottleneck and rein in runaway energy use.</p><p>One of the startling features of the Cambrian revolution was the emergence</p><p>of complex creatures larger than any seen before. In chipmaking, that is the</p><p>Cerebras approach. The American startup wants to reduce off-chip memory</p><p>access by cramming all its circuitry into one huge chip the size of a dinner</p><p>plate. The latest “wafer chip” from the firm has 900,000 cores and 44</p><p>gigabytes of on-chip memory, around half the off-chip memory of the</p><p>H100, a leading AI chip from Nvidia. By restricting all the data movements</p><p>to within the wafer, Cerebras claims that its chip has 7,000 times greater</p><p>memory bandwidth than the leading GPU. But each unit is much pricier,</p><p>needs its own cooling system and requires a specialised manufacturing</p><p>process.</p><p>Given the vast array of machine-learning models, designing specific</p><p>architectures to accommodate all of them efficiently can be a challenge.</p><p>To</p><p>address this, some firms are exploring chip designs that can be reconfigured</p><p>based on the algorithm in use. SambaNova Systems, a California-based</p><p>chip company, has designed its processing unit with small local memory</p><p>blocks that are laid out in a two dimensional grid, much like the TPU.</p><p>When a user runs a machine-learning software framework like TensorFlow</p><p>or PyTorch, SambaNova’s software configures the optimum structure of the</p><p>grid based on energy and speed.</p><p>Although the surge in computational demand has mainly centred on chips</p><p>for training large AI models, most chip-design innovations are tackling the</p><p>challenge of inference. Running a single inference is much cheaper but,</p><p>over time, the total cost often surpasses that of training. Google estimates</p><p>that three-fifths of its total data-centre energy use goes on billions of</p><p>inference queries. Jay Goldberg, founder of D2D Advisory, predicts the AI-</p><p>chip market will eventually split into 45% for data-centre inference chips,</p><p>40% for gadget-inference chips and 15% for training chips.</p><p>Designing processors that are optimised for machine learning is smart, but</p><p>tweaking the algorithms offers another way for chipmakers to squeeze out</p><p>extra performance. There are two ways to improve the efficiency of neural</p><p>networks: use less precise numbers, and prune the network to remove</p><p>irrelevant cruft.</p><p>Computers typically represent numerical values in “floating point” format</p><p>across 32 binary digits (bits). But computer scientists have found that</p><p>machine-learning algorithms can use less precise numbers without</p><p>sacrificing accuracy. Weights in a neural network often cluster around small</p><p>numbers and zero, making a lower-precision format ideal. Using fewer bits</p><p>means less shuttling of data between the processor and memory, which</p><p>boosts speed and cuts energy consumption. Switching to 16-bit floating-</p><p>point notation halves the memory and energy consumption compared with a</p><p>32-bit implementation.</p><p>What are you inferring?</p><p>Another way to improve efficiency is to identify and skip unnecessary</p><p>operations when performing calculations relating to a neural network.</p><p>According to Bill Dally, the chief scientist at Nvidia, most neural networks</p><p>are inherently “sparse”, or contain a large number of zeros, which means</p><p>you can remove a large number of weights without reducing accuracy. The</p><p>trick is to find the right balance between the overhead in identifying these</p><p>zeros and the benefits of skipping the redundant operations.</p><p>Nvidia claims a thousand-fold gain in GPU performance on AI inference</p><p>over the past eight years. Moving to smaller manufacturing nodes, and</p><p>increasing the die size to pack more transistors into a chip, improved</p><p>performance six-fold. But the biggest gains, almost 160 times, came from</p><p>smarter design decisions. Mr Dally admits that when Moore’s law was</p><p>going strong, chipmakers were playing “the same card” over and over</p><p>simply by shrinking transistors. Though they have not yet run out of cards,</p><p>he says the challenge now is to come up with a new card each time.</p><p>Without the support of Moore’s law, sustaining exponential gains may be</p><p>hard. Adi Fuchs, a computer scientist at Speedata, an AI-chip company,</p><p>points out that during the Bitcoin boom, once the underlying algorithm</p><p>stabilised, the industry exhausted its “bag of tricks” to eke out new gains.</p><p>Since 2017 most AI models have used a type of neural-network architecture</p><p>called the transformer, which is better at identifying patterns in data. Mr</p><p>Fuchs thinks that to maintain AI’s performance trajectory, the future may lie</p><p>in developing new algorithms that outperform current transformer models,</p><p>rather than trying to optimise silicon to run transformer models more</p><p>efficiently.</p><p>For chipmakers this is a problem. It can take up to two years to design a</p><p>chip. But software models change quickly. If a hardware design is too</p><p>specialised, it can quickly become obsolete. Mr Patterson believes these are</p><p>exciting times for researchers because “this is all brand new stuff”. For</p><p>bosses of chip firms that are building specialist chips amid rapid software</p><p>changes, he admits it is a “really scary” time. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/ai-has-propelled-chip-architecture-towards-a-tighter-bond-with-</p><p>software</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/ai-has-propelled-chip-architecture-towards-a-tighter-bond-with-software</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>OK (analogue) computer</p><p>Researchers are looking beyond</p><p>digital computing</p><p>They are using biology and light to design powerful, energy-efficient chips</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>IN 1945 JOHN VON NEUMANN, a Hungarian polymath, proposed an</p><p>“automatic digital computing system”. His design featured a central</p><p>processing unit (CPU) for crunching numbers and a memory unit for storing</p><p>instructions and data, linked by a communication pathway. Von Neumann</p><p>dreamed of a computer where anything stored in memory would be</p><p>instantly available to the CPU. In its absence, he came up with a clever fix:</p><p>a memory hierarchy with small, fast memory close to the CPU and larger,</p><p>slower memory farther away. Nearly 80 years later, his original blueprint</p><p>still forms the basis of most modern processors.</p><p>But shuttling data between the processor and memory eats up time and</p><p>energy, particularly for data-hungry artificial-intelligence (AI) models. An</p><p>analysis by Amir Gholami and colleagues at the University of California,</p><p>Berkeley found that in the past two decades, processor performance has</p><p>tripled every two years, while memory access speed has increased only by</p><p>about half (see chart). This means processors blaze through calculations</p><p>faster than data can be fed from memory, creating a “von Neumann</p><p>bottleneck”. This has led some to wonder if it is time for a new architecture.</p><p>Every engineer, and every reader, carries with them the proof that such a</p><p>thing is possible.</p><p>Brains do not separate processing and storage. They run without the central</p><p>co-ordinating clock von Neumann architectures use, and do more</p><p>calculations in parallel than a computer, performing at exaflop speed—a</p><p>billion billion calculations per second—using just 20 watts. To replicate this</p><p>scale digitally, an artificial neural network would need 8 megawatts of</p><p>power. Machine-learning software already mimics the brain’s parallel</p><p>processing through neural networks. Is the next step to build hardware that</p><p>mirrors the structure of the brain?</p><p>Sound and light show</p><p>“In-memory” computers are processors that use specialised memory</p><p>devices capable of performing certain computations. The building block for</p><p>this type of computer is a memristor, a type of a resistor whose conducting</p><p>properties can be easily adjusted by applying a sufficiently high current or</p><p>voltage. Crucially it retains its properties even after the current or voltage</p><p>disappears, functioning as a memory. But unlike transistors which represent</p><p>values as binary 1’s and 0’s, memristors record values on a continuum</p><p>between the two, like values in the analogue world. When these devices are</p><p>arranged in a grid of rows and columns, it is possible to perform a matrix</p><p>multiplication in a single time step. In machine-learning applications, this</p><p>allows weights to be stored within the computation unit, making processing</p><p>more energy efficient.</p><p>Some think the future of computing lies not in silicon but in our skulls</p><p>Drawing on the brain’s efficiency, processing units can be activated only</p><p>when needed, to reduce energy consumption. “Neuromorphic” computing</p><p>does away with a central clock—different neurons communicate when they</p><p>are ready. These “spiking” neural networks are more efficient because they</p><p>require less communication and computation. Joshua Yang of the</p><p>University of Southern California believes this can be efficient and yield a</p><p>“higher level of intelligence”.</p><p>IBM and Intel have both designed chips that mimic this concept using</p><p>current digital technology. IBM’s</p><p>NorthPole chip has no off-chip memory.</p><p>The company claims that its brain-inspired chip is 25 times more energy</p><p>efficient and 20 times faster than other specialist chips, called accelerators,</p><p>for certain AI applications.</p><p>Another alternative is to use light, not electricity. Optical accelerators can</p><p>process information much faster and using less power than their electrical</p><p>cousins. But until recently these devices relied on components too bulky to</p><p>be used with densely packed processors. Advances in photonics</p><p>manufacturing have helped shrink these devices to nanoscale levels.</p><p>Mach won</p><p>At the heart of an optical computer is an old idea: the Mach–Zehnder</p><p>interferometer (MZI), invented in the 1890s. This device takes a beam of</p><p>light and splits it into two paths. Depending on the length of each path, the</p><p>phase (ie, the timing of the wave’s crests and troughs) of the beam changes.</p><p>The two beams are then recombined so that the amplitude, or strength, of</p><p>the output beam is the amplitude of the input beam multiplied by a value</p><p>that depends on the phase difference between the split beams. An optical</p><p>accelerator has an array of MZIs laid out in a grid. Computation within</p><p>these arrays occurs at the speed of light and the flow of light through the</p><p>chip does not use energy.</p><p>Nick Harris, boss of Lightmatter, a California-based photonic-chip startup,</p><p>points out that optical computers are not good for logical operations. But he</p><p>says that, though they will “never run Windows”, they are a great</p><p>alternative for running neural networks because the energy benefit “scales</p><p>exponentially”.</p><p>Promising as these approaches are, analogue computers still need to talk to</p><p>the digital world. Converting non-digital signals into binary 1s and 0s burns</p><p>energy. But in inference applications, where a trained AI model answers</p><p>user queries, speed trumps precision. This trade-off might be enough to</p><p>bring analogue computers into the mainstream. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/researchers-are-looking-beyond-digital-computing</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/researchers-are-looking-beyond-digital-computing</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The relentless innovation machine</p><p>The end of Moore’s law will not</p><p>slow the pace of change</p><p>Semiconductors are likely to continue their transformational role</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>THE CHIPMAKING industry has always existed in a state of paranoid</p><p>optimism. Ever since Gordon Moore’s observation that processing power</p><p>would double roughly every two years was encoded by others into</p><p>“Moore’s law”, a chorus of experts has been warning of its end. That dread</p><p>is tinged with a fierce belief that there is always a way to stave off the</p><p>inevitable. The results have been nothing short of spectacular. In the past 50</p><p>years, processors have come to operate tens of thousands of times faster,</p><p>and store a million times more data in the same area. The cost of a transistor</p><p>has also fallen by a factor of a billion, making technology a global</p><p>deflationary force. They are also ubiquitous: semiconductors are now the</p><p>third-most traded commodity in the world by value, after oil and cars.</p><p>But decades of success have not quelled the industry’s jitters over the end of</p><p>Moore’s maxim. In 2017 Jensen Huang, boss of Nvidia, now the world’s</p><p>most valuable chip company, declared that the law was dead. In June, Pat</p><p>Gelsinger, chief executive of Intel, the firm that Mr Moore co-founded,</p><p>insisted that the law was “alive and well”. This Technology Quarterly has</p><p>argued that if not dead, Moore’s law is on life support.</p><p>For much of the transistor’s history it followed a “happy scaling” path—as</p><p>the logic gates shrank, they got faster and used less power. That era is over.</p><p>Leading-edge AI processors cram more transistors on a single chip or stack</p><p>multiple “chiplets” into one package to boost computing oomph. But the</p><p>performance gains have come at a cost: the energy consumed by a chip has</p><p>ballooned. A single Blackwell chip, Nvidia’s latest, runs five times faster</p><p>than its predecessor, but uses 70% more power in the process.</p><p>Data centres lash hundreds or thousands of these power-hungry chips</p><p>together to run large artificial-intelligence (AI) models. By some estimates,</p><p>OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, guzzled more than 50 gigawatt-hours of</p><p>electricity to train its latest model (see chart). The International Energy</p><p>Agency calculates that in 2022 data centres consumed 460 terawatt-hours,</p><p>or almost 2% of global electricity demand. The agency expects this figure</p><p>to double by 2026.</p><p>The tricks chipmakers have used to boost processing power for AI models</p><p>without causing runaway energy growth hint at shifts in the semiconductor</p><p>industry. The first change is the decline of the computer as a general-</p><p>purpose machine. Neil Thompson of MIT argues that, for decades, Moore’s</p><p>law held computing together. Every successive generation of semiconductor</p><p>technology was faster and more energy efficient than the previous one. That</p><p>allowed the tech world to rely on a universal processor—the central</p><p>processing unit (CPU)—that could be programmed for lots of tasks. But the</p><p>end of Moore’s law makes it harder now to improve performance across all</p><p>applications.</p><p>The response, in the case of AI chips, has been to specialise or fine-tune</p><p>chips for specific software. Mr Thompson believes this could split</p><p>computing into two lanes: the fast lane, where cutting-edge applications</p><p>benefit from powerful customised chips, and the slow lane, where ordinary</p><p>applications get stuck using general-purpose chips whose progress is</p><p>slowing.</p><p>The biggest merger</p><p>The need to specialise has precipitated a second shift—the rise of firms that</p><p>control both hardware and software. For over five decades, the tech world</p><p>was neatly split into two camps: the hardware crowd who tinkered with</p><p>their circuits and the coding geeks who wrote software. The “Wintel”</p><p>alliance whereby computers would run Microsoft’s Windows operating</p><p>system on chips made by Intel has been one of the most successful</p><p>partnerships in technology history.</p><p>Now the wall separating the two camps has cracked. Bill Dally, Nvidia’s</p><p>chief scientist, says that improvements in software and chip architecture</p><p>yield bigger gains than moving to newer manufacturing processes. At the</p><p>cutting edge, specialist silicon is the future and the giants are doing a lot of</p><p>it themselves.</p><p>Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta all now use custom silicon</p><p>that is optimised for their own software. Google’s processors are designed</p><p>to run TensorFlow, its machine-learning software. Apple’s homemade chips</p><p>are tuned to run its own software on the gadgets it makes. These firms</p><p>partner with firms like Broadcom, an American chip company, to design</p><p>these chips, and a foundry like TSMC to build them. Nvidia is the only one</p><p>to have made a great business out of making AI chips for others—but this is</p><p>in part because its chips are optimised for CUDA, its software platform,</p><p>which has become an industry standard.</p><p>According to BCG, a consultancy, between 2018 and 2023 the “big six”</p><p>firms (the five tech giants plus Nvidia) accounted for roughly 60% of the</p><p>value in the technology sector. But that will not slow innovation. This new</p><p>world is even more inventive than the previous era that sparked the</p><p>computer revolution. There are now so many more ways for computers to</p><p>become better—through silicon cleverness, better packaging, innovative</p><p>chip designs and new materials. It will be competitive in ways the Wintel</p><p>world never could be, and may create things even more wonderful. A</p><p>combination of silicon, dread and fierce belief are going to achieve even</p><p>more in the next 70 years than they have in the past 70. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/the-end-of-moores-law-will-not-slow-the-pace-of-change</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/the-end-of-moores-law-will-not-slow-the-pace-of-change</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Chipmaking</p><p>Sources and acknowledgments</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>Acknowledgments</p><p>In addition to those people mentioned and quoted in the text, the author</p><p>would like to thank the following people and companies:</p><p>Chris Auth, Krste Asanovic, Bob Beachler, Jos Benschop, Eric Beyne,Ian</p><p>Cutress, Eric Fetzer, Aart de Geus, Shankar Krishnamoorthy, Ann Kelleher,</p><p>Steven Latré, Chris Mack, Axel Nackaert, Sanjay Natarajan, Julien</p><p>Ryckaert, Sri Samavedam, Lisa Su, Christopher Walker, Jon Yu, AMD,</p><p>ASML, IMEC, Intel and Nvidia</p><p>Selected sources</p><p>J von Neumann, “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” (1945)</p><p>G.E. Moore. “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits” (1965)</p><p>R. H. Dennard, F. H. Gaensslen, H. -N. Yu, V. L. Rideout, E. Bassous and</p><p>A. R. LeBlanc. “Design of ion-implanted MOSFET’s with very small</p><p>physical dimensions,” (1974)</p><p>R.P. Feynman. “There’s plenty of room at the bottom. Engineering and</p><p>science” (1960)</p><p>N. P. Jouppi, C.Young, N. Patil, D. Patterson et. al. “In-datacenter</p><p>performance analysis of a Tensor Processing Unit” (2017)</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024/09/16/sources-and-acknowledgments</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/09/16/sources-and-acknowledgments</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Chipmaking</p><p>Silicon returns to Silicon Valley</p><p>AI has returned chipmaking to the heart of computer technology, says</p><p>Shailesh Chitnis</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/technology-</p><p>quarterly/2024-09-21</p><p>https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024-09-21</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Business</p><p>Generative AI is transforming Silicon Valley</p><p>The age of the hectocorn :: The technology is forcing America’s disrupters-in-chief to think</p><p>differently</p><p>How much trouble is Boeing in?</p><p>Flying pickets :: A protracted strike could cause lasting damage</p><p>Should you be nice at work?</p><p>Bartleby :: Kindness is in vogue</p><p>Chinese overcapacity is crushing the global steel industry</p><p>Smelted :: Governments are stepping in to protect local producers</p><p>How FIFA was outplayed by Electronic Arts</p><p>It’s in the game :: The video-game publisher called the football chiefs’ bluff—and won</p><p>Why the hype for hybrid cars will not last</p><p>On a detour :: Fully electric vehicles will win the race</p><p>PwC needs to rethink its global governance</p><p>Schumpeter :: The “big four” accounting giants have outgrown their decentralised structures</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>The age of the hectocorn</p><p>Generative AI is transforming</p><p>Silicon Valley</p><p>The technology is forcing America’s disrupters-in-chief to think differently</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | SAN FRANCISCO AND SEATTLE</p><p>A RARE BEAST may soon lumber across the hills of Silicon Valley: not a</p><p>$1bn unicorn, nor a $10bn decacorn, but a hectocorn—a startup valued at</p><p>more than $100bn. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is understood to be in</p><p>talks to raise $6.5bn from investors to fund the expansion dreams of its co-</p><p>founder, Sam Altman. If it pulls off the deal, OpenAI’s valuation will be</p><p>about $150bn, making it only the second ever $100bn-plus startup in</p><p>America after SpaceX, a rocketry giant led by Elon Musk (who co-founded</p><p>OpenAI in 2015 and is now Mr Altman’s nemesis).</p><p>All this makes OpenAI sound like a typical tech sensation: a sizzling startup</p><p>reliant on intrepid investors to develop a new way of doing things that it</p><p>hopes will change the world. Think Google, Facebook or Uber. Yet its</p><p>significance goes further than that. Generative artificial intelligence (AI),</p><p>the technology on which OpenAI is built, is changing the rules of the game</p><p>in Silicon Valley itself.</p><p>There are three big challenges posed by the new technology: many venture-</p><p>capital (VC) stalwarts cannot afford the huge sums of money that firms like</p><p>OpenAI need to train and run generative-AI models; the technology scales</p><p>in different ways than they are used to; and it may rely on unfamiliar</p><p>approaches to making money. In short, generative AI is bringing disruption</p><p>to the home of America’s disrupters-in-chief. Enjoy the Schadenfreude.</p><p>The first shock for venture capitalists is the size of the cheques required to</p><p>fund the builders of large language models (LLMs) like those powering</p><p>ChatGPT. According to PitchBook, a data gatherer, the average size of a</p><p>VC fund raised in America last year was about $150m. OpenAI is looking</p><p>to collect more than 40 times that from investors. The biggest cheques for</p><p>LLMs are thus being written not by the VC industry but by tech giants.</p><p>Since 2019 Microsoft has invested $13bn in OpenAI; this year Amazon</p><p>invested $4bn in Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s main rivals.</p><p>The tech giants do not just offer money. Their cloud services provide</p><p>computing power to train the startups’ LLMs and also distribute their</p><p>products—OpenAI’s via Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and Anthropic’s via</p><p>Amazon Web Services. Microsoft is expected to invest more in OpenAI’s</p><p>latest funding round. Apple (which will offer ChatGPT to iPhone users) and</p><p>Nvidia (which sells huge numbers of chips to OpenAI) are also likely to</p><p>take part. So are sovereign-wealth funds, demonstrating the vast sums of</p><p>money that are required for a seat at the table.</p><p>A few venture investors are undeterred by the high entrance fee. OpenAI’s</p><p>fundraising is being led by Thrive Capital, an investment firm based in New</p><p>York that has made other big investments in highly valued startups,</p><p>including Stripe, a payments company most recently valued at $65bn. Big</p><p>Silicon Valley investors such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz</p><p>helped provide part of the $6bn raised in May by Mr Musk’s xAI, and</p><p>contributed to the $1bn raised this month by Safe Superintelligence, a</p><p>model builder led by Ilya Sutskever, a former founder of OpenAI, that</p><p>currently has negligible revenues.</p><p>But the size of the sums involved means some VCs are adopting a new</p><p>modus operandi. Typically venture firms have sprayed capital thinly across</p><p>an array of startups, knowing that if a few strike it rich, the returns will</p><p>eclipse what is lost on those that do not. In the generative-AI era, where</p><p>startups with access to the most capital, computing power, data and</p><p>researchers have a big advantage, some are betting more on those that are</p><p>already well-established, instead of kissing a lot of frogs.</p><p>The second big challenge to recent VC investment practice comes from</p><p>how the new technology scales. Funding LLMs is coming to look more like</p><p>the early days of Silicon Valley, when venture capitalists invested in</p><p>companies cracking tough scientific problems, such as chipmakers, than the</p><p>more recent trend of backing internet startups.</p><p>One of the venture mantras of the past decade has been “blitzscaling”. With</p><p>the software behind most internet firms cheap to build and cheaper to run,</p><p>startups could focus their money and attention on growing as fast as</p><p>possible. Nowadays, the concept on everyone’s lips is “scaling laws”: the</p><p>more computing power and data that you throw at AI, the cleverer models</p><p>become. You thus have to invest fistfuls of money upfront to develop a</p><p>competitive product, or else invent a new approach.</p><p>In a recent blog Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School at the University of</p><p>Pennsylvania grouped state-of-the-art LLMs into four loose “generations”,</p><p>each requiring ten times more computing power and data than the last. He</p><p>calculated that in 2022, when ChatGPT was released, models typically cost</p><p>$10m or less to train. Some cutting-edge models developed since then may</p><p>have cost $100m or more. Those coming soon could cost $1bn. He thinks</p><p>training costs will eventually exceed $10bn. As pundits quibble over how</p><p>predictable these scaling laws really are, the cost of training continues to</p><p>rise (see chart).</p><p>Inference is also becoming more expensive. On September 12th OpenAI</p><p>introduced a new pair of</p><p>models, called o1 (nicknamed Strawberry), which</p><p>are designed to take multiple “reasoning” steps to produce a more accurate</p><p>response to a query, relying heavily on a process called reinforcement</p><p>learning. (Ask the latest version of ChatGPT how many rs in strawberry,</p><p>and it immediately says two. Incorporate o1, and after four seconds of what</p><p>it calls “thinking”, it gives the right answer.) That step-by-step approach,</p><p>particularly useful for complex subjects like maths and science, improves as</p><p>more computing power is used to think through a response.</p><p>As LLMs become ever more computationally intensive, those developing</p><p>them are furiously searching for ways to bring down their cost. Meanwhile,</p><p>many VC firms are being priced out of the market. Instead of pouring</p><p>money into models, some are instead funding the startups that are building</p><p>on top of them, such as those providing coding tools, or virtual health care,</p><p>or customer support.</p><p>This is bringing about a third big shift in the VC playbook, as the industry</p><p>is forced to work out how startups that rely on costly LLMs can become</p><p>profitable. Digital advertising, the favoured monetisation model in Silicon</p><p>Valley for decades, is tricky to incorporate into generative-AI tools without</p><p>undermining their credibility with users. Subscriptions may also be</p><p>difficult. Software firms typically charge per user per month. But as</p><p>companies roll out AI agents that can help humans do their work, the</p><p>number of users may fall.</p><p>Backchat</p><p>OpenAI still has its sceptics. They struggle to see how its revenue growth</p><p>can justify such a stratospheric valuation, especially given the competition</p><p>it faces from smaller, cheaper models, some of which are at least partially</p><p>open-source. Big investments from deep-pocketed sovereign-wealth funds</p><p>are often a sign of overly exuberant expectations. Scientific breakthroughs</p><p>in model-building could upend the industry. Sceptics also think the rapid</p><p>turnover of top talent at OpenAI underscores lingering corporate-</p><p>governance and safety concerns, following the ousting and subsequent</p><p>reinstatement of Mr Altman less than a year ago.</p><p>It will certainly not be easy for the would-be hectocorn to continue</p><p>galloping ahead of its rivals. Anthropic is investing heavily, with Amazon’s</p><p>backing. Google, Meta and xAI all have strong offerings of their own.</p><p>Competition is fierce. If the rest of Silicon Valley wants in on the action, it</p><p>will need to think differently. ■</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/08/28/meta-is-accused-of-bullying-the-open-source-community</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to</p><p>the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/generative-ai-is-transforming-silicon-</p><p>valley</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-bottom-line</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/generative-ai-is-transforming-silicon-valley</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Flying pickets</p><p>How much trouble is Boeing in?</p><p>A protracted strike could cause lasting damage</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>WHEN KELLY ORTBERG landed in the chief executive’s chair at Boeing</p><p>last month the list of problems he had to confront at the aerospace giant was</p><p>already daunting. Production of the 737 MAX passenger jet, Boeing’s most</p><p>important product, has been curtailed after a mid-flight blowout of a</p><p>fuselage panel in January. Production of the larger 787 Dreamliner has also</p><p>slowed down owing to supply-chain problems. Plans to launch the even</p><p>bigger 777X are years behind schedule. Add to that losses at Boeing’s</p><p>usually lucrative defence division and an embarrassing software failure that</p><p>left astronauts piloting its Starliner spacecraft stranded on the International</p><p>Space Station and some may wonder why Mr Ortberg took the job.</p><p>Boeing’s boss now has yet another crisis to deal with. On September 13th a</p><p>strike by 33,000 union members, a fifth of the company’s workforce, hit</p><p>sites in Washington state, where the firm assembles the 737 MAX, bringing</p><p>production to a halt. Morgan Stanley, a bank, estimates that the strike will</p><p>cost Boeing $2bn of cash a month at a time when its finances are already</p><p>under strain. To conserve funds, Boeing said on September 18th that it</p><p>would furlough tens of thousands of white-collar workers for one in every</p><p>four weeks the strike continues. The last big walkout at the company, in</p><p>2008, dragged on for 58 days. This one may still prove to be short-lived.</p><p>But, if it doesn’t, it could leave lasting damage.</p><p>Pay is at the centre of the latest dispute. Boeing offered its employees a</p><p>25% rise over four years; its workers are demanding 40%. That would be</p><p>less of a problem for the company than it sounds—assembly accounts for a</p><p>small fraction of the total cost of producing its planes, and wages are a</p><p>small fraction of that.</p><p>By holding out, Boeing will delay its effort to return production to previous</p><p>levels. The firm says that it has been making around 30 737 MAXs a</p><p>month, so each day of picketing means one fewer plane. Even if the strike is</p><p>short, Boeing is expected to deliver just 400 planes this year, half of what it</p><p>managed at its peak in 2018.</p><p>A protracted strike would make Boeing’s financial position even worse. The</p><p>737 MAX should be its cash machine, but has not dispensed reliably since</p><p>two fatal crashes linked to faulty software led to its temporary grounding in</p><p>2019. Since then Boeing’s operations have burned through $25bn of cash</p><p>and the company has racked up net debts of $45bn. Airbus, its main rival,</p><p>has almost none.</p><p>Before the strike, analysts projected that the firm would stop burning cash</p><p>in the second half of this year, having lost $7bn of it through its operations</p><p>in the first half. A prolonged stoppage would reverse its progress.</p><p>Boeing will also risk having its credit rating downgraded by the big</p><p>agencies if the stoppage is prolonged. That will make it more expensive to</p><p>top up its $11bn cash pile. The company also has $22bn of bonds that will</p><p>need to be refinanced in the next three years, for which the interest bill</p><p>would go up. To maintain its investment-grade rating Boeing may thus</p><p>choose to raise money by issuing stock (most analysts reckon that $10bn</p><p>should be enough). That would be a further blow to the company’s long-</p><p>suffering shareholders; Boeing’s share price is already down by 65% from</p><p>its high in 2019.</p><p>Boeing may take comfort in its vast backlog of orders for passenger jets.</p><p>But Airbus’s is far bigger. The European firm is likely to manufacture</p><p>around 770 planes this year, and its share price is close to its pre-pandemic</p><p>high. Airbus also recently announced that it would launch a new aircraft by</p><p>the end of the decade. Boeing may not be at risk of collapse, but the longer</p><p>it takes to spin up its engines again, the further behind it will fall. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to</p><p>the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/how-much-trouble-is-boeing-in</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-bottom-line</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/how-much-trouble-is-boeing-in</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Bartleby</p><p>Should you be nice at work?</p><p>Kindness is in vogue</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>KINDNESS IS IN the air. Publishers produce business books with titles</p><p>like “The Power of Nice” or, simply, “Kind”. LinkedIn, which is ostensibly</p><p>a networking site for career-minded professionals, is overrun with sickly</p><p>videos showing people being improbably generous to the homeless. Firms</p><p>publicly embrace the values of compassion: one manufacturer of safety-</p><p>gear talks of “offering grace internally”, which sounds terribly intrusive.</p><p>The fashion for niceness is both trite and revealing. Trite, because it is</p><p>really not surprising that people respond well to decent behaviour</p><p>from</p><p>colleagues and bosses. It would take a brave author to write a book called</p><p>“Stand Up for Psychopathy” or “Three Cheers for the Dark Triad”.</p><p>Revealing, because it shows how the leadership pendulum has swung.</p><p>A recent meta-analysis of research into niceness and effective leadership,</p><p>by Andrew Blake of Texas Tech University and his co-authors, concludes</p><p>that the two do often go together. Studies into bosses’ agreeableness, one of</p><p>the “Big Five” personality traits (along with openness to experience,</p><p>conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism), have found that it is tied</p><p>to ethical behaviour, workplace trust and psychological safety, among other</p><p>beneficial things.</p><p>That, in turn, can improve aspects of a firm’s performance. A recent paper</p><p>by Charles O’Reilly of Stanford University and his co-authors looked at the</p><p>relationship between chief executives’ personalities and reviews of their</p><p>organisations’ culture on Glassdoor, an employee-ratings website.</p><p>Agreeable bosses were associated with cultures that were more</p><p>collaborative and innovative.</p><p>Niceness seems to matter more than it once did. A meta-analysis of research</p><p>ending in the late 1990s did not find evidence of a strong connection</p><p>between agreeableness and effective leadership. Some of this shift doubtless</p><p>reflects the way organisations have evolved: teams matter more, along with</p><p>the social skills that ease co-operation. Some of it may also reflect more</p><p>volatility in the outside world. A study by Soo Ling Lim of University</p><p>College London and her co-authors looked at the performance of MBA</p><p>students at London Business School across ten academic years, and found</p><p>that agreeableness improves outcomes when levels of uncertainty about a</p><p>task—and presumably, the need to work together harmoniously—are</p><p>higher.</p><p>It is progress to get away from the era of “nice guys finish last”, not least</p><p>for those people who aren’t guys: women have long suffered more from</p><p>perceptions of lower competence if they display warmth. But you can have</p><p>too much of anything, even kindness.</p><p>Agreeableness is not the only trait that matters for a boss: a delightful but</p><p>highly neurotic person may struggle in stressful situations. Employees vary</p><p>too: some people care less about empathy and more about money. There are</p><p>moments—when employees have suffered a personal trauma, for example</p><p>—when warmth is the most important test of a company’s character. But in</p><p>other circumstances, different traits matter.</p><p>People who score less well on agreeableness are liable to be less trusting,</p><p>more competitive and more confrontational. That may not recommend them</p><p>as friends but could well be an advantage in certain contexts. Mr O’Reilly’s</p><p>paper finds, for example, that different industries attract leaders with</p><p>varying personality types: bosses in the financial-services industry are</p><p>comparatively less agreeable, for example, than those who work in health</p><p>care. Kindness may also count for less in negotiation-heavy roles like sales.</p><p>A recent paper by Daniel Keum and Nandil Bhatia of Columbia Business</p><p>School looks at how changing economic conditions can affect the types of</p><p>bosses who lead firms. The researchers gauge chief executives’</p><p>“prosociality” (their concern for the welfare of others) by looking at things</p><p>like their charitable activities and their language on earnings calls. Prosocial</p><p>bosses can be slower to restructure firms in bad times, and the authors find</p><p>that during periods of intensifying competition they were more likely to be</p><p>replaced by less caring types. When layoffs are necessary, boards don’t</p><p>want Samaritans in charge.</p><p>What there is no excuse for is unkindness. There is a basic level of decency,</p><p>civility and courtesy to which everyone is entitled and from which all</p><p>organisations benefit. Kindness is not a management doctrine. But its</p><p>absence is a management failure. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to</p><p>the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/should-you-be-nice-at-work</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-bottom-line</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/should-you-be-nice-at-work</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Smelted</p><p>Chinese overcapacity is crushing</p><p>the global steel industry</p><p>Governments are stepping in to protect local producers</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>EACH YEAR China makes as much steel as the rest of the world</p><p>combined. The vast scale of its output—around 1bn tonnes a year—is</p><p>obscured by the fact that most of it stays in the country. Lately, however,</p><p>China’s exports of the metal have surged, reaching 90m tonnes in 2023, up</p><p>by 35% on the previous year (see chart 1). That may be a fraction of</p><p>China’s total production, but it is more than what America or Japan make in</p><p>a year. And it is enough to build a thousand Golden Gate bridges.</p><p>With China’s economy struggling, its steelmakers are selling abroad at</p><p>bargain prices, to the distress of foreign competitors and politicians alike.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/05/09/what-xi-jinping-gets-wrong-about-chinas-economy</p><p>Last month Nippon Steel, Japan’s biggest steelmaker, called on the</p><p>government to impose anti-dumping duties on Chinese imports. In the</p><p>quarter to June its net profit shrank by 11% year on year. ArcelorMittal,</p><p>Europe’s steelmaking champion, has been hit even harder: its net profit for</p><p>the same period was down by 73%. “We want fair competition, and we</p><p>know that the competition against China is not fair,” says Genuino</p><p>Christino, the company’s chief financial officer. Such complaints tend to</p><p>carry weight with politicians. Steelmaking is often seen as a symbol of a</p><p>country’s industrial heft. And although a glut means lower prices for a</p><p>diffuse group of consumers, politicians worry about the concentrated pain it</p><p>inflicts on manufacturing workers and regions.</p><p>The rich world has experienced surges in Chinese steel exports before,</p><p>including in 2008 and 2015. Each of these episodes led to trade barriers</p><p>being raised; between 2008 and 2018 America, Britain, Canada and the</p><p>European Union implemented more than 500 trade measures affecting</p><p>imports of the metal from China. The consequences this time, however, are</p><p>likely to be much wider-ranging.</p><p>That is partly because China’s economy is in a worse way. As its</p><p>commodity-intensive property sector has suffered, its steelmakers have</p><p>taken a beating. In August barely 1% of the 250 steel mills in China that</p><p>report their finances to the government turned a profit, according to Isha</p><p>Chaudhary of Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy. The domestic price for hot-</p><p>rolled coil steel, a benchmark product, has fallen by 16% over the past year.</p><p>Despite the slump in prices, many of the country’s producers have been</p><p>reluctant to curtail production; idling a blast furnace can take months and is</p><p>often costlier than keeping it running. Facing lacklustre demand from their</p><p>usual customers at home, steelmakers are looking elsewhere.</p><p>The result is surging exports—and a fresh round of tariffs. Last month</p><p>Canada joined the fray, imposing levies on Chinese steel. Even in America,</p><p>where hefty tariffs already keep out most Chinese steel imports, producers</p><p>still face cut-price competition as global prices fall. In July America</p><p>announced a 25% duty on any steel coming from Mexico that had not been</p><p>melted and poured in North America, in a bid to keep out any trace of</p><p>Chinese steel that may travel via other countries.</p><p>The backlash is not confined to rich countries. These days most of China’s</p><p>steel exports go to the developing world, which accounted for nine of the</p><p>top ten foreign destinations for its steel in 2023 (see chart 2). Unlike in the</p><p>rich world, demand for the metal is roaring in much of the global south.</p><p>India’s steel consumption, for instance, is expected to grow by 8% this year</p><p>and at a similar rate next year thanks to a boom in infrastructure investment,</p><p>according</p><p>to the World Steel Association, an industry group. The Belt and</p><p>Road Initiative (BRI), China’s global infrastructure bonanza, has helped its</p><p>steelmakers expand their global reach. Chinese construction companies</p><p>building ports and laying railways in poorer countries have done so largely</p><p>with Chinese steel.</p><p>Yet steelmakers in developing countries are also starting to grumble about</p><p>Chinese exports. In August Thachat Viswanath Narendran, the boss of Tata</p><p>Steel, India’s biggest steelmaker, complained of “predatory pricing” by</p><p>Chinese competitors. As in the West, governments in the global south are</p><p>taking notice. This month India announced that it would impose tariffs of</p><p>up to 30% on some steel products from China. Brazil, Mexico, Thailand</p><p>and Turkey have also slapped tariffs on Chinese steel this year. Vietnam, the</p><p>biggest export destination for Chinese steel, is also undertaking anti-</p><p>dumping investigations.</p><p>In response to both the worsening economic situation at home and the</p><p>deteriorating trading environment abroad, China’s government has taken</p><p>some steps to boost demand and reduce supply. It has offered incentives for</p><p>Chinese businesses and households to swap old machinery and appliances</p><p>for new ones. Last month it suspended approvals of new steel mills. But</p><p>without more forceful reforms it is hard to see much changing. According</p><p>to S&P Global, a data provider, more Chinese steel capacity will come</p><p>online by the end of next year than will be shut down.</p><p>That leaves Chinese steelmakers with little option but to keep searching for</p><p>new customers. Wood Mackenzie forecasts that Chinese steel exports will</p><p>reach 103m tonnes this year. Some producers are also building new</p><p>production bases in the hope of retaining access to foreign markets. In July</p><p>China Baowu Steel, the world’s largest steelmaker, doubled its investment</p><p>in a plant in Saudi Arabia. Tsingshan Group, a Chinese metals and mining</p><p>company, has started production at a steel mill in Zimbabwe. That could</p><p>worsen the global glut, but at least it creates jobs abroad.</p><p>Other Chinese steelmakers are shifting sales at home from the moribund</p><p>property sector to manufacturers of things like electric vehicles—which</p><p>also, as it happens, are looking abroad to compensate for lacklustre</p><p>domestic demand. “Steel will always find a home,” says James Campbell of</p><p>CRU Group, a consultancy. Whether the world’s politicians like it or not. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to</p><p>the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/17/chinese-overcapacity-is-crushing-the-</p><p>global-steel-industry</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-bottom-line</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/17/chinese-overcapacity-is-crushing-the-global-steel-industry</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>It’s in the game</p><p>How FIFA was outplayed by</p><p>Electronic Arts</p><p>The video-game publisher called the football chiefs’ bluff—and won</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>A NEW FOOTBALL season will begin on September 27th: not the Premier</p><p>League or La Liga, but the annual update of the world’s favourite football</p><p>video-game. “FIFA”, as the franchise was known from its pixelated debut in</p><p>1993, sells nearly 30m copies a year. In-game spending pushes its annual</p><p>revenue above $3bn, estimates MoffettNathanson, a firm of analysts, which</p><p>calculates that the title contributes nearly two-thirds of the profit of its</p><p>publisher, Electronic Arts (EA). Gaming has few bigger names than</p><p>“FIFA”.</p><p>Yet a year ago EA changed the name of its mega-hit to “EA Sports FC”,</p><p>after its licensing deal with the Fédération Internationale de Football</p><p>Association, football’s governing body, fell apart. FIFA had reportedly</p><p>demanded more than the $150m or so that it had been charging EA each</p><p>year for the privilege of using its name. EA decided instead to embark on</p><p>what Andrea Hopelain, who runs its sports-game publishing business, calls</p><p>“one of the biggest rebrands in entertainment history”.</p><p>The gamble seems to have paid off. EA reported in July that revenue from</p><p>the game was up by “mid-single digits” compared with the previous, FIFA-</p><p>branded edition. EA Sports had already become a strong brand in its own</p><p>right, says Ms Hopelain; English referees have had its logo on their sleeves</p><p>for years. A marketing blitz has made it even stronger: money that would</p><p>have gone to FIFA has been spent on promotions like sponsoring the</p><p>Spanish league (now called “LaLiga EA Sports”). Sony and Microsoft also</p><p>had reason to keep the renamed game visible in their PlayStation and Xbox</p><p>app stores. It accounts for as much as 10% of spending on the platforms (of</p><p>which they take a cut), estimates Clay Griffin of MoffettNathanson.</p><p>Dropping the FIFA name has brought with it other opportunities. EA has</p><p>been able to work more closely with partners like Nike and Pepsi, which</p><p>had been sidelined by FIFA’s relationship with their arch-rivals Adidas and</p><p>Coca-Cola. EA has had a freer hand to innovate, too. Players can now share</p><p>video highlights of their footballing heroics with one another within the</p><p>game and will soon be able to buy merchandise from brands such as Nike to</p><p>match their avatars’ digital outfits.</p><p>Will FIFA hit back? In May Gianni Infantino, its boss, said it was working</p><p>on a rival game that “obviously, as everything we do, will be the best”. Yet</p><p>Take-Two, a game-maker rumoured to be involved, poured cold water on</p><p>the idea last month. Konami, which makes eFootball, a free-to-play game</p><p>that is big on mobile, is another possible partner.</p><p>Any rival will struggle to beat EA. Decades of incumbency have created</p><p>powerful network effects, as players compete with their friends online. EA</p><p>has spun a web of licensing deals with footballers, clubs and leagues, some</p><p>of them exclusive, costing hundreds of millions a year. These factors make</p><p>sport a winner-takes-most genre in gaming, argues Mr Griffin: EA’s</p><p>basketball title, “NBA Live”, was crushed by Take-Two’s “NBA 2K” for</p><p>the same reasons. With or without FIFA, EA’s football game will be hard to</p><p>tackle. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to</p><p>the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/how-fifa-was-outplayed-by-electronic-</p><p>arts</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-bottom-line</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/19/how-fifa-was-outplayed-by-electronic-arts</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>On a detour</p><p>Why the hype for hybrid cars will</p><p>not last</p><p>Fully electric vehicles will win the race</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>THE CAR industry’s effort to decarbonise revolves around replacing petrol</p><p>with batteries. A growing number of customers want both. Buyers who</p><p>cannot afford a fully electric car, or worry about the availability of charging</p><p>points, are turning to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVS), sales of</p><p>which are rocketing. But the hype for hybrids may prove to be short-lived.</p><p>Worldwide sales of cars running purely on batteries (BEVs) were more than</p><p>double those of PHEVs last year. But the gap has been rapidly closing.</p><p>Sales of PHEVs were up by almost 50%, year on year, in the first seven</p><p>https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/02/28/a-variety-of-new-batteries-are-coming-to-power-evs</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2023/08/10/how-green-is-your-electric-vehicle-really</p><p>months of 2024, compared with just 8% for BEVs, according to estimates</p><p>from Bernstein, a broker.</p><p>Carmakers have been cooling on BEVs and warming to hybrids. This</p><p>month Volvo backtracked on its commitment to go all-electric by 2030. It</p><p>now says BEVs and PHEVs will together account for 90% of its sales by</p><p>the end of the decade. Last month Ford announced that it was abandoning</p><p>plans to make a large fully electric SUV, opting instead for hybrid power.</p><p>Hyundai is doubling</p><p>Let Ukraine hit military targets in</p><p>Russia with American missiles</p><p>Hitting back at the forces blasting Ukrainian cities is legal and</p><p>proportionate</p><p>9月 19, 2024 07:38 上午</p><p>EVERY DAY, Vladimir Putin rains bombs and missiles on civilian targets</p><p>in Ukraine, spreading terror and trying to shut down the power supply as</p><p>winter approaches. Ukraine has proposed a proportionate, legal response to</p><p>these illegal attacks. It would like to use Western missiles to hit military</p><p>targets in Russia from which Mr Putin’s forces are launching their barrage.</p><p>So far, America has denied this reasonable request.</p><p>The West has been generous to Ukraine. Over the past two and a half years,</p><p>it has given it over $200bn in weapons and cash to defend itself from</p><p>Russian aggression, with over $100bn more in the pipeline. But time after</p><p>time, donors have refused to supply kit that they later agreed was essential.</p><p>First it was tanks, then missiles, then anti-missile batteries, then fighter jets.</p><p>“They give us enough to survive, but not enough to win,” one Ukrainian</p><p>front-line commander complained to The Economist this summer.</p><p>Next week Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, will meet Joe Biden,</p><p>and will renew his plea to be allowed to hit military targets inside Russia.</p><p>Britain and France are content to have their missiles, the Storm Shadow and</p><p>the SCALP, used in this way. But that is not happening, apparently because</p><p>the missiles rely on American technology to reach their targets, and</p><p>America has, so far, exercised a veto. Germany shares President Biden’s</p><p>caution, and then some. It has not given Ukraine its own powerful Taurus</p><p>missiles.</p><p>America may lift its veto on the use of European missiles, but that will not</p><p>be enough. What Ukraine really wants is permission to fire American-</p><p>supplied ATACMS at Russian targets. These have a longer range (up to</p><p>300km, against 250km for Storm Shadow and SCALP), and more of them</p><p>are available. Yet Mr Biden says no. He should change his mind.</p><p>Various reasons are given for the veto. One is that the Russian planes that</p><p>launch devastating “glide bombs” into Ukraine have been moved back out</p><p>of ATACMS range. That is true; but there are plenty of other military</p><p>targets, such as fuel and arms depots and command centres that Ukrainian</p><p>drones struggle to hit. Lifting the restrictions would help Ukraine create a</p><p>300km-deep buffer zone on its border. America also says the missiles are in</p><p>short supply. That is true of the European ones, but less so of the ATACMS.</p><p>Unfortunately, America is holding back out of a misplaced fear of</p><p>escalation. Mr Putin has said that if Ukraine fires American missiles into</p><p>Russia, it would be like NATO joining the war, and has promised severe</p><p>consequences. The threat is not so much that Mr Putin acts in Ukraine—</p><p>Russia is already doing everything it can there short of using a nuclear</p><p>weapon, and crossing that threshold would provoke outrage, including</p><p>among its allies such as China. The threat is instead that Russia attacks</p><p>Western interests elsewhere by, say, giving weapons to Iran or the Houthis.</p><p>This would be destabilising, but holding back would encourage Russian</p><p>aggression in Europe—even as Mr Putin continued to wield the threat of</p><p>stoking proliferation in the Middle East.</p><p>Mr Biden’s caution rewards Mr Putin’s recklessness. What is more, it rubs</p><p>off on other faint-hearts, such as Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, thus</p><p>dividing NATO. Mr Putin sees that division, and concludes that the West is</p><p>tired of war and keen to cut a deal that will be to his advantage. Peace talks</p><p>may indeed begin next year, after America’s election. The best way to raise</p><p>morale in Ukraine and to strengthen Mr Zelensky’s hand in any talks would</p><p>be for the West to show that it is fully behind its ally. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/let-ukraine-hit-military-targets-in-</p><p>russia-with-american-missiles</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/let-ukraine-hit-military-targets-in-russia-with-american-missiles</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Painful lessons</p><p>Britain should let university tuition</p><p>fees rise</p><p>Domestic students have been paying less in real terms every year</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>IN 2012 POLITICIANS in Britain burned lots of political capital by raising</p><p>the cap on how much English universities can charge domestic</p><p>undergraduates in tuition fees. Sir Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister at</p><p>the time, had previously pledged not to raise fees and never lived down the</p><p>U-turn. This political folk memory helps explain why the Labour Party,</p><p>which took power in July and has campaigned in the past to abolish tuition</p><p>fees, will find it difficult to raise the cap again. That is nonetheless what it</p><p>should do.</p><p>The financial strains on British universities are becoming hard to ignore. In</p><p>the academic year just gone 40% of British universities ran deficits. The</p><p>number is probably higher now. How to handle a failing university is no</p><p>longer an academic question. The effect of tighter immigration rules on</p><p>numbers of foreign students, who pay higher fees than native ones, is one</p><p>reason why the universities are under pressure. But the sinking value of</p><p>tuition fees is another. The cap of £9,000 ($11,880) that was put in place 12</p><p>years ago has been raised only once since then, and by a tiny amount, to</p><p>£9,250. Inflation has eaten away at its value: it is now worth less than</p><p>£6,500 in 2012 money.</p><p>Some argue that charging for higher education is wrong, and England</p><p>should go back to the old days of free tuition, courtesy of the taxpayer. In</p><p>fact, England’s student-finance regime offers a lot to like. Britons with</p><p>degrees earn 35% more than their peers who stop studying after secondary</p><p>school. Given these high private returns, it is fair that they should pay a big</p><p>chunk of the cost of their education. Student-loan repayments do not end in</p><p>bankruptcy: graduates in England start paying only when their annual</p><p>income exceeds a threshold (currently £25,000 for this year’s borrowers).</p><p>The previous jump in tuition fees has not put off poorer students; and most</p><p>graduates in a recent poll said their debts had not had a “negative impact”</p><p>on their lives.</p><p>From learners to earners</p><p>Every way of funding degrees has its flaws. Countries that pour a lot of</p><p>public money into higher education generally limit how many students can</p><p>go to university (as did England, until 2015). It is hard to argue that higher-</p><p>earning graduates are the worthiest recipients of any new government</p><p>spending. And relying on ever more foreign students to subsidise domestic</p><p>ones is also not a sustainable solution. If fees for home students remain</p><p>stuck, higher-paying foreigners will eventually start displacing them. Flows</p><p>of foreign cash are volatile, and benefit universities in famous cities such as</p><p>London more than others. Also, voters like immigration even less than they</p><p>like fees.</p><p>Those who would keep fees frozen point out that some students get poor</p><p>value for money. A number pursue qualifications that are unlikely to boost</p><p>their earnings; they may be better off with shorter courses or</p><p>apprenticeships. But the choice is theirs and, besides, constraining fees for</p><p>every student is not an answer to that problem. Britain’s university regulator</p><p>has been stepping up its policing of courses with high dropout rates and of</p><p>those that lead too few graduates to good jobs. In 2017 the government</p><p>required universities to meet minimum standards before taking advantage of</p><p>the small increase in the fee cap. It could try something like that again.</p><p>Universities say that if fees had tracked inflation, the cap would now be</p><p>more than £12,000. A sudden increase on that scale would be unwise. The</p><p>reforms of 2012 provided universities with a very large bump in income,</p><p>some of which they wasted. The cap was set at a high level in the vain</p><p>expectation that some institutions might choose to charge less. But neither</p><p>students nor the country are well served by</p><p>its range of hybrids from seven to 14 models.</p><p>Volkswagen, too, has pledged to increase investments in hybrids as it</p><p>rethinks its plans for BEVS.</p><p>Consumers are turning to hybrids partly because they are cheap. The big</p><p>batteries required to run fully electric vehicles make them far more</p><p>expensive than petrol cars. That is a problem when it comes to selling to the</p><p>mass market; most buyers “will not pay a premium”, says Jim Farley, the</p><p>boss of Ford. Plug-in hybrids, by contrast, run on much smaller batteries:</p><p>they typically have a 20-kilowatt-hour unit, around a third of the size of</p><p>those in BEVs. As a consequence, PHEVs are only a little more expensive</p><p>than petrol-powered cars, and cost less to run. Although hybrids can</p><p>typically travel only around 40 miles on their batteries, the option of using</p><p>petrol avoids the anxiety many drivers of BEVs have about running out of</p><p>charge.</p><p>For their part, carmakers are fond of hybrids because they are usually as</p><p>profitable as petrol-powered cars, in contrast to BEVs, many of which are</p><p>loss-making. Smaller batteries mean lower production costs. Hybrids also</p><p>allow legacy carmakers to draw more on their existing expertise and supply</p><p>chains.</p><p>The fashion for hybrids, however, may prove to be fleeting. Rules in</p><p>California, adopted by 16 other American states, stipulate that by 2035 only</p><p>20% of the new vehicles sold by carmakers can be plug-in hybrids; the</p><p>remainder must be fully electric. The EU plans to slam the brakes on even</p><p>harder: the bloc will ban the sale of all cars that run on petrol engines,</p><p>including hybrids, by 2035.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/special-report/2023/04/14/all-change</p><p>https://www.economist.com/special-report/2023/04/14/an-electric-shock</p><p>Hybrids may already be less competitive by then. Battery prices have been</p><p>falling, and will fall further as production expands and new chemistries are</p><p>developed. Carmakers such as Renault have plans to roll out BEV models</p><p>that cost significantly less than their current offerings, spurred on by</p><p>Chinese competition. Charging networks are continuing to expand.</p><p>Bernstein predicts that PHEVS will capture a growing share of the car</p><p>market until around 2030, but that sales will then stabilise and eventually</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/11/an-influx-of-chinese-cars-is-terrifying-the-west</p><p>decline as those of BEVs speed up (see chart). Hybrids are “winning now,</p><p>but BEVS will win eventually”, reckons Patrick Hummel of UBS, a bank.</p><p>Xavier Smith of AlphaSense, a consultancy, thinks the obsession carmakers</p><p>currently have with hybrids will prove short-sighted. Those that lose focus</p><p>on electrification could soon fall behind. ■</p><p>To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to</p><p>the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/17/why-the-hype-for-hybrid-cars-will-not-</p><p>last</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/newsletters/the-bottom-line</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/17/why-the-hype-for-hybrid-cars-will-not-last</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>Schumpeter</p><p>PwC needs to rethink its global</p><p>governance</p><p>The “big four” accounting giants have outgrown their decentralised</p><p>structures</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>LIKE HIS fellow Victorian beancounters, Edwin Waterhouse made his</p><p>name in part by unearthing frauds perpetrated during the railway mania that</p><p>gripped late-19th-century Britain. These days the accounting-and-</p><p>consulting powerhouse that traces its history to his successful sleuthing</p><p>more often makes news for failing to detect financial malfeasance—or for</p><p>engaging in mischief itself. Between 2010 and 2023 it faced around $450m</p><p>in fines and settlements related to botched audits and other misconduct in</p><p>various countries. The firm, which now goes by PwC rather than</p><p>PricewaterhouseCoopers, at least spares Edwin’s memory the indignity of</p><p>having his name openly tied to the mess.</p><p>The latest stain on PwC’s reputation came on September 13th. China’s</p><p>authorities slapped its affiliate in the country, PwC Zhong Tian, with a</p><p>record $62m fine and barred it from doing business for six months. Its staff,</p><p>regulators said, “concealed or even condoned fraud” in the accounts of</p><p>Evergrande, a property developer which inflated its revenues by nearly</p><p>$80bn in the two years before its collapse in 2021.</p><p>In anticipation of a ban, big mainland clients have been fleeing PwC’s</p><p>“assurance” practice, as auditing is known in the industry. Some may never</p><p>be reassured enough to come back. The fallout could spread to Hong Kong,</p><p>where Evergrande was listed and whose accounting watchdog is carrying</p><p>out its own investigation. PwC has reportedly downed shovels on a new</p><p>$140m Chinese campus for “building trust in leadership”, possibly</p><p>concluding that it might be wise to rebuild trust in its brand first.</p><p>Mohamed Kande, PwC’s newish global boss, admitted that its work for</p><p>Evergrande “fell well below our high expectations and was completely</p><p>unacceptable”. Six partners and five other staff have been sacked, the top-</p><p>ranking partner in China has stepped down and a crisis manager from</p><p>PwC’s head office in London has been parachuted in to replace him.</p><p>If only that were the end of it. Such mea culpas are becoming distressingly</p><p>common in the professional-services business, which is dominated by PwC</p><p>and its three giant rivals: Deloitte, EY and KPMG. Since 2019 the “big</p><p>four” have on at least 28 occasions found themselves on the hook for</p><p>multimillion-dollar fines and settlements related to behaviour in the past</p><p>decade or so. In the five years before 2019 the like-for-like figure was four.</p><p>One explanation is that regulators are becoming more watchful. If so, about</p><p>time. Yet the profusion of scandals also coincides with a period of rapid</p><p>expansion in the quartet’s size and reach. Growth may be putting intolerable</p><p>strain on the franchise-like model adopted by the big four, which have long</p><p>functioned as networks of independent national partnerships. That structure</p><p>makes it impossible for Mr Kande and his counterparts to supervise their</p><p>sprawling empires.</p><p>The big four’s sheer bigness is something to behold. Together they check</p><p>the books for nearly all American and European blue chips, as well as</p><p>offering advice on dealmaking, digitisation and plenty besides. Their</p><p>collective fees have ballooned from $134bn in 2017 to $203bn last year. In</p><p>the same period their combined ranks swelled by 500,000 employees, to</p><p>1.5m. In 2023 alone PwC hired 130,000 people, more than its total head</p><p>count in 2002. And it bid farewell to 94,000. Lots of young hires just want a</p><p>reputable employer on their CV and to move on after a year or two. With so</p><p>many coming and going, fewer have a long-term stake in ensuring that the</p><p>firm’s reputation remains intact.</p><p>Staff face pressure to cut corners in other ways. Fresh-faced accountants</p><p>can expect to earn around $60,000 a year at the big four in America,</p><p>compared with around $100,000 for a young management consultant at</p><p>prestigious strategy shops such as McKinsey, Bain or BCG. Yet that</p><p>difference narrows substantially once you become a partner, meaning there</p><p>are big gains to doing whatever it takes to climb up the greasy pole. “You</p><p>don’t make partner because you are a good auditor. You make partner</p><p>because you close deals,” recalls a former big-four employee in China.</p><p>Such misalignments are especially acute in the rough-and-tumble markets</p><p>of the emerging world. Laxer corporate oversight means more temptation</p><p>for bad behaviour. Employee churn also tends to be higher, because workers</p><p>are readier to jump ship to secure even a modest pay rise. With little</p><p>management from the top, these problems could become widespread as a</p><p>greater share of the firms’ business comes from poor countries. Around</p><p>two-thirds of the corporate entities that make up EY’s global network reside</p><p>outside the rich world. “It’s a wonder there aren’t more scandals,” says Tom</p><p>Rodenhauser of Kennedy Intelligence,</p><p>allowing the real value of fees</p><p>to fall for ever. Labour should let them rise. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/18/britain-should-let-university-tuition-</p><p>fees-rise</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/18/britain-should-let-university-tuition-fees-rise</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu | Previous |</p><p>The left’s doctrine of original sin</p><p>After peak woke, what next?</p><p>The influence of a set of illiberal ideas is waning. That creates an</p><p>opportunity</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>ONE OF THE early uses of the word was by Lead Belly, who sang about</p><p>the Scottsboro boys, nine young African-Americans in Scottsboro,</p><p>Alabama, who were wrongly accused in 1931 of raping two white women.</p><p>They got an unfair trial; all nine later had their convictions overturned or</p><p>were pardoned. In a recording in 1938, Lead Belly warns black Americans</p><p>travelling through Alabama to stay “woke”, lest they be accused of</p><p>something similar. Even the most committed anti-woke warrior would grant</p><p>that the man had a point.</p><p>But in the past decade, a form of wokeness has arisen on the illiberal left</p><p>which is characterised by extreme pessimism about America and its</p><p>capacity to make progress, especially on race. According to this view, all</p><p>the country’s problems are systemic or structural, and the solutions to them</p><p>are illiberal, including censorship and positive discrimination by race. This</p><p>wokeness defines people as members of groups in a rigid hierarchy of</p><p>victims and oppressors. Like the Puritans of old, adherents focus less on</p><p>workable ideas for reducing discrimination than on publicly rooting out</p><p>sinful attitudes in themselves and others (especially others).</p><p>The Economist has analysed how influential these ideas are today by</p><p>looking at public opinion, the media, publishing, higher education and the</p><p>corporate world. Using a host of measures, we found that woke peaked in</p><p>2021-22 and has since receded. For example, polling by Gallup found that</p><p>the share of people who worry a great deal about race relations climbed</p><p>from 17% in 2014 to 48% in 2021, but has since fallen to 35%. Likewise,</p><p>the term “white privilege” was used 2.5 times for every 1m words written</p><p>by the New York Times in 2020. Last year it was used 0.4 times per 1m</p><p>words. That timing is no coincidence. Many people assume that wokeness</p><p>took off after the murder of George Floyd in 2020; in fact the inflection</p><p>point was in 2015, as Donald Trump ran for president.</p><p>Mr Trump’s victory had a profound effect on the American left. It</p><p>strengthened those who said America is racist and sexist and undermined</p><p>those who said that progress is possible and that persuasion beats</p><p>cancellation. As those on the centre-left cowered for fear of being cancelled</p><p>themselves, woke ideas spread from sociology departments to the rest of the</p><p>university, and from there to company boardrooms. On campus,</p><p>controversial speakers were prevented from addressing students. In</p><p>corporate America managers were rewarded partly for hiring to meet targets</p><p>based on diversity, equity and inclusion.</p><p>The backlash has been led by right-leaning activists and mainline liberals</p><p>who disagree about many other things. And the Democratic Party has</p><p>realised that woke ideas and policies are both unpopular with voters and</p><p>electorally reckless in a party that relies on a multiracial coalition to win.</p><p>Towards the end of her acceptance speech in Chicago, Kamala Harris talked</p><p>about “the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on</p><p>Earth—the privilege and pride of being an American”. It would have been</p><p>hard for a front-line Democrat to say that between 2016 and 2021.</p><p>The lesson is not that wokeness is over, still less that it achieved nothing</p><p>good. The cycle of overreaction and counter-reaction can lead to progress.</p><p>Companies still care about diversity; universities still disdain hateful</p><p>rhetoric. But as the left and their critics on the right score points off each</p><p>other, the fight increasingly feels stagey and artificial, like professional</p><p>wrestling. The hope now is that race and sex will once again be discussed as</p><p>questions of public policy, where compromise is possible, rather than of</p><p>identity, where it is not. ■</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/after-peak-woke-what-next</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/19/after-peak-woke-what-next</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Letters</p><p>Letters to the editor</p><p>On bitcoin mining, social care, orange juice, dogs, Sudan, country music, contemporary</p><p>compositions :: A selection of correspondence</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>On bitcoin mining, social care, orange juice, dogs, Sudan, country music, contemporary</p><p>compositions</p><p>Letters to the editor</p><p>A selection of correspondence</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>Letters are welcome via email to letters@economist.com</p><p>Bitcoin mining and energy</p><p>You perpetuated common myths about bitcoin mining while neglecting the</p><p>real story: bitcoin mining is a powerful new tool for supporting renewable-</p><p>intensive grids (“Power hungry”, August 31st). It is true that electricity</p><p>grids are under increasing strain from manufacturing plants, electric</p><p>vehicles and data centres, and it would be easy to think of bitcoin mining as</p><p>just one more source of electrical demand.</p><p>mailto:letters@economist.com</p><p>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/08/27/why-texas-republicans-are-souring-on-crypto</p><p>But whereas data centres and the like will buy electricity regardless of the</p><p>price, bitcoin mining is different. It operates only when power is cheap and</p><p>abundant. Whenever power is scarce, and therefore expensive, it curtails its</p><p>electricity usage in a matter of seconds.</p><p>In practice, this means that during severe weather events in Texas say, such</p><p>as a heatwave, electricity prices spike, and bitcoin miners naturally turn</p><p>their machines off. But when power is cheap, their machines remain on,</p><p>providing a steady stream of revenue to energy producers. Having a reliable</p><p>buyer of energy that does not add to peak demand is ideal for incentivising</p><p>the building of renewable generation while still reliably delivering power to</p><p>homeowners and hospitals.</p><p>Bitcoin miners also participate in demand-response programmes, allowing</p><p>grid operators to control their power consumption to stabilise the grid. You</p><p>characterised demand response as some kind of public gift to the bitcoin-</p><p>mining industry. In fact, these programmes have been praised as a crucial</p><p>part of managing a highly renewable system. The International Energy</p><p>Agency, for example, says we must increase demand-response tenfold, or</p><p>by 500 gigawatts, within this decade if we are to meet net-zero targets. Far</p><p>from a giveaway, bitcoin miners participate in these demand-response</p><p>programmes like any other company, bidding in an open market and driving</p><p>prices down for consumers.</p><p>Moreover, the grid-stabilising behaviour of bitcoin miners puts them in</p><p>direct competition with natural-gas “peaker” plants, which run only during</p><p>peak demand. Both technologies help grid operators match fluctuating</p><p>supply and demand in real-time.</p><p>The difference is that a system with more renewable generation and bitcoin</p><p>miners is far less carbon-intensive than a system with less renewable</p><p>generation and peaker plants. It is no surprise, then, that the industry</p><p>lobbying Texas for more peaker-plant construction has also lobbied against</p><p>its grid-balancing competition.</p><p>ROBERT F. KENNEDY JUNIOR</p><p>Washington, DC</p><p>Preparing for old age</p><p>“The real test of Labour’s ambition” (August 31st) gave a good summary of</p><p>the need for reforming social care in Britain. However, the article suggested</p><p>that it is “impossible” for people to plan for their future care costs “because</p><p>no one knows how long they will need to be looked after”. There are</p><p>insurance solutions that can help provide protection against catastrophic</p><p>care costs.</p><p>These include immediate-needs annuities (typically taken out as</p><p>the insured life enters care) offered by companies such as Aviva, Legal &</p><p>General, Just Group and National Friendly. There are also protection</p><p>products, sold by firms such as National Friendly and Vitality.</p><p>Some people argue that social care should be the responsibility of the state</p><p>and that it is better to allow individuals to pass on an inheritance than pay</p><p>for their own care. However, the state’s finances are constrained and those</p><p>who can afford to pay for their care should do so.</p><p>The government’s reforms of social-care policy should be clear about what</p><p>the long-term position will be on the balance between the state, private</p><p>provision and the wider family. This should enable the public to be made</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/08/28/fixing-social-care-in-england-is-a-true-test-of-labours-ambition</p><p>aware of their potential costs in later life, after any state support, and make</p><p>provision for them.</p><p>TOM KENNY</p><p>Chair of the Social Care Working Party</p><p>Institute and Faculty of Actuaries</p><p>London</p><p>Why we have OJ every day</p><p>Talk of orange-juice shortages in the face of strong global demand is ironic</p><p>given the industry’s roots (“The big squeeze”, September 14th). The</p><p>introduction of orange concentrate (or “chilled juice”, its chosen</p><p>euphemism) in the late 1940s was a response to a surplus of Florida citrus.</p><p>According to Alissa Hamilton’s book, “Squeezed”, ballooning production</p><p>renewed the imperative to persuade consumers to buy more oranges.</p><p>Minute Maid, a concentrate producer, had no money to advertise and</p><p>offered Bing Crosby cheap stock options in exchange for the crooner’s</p><p>services on the radio. The resulting marketing boom paved the way for</p><p>orange juice to become a staple of the American breakfast.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/09/12/why-orange-juice-has-never-been-more-expensive</p><p>YACOV ARNOPOLIN</p><p>New York</p><p>Man’s best friend</p><p>Bartleby’s thoughts on pets in the office (August 24th) reminded me of my</p><p>experience at the OECD headquarters in Paris some 50 years ago. I insisted</p><p>on bringing in my dog, Meatball, a hefty Briard (French sheepdog). It</p><p>wasn’t long before Meatball became the favourite of just about everyone on</p><p>the staff. Every morning he would make a tour of the building to collect the</p><p>many treats that had been brought for him, then return to my office to curl</p><p>up for a snooze. Our formal work environment soon relaxed to a remarkable</p><p>degree, unmistakable evidence that dogs in the workplace can indeed boost</p><p>morale and productivity.</p><p>BENJAMIN COHEN</p><p>Professor emeritus</p><p>University of California at Santa Barbara</p><p>As a matter of fact, the office grind does not stray far from a dog’s natural</p><p>daily routine: hanging out with the pack and dozing most of the time.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/business/2024/08/22/what-to-do-about-pets-in-the-office</p><p>ALEXANDER HILSBOS</p><p>Waltenschwil, Switzerland</p><p>Stopping the war in Sudan</p><p>“An intensifying calamity” (August 31st) compellingly portrayed both the</p><p>scope and international implications of the tragic conflict in Sudan. The war</p><p>is a vicious power struggle between competing factions, each of them</p><p>drawing support and encouragement from foreign interests anxious to share,</p><p>one way or another, in the spoils. The greatest losers? The people of Sudan,</p><p>abandoned by their government, left without protection and caught in the</p><p>crossfire to face death or displacement.</p><p>Your briefing decried the lack of an international response, yet nowhere</p><p>mentions the most obvious means by which it can be furnished. Almost 20</p><p>years ago, UN member states voted unanimously to adopt a set of principles</p><p>that committed them to “take collective action, in a timely and decisive</p><p>manner...should national authorities manifestly fail to protect their</p><p>populations” from mass atrocities. Growing out of the shared shame from</p><p>earlier international failures to respond to atrocities in Rwanda and the</p><p>Balkans, the “responsibility to protect”, or R2P, marked a turning point. In</p><p>https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/08/29/anarchy-in-sudan-has-spawned-the-worlds-worst-famine-in-40-years</p><p>the words of Martin Gilbert, a historian, the breakthrough symbolised “the</p><p>most significant adjustment to sovereignty in 360 years.”</p><p>The R2P principles call upon the international community to prevent, to</p><p>respond and to rebuild. Military intervention is a last resort to be deployed</p><p>only in the rarest cases. A broad range of other responses are available,</p><p>from arms embargoes to “no fly zones” and targeted sanctions. In Sudan,</p><p>measures such as those would signal the end of international indifference</p><p>and might well influence the competing warlords to end the violence.</p><p>It is disappointing that The Economist failed to include any reference to</p><p>R2P in its description of Sudan’s war and the search for solutions. And it is</p><p>high time that UN member states, and especially the Security Council,</p><p>respect the solemn commitment they made in 2005 and provide protection</p><p>to the beleaguered population of Sudan.</p><p>LLOYD AXWORTHY</p><p>Former foreign affairs minister of Canada</p><p>ALLAN ROCK</p><p>Former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations</p><p>Ottawa, Canada</p><p>Let your Brits be country</p><p>Your article on the boom in country music in Britain mentioned how it has</p><p>become popular in clubs (“What ho, y’all”, August 31st). There are also</p><p>several country-music festivals that draw big artists, two examples being</p><p>Long Road and Country to Country, which plays across Belfast, Glasgow</p><p>and London. It sold out the 20,000 capacity O2 Arena and has been running</p><p>since 2013. Britain also has home-grown talent such as Ward Thomas and</p><p>The Shires. The popularity of country music in Britain owes a huge amount</p><p>to Bob Harris, a radio DJ with a passion for country.</p><p>LORENZ JORGENSEN</p><p>Saffron Walden, Essex</p><p>Country music’s subtle infiltration of Britain allows the fullest possible</p><p>appreciation of the genre. Take, for example, the old standby, “Drop Kick</p><p>Me Jesus Through The Goal Posts of Life”. Somewhere in country music</p><p>the pathos of modern life is addressed: religiosity, booze, love gone bad,</p><p>patriotism, feminism, fidelity, dead-end jobs and on and on. These are</p><p>universal themes and you can get the message in three minutes or so.</p><p>Anyway, welcome to the club and honk if you love Willy Nelson.</p><p>PAT FLEMING</p><p>Washington, DC</p><p>Unpopular music</p><p>I read your article in remembrance of Arnold Schoenberg (”A maestro, due</p><p>an encore”, September 7th). Pierre Boulez once asked me, when he was</p><p>about to conduct a new work by Elliott Carter, a modernist composer, if I</p><p>knew how often contemporary compositions are performed? When I</p><p>hesitated, he answered: “Twice. The first and the last time.”</p><p>ALAN RIDING</p><p>Paris</p><p>https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/08/29/why-country-music-is-booming-in-britain</p><p>https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/09/05/arnold-schoenberg-was-one-of-classical-musics-most-important-rebels</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from</p><p>https://www.economist.com/letters/2024/09/19/letters-to-the-editor</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.economist.com/letters/2024/09/19/letters-to-the-editor</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>By Invitation</p><p>Bill Gates on how feeding children properly can transform</p><p>global health</p><p>Nutrition :: The stomach influences every aspect of human health, says the philanthropist</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Nutrition</p><p>Bill Gates on how feeding children</p><p>properly can transform global</p><p>health</p><p>The stomach influences every aspect of human health, says the</p><p>philanthropist</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午</p><p>WHEN HISTORIANS write about the first quarter of the 21st century, they</p><p>may sum it up this way: 20 years of unprecedented progress followed by</p><p>five years of stagnation.</p><p>This is true for nearly every issue the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation</p><p>works on, from poverty reduction to primary-school enrolment. But</p><p>nowhere is the contrast more stark or tragic than in health.</p><p>Between 2000 and 2020 the world witnessed a</p><p>global health boom. Child</p><p>mortality fell by 50%. In 2000 more than 10m children died every year, and</p><p>now that number is fewer than 5m. The prevalence of the world’s deadliest</p><p>infectious diseases fell by half, too. Best of all, the progress was happening</p><p>in regions where the disease burden had been the highest. Sub-Saharan</p><p>Africa and South Asia saw the most improvement.</p><p>Then covid-19 hit, and progress came to a screeching halt.</p><p>Today, the world is contending with more challenges than at any point in</p><p>my adult life: inflation, debt, new wars. It is also contending with the worst</p><p>child-health crisis: malnutrition. Unfortunately, aid isn’t keeping pace with</p><p>these needs, particularly in the places that need it the most.</p><p>When a child dies, half the time the underlying cause is malnutrition.</p><p>Climate change is making the situation worse. Between 2024 and 2050,</p><p>some 40m additional children will be stunted and 28m will suffer wasting</p><p>as a result of climate change, according to new data from the Institute for</p><p>Health Metrics and Evaluation. These conditions, the most acute forms of</p><p>malnutrition, mean children don’t grow mentally or physically to their full</p><p>potential.</p><p>The health and economic impacts are catastrophic. A child who has suffered</p><p>severe malnutrition before the age of three will complete five fewer years of</p><p>schooling than well-nourished children, and studies show that people who</p><p>went hungry as children earn 10% less over their lifetimes and are 33% less</p><p>likely to escape poverty.</p><p>We must invest in global health to protect children from hunger’s worst</p><p>effects, mitigate the impacts of climate change and spur economic growth.</p><p>And looking to the past can provide inspiration for how to rekindle</p><p>progress.</p><p>The global health boom had many causes. A new generation of political</p><p>leaders embraced humanitarianism. Hundreds of thousands of health</p><p>workers fanned out across the globe, bringing the latest medicines to places</p><p>that doctors had rarely visited. But one often overlooked factor was a small</p><p>—yet crucial—increase in funding.</p><p>https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/09/19/reductions-in-childhood-mortality-have-prevented-100m-deaths-since-1990</p><p>Starting in 2000, the world’s wealthiest countries began steadily increasing</p><p>their funding to supplement low-income countries as they increased their</p><p>own investments in health. During the century’s first 20 years OECD</p><p>countries steadily increased foreign aid from an average of 0.22% of their</p><p>gross national income to 0.33%—with the most generous countries giving</p><p>around 1%. In 2020 low-income countries received an average of $10.47</p><p>per person. It doesn’t sound like much, but that $10.47 made a remarkable</p><p>difference. It fuelled the work of organisations like Gavi, the Vaccine</p><p>Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,</p><p>which gave poorer countries access to life-saving vaccines, drugs and other</p><p>medical breakthroughs.</p><p>The impact of this generosity was stunning. Yet the work is unfinished.</p><p>Today, more than half of all child deaths still occur in sub-Saharan Africa.</p><p>Since 2010 the percentage of the world’s poor living in the region has</p><p>increased by more than 20 points, to nearly 60%. Despite this, during the</p><p>same period, the share of total foreign aid going to Africa has dropped from</p><p>nearly 40% to only 25%—the lowest percentage in 20 years. Fewer</p><p>resources mean more children will die of preventable causes.</p><p>The global health boom is over. But for how long? That’s the question I</p><p>have been wrestling with for the past five years. Will we look back on this</p><p>period as the end of a golden era? Or is it just a brief intermission before</p><p>another boom begins?</p><p>I’m still an optimist. I think we can give global health a second act—even</p><p>in a world where competing challenges require governments to stretch their</p><p>budgets. To do this, we’ll need a two-pronged approach.</p><p>First, the world has to recommit itself to the work that drove the progress in</p><p>the early 2000s, especially investments in crucial vaccines and medicines.</p><p>They’re still saving millions of lives each year.</p><p>We also need to look forward. The research-and-development pipeline is</p><p>brimming with powerful—and surprisingly cost-effective—breakthroughs.</p><p>We need to put these to work fighting the most pervasive health crises. And</p><p>it starts with good nutrition.</p><p>One of the few failures of the global health boom was that we didn’t</p><p>understand the importance of nutrition. But over the past 15 years doctors</p><p>have started to uncover the ways the stomach influences every aspect of</p><p>human health. If we solve malnutrition, we make it easier to solve many</p><p>other problems. We solve extreme poverty. Vaccines are more effective.</p><p>And deadly diseases like malaria and pneumonia become far less fatal.</p><p>This knowledge is now being turned into surprisingly cost-efficient</p><p>innovations, such as super-fortified bouillon and more effective prenatal</p><p>vitamins. The impact of scaling up these innovations would be amazing. In</p><p>Nigeria, modelling shows that fortifying bouillon cubes wouldn’t just</p><p>prevent anaemia; it would also avert more than 11,000 deaths from birth</p><p>defects of the central nervous system, known as neural tube defects. And if</p><p>low- and middle-income countries adopted the most complete form of</p><p>prenatal vitamins, called Multiple Micronutrient Supplements, almost half a</p><p>million lives could be saved by 2040.</p><p>The early global health boom is over. “But for how long?” is a question</p><p>that’s still in humanity’s control to determine. I believe we can start a</p><p>second global health boom by getting children the nutrients they need to</p><p>thrive.■</p><p>Bill Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda</p><p>Gates Foundation. A longer version of this article appears in the</p><p>foundation’s Goalkeepers report for 2024.</p><p>This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/by-</p><p>invitation/2024/09/17/bill-gates-on-how-feeding-children-properly-can-transform-</p><p>global-health</p><p>| Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/report/2024-report/</p><p>https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2024/09/17/bill-gates-on-how-feeding-children-properly-can-transform-global-health</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>Briefing</p><p>America is becoming less “woke”</p><p>Back to sleep :: Our statistical analysis finds that woke opinions and practices are on the</p><p>decline</p><p>| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |</p><p>| Next | Section menu | Main menu |</p><p>Back to sleep</p><p>America is becoming less “woke”</p><p>Our statistical analysis finds that woke opinions and practices are on the</p><p>decline</p><p>9月 19, 2024 06:21 上午 | WASHINGTON, DC</p><p>REGINA JACKSON and Saira Rao achieved a degree of fame at the height</p><p>of the backlash in 2020 after police killed George Floyd, an unarmed black</p><p>American accused of buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 note. For a</p><p>hefty fee, rich white women would hire the pair to help them confront</p><p>unconscious biases at dinner parties that featured such ice-breakers as,</p><p>“Raise your hand if you’re a racist.” Guests may often have broken down in</p><p>tears when told that their claims to be colour-blind were simply another</p><p>brick in the edifice of white supremacy, but there was lots of interest. The</p><p>two women were featured in many news reports and made a film about their</p><p>dinners, “Deconstructing Karen”, in which a guilt-stricken participant</p><p>confesses, “I am a liberal white woman. We are absolutely the most</p><p>dangerous women.”</p><p>The media scrum has since subsided. The last “Race2Dinner” event took</p><p>place a year ago. The pair now host screenings of the film instead. The</p><p>problem, says Ms Rao, is not just that they are fed up with having to “sit</p><p>across from a white person to tell them why they can’t use…the N-word”. It</p><p>is also that public interest in matters of racial injustice has cooled. “The</p><p>pulse of anti-racism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-genocide, is</p><p>dead. There is no pulse,” Ms Rao laments.</p><p>Woke me up</p><p>Republicans love to blame everything they consider wrong with America</p><p>on an epidemic of “wokeness”,</p><p>by which they tend to mean anything that</p><p>smacks of virtue-signalling or political correctness. Thus a bridge over</p><p>Baltimore harbour collapsed earlier this year not, as it might have seemed,</p><p>because it was hit by a wayward cargo ship, but because one of the nearby</p><p>port’s six commissioners is a black woman whose human-resources firm</p><p>helps companies assess how diverse their workforces are, among other</p><p>things—or so a Republican candidate for governor of Utah asserted. Donald</p><p>Trump, when accepting the Republican nomination for president in July,</p><p>blamed “woke” leadership for the failings of America’s armed forces. The</p><p>party’s official platform this year complains of “woke…government”</p><p>spurring politically motivated prosecutions. The implication is that woke</p><p>attitudes are proliferating, and that only Republicans can stem their rise.</p><p>In fact, discussion and espousal of woke views peaked in America in the</p><p>early 2020s and have declined markedly since. The Economist has</p><p>attempted to quantify the prominence of woke ideas in four domains: public</p><p>opinion, the media, higher education and business. Almost everywhere we</p><p>looked a similar trend emerged: wokeness grew sharply in 2015, as Donald</p><p>Trump appeared on the political scene, continued to spread during the</p><p>subsequent efflorescence of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, peaked in</p><p>2021-22 and has been declining ever since (see charts). The only exception</p><p>is corporate wokeness, which took off only after Mr Floyd’s murder, but has</p><p>also retreated in the past year or two.</p><p>The term woke was originally used on the left to describe people who are</p><p>alert to racism. Later it came to encompass those eager to fight any form of</p><p>prejudice. By that definition, it is obviously a good thing. But Democrats</p><p>seldom use the word any more, because it has become associated with the</p><p>most strident activists, who tend to divide the world into victims and</p><p>oppressors. This outlook elevates group identity over the individual sort and</p><p>sees unequal outcomes for different groups as proof of systemic</p><p>discrimination. That logic is then used to justify illiberal means to correct</p><p>entrenched injustices, such as reverse discrimination and the policing of</p><p>speech. It is this sort of “woke warrior” that Republicans love to lambast.</p><p>Wide awoke</p><p>Our analysis subsumes both the advocates and the denigrators of woke</p><p>thinking, by looking at ideas and actions associated with this sort of</p><p>activism, for good or for ill. It measures, for example, talk of “diversity,</p><p>equity and inclusion” (DEI) in the corporate world, regardless of whether it</p><p>is being invoked as a way to correct the under-representation of women and</p><p>racial minorities or as an example of pious window-dressing. Some of the</p><p>yardsticks we use apply only to the more doctrinaire form of woke activism,</p><p>such as the number of drives to censure academics for views deemed</p><p>offensive. Others capture only the more positive aspects of the movement,</p><p>such as polling data on the proportion of Americans who worry about racial</p><p>injustice. Either way, the results are consistent: America has passed “peak</p><p>woke”.</p><p>The simplest way to measure the spread of woke views is through polling.</p><p>We examined responses over the past 25 years to polls conducted by</p><p>Gallup, General Social Survey (GSS), Pew and YouGov. Woke opinions on</p><p>racial discrimination began to grow around 2015 and peaked around 2021.</p><p>In the most recent Gallup data, from earlier this year, 35% of people said</p><p>they worried “a great deal” about race relations, down from a peak of 48%</p><p>in 2021 but up from 17% in 2014. According to Pew, the share of</p><p>Americans who agree that white people enjoy advantages in life that black</p><p>people do not (“white privilege”, in the jargon) peaked in 2020. In GSS’s</p><p>data the view that discrimination is the main reason for differences in</p><p>outcomes between races peaked in 2021 and fell in the most recent version</p><p>of the survey, in 2022. Some of the biggest leaps and subsequent declines in</p><p>woke thinking have been among young people and those on the left.</p><p>Polling about sexual discrimination reveals a similar pattern, albeit with an</p><p>earlier peak than concerns about race. The share of Americans who</p><p>consider sexism a very or moderately big problem peaked at 70% in 2018,</p><p>in the aftermath of #MeToo. The share believing that women face obstacles</p><p>that make it hard to get ahead peaked in 2019, at 57%. Woke views on</p><p>gender are also in decline. Pew finds that the share of people who believe</p><p>someone can be a different sex from the one of their birth has fallen steadily</p><p>since 2017, when it first asked the question. Opposition to trans students</p><p>playing in sports teams that match their chosen gender rather than their</p><p>biological sex has grown from 53% in 2022 to 61% in 2024, according to</p><p>YouGov.</p><p>To corroborate the trend revealed by opinion polls, we measured how</p><p>frequently the media have been using woke terms like “intersectionality”,</p><p>“microaggression”, “oppression”, “white privilege” and “transphobia”. At</p><p>our request, David Rozado, an academic based in New Zealand, counted the</p><p>frequency of 154 of such words in six newspapers—the Los Angeles Times,</p><p>New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and</p><p>Washington Times—between 1970 and 2023. In all but the Los Angeles</p><p>Times, the frequency of these terms peaked between 2019 and 2021, and</p><p>has fallen since. Take the term “white privilege”: in 2020 it featured</p><p>roughly 2.5 times for every million words in the New York Times, but by</p><p>2023 had fallen to just 0.4 mentions for every million words.</p><p>We found largely the same trend in television, by applying the same word-</p><p>counting method to transcripts from ABC, MSNBC and Fox News from</p><p>2010 and 2023, and in books, using the titles of the 30 bestselling books</p><p>each week between 2012 and the middle of this year. Mentions of woke</p><p>words in television peaked in 2021. In popular books the peak came later, in</p><p>2022, with only a small drop in 2023 followed by a much greater fall so far</p><p>in 2024.</p><p>In academia, which is often thought of as a hotbed of wokeism, the trend is</p><p>much the same. Calls for academics to be disciplined for their views, as</p><p>documented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression,</p><p>peaked in 2021 with a total of 222 reported incidents. (Many of these calls</p><p>came from the right, not just from the left.) A similar database, compiled by</p><p>the College Fix, a conservative student newspaper, finds 2020 was the peak</p><p>in calls for scholars to be censored or cancelled. These findings also</p><p>dovetail with polling data: the share of Americans who think that</p><p>expressions of racist views should be restricted rose sharply between 2016</p><p>and 2021, reaching around 52%, and has since declined slightly, down to</p><p>49% in 2022.</p><p>Teaching and research also seem to be shifting away from wokery, at least</p><p>somewhat. The use of our set of 154 woke terms began to rise sharply in</p><p>2015 in papers on the social sciences collected by JSTOR, a digital library</p><p>of academic journals. By 2022 the incidence of “intersectional”,</p><p>“whiteness”, “oppression” and the like were at their peak. At our request,</p><p>Jacob Light, an economist at Stanford University, counted the frequency of</p><p>woke words in a collection of course catalogues from American</p><p>universities. Classes that invoked woke terms in their name or synopsis rose</p><p>by around 20% between 2010 and 2022, but remained stable last year.</p><p>In part, academia’s retreat from wokeness has been ordained by law. The</p><p>Supreme Court banned race-based affirmative action in admissions last</p><p>year. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 86 bills in 28 states</p><p>have aimed to curb DEI initiatives in academia over the past year; 14 have</p><p>become law. For example Alabama will from October 1st prohibit state-</p><p>funded universities from having any DEI offices or programmes, from</p><p>promoting “divisive concepts” about “race, colour, religion, sex, ethnicity</p><p>or national origin” and from allowing transgender students to use the toilets</p><p>of their choice.</p><p>Nine states ban academic institutions from demanding “diversity</p>
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