It should be a management consultant’s dream. The organisation is immense. The bloat is obvious. And the new boss is eager to shake things up. President Donald Trump and his disrupter-in-chief, Elon Musk, have already begun hacking away at America’s federal bureaucracy. Mr Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has set itself the target of cutting government spending by a colossal $2trn. More
China’s Communist Party has a history of purging then welcoming back senior officials. Deng Xiaoping was purged three times before leading the country out of Maoism in the late 1970s. Some cadres are welcomed back years after their death. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, received the modern version of a purge in 2020. The initial public offering (ipo) of his fintech company, Ant Group, was cancelled. Alibaba was probed and handed a record fine. Mr Ma withdrew from public life. More
China’s Communist Party has a history of purging then welcoming back senior officials. Deng Xiaoping was purged three times before leading the country out of Maoism in the late 1970s. Some cadres are welcomed back years after their death. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, received the modern version of a purge in 2020. The initial public offering (ipo) of his fintech company, Ant Group, was cancelled. Alibaba was probed and handed a record fine. Mr Ma withdrew from public life. More
Keytruda, a cancer-immunotherapy medicine, ranks among the most lucrative drugs ever sold. Since its launch in 2014 it has raked in over $130bn in sales for Merck, its American maker, including $29.5bn last year. In September last year an experimental drug did what none had done before. In late-stage trials for non-small-cell lung cancer, it nearly doubled the time patients lived without the disease worsening—to 11.1 months, compared with 5.8 months for Keytruda. More
“Styling, build quality and polish” were “frankly lacklustre”. The review in Car and Driver, a respected motoring publication, of a vehicle made by BYD on display at the Detroit Motor Show in 2009 was hardly encouraging for a car that its Chinese manufacturer hoped to start exporting to America in a few years. More
The gut reaction that a manager has when an employee announces their resignation is telling. Sometimes it is genuine dismay: the person leaving is a star. Sometimes disappointment is mixed with irritation at having to recruit and train a replacement. And sometimes it is relief: the HR equivalent of a pebble being removed from your shoe. More
In the 1980s Robert Solow, an economist, remarked that you could see the computer age everywhere except the productivity statistics. Today it could be said that the revolution in military affairs, playing out in the skies, trenches and seas of Ukraine, is visible everywhere except the European defence industry. America boasts three defence-tech “unicorns”, private firms with a valuation of more than $1bn, if you count SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-and-satellite company. In Europe there is one: Germany’s Helsing. More
IN THE BACK of an unmarked office building close to LAX, the main airport of Los Angeles, stands a rack of unarmed hypersonic missiles the size of small drainpipes. On February 6th a camouflaged truck ferried one away to New Mexico for a test launch with the US Air Force. Such activity used to be common in El Segundo, the LA neighbourhood that was once a hub of military spaceflight. Then the cold war ended and with it much of the west-coast weapons business. Now it’s coming back. Castelion, which makes the projectiles, was founded in 2022 by three alumni of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-and-satellite company, which was also created in El Segundo. More
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