Philippa Kaur

ARMSMAKING IS NOT like other businesses. It is impervious to macroeconomics and sheltered from fickle consumer tastes. Its prospects are determined by one factor—how militarily threatened its government customers are feeling. With wars blazing in Ukraine and Gaza, another on the brink between Israel and Lebanon, and more conflict looming as China eyes Taiwan, the perceived threat level as leaders of NATO countries gather for a summit in Washington on July 9th-11th is through the roof.Last year NATO’s 32 members spent $1.3trn on defence, a record high after adjusting for inflation at least since the fall of the Soviet Union. America, by far the biggest spender, is budgeting $842bn this year. Historically more peacenik Europeans, spooked by Russian tanks on their doorstep, are undoing decades of stinginess that has resulted in accumulated underinvestment in equipment of about $600bn. This year NATO expects 18 members to meet the target of dedicating 2% of GDP to defence, up from three in 2014. More

Few bosses worry about European politics more than its bankers. In Italy and Spain new taxes have been levied as punishment for higher profits. The populist surge in France has redoubled concern. When Emmanuel Macron announced shock parliamentary elections in June, investors in French banks legged it. The final round of the election, held on July 7th, is likely to empower reckless spenders on the hard left or hard right. In an interview with Bloomberg in May, Mr Macron made a rare political pitch for a more integrated banking market, including cross-border deals. Now the sharp election-related fall in the price of France’s government debt has instead revived memories of the “doom loops” of the euro-zone crisis of the early 2010s, when worries about the solvency of sovereigns and of lenders fed off one another.More volatile politics could make European banks even more parochial and less ambitious than they already are. One exception is Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), which cannot be accused of being either. The Spanish lender makes more than half its profit in Mexico. After Spain, its next largest market is Turkey, where the economy is so dire that BBVA uses “hyperinflation accounting” in its bookkeeping. And it is no shrinking violet at home. In May BBVA made a €12bn ($13bn) hostile offer to acquire Sabadell, a Spanish competitor it came close to buying in 2020. More

KIM KARDASHIAN spotted the trend early, true to form. In 2021 the American reality-television star and her sister Khloé went bunker shopping. They tested a $200,000 facility made by a firm called Atlas Survival Shelters which provides 46 square metres (500 square feet) of safe space. Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Meta, a social-media empire, is reportedly building a less cramped 450-square-metre facility under his ranch on a remote Hawaiian island. Now many Europeans, too, are running for cover. And not just plutocrats.In the days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 Bunkers Shelters Systems Germany (BSSD), a company in Berlin, began to receive as many as 1,000 calls a day from prospective clients. Created in 2014 and employing 100 people, it was the only German company making bunkers for private individuals when the Ukraine war began. Its founders, Mario and Katrin Piejde, quickly installed a hotline to deal with the barrage of requests. Since then its order book has swollen three-fold, as more Germans worry about various conflicts spinning out of control. More

AN EMAIL URGING you to download the “forum-networking app” to start “making new connections” ahead of next week’s “knowledge-sharing experience” reminds you of something you had pushed to the back of your mind: you are going to a conference. If you are a paediatric nephrologist meeting colleagues to discuss the latest in children’s dialysis, a founder looking for investors or a speaker, you know what to do. But if—like most conference attendees, including, on occasion, this guest Bartleby—you are not sure why you are here, you need a strategy.First, manage your expectations: “convention”, “summit”, “event”, “roadshow” and “festival” sound more fun than a conference, but don’t bring your Glastonbury or Burning Man kit. You are still just going to a gabfest. No need to wear a three-piece suit, and by all means dress for comfort, but avoid the Midwest-account-manager-out-for-a-golf-weekend look. You never know whom you might run into. More

With sound-stage doors made big enough for performing elephants, the century-old Paramount Pictures lot on Melrose Avenue is a living museum of the film business. Now the studio, one of the world’s first—and the last still based in central Hollywood—is for sale. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is seeking a buyer for the teetering empire she inherited from her father Sumner, who died in 2020. For six months suitors have come and gone. On July 2nd it was reported that David Ellison, a tech heir whose previous bid for Paramount was rebuffed only in June, had reached a preliminary agreement to buy Ms Redstone’s stake in the company.The turbulent picture at Paramount reflects the state of Hollywood. Show business has entered an age of austerity. Cinema is suffering from long covid; this year’s domestic box-office takings are forecast to be 30% lower than in 2019. Cable subscriptions are falling faster than ever, with a record 2.4m Americans cancelling their pay-TV in the latest quarter. More

In the summer of 1994 a job vacancy for software engineers was posted on Usenet, an early precursor to online forums. The company in question planned to “pioneer commerce on the internet”. Applicants needed to be able to design complex systems “in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible”. Résumés could be sent to Jeff Bezos at a Seattle-based startup named Cadabra.The name didn’t stick—on phone calls “Cadabra” was too easily confused with “cadaver”—but the ambition did. Amazon, which turns 30 on July 5th, has indeed changed the world of online shopping. This year its websites will sell an estimated $554bn-worth of goods in America, reckons JPMorgan Chase, a bank. That gives it a 42% share of American e-commerce, far beyond the 6% captured by Walmart, its nearest online competitor (and biggest retailer overall). More

DUBAI SELLS itself as a refuge for the footloose plutocrat. It is an easy place to do business and has convenient flight connections to just about anywhere in the world. Its streets are safer than New York’s or London’s (not to mention much cleaner). Just in case those attractions are not enough, it levies no tax on income, property or capital gains.Small wonder that the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of which Dubai is the glitzy business hub, is forecast to draw a net 6,700 millionaires this year, according to Henley & Partners, a wealth consultancy. That is almost twice as many as are expected to head to America, the historic home of the world’s rich, with 5.5m residents worth $1m or more. Long a bolt-hole for rich Russians, Indians and Arabs from neighbouring countries, Dubai is now attracting a new group of mogul migrants: Europeans fleeing rising political uncertainty at home. More

AFTER SAM ALTMAN was sacked from OpenAI in November of 2023, a meme went viral among artificial-intelligence (AI) types on social media. “What did Ilya see?” it asked, referring to Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder of the startup who triggered the coup. Some believed a rumoured new breakthrough at the company that gave the world ChatGPT had spooked Mr Sutskever.Although Mr Altman was back in charge within days, and Mr Sutskever said he regretted his move, whatever Ilya saw appears to have stuck in his craw. In May he left OpenAI. And on June 19th he launched Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a new startup dedicated to building a superhuman AI. The outfit, whose other co-founders are Daniel Gross, a venture capitalist, and Daniel Levy, a former OpenAI researcher, does not plan to offer any actual products. It has not divulged the names of its investors. More