Space invaders: Russia’s NATO nose-thumbing

0:00Over 1 ,800 international businesses, including 13 of the top 20 global technology companies have established operations in Ireland, creating one of the world's leading innovation. hubs. These businesses have invested in Ireland because it delivers skills, support, stability, sustainability, and significant returns. IDA Ireland, the inward investment promotion agency, can help you tap into the same talent pool and support system and hit the ground running. Learn more at IDAireland.com.

0:40or tablets for school, buying refurbished tech makes sense for families trying to save money without sacrificing quality. At Backmarket, tech costs up to 50 % less compared to new. All devices have been professionally refurbished and come with a one-year warranty and 30-day return policy. Start saving money. Visit Backmarket.com or the Backmarket app to shop now.

1:12Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

1:28Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Madagascar to protest against the government's failure to improve their plight. Our correspondent gives us the view from the ground. And we've had so many letters about last week's segment on the benefits of sunlight that we've invited our bright correspondent back to answer some of your questions

2:04But first

2:12In the skies above Europe, there have been some curious happenings of late. First came a wave of Russian drones into Poland on September 9th. Ten days later, a trio of Russian fighter jets traversed Estonian airspace for 12 minutes. And then there were those mysterious drones that shut down airports in Denmark and Norway. It's all slightly odd, but some reckon it's more sinister than that. In the last few weeks, it does look as though Vladimir Putin is turning the screws on Europe. Shashank Joshi is the Economist's defence editor. Some people call this hybrid warfare. Others talk about the grey zone between war and peace.

3:00Military experts often think both terms are a little bit vacuous. But what they represent, I think, captures something of the murkiness and the sense of pressure and competition that is unfolding in Europe in the last weeks and days. Shashank, how big a threat is this? There was an interesting paper published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which is a think tank in London, and they tried to collate incidents of confirmed Russian sabotage against European critical national infrastructure. And it found that Russian sabotage more than tripled between 2023 and 2024. Much of that was directed at maritime and water-related facilities, water treatment plants, cables, that kind of thing.

3:46Just a week or so ago, Lithuania's government charged 15 people who had ties that they said to Russian military intelligence services placing explosive parcels on cargo planes in Europe. I can't tell you for sure that Russia's incursion into Poland or the Russian jets inside Estonian airspace were absolutely deliberate, but my understanding is airspace violations in NATO's airspace have roughly doubled in the past year. And some of that may be to do with the intense pace of Russia's missile campaign against Ukraine. You know, if you fire more drones at Ukraine, you may have more accidents inside Europe.

4:24But the fact is that Article 4 of NATO's charter, which is effectively a consultation mechanism inside the alliance, that has only been invoked seven times in the history of the alliance since 1949. It has now been invoked twice in two weeks. And I think that really tells you something about the mood. So how are European states responding to these incursions? By and large, they are beefing up their presence in Eastern Europe, in the skies. I think we're also seeing some more unorthodox measures. So if you look at the incidents over Copenhagen airport that were really disruptive, the Danes are convinced that this was the work of what they call a professional actor.

5:06They're not saying Russia, but clearly if you read between the lines, They're saying we think it might have been Russia. And they have shut down all civil drone use in their airspace for a full week. And it happens to be a week in which they're hosting a couple of major European summits. So clearly they don't think this was just some hobbyists and they are willing to really shut down bits of their airspace to drones as a preventive mechanism to stop this disruption from getting out of hand. With all your caveats, of course, about the fact that we don't know for sure that this is Russia. What might Putin be trying to achieve?

5:39Well, first of all, if it is accidental, then that doesn't mean he's off the hook because the choice to allow your pilots to take these risks, the choice to allow your missile operators to operate in a way that drones are routinely flying into Romania or Poland, that is a policy choice. So that is a choice to allow recklessness. Look, a lot of the pressure campaign for the last three years has been about saying to Europe, I am going to start doing assassinations in Europe. I will start committing arson in warehouses. I will do disinformation campaigns. And I'm doing all that to dissuade you from providing weapons to Ukraine.

6:17I think that this round of Russian pressure is a little bit different. I think this is not just about putting pressure on Europe for the sake of making them back down on Ukraine. I think this is also about the transatlantic relationship. That is, this kind of pressure accentuates divisions within the alliance, particularly between America and Europe, because it raises a debate in which we all know that there is doubt over whether Donald Trump will stand by Europe. So if Poland wants to shoot down a Russian plane in its airspace, they do not know whether the Americans will stand by them. And that This uncertainty, I think, exposes European weakness.

6:59And by doing that, Russia puts itself in a psychologically stronger position and says, when we have talks over Ukraine, when we have talks over the future of Europe, you are on your own, the Americans aren't with you, and I am in a stronger position. I'm not saying he's successful in that, but I think that's what he hopes to achieve. And that changed mood is what makes this campaign different to what we may have seen in 2022 or 2023. So Shashank, if, as you say, essentially these incursions raise the possibility that Europe is unable to protect its airspace, what can NATO allies do to fight back?

7:35I think this is a million euro question. Nobody really has a clear answer to this. Part of the answer, of course, is just defending your airspace, making sure that you are able to intercept Russian planes if they're in your airspace, to make sure that they aren't posing a threat. Part of it is about being able to shoot down Russian drones and not having to spend a million dollar missile on a$20 ,000 styrofoam drone, which is exactly what happened over Poland a few weeks ago. So you need to develop new low cost means of interception. And that is part of what the Europeans are calling a drone war.

8:08But I think there's an interesting debate occurring on two things. One of them is the next time Russia does this inside Estonia or Poland, do you shoot the Russian plane down? That's not an easy call to make. Do you shoot it down even if it doesn't pose an immediate threat? Or do you stand by and accept that your airspace is being violated repeatedly with impunity? I think the other question is, how do you punch back? Do you, for example, try to shut down St. Petersburg airport with drones of your own? And I think European leaders are very wary of getting in the business of wrestling with Russia on its own terms.

8:40Or do you find a new way to put pressure on Russia, to impose a cost on the Kremlin? But of course, there we've taken all the steps we can. I guess what this might do is accelerate the debate on things like, can you seize frozen Russian assets in Europe, which run to hundreds of millions of dollars, and use them for the benefit of Ukraine? And Russia's campaign of intimidation is probably pushing that debate along in some quite helpful ways. The question of whether you shoot a Russian jet down is a huge escalation, of course. Where could this all end? Well, part of it is a deliberate choice of, do I shoot down this Russian plane?

9:20But I have to tell you, there's also a possibility of an accident. I mean, I spoke to the head of the Swedish Air Force a few days ago, and he said he was very concerned about this. This, again, Rosie, is not hypothetical. If you look a few years ago, we saw a collision in the Black Sea between a Russian jet and an American drone, causing the American drone to crash. So that can happen. We also saw an incident in the Black Sea again near Crimea in which a Russian jet fired two missiles at a British spy plane over the Black Sea, one of which thankfully malfunctioned because that pilot thought he had been given permission to do that by Russian ground control.

9:57Accidents happen when you are operating fast jets in close proximity with pilots on the Russian side who, frankly, are not exactly the world's greatest and most skilled combat pilots. I think that's something that European military chiefs are certainly concerned about today. Shashank, thank you very much. Thanks very much for having me, Rosie.

10:31Ireland's workforce tops the world rankings for flexibility and adaptability. Quality is critical to any company driven by innovation and vision. It's just one of the reasons 1 ,800 international businesses, including 13 of the top 20 global technology companies, have established a base here. IDA Ireland, the inward investment promotion agency, partners with you, connecting your business to unique opportunities. Learn more at IDAireland.com.

11:09Thousands of people have been taking to the streets in Madagascar. Protesters say they're fed up with persistent power cuts, water shortages and rampant corruption. They're calling for President Andrei Radjolina to resign. He's responded by sacking his entire cabinet. He's imposed a dawn-to-dust curfew, and his security forces are trying to clear the demonstrators. They don't seem ready to give up. Though many of those in the crowd are young, their grievances have been decades in the making. In some ways, it's not entirely surprising that people in Madagascar are rising up against horrific poverty, terrible public services and endemic corruption.

11:55John McDermott is our senior Africa correspondent. Perhaps what's most surprising is that they haven't protested en masse more often before, given just how bad things can get. So for those of us who haven't been following it, why are things so bad in Madagascar? In my job, I have found myself going to quite a lot of very poor places, but I'm not sure I've ever been to a country that has so little obvious excuse to be as poor as it is. And there's one of those core blimey statistics that I just keep underlining. It's that Madagascar has seen the biggest drop in GDP per capita since 1960 of any country that hasn't had a civil war.

12:45Maybe listeners who think of Madagascar, and if they're not thinking of the kids movie, they're thinking of its incredible biodiversity, might know the island for those reasons. But I think there's just as many reasons for, say, an economist to study the place as there is an ecologist. John, you say you've just come back from there. What did you see on your visit? I was there the week before all these protests broke out, which either shows stunning prescience or a stunning inability to get the story, depending on your point of view. I started in the capital, Antananarivo, and there's one project in particular, which I think just summed up the situation there.

13:29This cable car line that was opened earlier this year, thanks to a loan from the former colonial power, France. Now, the capital has some bad traffic, like a lot of African cities. So the theory is this cable car line is supposed to relieve some of these pressures. But there's a number of problems. One is that it is much more expensive than the local bus. So ordinary Malagasy can't use it. And even more importantly, there's so many power cuts in the city that it barely even works. And the few people that can afford to use it are suspended over this city where you can see from the privileged position of your cable car, kids playing in skips next to Porsche Cayennes waiting for salon appointments.

14:21And it was really pretty grim. So I don't think it was a coincidence that one of the targets of these protests was these cable car stations, a few of which were set alight. And presumably that poverty extends beyond the capital. That's right. I travelled around a good deal of the island, especially in the north, which is actually a bit richer than the south, which has seen quite a lot of drought in recent years, going to this one village in an area where they grow lots of vanilla.

14:52It felt as I was walking into the village that I wasn't so much traveling in terms of distance, but also in terms of time. An ox cart trundling past. Women and girls carrying buckets of water on their heads. And when people weren't washing their clothes or pounding rice flour, they might be breaking up stones. It was like something from the 17th or 18th century with the occasional edition of a mobile phone. And to put some real numbers on this, I stopped by the side of the road in a cocoa growing area. There were about 10 or 12 young guys hacking away at Cocoa Pops. It was actually quite kind of mesmeric and rhythmic.

15:37And I was just saying to them, you know, how much money do you make? It was the equivalent of about$40 a month, which if you average it out over a year is actually around about the average income in the country, around$500 a year. As the population has exploded over the past few decades, from 6 million in 1960 to about 30 million today, that's put more pressure on the land. Farmers are yielding less so their incomes are going down and everyone is getting poorer in those areas, contrary to what you're seeing in many other parts of the continent. And as they're getting poorer, they're more likely to move to cities, so they're putting more pressure on places like the capital, and that's making it harder to provide services and adding to some of the social pressures that have been unleashed over the past few weeks.

16:24John, as you say, it's pretty clear why people might want to protest now and the longer-term problems that these demonstrations reflect. How have governments tried to deal with this? In the 20th century, there were some disastrous Soviet-style policies. And more recently, there's been a shift to what is ultimately a form of crony capitalism. It was noticeable that the protesters are not only mentioning the name of the president, Mr. Regilina, but also some of the powerful businessmen that are seen to be the influence behind the throne. And clearly people have had enough. I think so. But at the same time, one of the things that some people might find surprising is that there's not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people out on the street.

17:11There are a few thousand, and yet they've really rocked the system. I mean, as I speak to you now, it's unclear whether the president will survive or not. Before I went to the country, I was chatting to a few people that knew it well and said that there's this theory, given some credence by Malagasy themselves, that is more interesting in the afterlife than the present life. There are these elaborate cultural rituals that celebrate ancestors. There's a particular one that's common in the capital, it's called the Femadahana, which roughly translates as the turning of the bones. And on the outskirts of the city, in a poor neighborhood, this family with about two, three hundred other members of the community walked through the area with an incredibly loud brass bands in tow.

18:02Then they proceeded to the family tombs, which are common in this part of the country. And over the next two to three hours, they proceeded to remove corpses from the tomb, redress them in new silk shrouds, dance around with them, and put them back. And the point the patriarch was explaining to me was that we want to make sure our ancestors know that we are caring about them. And I said to him, well, you know, how much does all this cost? There's 300 people here. They're all getting fed and getting boozed up. And he said, oh, I don't know, maybe the equivalent of$1 ,000, which again is twice average income a year.

18:42Now, ultimately, these things are probably more an effect of poverty than they are a cause. But the very fact that it is a legitimate point of conversation, even in Madagascar itself, I think tells you a little bit about quite how entrenched poverty has become. I think the danger for Madagascar is that while this particular president may leave, even if he does so, the country's entrenched problems are still going to remain. John, thank you for talking to me. Thanks, Rosie.

19:31Last week, science writer Tim Cross and I discussed the joys and benefits of sunlight, as well as considering its dangers. That prompted plenty of messages from you, our listeners. Some questions seem to warrant further investigation. So Tim is back with me now. Hello, Tim. Hi, Rosie. Okay, our first message comes from Francois in Mexico on this voice note. To me, sunlight has a totally obvious benefit. It keeps me in a good mood. Seeing the sun is uplifting and if one's mindset has any effect whatsoever on one's health, I would think sunlight might well have a major effect through this mechanism alone.

20:11So what do you reckon to that, Tim? He's definitely right. And this was something that there wasn't really enough space to go into in the piece. But we know that sunlight can positively affect people's mood and we know that a lack of it can negatively affect it. And in some people, it's serious enough to qualify as a disorder. There's this thing called seasonal affective disorder, which people who live in high latitudes can suffer from in the winter months when there isn't much sun, where you feel sort of down and depressed. And exposure to sunlight or to special lamps that mimic sunlight can help treat that.

20:40We know that sunlight can affect the production of various neurotransmitters like serotonin. And we also know that it helps to regulate something called your circadian rhythms, your body clock. So there's all kinds of processes that happen in your body, like hormone production, cellular repair, chemicals that affect your mood. And they happen on 24-hour periods. And we know that exposure to sunlight is important to calibrate that clock and keep it in tune with what's happening in the outside world. So I think he's right. There are definitely mood and mental benefits to seeing the sun. Here's another one from Peter Katanko, who's a professor at Mount Sinai in New York.

21:19Hi, Kim. Together with Richard Weller, we looked into about 340 ,000 hemodialysis patients from the US and found that exposure to UV solar radiation is associated with lower blood pressure. While dialysis patients have a very specific population, I think that these findings add to the body of evidence supporting a beneficial role of UV light. Okay, so you're hearing from the expert there, Tim. What's your response to that? Yes, exactly. And this point about blood pressure is something that the piece did go into a bit. So we have some observational studies done on people in the UK and in Sweden that show an association between being exposed to sunlight and lower all-cause mortality.

22:05One of the proposed mechanisms by which this might work is exposure to sunlight might lower your blood pressure. And this ultimately goes back to some work that was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1998, when scientists discovered that a very simple molecule called nitric oxide is actually quite a potent signaling molecule within your body. It does all kinds of things, but one of the things it does is it encourages the walls of your arteries to relax, and that lowers your blood pressure. Later, it was discovered that there are nitrogen compounds in your skin, and when these are exposed to ultraviolet light, they convert to nitric oxide.

22:40That nitric oxide seems to be able to make its way into your bloodstream and promote this sort of relaxation. So this kind of biochemical pathway is one of the ways we can link those observational studies to something that actually happens in real people's bodies and it's definitely a really interesting area of research. Some of these letters came into the intelligence inbox. Others were in response to the Simply Science newsletter that you wrote, Tim. Dear Tim Cross, I read your newsletter on exposure to sunlight with interest and decided to act on your invitation at the end of the column, an obvious reaction would be correlation does not equal causation.

23:20Further research may well reveal other causal factors that also correlate with exposure to the sun, such as a Mediterranean diet, fresh air, exercise, stress reduction, social interaction, and the general enjoyment of outdoors life. That being said, I suppose correlation is another way of saying hidden benefit. Kind regards, Niels van Graaf Eiland from the Netherlands. So the first thing to say is he's absolutely right. Correlation does not equal causation. And this is always a problem with any kind of purely observational research. But of course, the scientists that do these studies are aware of this.

23:58So both those studies that we talked about, the big one done in the UK, the slightly smaller one done in Sweden, they tried to correct for all the known confounding factors that could have explained it. So they've done their best. The counter argument to that, I suppose, is you can never be sure that you've accounted for everything. And that's why I think those observational studies can only ever be a jumping off point. That's one reason why the piece went into some of the proposed mechanisms. So we've just talked about nitric oxide. There's also research into ways in which sunlight seems to regulate the immune system and change the way it works.

24:30So if you get a correlation, if the correlation is still there once you've corrected for all the things you can think of to correct, and then you start turning up some plausible biological mechanisms by which it should work, each of those steps should increase your confidence that you've picked up something interesting here. And when it comes to sunlight, I think the evidence is at the level now where lots of people are starting to look at this and say, huh, this is quite interesting and it's starting to become persuasive. It's certainly not a slam dunk yet. We may well find with more research that the whole thing unravels.

25:01That would be far from the first time that that's happened. But I think it's a good example of how science works in practice, where you're trying to get evidence from lots of different sources and build it into a compelling picture. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't. We'll just have to see, ultimately, which of those two things it is in this case. So you're standing by your conclusion that it's probably okay to book my Caribbean and holiday. I'd hate to get in between you and any kind of holiday, Rosie. Thanks, Tim. Great to talk to you. Thanks, Rosie. And if you've got views on sunlight or anything else we've talked about on The Intelligence, do email us at podcast.economist.com.