12/14/2025: Germany Rearms, The Price of Life, Hoosier Hysteria

0:07This past month we were invited by the Bundeswehr, the German military, to observe basic training as a squad of recruits ran punishing drills, honing the skills they would need to defend against an enemy assault. Everything we are training here for could be one day real. We don't hope that, but we're preparing exactly for that. Because of the war in Ukraine? Yes, of course. A new class of drugs can save the lives of children like Maisie. Trouble is, one dose costs millions of dollars. It was cheaper for her to die. They were banking on her dying. Neither health insurance nor government has figured out how to pay for the next wave of miracle medicines.

1:00I liken it to a coming tsunami, which is basically going to overwhelm the employer-sponsored insurance system. Indiana entered this season as the losingest program in major college football history, more than 700 defeats. It's a rat. Corner. Touchdown, Indiana. So imagine the astonishment last weekend when the Hoosiers took down the defending national champions, unbeaten Ohio State, to win the Big Ten title. How'd they do it? You gotta adapt, adjust, and improvise. Take what the defense gives you. Attack at all times. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

1:45I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and in our last minute, reaching a new high, tonight on 60 Minutes.

2:05This past week, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky reasserted he doesn't want to surrender any territory in exchange for peace with Russia, a declaration that followed earlier warnings from Russian President Vladimir Putin that if Europe engaged in a wider war, it would be defeated. Nearly four years in, the conflict continues to send shockwaves through the Western alliance. European nations are beefing up their defenses. Nowhere is the impact more profound than in Germany. Scarred by their country's Nazi past, Germans embraced pacifism after the Cold War, Defense spending collapsed to the point some soldiers were buying their own gear.

2:50But Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, combined with persistent pressure from President Donald Trump for Europe to shoulder more of its own defense, transformed the landscape. Today, Germany is racing to rearm. This past month, we were invited by the Bundeswehr, the German military, to observe basic training at the Munster Army base in northwest Germany.

3:21A squad of recruits ran punishing drills, honing the skills they would need to defend their position against an enemy assault. The major in charge has been training troops since 2018. The Bundeswehr won't reveal his name to shield his identity from hostile actors. So have you seen a difference in the recruits of today versus years past? Yes, I think there's a huge difference. They know what they're here for, and it's getting more clear to them that everything we are training here for could be one day real. We don't hope that, but we're preparing exactly for that. Because of the war in Ukraine?

4:12Yes, of course, yeah. The war in Ukraine has shaken Germany's sense of security. But the country is also shaking off the shadows of its brutal military past. This Holocaust memorial in Berlin, a stark reminder of that history, stands close by the Reichstag, where the national parliament is moving to restore Germany's military as Europe's most powerful force. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has overseen a 23 % uptick in enlistments over last year. How is the war in Ukraine changing Germany's view of its own security? I grew up in the Cold War, and since February 2022, we all experienced in Germany and in Europe that the war is back.

5:06We never expected that, and we were so hopeful that it would never happen again. But it does, and we have to do everything to be able to deter and defend. Pistorius was appointed defense minister in 2023, almost a year after Russia's large-scale assault on Ukraine. When conservative Friedrich Merz became chancellor this past May, he kept Pistorius, the blunt-talking social democrat, in his post. I mean, you have to be clear on what you want, what you are standing for. We met him at the Bendler Block, the Berlin building complex once housed the Nazis' army high command. Today, it's Germany's equivalent of the Pentagon.

5:48When we spoke with Pistorius this past month, he didn't pull any punches on Russian President Vladimir Putin's ambitions. There is not only the war against Ukraine, this is a war against the root-based international order. And at the same time, he does not stop stressing what he is really longing for, like a renaissance of the Soviet Empire. He wants to be the dominant power in Europe and he wants to be the third of three world powers like China and the US. This is what he is heading for. Pistorius warns Putin is rapidly rebuilding Russia's military, and he told us Russia could be in position to attack the West by the end of the decade.

6:36When does Germany need to be ready for war? We should do everything to be that in 2029. This is our objective. This is still a way to go. Three days after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, the incursion marked a Zeitenwende, a turning point for Europe. He announced a special 100 billion euro fund to kickstart Germany's military build-up. Three years later, in the run-up to his election as chancellor, Friedrich Merz said he was troubled as well by President Trump's threats to pull back from NATO. My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.

7:31You're gambling with World War III. After this contentious Oval Office meeting with President Zelensky this past February, Friedrich Merz posted, we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war. And he pushed Parliament to exempt defense spending from Germany's debt break, the constitutionally mandated spending cap. The money started flowing. The defense budget is projected to rise almost 80 % by 2029. How big should the German military be? Germany is the third biggest economy in the world. And the biggest one in Europe, of course. So everybody in Europe expects us to be the strongest ally in NATO in Europe.

8:20With the surge of federal funding, the long, moribund German defense industry is springing back to life. The drones are the future of warfare. We met Sven Kruik in Berlin. He is co-CEO of drone manufacturer Quantum Systems. The company, with factories in Germany and Ukraine, just landed a 25 million euro contract with the Bundeswehr to produce up to 750 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones, ISR for short. We have now more than 1 ,500 at the battlefront, day by day in use. 1 ,500 drones? Drones, drones, in use in Ukraine, day by day, night by night. Drones, including quantums, have helped reshape the battlefield.

9:09A few months after the 2022 invasion, Russian forces tried to cross the Donets River in eastern Ukraine. Explosions and smoke obscured their movements. A quantum drone equipped with a thermal camera helped Ukraine see, target and stop the advance. And this actually was our moment where everybody has seen quantum systems and especially ISR drones can make a difference. Krug told us Germany isn't investing enough in cutting-edge technologies. But we saw evidence the defense ministry is thinking outside the box, way outside the box. It's funding tests to see if these giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches can be repurposed from repulsive pests to miniature battlefield assets.

10:00This is the left turn, and this is the right turn. Stefan Wilhelm's year-old startup, Swarm Biotactics in central Germany, is working with the Bundeswehr to develop technology that can steer the creepy critters autonomously and send them on reconnaissance missions. He let me take control. Wow. They're super resilient, and as you can see, I mean, they can crawl through tiny spaces, can go up the wall into pipes, like underground and rubble. You know this is really bizarre. Is it? Swarm's insect neuroscientists attach electrodes to the roach's antenna. They insist this doesn't hurt, stimulating their natural ability to navigate.

10:48The electrodes are hidden in these bug-sized backpacks, along with a battery and microchips. They're working to shrink the technology to soon look like this. Swarm's AI-generated video shows how they might be deployed, carrying cameras, microphones, and Doppler radar into war zones. Right now we're hearing that Russia is rearming itself. They've got more tanks, more armaments. How does this compete? We have to be smarter. We have to use intelligence. We have to use autonomy because we wouldn't have enough personnel or enough equipment if you look at what Russia produces right now. So I think this is a shift we see in the German startups.

11:34Still, Germany is placing a big bet on its biggest defense contractor, contractor, Reinmetall. A major arms supplier to German troops in both world wars, Reinmetall and its subsidiaries have won a commanding share of recent government contracts. We are the fastest growing defense company in Europe at the moment. Armin Paperger has been CEO since 2013. Pragmatic, forceful, strategic, he built Reinmetall into a pillar of NATO rearmament. Rheinmetall was an ammunition company. It's going from ammunitions to vehicle platforms. But now we go to digitization. We go to satellite business. We go to naval business.

12:17His company's success and support of Ukraine made him the target of a Russian assassination plot. But that didn't slow him or the company down. Ryan Mattal is building and expanding 13 arms factories across Europe. We educated two generations. If something happens in the world, we call Washington and Washington will help us. That changed. President Trump said it very clear. America has her own problems. The Europeans have to help themselves. And now, with the Ukrainian-Russian war, it's very clear about that, that we have to do more. In 2024, Germany began sending its 45th Armored Brigade, 5 ,000 troops, to Lithuania, once brutally occupied by the Nazis.

13:07Lithuania now welcomes German troops bolstering NATO's eastern flank, Germany's first permanent deployment of a combat-ready brigade abroad since World War II. Despite the uptick in enlistments, the Bundeswehr faces a manpower challenge. It wants to add about 75 ,000 active-duty troops to its all-volunteer force by 2035. History weighs on recruitment. The issue still sparks protests. A recent poll found an overwhelming majority of 15 - to 25-year-olds would not take up arms. If volunteer numbers fall short, the government may reintroduce the draft. Soldiers we met in basic training told us they find the reluctance of their generation to volunteer troubling.

14:00I think a lot of it must have to do with the history of World War II. Yes, of course. Private Lasse told us he's proud to serve. Nobody wants to go to war. But if it happens, you have to be there to defend your country.

14:23The week before we spoke to Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, he presided over a public swearing-in of new recruits in Berlin. Deutschland, they shouted. The world hasn't heard Germany assert itself like this since World War II, but times have changed. When you talk about rebuilding the German military, there are many people who recoil at that thought. I try to explain to them, if you want to live in peace, in freedom, security, with the right to go on the street and to demonstrate against or for whatever you want, to love however you want and to believe in any God you want, then you need to be willing to defend it, because otherwise there might be people like Vladimir Putin who will take that kind of living away from us.

15:30A new class of drugs is saving the lives of children who once had no hope. These high-tech medicines can replace defective genes, but there's a catch. Many cost millions of dollars for a single dose. And American health care hasn't figured out how to pay. We wondered how medicine could be priced so high and how insurance plans could refuse a life-saving treatment. So we asked the people you're about to meet. A drug maker whose company charges$3 million for its medication. A CEO whose insurance plan won't pay. and a mother named C.G. Green. C.G. was overjoyed that a new drug could save the life of her daughter, Maisie, until she found no one would pay the price of life.

16:27Tiny Maisie was born in 2017. C.G. Green says that from the start, her daughter was mysteriously ill. When you brought Maisie home, what did you begin to notice? Um, initially, she just sounded like she had a cold all the time. Um, she just sounded really congested. Um, and after, um, I'd say like two weeks, I noticed that Maisie, like, wasn't holding her head at all. She was just like jello. Her head, like, neck was like jello. And her head would just flow. C.G. had a feeling something was terribly wrong, something doctors couldn't name, until one took a blood sample to test for spinal muscular atrophy, SMA.

17:14And she left with the blood, and she came back, and she goes, you heard me when I said we're testing for SMA. And I said, yes, I heard. And she goes, do you know what that is? And I go, no. She put her hand out, and I said, please don't touch me. Please don't touch me because I knew everything I had been feeling. Please don't touch me. I said, what can we do? What can you do? And she shook her head. She said, love her and squeeze her. A missing gene caused Maisie's muscles to waste away. SMA is often fatal by age two. Then, just in time, in 2019, something like a miracle was approved by the FDA.

18:08Just one dose of a drug called Zolgensma can replace the gene to stop the disease. But the dose is$2 million. Maisie was on her state's Medicaid. The insurance company that managed Medicaid said it would not pay. I became very angry to know that there was something that could help her. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was burying my daughter before she was two. It was cheaper for her to die. They were banking on her dying. Maisie's story is a view on what's coming to American health care. Because today, there are more than 300 high-cost genetic therapies in clinical trials. some for diseases suffered by millions of patients.

19:02I liken it to a coming tsunami, which is basically going to overwhelm the employer-sponsored insurance system. Few know health care finance, as well as Jonathan Gruber. He's chair of economics at MIT and an architect of the Affordable Care Act. What happens when you have genetic cell and gene therapies that treat cancer or heart disease, which are much more common, And that's when the tsunami hits and we're threatened to be underwater. What problems are the high prices already causing today? The first problem is that many companies in America are what we call self-insured. They pay their own medical bills, about two-thirds of the insured in America in such arrangements.

19:46They can't afford to pay this. So they're facing a difficult financial decision, which is, do I cover this drug and potentially go bankrupt or do i not help my unlucky employee that's the painful question mike poor faced it should not be that only the rich can afford the best care poor is ceo of mosaic life care a non-profit hospital system in missouri with about 5 000 employees in 2023 mosaic decided not to cover gene therapies because Mike Poore told us employee premiums would jump$125 a month. But a few months later, an employee had twins with SMA, like Maisie. And the gene therapy for the twins would be$4.2 million.

20:45Yes. Denied coverage, the family went public and blamed Mosaic. I got death threats. My family was threatened. What did you do to protect your family? Actually sent them away and decided to stay on at the hospital and then just work to make sure that the children got the care they needed. From the moment his health plan denied the claim, Mike Poore appealed to philanthropists and legislators. Finally, state Medicaid paid to treat the twins. What's really important here is to understand that this is one situation, but it is a bellwether of what is to come. Every new gene therapy breaks a record for the most expensive drug ever.

21:41You seem to be saying there's a storm coming. It's definitely a storm coming. Who charges millions for a drug? Doug Ingram is among them. The CEO of Sarepta Therapeutics took us into a freezer at four degrees below zero where he stores a Levitus, which costs$3.2 million for one dose, which may be all that is needed to slow Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle-wasting disease that confronts parents with this prognosis. They're always told, your boy has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. There's nothing we can do about it. Go home, love him, because this disease is going to steal him from you bit by bit, day by day, and he will die, and you've got to get used to that.

22:35People hear$3.2 million for your drug, and they think greed. Here's what they should think. So first of all, if the question is, is this the right price or only price and can society afford this, you're going to hear me say that it absolutely is and society absolutely can afford it. And we'll go into that. If you're asking me whether this is the sort of price that we should be happy with and satisfied in the long term with gene therapies and genetic medicine, I'm going to tell you absolutely not. Ingram's company uses an engineered gene that instructs the child's cells to make a protein to protect the muscles.

23:21A modified virus carries the gene to the cells. Development took 18 years. So the first question is, could you even do this and do this safely? The second question that was obvious is, if you could, you have to manufacture this stuff. And at the moment in time we did the calculation, you needed more gene therapy manufacturing capacity than all of the capacity that exists on the planet Earth at the time. Every company, every research facility, every university. And we'd never made a vial of anything that looked like a gene therapy at that moment. And the next thing, you'd have to raise billions of dollars.

24:03You have to go to investors and paint a picture of the future and literally raise billions of dollars to do this. We didn't have billions of dollars. It took$3 billion to create a Levitus, according to Ingram. One of his challenges now is recouping that investment in a rare disease that has only about 15 ,000 patients in the U.S. Ingram says the price will come down with manufacturing experience, future competition, and in his view, streamlined federal regulations. Today, on average, it takes more than 10 years to develop a therapy. It costs nearly$3 billion on average to make a therapy. And at the beginning of that journey, the probability of it being successful is nearly zero.

24:54And in the context of that, of course, therapies, when they're eventually approved, are going to be very expensive. So what we need to do is fix that. We've had 60, 70 years of layering and layering and layering of requirements, all for the laudable goal of ensuring that the therapies that are approved in the United States are both safe and effective. We have to do the hard work of getting under that and stripping it down to those things that are absolutely necessary, informed by the science that we have today, not the science we had in the 60s, and find a way to make therapies less than$3 billion with a higher probability of success.

25:36Despite mixed results, the FDA approved Elevitus. About 1 ,100 patients had been treated. Two died of liver failure. About half of the patients were covered by Medicaid. It's too soon to fully evaluate how well Elevitus is working, but the vial Doug Ingram showed us was made for a boy named Leighton, and months after his treatment, Leighton's parents told us he is, quote, thriving, stronger, and more independent. Is there a bad guy in this equation? Employers who won't pay, drug companies that are charging enormous fees for these drugs. The manufacturer is not the bad guy. The company is not the bad guy.

26:25Really, there's no bad guys here, Scott. We just have to recognize as a society that something's changed. We have a new, miraculous, and expensive mode of treatment, and we society need to recognize that we need to act jointly to absorb those costs. Economist Jonathan Gruber says in his view, absorbing those costs will require government support and negotiated prices. Until then, parents, including C.G. Green, must improvise. Green pursued philanthropy for her daughter Maisie, set up a GoFundMe page, and demanded a meeting with the insurance company. You wanted them to look her in the eye. Yes, I wanted them to look her in the eye and say, we're the reason you're going to die.

27:16The insurance board blinked. Maisie received the genetic therapy drug Zolgensma in 2019. One dose, one hour, and the effect was what? You can't even describe it. Amazing. Amazing Maisie. It changed her life. It changed our life. It was what she needed. Can we meet her now? You sure can. We'd love to meet Maisie. Expected to die by age two, she was six when we met, after a treatment so successful that C.G. has appeared in testimonials for the drug company. The impairment suffered before the drug cannot be reversed. Maisie doesn't walk, but she's making straight A's in school. Hi, Maisie. Hi. CG told us the progress of the disease appears to have stopped.

28:18And what is the price of that? Precious little wave. I'm so glad to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Your own miracle. My very own miracle.

28:42Indiana is the setting for three all-time great sports movies, Hoosiers, Rudy, and Breaking Away. And now comes another cinematic underdog story set in the state, except this one is unscripted. Over the last century, defeat has been the near-constant companion of Indiana University football. But then arrived a new coach who'd never gotten a shot at the big time. He brought new players, a new energy, and cue music. Suddenly, Hoosier hysteria reigns as top-ranked Indiana is the unlikely darling of college football. The Hoosiers are undefeated, just upset powerhouse Ohio State, and might win a national championship before the credits roll.

29:26They come from the cities and they come from the smaller towns. More than 55 ,000 fans converging on Bloomington to watch the Indiana Hoosiers. Built from limestone extracted from local quarries, Memorial Stadium is 65 years old. But this is a completely new look. Home to a football dynamo. Indiana had always been a basketball school. No longer.

30:00This season, the Hoosiers have won at home and on the road.

30:08They've won in blowouts and won with their season on the brink. In trouble! It's out! Touchdown! Wow! This game-winning touchdown against Penn State stands as the play of the year in college football. And they're hardly doing it with prized recruits. I think a lot of people on our team, whether it's coaches, players, or staff, have all been overlooked. You say outcasts and transfers and rejects, you guys are doing pretty well. Well, I wouldn't say we're like, for sure, outcasts and rejects. I think we're all still really, really good football players here. That's Fernando Mendoza, Indiana's star quarterback.