Drone truth: Russia has the upper hand

0:00This Intelligence Podcast is sponsored by Business Travel on Hotels.com. Does booking business travel feel like another job? Hotels.com makes booking work trips easy and rewarding. It's easy because you can set your preferences once and get results tailored to your business travel needs every time. It's rewarding because with Hotels.com's Free Rewards program, you can save instantly on your next work trip and earn rewards for future travel. Book faster with confidence at Hotels.com, no of team members 18 plus. This Intelligence Podcast is sponsored by Perk, the intelligent platform for travel and spend. Every person on your team loses up to seven hours a week doing the work behind the work, submitting expenses, matching receipts and booking travel. Using AI and automation, Perk can do that work bringing travel and spend together in one place. Enjoy three months without platform fees when you sign up at Perk.com forward slash the intelligence. That's Perk.com forward slash the intelligence. New US-based corporate customers only, terms apply.

1:04The Economist Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Rosie Blore. Today on the show, the drinks business is in low spirits and remembering the great glorious Steinem. But first. From drones to interceptors, innovation has been a hallmark of Ukraine's defence against Russia. But Russia is innovating too. The frontline is barely budging, yet Ukraine's capital Kiev is being struck day and night as our civilian and economic targets across the country. It's a huge threat to the economy. It's a huge threat to the economy. The economy is a huge threat to the economy. The economy is a huge threat to the economy. The economy is a huge threat to the economy. Therefore it has the economic targets across the country.

2:06It's a new phase of the war that has already been stretched out for 4,5's years. And it's about to get tougher. The war on Ukraine has shifted in recent weeks and months, and it's fair to say Ukraine faces a really hard winter. Alex Turner is the economist defense editor. We always say that every year that's said about Ukraine, but two things are different, and they're connected. The first is that Russia, temporarily or otherwise, now has the upper hand in innovation and the scale of production of strike systems that can hit anywhere inside that country. And second is technologies are bringing the war to more parts of the country and in ever more inventive ways. You've just been on a trip to Kiev with a team from the economist. Tell me what you saw. Kiev is a beautiful city. I first visited there in the wake of the sort of land grabs of the 2014 period, and you can imagine how much has changed. It is a normal functioning, bustling city.

3:07But what's very clear is that the rate of attack and the nature of attack is on the increase. The locals will tell you that. Both Kiev and the entire country, you feel the war everywhere in Ukraine now. The beginning of the war, there were front lines, and cities were being struck, and actually often it was energy sector outside cities. But anywhere you go in Ukraine now, a petrol station is protected. Scott Dronet, it's got bastions around field tanks. 40% by some estimates of their retail infrastructure, their supply chain infrastructure has been hit. So you pass warehouses which have been smashed. Warehouses have no feasible military value. Commuter trains are being hit. And it's night and day is the other thing. You know, a lot of the time earlier in the war, these attacks would come in the dead of night. Now they're hitting them more often because there's more weapons to strike. And the economist team, we experienced this, but an unexpected time and place.

4:07So what happened? In a street waiting to meet some contacts. And you kind of hear the buzz, the old Shahidro in some two-stroke pet-fendent, kind of sounds like a flying scooter. So it's an unusual sound. So you're a cranierized skyward, and then you catch this very distinctive triangular shaped beetling along. And then you need to watch it. A good parallel of the V1 doodle by bombs that rained down on London in the Second World War. And when they used to cut out, you knew there was a problem. And it's a Shahid when it turns and dives as a problem. And so obviously pretty briskly, we took cover and one of them was shot down and one of them was impacted. Most Ukrainians nearby were relatively unfazed by this. But it's an example of these things appear largely without very much warning. And at any time of the day or night, and that's wearing for a country. As you say, the war has been going on for a long time. So what exactly is it that's changed just in the last few weeks? Well, the first thing to say is the Russians have made technical gains.

5:09And the first of these is with these Shahidroans, which is up till now have been petrol driven, little engine, and now they're jet powered. And that means they can fly higher and faster. And the Russians have been increasing the production rates. There's by some measures, we think the production target is 24,000 of these things this year. Ukrainian intelligence official said of that. Maybe 2,800 have been fielded. Now so far, only about 1,000 of struck you create. So you can see this is going to get worse. These things are coming greater numbers and harder to hit. Meantime, the Russians are also producing more ballistic missiles, just at the same time as Ukraine is reducing the number of interceptors capable of hitting them. So again, you've got a problem. You say that Russia has the upper hand. What does that look like in practice aside from these daily disruptions that you've described? Where this confers an advantage is the stranglehold that it threatens to put on Ukraine's economy. It's important to understand that on the front lines,

6:11it's much more balanced picture. And Ukraine is still capable of holding the Russians back. And there's an innovation battle there. You could say it's kind of in more of a dynamic equilibrium. The front line appears static, but there's lots of innovation, lots of adaptation, so forth. But it's kind of in balance. It's the fact that behind the front line, whether it's rail networks, which are the artery of any economy, let alone a wartime economy, or population centers being deprived of heat, light, water, these things will have an impact ultimately on the front line fortunes, as part of what concerns us. And one of my own concerns, speaking as an ex-soldier, is that people at the front line who are fighting, they know what they're fighting for, and they're confident they can do it. But as a situation behind them gets more difficult, they start worrying about their families, it becomes a distraction, and the less motivated people may be tempted to desert to go and make sure their families are okay, or just to be with their families. And those little things can start subtly and gather momentum. And what about Ukraine's own technological innovations?

7:12So Ukraine will respond to this, no question. So for the problem of the jet-shared, which is now moving in a few hundred miles an hour, rather than about a hundred miles an hour, they're developing interceptors. Earlier in the war, they developed these little very, very zippy quadcopters that tear off into the sky and close an impact near or against a shahidron, really effective. And they could scale production of those in the same way they've scaled production of battlefield drones. So Ukraine has already got four or five prototypes working. The distinction has been blown between drone and missile at this point, a little jet engine plane that streaks off a launching rail and could detonate similarly in the sky. But the problem they've got is scaling production of a solution. Once a solution has been identified, they'll need help with this and it's going to take them some time. And where they're looking at heading ballistic missiles and creating their own version of these very expensive and complicated patriots interceptors or European equivalents are quite as good, but they're all expensive, they're all in short supply.

8:13And you know, Ukraine is working on a solution. They're going to need some help here too. That's an even more devilish technical challenge. They'll get there. But that one may take years, whereas the little jet interceptors will take months. And in that window, Russia kind of has a free hand. This is our concern. And you went on a tour of a drone unit on your recent visit, didn't you? Yes, we did. We visited a drone's battalion called Nemesis. Nemesis is a drone's unit that specializes in long range operations behind the front line. And it lends its name to a particular type of quadcopter, which flies long distances and drops bombs on pre-identified target. It's part of the unmanned systems force. And I went there with our editor-in-chiefs, Saliments and Bedouins. This is a battle room. Here is battle groups, pilots, intelligence, and duties. These are all people with large monitors, with looks like they're playing video games.

9:14Yeah, yeah. This is a pilot and duties who are watching online video from the drones, from our drones, intelligence, from another, units, intelligence drones. So this is the heart of our battle, our own, our regardless. And it's an extremely focused and professional organization that melds intelligence, planning, and drone operations, almost with a commercial spirit. We were the first foreign journalists to be allowed to film at Nemesis, and you can watch inside defense and see what we produced and meet some of the very interesting commanders and drone professionals that we spoke to. You say that Ukraine needs help. Exactly what does it need? The first and most obvious thing is money. Their military complex is getting more expensive as they scaled production of these sort of novel weapons, which we can't necessarily give them. So they need more money both for their economy and for their war effort. And part of the problem is that when western countries provide

10:19bilaterally, that's not always cash that goes into Ukraine's own war economy. That's often western countries buying equipment from their own defense suppliers and providing those to Ukraine. They're not always as good, they're certainly not always as plentiful. In some senses, a change in policy where contracts are let with the Ukrainian companies that already build and scale this stuff, you know, might help. But where we're talking about developing new systems like these jet interceptors or ballistic missile interceptors, it's not just money they need, they're also going to need some of our technical expertise and potentially some of our prized military industrial intellectual property. Alex, we're heading into winter. We seem to be entering a new phase of the war. What happens next? It's going to be a long grim and dark winter for Ukraine. There's just absolutely no question about that. And a lot will depend on how much of their economy does get strangled, how much of their national infrastructure does get hit and how fed up people become, how many choose to leave,

11:25and how many choose to start arguing about it. And this could open up fissures in Ukraine's domestic political picture. And we've seen the protests over corruption, federals sacking. People have been losing faith to a certain degree. And when situations like this really bite down and when things get difficult, uncertain, scary, you might know the Russians are to blame, but it's sometimes a bit easier to have an argument with the system that's just sitting on your shoulder. And of course, it's not just about people versus politics, political actors inside that system. If they are minded to oppose or replace a lensky, can obviously find leverage in that kind of febrile atmosphere. And things can start to unravel. And our biggest concern and a sense is that all of these factors, military, economic and political societal interplay of these things create a self reinforcing down spiral. And the whole system gets taken down as the whole

12:26further into darkness. Alex, thank you very much. My pleasure. And you can watch that full report from an elite Ukrainian drone unit on this week's episode of Insider. As Alex, along with Zanymint and Bedo's, the economist's editor-in-chief, and other colleagues, find out how Ukraine is building the weapons of tomorrow. If you're a digital subscriber, Insider is already included in your subscription. If you're listening free, you can watch extended clips via the link I put in the show notes. This economist podcast is sponsored by Scribt, the knowledge platform with more than 350 million documents shared by real people. Whatever you're working on, Scribt is where you go to find information, build understanding and get it done. And if you're a student or educator in the US, a valid school email address gets you a discounted subscription plan.

13:27Head to Scribt.com to claim yours. That's s-c-r-i-b-d.com. Must be 18 or over. Simplify the complex and power what's next. Because when everything comes together in one place, growth comes easy. Experience one place for all your HCM needs. Start now at palacity.com slash one. Time was when different alcoholic drinks each had their appropriate setting. Beer for watching the game, wine with dinner, spirits at happy hour or down to pre-club, and fizz for special occasions. But now people drink less. Alcohol companies are all going

14:27for the same territory. It's not a great time to be a firm that makes alcohol. A vantakachial cottage is our global business writer. Well quite a few years now, total sales of alcohol around the world have been declining. If you look at the share price of the 10 biggest booze makers that have been going down and down in the past five years. And the trend really is especially for young people to be drinking less. They're becoming more abstinuous. They're going out less often. And it's all looking like this industry is going the same way as tobacco. What are the drinks companies doing about that? They're all basically scrambling around to try and find a corner of the market that is growing. So one thing that whether you're a beer maker or a wine maker or you're on spirits, you're trying to get into as non-alcoholic alternatives. Beer companies have done quite a good job of making non-alcoholic alternatives. You can essentially

15:29make beer the normal way and strip out the alcohol so it tastes pretty good. The spirits, it's sort of tastes like a fizzy drink but less sweet than normal and wine makers are completely unable to make alcohol free wine with the normal fermentation process. The other things they're trying to do is get into markets that are growing. So one is what they call RTDs, ready to drink beverages. You'll have seen them on a Sunday morning in public bins, pricey looking cans of margarita and things like that. Those seem to be doing well. And finally what they're trying to do is they're trying to muscle into each other's market. So if you were a beer maker for example, you basically had a monopoly on outdoor events. You had a monopoly on gigs and sports matches but now actually spirits firms are thinking okay well that's a place where people still drink can we get in on that market. They're really trying to e-cout growth where they can. Is that working then? Are people actually changing their drinking habits? One thing I'm really interested in is the way in which spirits

16:33are going into the beer makers market. In the most interesting example of this I've heard is from Campari. Campari is an Italian firm. It makes a pair of teeth best known for making apparel. An apparel is something that people have as a spritz in the pub at home. You don't really associate say a massive concert venue with having apparel. It's a bit of a faph to mix these things. You're not going to be making them every second for a long line of people. But what they've done is they've put apparel spritz on tap initially. So in Italy already 1.5% of the premium beer market has been stolen by these on tap cocktails. There was a bad Bonnie concert in Milan recently and they had apparel spritz on tap and they said they sold 22,000 glasses which is really long. If there's all going to be glasses of beer you've really tipped the market. So people are actually willing to try things in different occasions they normally would. When it comes to non-alcoholic drinks for sure

17:35people are really willing to try them but they do also want them to taste good. So the non-alcoholic beer flies off shelves quite common. Let's say you have a group of men playing sport and normally they would go for beers. People opting for a non-alcoholic beer. That's sort of the typical consumption habit but they do have to taste good. So non-alcoholic wine is sort of an irrelevant part of the industry right now. Avantica a lot of this doesn't sound very new it sounds like the alco pops of old. Is there anything really different about it? The canned cocktails and things honestly I thought exactly the same thing and the way to think about that is these are new brands they're new producers who are making these canned cocktails. So you'll have heard of buzz balls you might have seen Moff. There's a new brand where spirits companies have tried to bring out ready-to-drink beverages. They have tried to mix spirits that they already own and sell them and those really don't do as well. There are a tiny portion of this market that is much more like a smur nor vice. The way one analyst put it to me is people drink something as their first

18:39drink when they're 19 and by 25 they're thinking wow did I really drink that and that's what's happening with these spirits mixes. Whereas you can get a canned margarita in the corner shop from my house for more than five pounds now and it's a tiny can it's not a big one. So the position does premium drinks they honestly taste much better they're not as sweet and crucially people don't associate them with teenage night out. So where does that leave spirit makers? So spirits makers are the ones really falling behind at the moment. They're flapping about trying to do things they're trying to get into this ready-to-drink market they're trying to have emanating deals are trying to spot which startups are doing well because often it's startups that are ahead of social media trends that are producing the innovative products and they're trying to snap them up but it really is spirits makers that are falling behind. Avantika there's forever seeming to be innovation in the drinks trade what's next? So as far as I can see alcohol itself might be going out of fashion but people still want a

19:42drink to have socially something that changes their mood and you're seeing CBD drinks an ingredient that comes from marijuana that claims to calm you down there's other mushroom extracts and drinks. You even see them where you get your lunch and it's a drink that has managed to do what every single alcohol company has not managed to do which is make themselves available at every occasion be it you're a bit stressed before a meeting or you're winding down at the pub I think that is the corner of the drinks market we don't think of but really is a big competitor to alcohol. Avantika thank you very much. Thanks for having me. In the summer of 1963 Gloria Steinem decided she would go and work in the Playboy Club on East

20:4459th Street in Manhattan. She was going to be a buddy girl. And Roe is the economist a bit trees editor. It was a much more difficult job than she imagined. First of all she had to be fitted for her blues satin bunny costume which was really tight and painful and exposed her hip bones. Then she had to wear bunny ears on head bandrod her head and then she had to teeter around in three inch heels all while holding a loft a tray of drinks on the palm of her left hand. The dresser stuffed a dry cleaning bag a plastic one down her frontage and said this was for stuffing. Everybody liked stuffing she said which meant that the gentleman customers could put their tips inside all the same she was supposed to say to them very partly. So you are not allowed to

21:45touch the bunnies. She was pleased with the piece she wrote quite an expose of the exploitation of women in clubs like this. But critics thought it was still a frivolous piece and that it was typical of her as a woman journalist to do. She was working out a time when journalism as she described it was not so much a glass ceiling as a glass box even one of her most impressive and helpful editors had hired her partly because she had great legs. And so after her great work at the playboy club she was put bag on the usual beat of fashion celebrities, drapes and how to cook hamburger and she hated that beat. She wanted to write sharp way she political articles the sort that were in those days the province of men and within a decade she'd actually co-founded a

22:46magazine that did exactly that. This magazine was called Muz MS and it was designed to reflect what women in modern America were really thinking. The first trial edition of it had a picture of the Indian goddess Kylie on the cover trying to juggle all the different tasks that a woman had to do so with eight arms she was holding a prime band and a rake and an iron and a telephone and a mirror. All these sorts of things. The cover of the first police use showed a Wonder Woman who had just been stripped of her powers by DC Comics suddenly restored to them and striedying over the globe with her dazzling lassu to write injustice. And inside this magazine if you were to buy it it would find articles on pay for housework on body hair the last frontier and an intriguing lineup of

23:50famous women under the title we have had abortions. This was a revolutionary magazine mostly for that sort of content but also because it was the first glossy national magazine to be owned, run and entirely written by women. There was a reason why glorious item had included that list of confessions by famous women about their abortions because she had had one herself. Abortion in those days was as illegal in America as it was in Britain but when she'd been in London in 1957 she had had one and she had never told a soul about it. It was her life it was her choice. But in 1969 she happened to go to a report a meeting of women in Greenwich Village. She found they were all discussing their own illegal abortions. She noticed then what a power there was in sisters

24:55getting together, comforting each other, being quite candid and open with each other in a way they would never be in front of men talking about things that women were not supposed to talk about. And she thought that if most could be a forum of this sort then her particular role would be to create talking circles like the circle of these women in Greenwich Village. Up and down the land in any space like a mall or a bookstore she would get women together and they would discuss the things that were important to them. So she started a life of tremendous campaigning and fundraising. She had a good many frustrations in her life. Most of them were to do with how politics went in the country as a whole. Roe vs Wade legalized abortion in 1973 across the nation but that was reversed in 2022. Both the good candidate she saw Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris

26:04were defeated in favour of Trump. There was still plainly a long way to go to get women into the places where they should be but as rather a nice little adendum the Playboy Club itself in New York had actually closed down in 1986. And Roe on Gloria Steinem who has died age 92. Tomorrow on the Weekend Intelligence you can hear the second of our three part series on Tommy Robinson, the far right football hooligan who is now shaping people's views of Britain at home and abroad. Last week we traced his origin story from the town of Luton. Tomorrow the move from fringe to mainstream media. It's a mesmerising story and important.

27:06You'll need to be a subscriber to hear it. That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. The show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is Sarah Larnuke and our sound designer is Will Roe with additional help this week from Mark Burrows. Our senior producers are Henrietta McFarlane, Emily Elias and Alessage Ambattiste. Our senior development producer is Worry Galloway and our senior creative producer is William Warren. Our producer is Anne Hannah and our assistant producer is Kunal Patel with Extra Production help this week from Benji Guy. We'll all see you back here for the Weekend Intelligence tomorrow. Early detection can change everything but early stage column cancer often shows no symptoms at all. That's why screening mothers and ketis symptoms be. If you are 45 or older and at average risk it's time to screen for column cancer. Colorboard plus make it simple.

28:09There is a proof and non-invasive, simple comparison that you can make at home in almost 15 minutes. This is something you can do on your own time to properly retake. Talk to your provider or ask for a line or the same. We'll see what you can do. A valuable by prescription only.