How AI is rewiring childhood

Issue Date: December 6, 2025

Table of Contents

The world this week Leaders Letters By Invitation Briefing Britain Europe United States Middle East & Africa The Americas Asia China International Business Finance & economics Science & technology Culture Economic & financial indicators Obituary

The world this week

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Russian President Putin meets US Special Envoy Witkoff at Kremlin, Moscow, Russian Federation - 02 Dec 2025

Politics

The world this week

Kindergarten children.

Business

The world this week

Cartoon of Pete Hegseth dressed as a cowboy being accused of war crimes.

The weekly cartoon

The world this week

Leaders

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A young child being inundated with robotic helpers

How AI is rewiring childhood

Generation AI

A slot machine game featuring the faces of British political party leaders

Britain’s slot-machine politics

Crackpot or jackpot?

A female soldier is about to launch a drone at a military position in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine on October 6th 2025

Enough dithering. Europe must pay to save Ukraine

Squabbling while Ukraine burns

A person holds up an image of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa during a protest in support of Syrian territorial unity and against division, in Damascus, Syria, November 28th 2025

Syria’s transition has gone better than expected

Two cheers for Ahmed al-Sharaa

A diptych of Kevin Hassett and Chris Waller.

Chris Waller, not Kevin Hassett, should lead the Federal Reserve

Choosing the chair

Letters

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This illustration shows a fast-food worker standing with a sad or disappointed expression, holding a serving tray with only a single small item on it—perhaps suggesting scarcity, a mistake in an order, or just a slow, uneventful moment at work.

Do minimum wages kill jobs?

A selection of correspondence

By Invitation

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Illustrations of Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein

Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein on how tokenisation could transform finance

Blockchain boon

Briefing

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An illustration of a girl happily studying in a classroom with a gentle, caring personalised AI robot teacher.

At home and at school, AI is transforming childhood

Generation AI

Britain

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Sir Keir Starmer being interviewed by Zanny Minton-Beddoes

Our interview with Sir Keir Starmer

The man versus the moment

A slot machine of UK politician faces

Our new model captures the lottery of Britain’s electoral system

Slot-machine politics

Leader of the Reform Party, Nigel Farage MP is seen on the front page of the weekly Standard newspaper

Polls predicting the next British election are not to be trusted

Pinch of salt

Britain's Justice Secretary David Lammy speaking about criminal court reform during a session of parliament

Britain’s plan to curb jury trials is a sharp break with tradition

Fury over juries

119 families set sail in the "Orontes" for a new life in Australia. Tilbury Docks.

Are Brits really leaving the country in droves?

Flight of fancy

Illustration of a person dressed as an avocado

Pity the AVOCADOs

Bagehot

Europe

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French soldiers work on a Leclerc tank, at Mourmelon military camp in Northern France

Europe is going on a huge military spending spree

Pumping iron

Russian President Putin meets U.S. special representative Witkoff in Moscow.

America’s peace initiative has stalled in Moscow

Flame out

A huge computer cursor is pinning down one person while another person in a suit walks away looking at a tablet

Greece is teaching Germany how to get government online

The last shall be average

A woman holds up a sign that says, patriarchy exists because I could be next, at a protest against violence on women

Italy’s populist right stalls a sexual-consent law

Basta means basta

The Hague exterior view.

The Hague is coping with the decline of international courts

Not so judgy

A man in a suit and bowler hat stands by the sea with a green apple covering his face; a worm pokes out of the apple, and he wears a badge with the EU flag.

Why a small corruption scandal is a big problem for the EU

Charlemagne

United States

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Pete Hegseth.

Will Congress rein in Pete Hegseth and his boat-bombing campaign?

Drifting with purpose

Republicans still don’t know what to do with Obamacare

Concepts of a plan

A man uses a leaf blower to clear the leaves in a yard.

Leaf blowers are the latest thing dividing Americans

After the fall

Matt Van Epps waves alongside wife Meg Van Epps to speaks at a watch party to announce victory in a special election for the U.S. seventh congressional district.

A special election puts Democrats on track to flip the House

But no cigar

Illustration of a red and a blue chart arrow being sucked into a digital wormhole

AIs could turn opinion polls into gibberish

Confirmation bias

Michael Dell talks after United States President Donald Trump announced that he and Susan Dell have pledged a historic $6.25B to seed Trump accounts for kids.

What will your child’s Trump Account be worth?

Dell gift

Illuatration of a 2 faced Trump, on the left side he's grabbing a small Nicolás Maduro by his tie and shouting, on his right he's smiling while he opens the handcuffs for a small Juan Orlando Hernández

Some cocaine-smuggling presidents are more innocent than others

Lexington

Middle East & Africa

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A person carries a bunch of balloons through destroyed streets in Aleppo, aerial view

Syria uneasily celebrates a year of liberation

A year After Assad

People take part in a protest in al-Azhari Square, following recent attacks against the Alawite minority community in Latakia, Syria

An insurgency may be brewing against Syria’s new leaders

Trouble brewing

Activists protest outside the home of President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv, calling not to grant a pardon to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Binyamin Netanyahu has asked for a presidential pardon

Binyamin Netanyahu’s trial

A brass band practice by the light of a single isolated lamppost, Volta Region, Ghana

Africa needs to generate more electricity

Purchasing power

A worker is seen at the Port autonome de Pointe Noire, in the Republic of Congo

Russia’s dodgy plan for a pipeline in Congo

An oily deal

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Accra, Ghana

Mormonism’s surprising boom in Africa

Latter-day Saints on the march

The Americas

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A few women are visible, seen through a small keyhole

Trafficking humans is the drug-gangs’ grimmest business

The price of a person

West Indies cricket team celebrate during the 3rd day of the 2nd Test match between West Indies and Australia at Grenada National Cricket Stadium

China built a swanky cricket pitch to win over tiny Grenada

Xi’s first XI

A woman wearing a Honduran flag queues to vote during the general election in Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Why does Donald Trump care about Honduras’s election?

Elections in Honduras

Worshippers prepare for a ritual of the African-Brazilian Candomble religion in Salvador, Brazil.

Brazil is embracing its African roots

Remember, remember the 20th of November

Asia

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A 3D illustration of the Indian flag. The Ashoka Chokra is a drone instead of the usual symbol.

India’s defence-tech startups are thriving

Boom times

A drone view shows people walking in a flooded area in Hat Yai district, Songkhla, Thailand.

South-East Asia and Sri Lanka are reeling from storms and flooding

Natural disasters

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) attend the award ceremony as Putin awards the Order of St. Andrew to Narendra Modi.

Donald Trump looms over Vladimir Putin’s visit to India

Third wheel

Members of a local election commission count ballots at a polling station during Kyrgyzstan's snap parliamentary elections in Bishkek.

Kyrgyzstan is losing its status as Central Asia’s only democracy

Regressing to the mean

Illustration of a small person representing Japan standing on a pile of minerals/rocks, pushing against a big, crushing fist representing China.

Lessons from Japan’s efforts to wean itself off Chinese rare earths

Banyan

China

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An illustration of boxes in a empty room. A person in the background is leaving with one of the boxes.

America is foolishly waving goodbye to thousands of Chinese boffins

Talent flows

The moon on top one of the burned buildings near Wang Fuk Court housing complex in Hong Kong

After a terrible fire in Hong Kong, public fury smoulders

Elections approach

A still from a leaked video of general Xi Qinxian court-martial trial in 1989

The general who refused to crush Tiananmen’s protesters

Suppressing democracy in China

International

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New US Marine recruits train in San Diego, California

Western armed forces have struggled to fill their ranks to deter Russia

Defence

Trump on pedestal and a fallen statue of Plato

Trumpworld thinks Europe has betrayed the West

The Telegram

Business

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illustration of a bright red room set up like a film studio. A woman in a yellow dress sits on a bed holding a drink, while a man in a white shirt and gray pants stands nearby gesturing

From micro-dramas to video games, Chinese entertainment is booming

Creative tension

Actors rehearse on the set of a micro movie at a hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China

China’s unlikely new entertainment capital

Showing up

Illustration of an office desk chair issolves away into pixels, blowing away to the side.

Lessons from the frontiers of AI adoption

Jobs for the bots

Legami pens.

Even Europe’s penmakers are under threat

Animals, ink

People work at a new production base of Volkswagen Anhui in Hefei, Anhui province, China

To halt their decline, VW and others are turning Chinese

Changing lanes

Patrick Drahi.

Patrick Drahi has bested his lenders yet again

High and Drahi

Person pushing oversized clock hands between markings for 40 and 80 hours.

How many hours should employees work?

Bartleby

illustration of two figures push green and orange building-like blocks toward a central machine with glowing lenses.

Will the mega-merger wave destroy value for shareholders?

Schumpeter

Finance & economics

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For people striving to break into the middle class, hard work is no longer enough

Why worries about American job losses are overstated

Labouring the point

Kevin Hassett, speaks to reporters in front of the West Wing at the White House, Washington DC, USA.

Which Kevin Hassett would lead the Federal Reserve?

Central banking

This illustration shows a large, glowing, abstract brain shape floating above a group of silhouetted people who are looking up at it thoughtfully. It suggests the idea of humans contemplating intelligence, creativity, or complex thinking

How to spot a bubble bursting

Once you pop

Michael Saylor, co-founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy, speaks during the Bitcoin 2025 conference at The Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Bitcoin has plunged. Strategy Inc is an early victim

Cryptocurrencies

A blue grand piano stands in a room decorated with stripes and swirls. A view of a luxury public restroom at the Nanjing Deji Plaza in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province of China.

Can golden toilets fix China’s economy?

Feeling flush

Lights illuminate the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery plant, operated by Rosneft PJSC, in Novokuibyshevsk, Samara region, Russia

American sanctions are putting Russia under pressure

Refined attacks

Illustration of several blue fighter jets flying among large white drawstring sacks on a bright yellow background.

Stockholm is Europe’s new capital of capital

Buttonwood

An illustration of two lizards performing a courtship display

AI misinformation may have paradoxical consequences

Free exchange

Science & technology

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Human head split in two, formed from layered, wavy paper that extends outward in shapes resembling a brain.

Why autism should not be treated as a single condition

The new neurotribes

A simulated image representing the projected contamination by satellite trails in one of the future space telescopes.

Surging satellite numbers threaten to dazzle even space telescopes

My God, it’s full of Starlinks

Illustration of a woman with tap across her mouth

Does taping your mouth while you sleep have benefits?

Well informed

The Zhuque-3 rocket blasts from the Dongfeng Space Centre

A Chinese firm attempts to bring a booster rocket back to Earth

Head to head

Culture

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Men ride a motorcycle by the Great Colonnade (Decumanus Maximus) at the ancient ruins of Palmyra in central Syria.

Why do tourists visit sites of atrocities?

Dark tourism

An illustration of a bowl of alphabet spaghetti in tomato sauce.

And The Economist’s word of the year for 2025 is…

Language

Picture of an advent calendar with jam jars in the boxes

Why there is an Advent calendar for absolutely everything

Show me the doors

Tyler Mitchell, Curtain Call, 2018.

Tyler Mitchell: the photographer of the moment

Hotshot

Tiktokers reviewing the book I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman.

The 30-year-old dystopian novel that is the talk of TikTok

Stuff of fiction

An illustration of two people watching a retro-looking TV in a living room. There are BAFTA and Emmy award trophies on a side table.

The best TV shows of 2025

Right on cue

Economic & financial indicators

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Economic data, commodities and markets

Indicators

Obituary

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Tom Stoppard in November 2023

Tom Stoppard was an inexhaustible fountain of ideas

A man of multitudes