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This summary covers The Economist’s May 30th, 2026 Leaders article on military technology and the changing logic of war, published under the headline Smarter tech is making war a dumber choice and listed in the contents as The future of war.

The article argues that modern military technology has changed the bargain behind wars of choice. Leaders still imagine short, decisive campaigns in which superior forces impose their will. But recent wars suggest the opposite: sensors, drones, precision weapons and artificial intelligence are making battlefields more transparent, offensives harder and weaker defenders more dangerous. The result is not a clean replacement of old warfare with a new formula. It is a harsher environment in which attacking states can destroy more targets than ever while still failing to achieve their political goals.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Business article on airlines and jet-fuel shortages, published under the headline Fuming and listed in the contents as Airlines in crisis.

The article argues that the aviation industry is being forced to confront a supply shock that is both global and oddly specific. The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz has not only trapped crude oil in the Gulf; it has also constrained the movement of jet fuel and the crude used to make it. For airlines, that turns a geopolitical crisis into a direct operating problem. Aircraft may cross continents in hours, but the fuel that keeps them flying still depends on slow, fragile shipping routes and refinery networks.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Leaders article on artificial intelligence and biological risk, published under the headline From cyber-security to biosecurity and listed in the contents as AI arms and alarms.

The article argues that artificial intelligence is moving from being a tool that can help people write, code and reason into something more consequential: a tool that may soon help people manipulate biology. The central warning is stark. If advanced AI systems can guide users through the design or construction of dangerous pathogens, then a technology built to democratize intelligence could also democratize destructive biological capability.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Science & technology column Well Informed: Does acupuncture work?, published under the headline Does acupuncture work?.

The article gives acupuncture a measured verdict: it looks useful for some kinds of pain, but the evidence becomes much weaker once the claims move beyond pain relief. That distinction matters because acupuncture occupies an unusual place in modern medicine. It is an ancient Chinese practice traditionally explained through the flow of qi, or vital energy, yet it is now marketed by influencers, athletes and wellness clinics for everything from anti-ageing to fertility, asthma, anxiety and muscle recovery.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Science & technology article on a hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, published under the headline Troubled waters and listed in the contents as Handling a hantavirus outbreak.

The article describes a small but unusually worrying outbreak. MV Hondius left Argentina on April 1st with around 150 passengers and crew, bound for Cape Verde. By May 6th, when The Economist went to press, three people on board had been confirmed as infected with hantavirus and another five cases were suspected. Three of those eight people had died.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Science & technology article on peptideins, published under the headline Almost proteins and listed in the contents as Proteins' little cousins.

The article describes a newly named class of tiny molecules that could complicate the standard picture of how human cells work. Peptideins resemble proteins but are smaller and, in most cases, have no known function. That uncertainty is the point. They may turn out to be mostly biological noise, or some may become useful clues to disease and promising targets for cancer treatments. Giving them a name is an attempt to make researchers pay closer attention.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Business column on Berkshire Hathaway and SoftBank Group, published under the headline Warren or Masa and listed in the contents as Berkshire v SoftBank.

The article presents Berkshire Hathaway and SoftBank as opposite answers to the same question: what should an investment company do when markets look unusually expensive and technology is changing unusually fast? Berkshire, built by Warren Buffett, has accumulated nearly \$400bn in cash because it cannot find enough attractive deals. SoftBank, led by Masayoshi Son, is borrowing heavily to finance a sweeping bet on artificial intelligence. One risks becoming too cautious to justify its structure. The other risks running out of money before its vision pays off.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Business article on eBay’s revival, published under the headline Unjumbled and listed in the section notes as EBay's stunning revival.

The article argues that eBay, long treated as a faded relic of the early consumer internet, has become interesting again by narrowing its ambitions. Instead of trying to beat Amazon, Walmart or newer specialist marketplaces at their own games, the company has leaned back into the messy, second-hand, enthusiast-driven commerce that made it distinctive in the first place. That shift has helped stabilize buyers, restart sales growth and lift investors’ expectations. It has also made eBay attractive enough for GameStop to attempt an improbable takeover.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Business article on Chinese carmaking, published under the headline Red lights and listed in the contents as Chinese carmaking.

The article argues that the global car industry has reached an uncomfortable reversal. For decades, foreign carmakers went to China to sell vehicles, lower costs and learn the local market. Now many of them are trying to learn how to become more like Chinese carmakers everywhere else. China has become the industry’s most important source of speed, software, electric-vehicle manufacturing skill and competitive pressure. The question is no longer whether Chinese carmakers can catch up with Western and Japanese incumbents. It is whether those incumbents can catch up with China without becoming dependent on the very rivals threatening them.

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This summary covers The Economist’s May 9th, 2026 Finance & economics article on artificial intelligence and China’s office-property market, published under the headline The rent is too damn AI and listed in the contents as AI rescues Chinese landlords.

The article uses a neat irony to explain a real-estate rebound. A court in Hangzhou, one of China’s leading AI hubs, ruled that firms cannot simply dismiss workers and replace them with artificial intelligence. That is good news for employees. It is also good news for commercial landlords, because office towers do not earn rent from software agents. They need people in seats, and China’s newest source of people in seats is the AI boom.