The Economist - September 13 2025

Год выпуска: September 2025

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 76

The $3trn bet on AI

• Even if artificial intelligence achieves its potential, many people will lose their shirts: leader, page 7.
• Faith in God-like large language models is waning, page 50.
• Al stocks are soaring. How bad would a crash be? Page 57.
• Ais and privacy: By invitation, page 13.

Socialists in America

• The Democratic Socialists are emerging as a populist alternative to Trumpism: Lexington, page 23.

Sabres rattle in Poland and Qatar

• NATO needs an emphatic response to Russian air incursions: leader, page 9.
• Poland’s prime minister warns of “open conflict” with Russia, page 38.
• Israel’s extra-territorial campaign against terrorists has to have limits: leader, page 9.
• America no longer looks able to protect its partners in the Gulf, page 34.

Peak human, falling fertility

• A world with fewer people would not be all bad: leader, page 8.
• The numbers, page 14.
• A contracting population does not have to be poorer, page 16.

Dan Brown: sects maniac

• Despite its clumsy exposition, “The Secret of Secrets” is a romp, page 68.

The world this week Politics

• Poland shot down Russian drones that had entered its air space, the most far-reaching intrusion ever into NATO territory. The Netherlands assisted Poland. Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said the incursion brought NATO closer to “open conflict” with Russia. Poland had earlier decided to close its border with Belarus while Russia conducts its Zapad war games there, which simulate an attack on NATO. Analysts think the previous Zapad manoeuvres in 2021 were a training ground for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr Tusk said a Belarusian spy had been arrested and a diplomat would be expelled.
• At least 24 pensioners queuing to collect their benefits were killed by a Russian air strike on a village in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Russia has carried out its largest attack across Ukraine since the start of the war, hitting the north, south and east of the country with a blitz of drones and missiles and setting the government’s main building in Kyiv on fire.

Mr Macron’s political fixer

• Emmanuel Macron appointed Sébastien Lecornu as the next prime minister of France, after François Bayrou lost a vote of confidence in the National Assembly over his plans to cut spending. Mr Lecornu, previously the armed-forces minister, is Mr Macron’s seventh prime minister since 2017. Adding to the upheaval, “Block Everything” protests broke out across France. Markets are unimpressed. The government’s borrowing costs on ten-year bonds continue to hold above those of Greece, as investors bet that Mr Lecornu will also struggle to get a grip on France’s fiscal crisis.
• Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, found himself on the back foot again about his political judgment. He was forced to sack Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to America after more revelations emerged about a past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a deceased sex offender. The opposition Conservatives had raised questions about why Lord Mandelson was appointed in the first place. A few days earlier Angela Rayner resigned as deputy leader of the Labour Party for underpaying tax on a new home—she had been in charge of the government’s housing policy.
• Norway’s Labour Party won another term in office in an election, at which the antiimmigration Progress Party doubled its number of seats in parliament and support for the centre-right collapsed. The prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, will now rely on an alliance of smaller left, green and agrarian parties to pass key legislation.
• Israel bombed a villa in the Qatari capital, Doha, where it said senior Hamas officials were meeting. Six people were killed but their identities remain unclear; Hamas insists none of its leaders was among them. Qatar, which hosts an American base and has been facilitating talks over a ceasefire in Gaza, said Israel’s attack was “state terrorism”. American officials denied they knew about the strike in advance.
• Donald Trump said that he felt “very badly” about the attack and that it did not assist Israel’s or America’s goals.
• Israel ordered all residents of Gaza city, around a million people, to evacuate ahead of its anticipated ground offensive, Gideon’s Chariots II. Binyamin Netanyahu said recent air strikes on the area, which have killed scores of Palestinians, were only the beginning of the main “intensive operation” to capture what he says is Hamas’s last stronghold.
• Palestinian gunmen killed six people at a bus stop in Jerusalem. The Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said it was responsible for the attack.
• Jihadist terrorism continued to plague Africa. The Allied Democratic Forces, which is linked to Islamic State, killed at least 50 mourners during a vigil at a church in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In Mali an al-Qaeda-linked group tried to block fuel from reaching Bamako, the capital; the military responded with air strikes. In Mozambique a wave of Islamist attacks in the Muidumbe district of Cabo Delgado province has displaced 1,319 people since August. Almost 100,000 have fled the violence so far this year.
• Charlie Kirk, a conservative podcaster and activist in America, was shot dead at a college event in Utah. He was 31. Police hunted for the killer, a lone shooter. Utah’s governor called it a political assassination. Donald Trump, who has faced two assassination attempts himself, blamed the rhetoric of the radical left for comparing “wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers”.
• America’s Supreme Court decided that immigration officers could continue their expansive raids in Los Angeles, lifting a lower court’s blocking of the operations because of concerns over racial profiling. Other litigation is pending, but one of the justices on the Supreme Court said that for now, the officers could use ethnicity as a “relevant factor” in whom they decide to question.

Another one bites the dust

• Ishiba Shigeru resigned as Japan’s prime minister. His position had become untenable following the loss of the upper house in an election in July. He was in the job for less than a year. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party will hold an election probably on October 4th to decide who Japan’s fifth prime minister in five years will be. The front-runners include Takaichi Sanae, hoping to become the country’s first female leader, and Koizumi Shinjiro, the son of a former prime minister.
• At least 19 people were killed during anti-corruption protests in Nepal. K.P. Sharma Oli resigned as prime minister, but that did little to quell the violence. The palace that houses the prime minister’s office was set on fire and senior politicians were physically attacked. A curfew was imposed in Kathmandu, the capital.
• Anutin Charnvirakul was elected as Thailand’s new prime minister by parliament following the dismissal of Paetong-tarn Shinawatra by the Constitutional Court. Mr Anutin leads the Bhumjaithai party and must call an election within four months, according to the agreement with the opposition People’s Party that pushed him into power.
• In Argentina, Javier Milei’s Libertarian party was trounced in a legislative election in Buenos Aires province by the Peronist opposition, indicating that the president faces a tricky midterm congressional election on October 26th. Stock-markets fell and the peso slumped, as investors fretted that Mr Milei’s tough-love reforms maybe in jeopardy. Acknowledging the defeat, Mr Milei vowed to “accelerate” his programme of fiscal rectitude.

The world this week Business

• The Murdoch family reached a settlement on who will head Rupert Murdoch’s media empire when he dies, bringing an end to a decades-long succession battle. Lachlan Murdoch, Mr Murdoch’s eldest son, emerged as the winner. He will take a controlling stake in Fox, which covers television and broadcast news, and News Corp, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and in Britain the Sun and the Times, when his father, who is 94, passes away. Lachlan already runs the companies, but formally handing him the reins fulfils the elder Murdoch’s wish that they continue to promote a “conservative voice”.

What Al bubble?

• Oracle’s stock jumped by a third in value thanks to an “astonishing” quarter in which its expected revenue from future contracts for cloud services rose by 359%, year on year. It also emerged that Oracle will supply OpenAl with data-centre capacity in a $300bn contract. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder, has seen his net worth grow by $i9ibn this year, to $383bn. He is now vying with Elon Musk for the title of world’s richest man.
• Anthropic’s recent $1.5bn settlement with a group of authors in a copyright lawsuit was roundly criticised by the judge overseeing the case. The suit alleges that the Al startup downloaded books from pirated websites to train its models. The judge called another hearing for September 25th, to “see if I can hold my nose and approve” the agreement.
• The European Commission fined Google €2.95bn ($3.5bn) for favouring its own display advertising technology to the detriment of its rivals. Google has 60 days to tell the commission how it will remedy the situation, or else face the possibility of being ordered to sell part of its ad business. Google said the fine was unjustified and that it would appeal against it.
• America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that 911,000 fewer jobs had been created in the 12 months ending March than had been thought. The revision is based on new census data and updated information from businesses. The head of the BLS was recently sacked by Donald Trump after a big downward correction to payroll China’s exports grew by 4.4% in August, year on year, the slowest pace by that measure since February. The value of goods sent to America plunged by 33%, but exports to South-East Asia were up by 22.5% and to the EU by 10%. Meanwhile, China fell back into deflation in August, as the consumerprice index dropped by 0.4%, year on year.
• numbers for May and June. The president had claimed those figures were “rigged”. Meanwhile, data for August suggested that only 22,000 jobs were created that month.
• A federal judge decided that Lisa Cook could continue to serve as a governor at the Federal Reserve while she fights Mr Trump’s attempt to sack her. The judge ruled that because Ms Cook’s alleged transgressions in filling out a mortgage application occurred before she became a governor it did not meet the threshold of “sufficient cause” that the president had used to justify her firing. The decision means that Ms Cook will get to vote on interest rates at the Fed’s meeting on September 17th.
• Anglo American announced that it will merge with Teck Resources, a Canadian mining company, to become a giant in the production of copper. Mining companies have tried to consolidate in recent years, though few have succeeded. Anglo fought off a bid from bhp last year and Teck rejected an offer from Glencore in 2023. Anglo Teck will have its headquarters in Vancouver, but will keep its primary share listing in London, with secondary listings in Johannesburg, Toronto and New York.
• Klarna’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange made a splash. The Swedish fintech company’s stock was up by 15% by the close of trading, giving it a market valuation of $15bn.
• Apple unveiled the iPhone 17 and the iPhone Air, its thinnest phone yet with a width of 5.6mm. That is even thinner than Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge, which came out earlier this year. The iPhone 17 is roughly the same price as last year’s model, despite Apple’s warning that it faced huge disruptions to its supply chain because of tariffs.

Slimming down

• Novo Nordisk decided to cut 9,000 jobs amid intense competition in the market for weight-loss and diabetes drugs. It also issued its third profit warning of 2025. When sales surged of its Wegovy and Ozempic treatments the Danish firm increased its workforce by 75% to 78,400. But with Eli Lilly eating into its market share investors have lost their appetite for Novo’s stock, which is down by 45% this year.

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