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Scaling Europe’s defense industry: An interview with Micael Johansson

The defense landscape in Europe is evolving fast, with active conflicts and novel hybrid threats affecting countries’ critical infrastructure and economies. Innovation will be a key enabler for Europe’s defense industrial base as the region seeks ways to scale the defense industry, drive more capabilities, and better collaborate to ensure its industrial competitiveness. Having joined Saab in 1985, and having recently been elected as president and chairman of the Aerospace,…

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Can Mark Zuckerberg Spend His Way to AI Success?

This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. The views expressed are the authors’ own. In the last week alone, Meta has poached more than a dozen top AI researchers from peer companies, giving each one immediate cash bonuses worth up to $100 million in a frantic effort to keep up with the AI arms race after falling behind market leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic. But perhaps Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg…

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Past their prime? Tool use declines with age in wild chimpanzees

Wild chimpanzees show reduced participation and performance in their tool-use behaviours as they grow older, according to the long-term video observations used in the new study. This provides solid evidence that old age leads to gradual withdrawal from tool use, and is a contributing factor to lower efficiency in chimps' stone tool selection and use.The findings also indicate that chimpanzees mirror human beings in how the aging process affects their…

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The US Provokes China into a Military Confrontation over Taiwan

The US goal is not a direct military clash, but the gradual drawing of Beijing into a protracted proxy conflict in which Washington will have the advantage in terms of time, resources and political conditions, Andrey Sushentsov writes. Tensions in relations between the US and China are steadily growing. Their rivalry extends to the economic, technological, military-political and ideological spheres. The Taiwan issue remains the central node of this confrontation.…

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Be WARNed: Maryland DOL Reissues Proposed Rules on Mandated Notice of Proposed Mass Layoffs or RIFs

Quick Hits On June 14, 2025, the Maryland Department of Labor reissued proposed regulations for the Maryland Economic Stabilization Act, requiring employers to provide notice of mass layoffs or reductions in force. Maryland’s Economic Stabilization Act mandates sixty days’ written notice for mass reductions in operations, applying to employers with at least fifty employees and triggered by significant workforce reductions. The public has until July 14, 2025, to comment on…

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Expert Comment: What is the role of community energy systems in achieving universal energy access?

In the UK, we often take access to energy for granted. Yet it underpins virtually every aspect of daily life—from food and healthcare, to communication and transport. Globally, it enables sustainable development by improving educational outcomes, increasing clean water availability, and building climate adaptation capacity. Its centrality in the UN Sustainable Development Goals underscores a shared understanding: equitable development hinges on universal energy access.Achieving this goal, however, is far from…

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Frank Elderson: Banks have made good progress in managing climate and nature risks – and must continue

11 July 2025By Frank Elderson, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECBEuropean banks have made forward strides in managing climate and nature-related risks. But more still needs to be done as we often see that practices are only applied to a subset of relevant exposures, geographic areas and risk categories. To help banks improve further, later this year the ECB…

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NATO: Was There a Summit?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s summit is traditionally one of the last events of the spring political season in Europe. In late June - early July, the allies "synchronise their watches" on the results of the first half of the year and record agreements for the future. Since 2022, NATO summits have been rich in news: after a twelve-year break, the Alliance's Strategic Concept was updated, several aid packages for…

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The Iberian green industrial opportunity: Carbon capture and storage

As the world shifts toward a more sustainable future, addressing carbon emissions remains a top priority. Renewable energy sources are rapidly expanding and driving the decarbonization effort, yet certain industries, particularly those with hard-to-abate (HtA) emissions, require additional solutions.HtA industries are sectors with high energy requirements that face significant challenges in reducing their carbon emissions due to the nature of their processes. In 2022, the three main HtA industries—cement, steel,…

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Scaling the 21st-century leadership factory

A large fashion retailer faces the possibility that much of its supply chain will be subject to 90 percent tariffs depending on how and when geopolitical winds shift. A global industrial-equipment maker needs to quickly redesign a flagship product that keeps malfunctioning because of stronger and more frequent weather events. A consumer-packaged-goods company needs to optimize its coding and product-marketing processes given that gen AI can automate both—and competitors are…

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Leading With a Moonshot Mindset: Lessons From Waymo

Waymo started over a decade ago as a research project at Google X, Alphabet’s R&D lab. Today, it's a commercial autonomous driving service operating on public roads, with no human drivers behind the wheel. It represents one of today’s most visible and complex moonshots. Moonshot thinking, as Waymo shows, is about solving deeply rooted real-world problems through 10x leaps, not 10-percent improvements. It requires significant upfront investment, a long runway, interdisciplinary collaboration…

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Why learning to code still matters

Karlie Kloss, founder of Kode With Klossy (KWK), and Osi Imeokparia, KWK’s CEO, say the process of coding builds more career skills than knowing how to write instructions for a computer. On this episode of At the Edge podcast, they speak with McKinsey Senior Partner Lareina Yee about how KWK’s programs teaching 13-to-18-year-old young women and gender-expansive teens how to code help enable the students to develop critical thinking skills, improve…

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Results of the BRICS Summit in Brazil

The Brazilian BRICS summit should be recognised as quite successful both in promoting new topics on the agenda and in the declared common approaches, which more clearly than before reflect the position of the countries of the Global Non-West and the South in world politics, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov. The annual BRICS summit was held on July 6-7, 2025 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For the first…

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Banking on AI risks derailing net zero goals: report on energy costs of Big Tech

By 2040, the energy demands of the tech industry could be up to 25 times higher than today, with unchecked growth of data centres driven by AI expected to create surges in electricity consumption that will strain power grids and accelerate carbon emissions.  This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which suggests that even the most conservative estimate for big…

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The European asset management industry: Navigating volatile times

The European asset management industry is facing rocky times. Although assets under management (AUM) are at record levels, structural trends are putting pressure on long-term viability. At the same time, the industry is facing an uncertain macroeconomic environment and geopolitical tensions, leading to lower levels of net flows and higher market volatility. European asset managers have also lost ground to US players. In light of these developments, European asset managers…

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The learning organization: How to accelerate AI adoption

The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.William Gibson (Cyberpunk documentary, 1990) The dizzying speed at which AI technology is evolving makes it nearly impossible to keep up with the many new ways that it could transform how people work. Yet for most organizations, the gap between what’s possible and what’s implemented is steadily widening. A 2024 McKinsey Global Survey found that nine in ten employees used gen AI for…

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Large-scale DNA study maps 37,000 years of human disease history

A new study suggests that our ancestors’ close cohabitation with domesticated animals and large-scale migrations played a key role in the spread of infectious diseases.The team, led by Professor Eske Willerslev at the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen, recovered ancient DNA from 214 known human pathogens in prehistoric humans from Eurasia. They found that the earliest evidence of zoonotic diseases – illnesses transmitted from animals to humans, like COVID in…

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Major investment for next-generation battery research for heavy industries

Since 2017, Prosperity Partnerships have provided investment for academic institutes and businesses to co-create and co-deliver a programme of research activity that directly addresses a clear industrial need.By backing scientists to work hand-in-hand with industry, we’re combining cutting-edge research with business expertise to turn science into practical solutions that can make a difference in people’s daily lives.Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister for ScienceFor the new project ‘Energy storage for decarbonisation’, the…

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Oxford joins Franco-British partnership to cooperate on AI research, training and innovation

Oxford is joining forces with the Saclay Cluster – which includes Institut Polytechnique de Paris, HEC Paris and Université Paris-Saclay – and the University of Cambridge, to create a strategic partnership in the field of artificial intelligence. Named the Entente CordIAle Paris-Saclay – Oxford-Cambridge AI Initiative, the partnership brings together leading centres of scientific and technological excellence to foster the emergence of excellent, ethical and sovereign artificial intelligence on a…

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Climate risks: no longer the tragedy of the horizon

9 July 2025By Sabine Mauderer and Livio Stracca[1]Climate change is no longer “the Tragedy of the Horizon”, as Mark Carney put it, but an imminent danger. In the next five years, extreme weather events could already put up to 5% of the euro area’s economic output at risk, according to the new short-term scenarios of the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).Climate-related risks are an immediate concern for financial…

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Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Continue Plans to Reduce Federal Workforce

Quick Hits The Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s order that had blocked President Trump’s executive order directing large-scale reductions in force across federal agencies. The ruling temporarily allows the Trump administration to continue its efforts to reorganize the federal workforce under the Department of Government Efficiency initiative while merits-based legal challenges to the planned reductions are pending. The justices stayed a May 22, 2025, preliminary injunction issued by a…

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Oxford’s OrganOx wins the MacRobert Award 2025

The University of Oxford spinout has developed two of the most complex medical devices ever designed and built in the UK. They maintain livers and kidneys in a functioning state outside the body for at least twice as long as conventional cold preservation techniques, dramatically increasing the number of transplants for patients, eradicating night-time operations for clinicians, and reducing overall healthcare costs for providers.A third, patient-connected device can also be…

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Shale’s bold new era: What it means and how to succeed

The US shale industry has moved through two distinct eras of transformation, and it is now entering a third. After years of rapid growth and a sharp focus on cash, the industry’s boldest chapter may be unfolding, defined by unprecedented scale, geologic uncertainty, macro volatility, and accelerating innovation. Thriving in this new era will be all about leveraging scale: transforming operations and supply chains, elevating and integrating commercial strategies for…

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The Dynamics of Changes in the International Order

We should first temper our tendency to frame global political evolution as a contest between rival systems. While this struggle remains significant – manifest in responses to inequality (domestic and global), neo-colonial exploitation, digital colonialism, Western disregard for international law, and the imposition of “might makes right” logic – we must avoid mimicking the West’s polarizing tactics, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev. It is likely evident to all that the transformation of the international order and the dissolution of distortions emerging…

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Banking on gen AI in the credit business: The route to value creation

Transformative technologies don’t come along very often, so when they do it pays to act quickly. When gen AI algorithms were launched in 2022, banks wasted little time exploring their potential in core commercial credit activities. But three years later, the results are mixed, with some institutions making good progress in putting the technology to work while others lag behind, a new study from McKinsey and the International Association of…

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John Stankey talks about leaning into the long term at AT&T

John Stankey has led AT&T as CEO since July 2020 and was elected chairman of the board in February this year. Over his 40-year tenure, John has held senior leadership roles across the breadth of AT&T’s businesses. These include turns as chief strategy officer and chief technology officer. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, John talks with McKinsey Senior Partner and North America Chair Eric Kutcher on…

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Expert Comment: Would a ban on fossil fuel advertising usher in a new era of corporate responsibility?

MPs gathered in Parliament yesterday to debate a proposed UK-wide ban on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship.If the UK is serious about climate leadership, the question may not only be whether to ban fossil fuel advertising, but rather how quickly we can expand this logic across other sectors still propping up carbon-intensive industries.Triggered by a petition submitted by Chris Packham, signed by more than 110,000 UK residents and supported by…

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Florida’s New State Laws Hitting the Books This Summer

Quick Hits A handful of new Florida laws went into effect on July 1, 2025. New legislation changes the number of hours minors may work and their break entitlements and provides increased flexibility for certain minors who are at least 16 years old. The Florida minimum wage rate is increasing to $14 per hour for nontipped employees and $10.98 per hour for tipped employees. New legislation makes significant changes to…

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Egypt: Miss Economy in the Keynes beauty contest

Controlling the narrative and exploiting positive biases Studying Egyptian sovereign risk is a particularly challenging exercise: the Egyptian pound remains sensitive to investors’ expectations, guided by their perceptions and biases. The authorities are well aware of this and know which signals to communicate about. One such signal is the closely followed level of currency reserves, which, in reality, is becoming less and less relevant as a way to monitor liquidity…

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  • Reading time:7 mins read
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Trading with dictators? A historical review of the EU’s business partners

8 July 2025By Claudia Marchini and Alexander PopovOver the last 25 years the EU’s trading partners have become less and less democratic. The ECB Blog investigates the background of this development and the dynamics at play.Do democratic values play a role in trade? While the weakening of democratic norms around the globe has sparked renewed interest in this question, economic theory and historical examples do not provide a definitive answer.On…

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Two Oxford researchers become EMBO members

Two University of Oxford academics have become the latest to join the eminent life scientists in Europe and beyond that make up the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Professor Ana Domingos of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG) and Professor Matt Higgins of the Department of Biochemistry, are two of sixty new EMBO Members (and nine EMBO Associate Members) who have been elected in recognition of their outstanding…

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Iran: Results of the Confrontation with Israel

The twelve-day Iranian-Israeli military conflict has demonstrated that no bombing campaign can completely destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Hypothetically, this is only possible as a result of a military ground operation, which neither Israel nor the United States are ready to initiate. The only way to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem is through political and diplomatic means, writes Alexander Maryasov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Iran (2001-2005). The Israeli…

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What Happened When Five AI Models Fact-Checked Trump

This commentary originally appeared in the Washington Post. The views expressed are the authors’ own. President Donald Trump has presented himself as a strong champion and consistent supporter of artificial intelligence. Upon returning to the White House, one of his first acts was to issue an executive order to “sustain and enhance America’s dominance in AI.” On his second day in office, he announced the Stargate Project, calling it “the…

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Seven Steps to AI-Powered Community Marketing

Information overload has transformed how brands must connect with consumers. Ask yourself: How often do you click on a random ad that pops up in your social media feed? Traditional advertising, characterised by brands telling consumers how good their product is, increasingly falls flat amid the sea of content. To stand out, brands shouldn’t shout louder; they need to build genuine connections. As marketing legend Seth Godin noted, "People do not…

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Semiconductors: Economy vs. Security

On July 4, the Valdai Club hosted a presentation of the Valdai Paper, titled “The Semiconductor Reindustrialisation of the United States: Implications for the World”. The moderator of the discussion, Ivan Timofeev,  noted that the topic was highly relevant, since semiconductor technologies are of global importance and are currently being politicised. He pointed out that the United States, which was the architect of the globalisation model that emerged after the Cold War,…

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In Marx We Trust, In Iran We Bust: China’s Iran Strategy Collapses

When the Biden administration signaled a withdrawal of U.S. assertiveness in the Middle East, it effectively created a vacuum that China was eager to fill. By softening pressure on Iran and tolerating Beijing’s growing rapprochement with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, Washington permitted China to extend its influence across a region historically dominated by U.S. power. In this permissive environment, China built upon its long-term Marxist-Leninist worldview of exploiting “weakest…

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District of Columbia’s Pause on Tipped Wage Increase Signals Grim Future for Initiative 82

Quick Hits On June 30, 2025, District of Columbia Mayor Bowser signed emergency legislation that pauses the scheduled tipped wage increase from $10 to $12 per hour on July 1, 2025. On July 1, 2025, the permissible tip credit in the District of Columbia increases from $7.50 to $7.95. The emergency legislation expires on September 28, 2025. Under Initiative 82, the next increase to the minimum cash wage for tipped…

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OFCCP Proposes Changes to Employment Discrimination Complaint Forms

Quick Hits OFCCP is seeking comments on changes to the complaint form for employment discrimination by federal contractors and subcontractors. The proposed changes are requested to update the complaint form to comport with changes brought by Executive Order 14173. OFCCP is seeking approval to revise the Complaint of Employment Discrimination Involving a Federal Contractor or Subcontractor form (CC-4) and the Pre-Complaint Inquiry for Employment Discrimination Involving a Federal Contractor or…

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Expert Comment: Welfare for the 21st century

Much of the debate focuses on the budgetary cost of welfare benefits, and on the labor market participation of recipients. Little of this debate is based on clear principles, a vision of the society we want to live in, or rigorous evidence on the effect of alternative policies.  Professor Maximilian Kasy, Department of Economics There are some principles that most economists, regardless of political persuasion, would agree to.First, coercion, surveillance,…

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Expert Comment: What is the future of the British welfare system?

Much of the debate focuses on the budgetary cost of welfare benefits, and on the labor market participation of recipients. Little of this debate is based on clear principles, a vision of the society we want to live in, or rigorous evidence on the effect of alternative policies.  Professor Maximilian Kasy, Department of Economics There are some principles that most economists, regardless of political persuasion, would agree to.First, coercion, surveillance,…

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