The envy of the world
The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust. Expect that to continue, argue Simon Rabinovitch and Henry Curr
Analysis: ‘The American Economy’ (Oct. 19, 2024)
Tag Archives: Special Reports
Technology Quarterly: ‘Chipmaking & AI’ (Fall 2024)
Silicon returns to Silicon Valley
AI has returned chipmaking to the heart of computer technology, says Shailesh Chitnis
The semiconductor industry faces its biggest technical challenge yet
Node names do not reflect actual transistor sizes
How to build more powerful chips without frying the data centre
AI has propelled chip architecture towards a tighter bond with software
Researchers are looking beyond digital computing
The end of Moore’s law will not slow the pace of change
Education: “Schooling’s Stagnation” – July 13, 2024
Must try harder
Schools in rich countries are making poor progress. They need to get back to basics, argues Mark Johnson
Schools in rich countries are making poor progress
Hanging on to the best of them is getting harder
The rich world’s teachers are increasingly morose
Will artificial intelligence transform school?
Efforts to teach character bring promise and perils
England’s school reforms are earning fans abroad
Technology Report: “Spycraft” – July 6, 2024
The tools of global spycraft have changed
And so has the world in which they are used, says Shashank Joshi
Afew years ago intelligence analysts observed that internet-connected cctv cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were inexplicably talking to vital parts of the Indian power grid. The strange connection turned out to be a deliberately circuitous route by which Chinese spies were communicating with malware they had previously buried deep inside crucial parts of the Indian grid (presumably to enable future sabotage). The analysts spotted it because they were scanning the internet to look for “command and control” (c2) nodes—such as cameras—that hackers use as stepping stones to their victims.
Ubiquitous technical surveillance has made spying more difficult
Signals intelligence has become a cyber-activity
Sometimes the old ways of espionage are the best
Artificial intelligence can speed-sort satellite photos
Private firms and open sources are giving spies a run for their money
Report: “Deglobalization Of Finance” – May 11, 2024
Worlds apart
The American-led financial order is giving way to a more divided one
Ten years ago your correspondent was fidgeting nervously in a meeting room at vtb Capital, the investment-banking arm of Russia’s second-biggest bank, just across the road from the Bank of England. During the recruitment process for a graduate job, things had taken a worrying turn. A Russian missile had shot down mh17, a passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, while it was passing over Ukraine. Plenty of Russian firms were already under Western sanctions owing to the annexation of Crimea earlier that year. Now sanctions were being ramped up, and vtb Capital’s parent bank was a prime target. Hence the fidgeting: how to ask the slightly alarming man across the table whether there would even be a vtb in a few months’ time?
The global financial system is in danger of fragmenting
How crises reshaped the world financial system
The movement of capital globally is in decline
National payment systems are proliferating
The fight to dethrone the dollar
How the financial system would respond to a superpower war
Sources and acknowledgments
Special Report: “India’s Economy” – April 27, 2024
For its next phase of growth, India needs a new reform agenda
With the right changes, it can continue as an engine of global growth, say Arjun Ramani and Thomas Easton
The consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a city in Uttar Pradesh, in January was a matter of supreme importance to Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister; attendance was thus de rigueur for those seeking his approval. The attendant courtiers included not just politicians, officials and foreign dignitaries but also India’s biggest corporate bosses. Uttar Pradesh is not their normal stamping ground, and Ayodhya has not until recently been much of a destination for tycoons. Now it has 115 hotels under construction, and some of those January visitors may soon be finding reasons to return.
India’s financial system has improved dramatically in the past decade
India’s difficult business environment is improving
India’s leaders must deal with three economic weaknesses
Going green could bring huge benefits for India’s economy
Technology Quarterly: ‘Health And AI’ (April 2024)
A new prescription
AIs will make health care safer and better, reports Natasha Loder. It may even get cheaper too
AIs will make health care safer and better
Artificial intelligence has long been improving diagnoses
Medical AIs with human faces are on their way
Artificial intelligence is taking over drug development
Can artificial intelligence make health care more efficient?
The Economist Special Report: ‘The Oil Industry’
For 50 years the story of oil has been one of matching supply with increasing demand
Fly west across the United Arab Emirates from Fujairah, a tanker-filled port on the Gulf of Oman, towards the Persian Gulf and you get a sense of the vulnerability arid lands have to climate change. The farms around Dhaid provide a splash of green, but homegrown food is scarce, homegrown staples next to non-existent. Drinkable water comes mostly from desalination plants. The heat is growing inhumane; outside work is banned during the hottest hours of summer afternoons.
Why oil supply shocks are not like the 1970s any more
The end of oil, then and now
Oil’s endgame will be in the Gulf
Can Big Oil run in reverse?
Sources and acknowledgments
Technology Quarterly: Where The Internet Lives
Where the internet lives
Users of the internet can ignore its physical underpinnings. But for technologies like artificial intelligence and the metaverse to work, others need to pay attention, argues Abby Bertics
- Users of the internet need not think about its physical underpinnings
- Advances in physical storage and retrieval made the cloud possible
- The internet got better and faster by moving data closer to users
- Data centres improved greatly in energy efficiency as they grew massively larger
- The physical borders of the digital world
- Satellites offer an important alternative to the wired internet
- The internet is integrated into virtually every aspect of life
- Sources and acknowledgments
The Economist Special Report: ‘Philanthropy’
The super-rich are trying new approaches to philanthropy
They are hoping to get money to the needy faster, says Avantika Chilkoti
A nudge is not always enough to force change within an industry. Sometimes a series of forceful shoves is required. In the rarified world of Western philanthropy, the shoves began in 2020. The covid-19 pandemic, protests for racial justice across America that summer and the outflow of refugees from Ukraine starting in early 2022 created a new urgency around charitable giving and revealed failings in how it worked. Donors began to consider how they could disburse money faster and with more impact.
No-strings philanthropy is giving charities more decision-making power
Organizations on the ground know best how money should be spent
Give Directly does what it says on the tin
Cash hand-outs can transform communities
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