In some places, the Caspian Sea has already retreated 50km.S. Melkin / shutterstock
This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.
Around the world, rivers and lakes that sustained civilisations for millennia are vanishing before our eyes. The Caspian Sea – the world’s largest inland body of water – has shrunk dramatically in just a few decades. The Ganges nourishes hundreds of millions of people across India and Bangladesh, yet is drying at a rate scientists say is unprecedented in the past thousand years.
Climate change isn’t solely to blame for the woes of the Caspian or the Ganges, of course. In nearly all cases, what’s going on is some combination of human and climate factors. But there is a trend.
Let’s start with rivers.
Writing in 2022, Catherine E. Russell, then of the University of Leicester, notes that:
“The Loire in France broke records in mid-August for its low water levels, while photos circulating online show the mighty Danube, Rhine, Yangtze and Colorado rivers all but reduced to trickles.”
“climate change is altering where freshwater is found: such that, in general, places with plenty are getting more while places with little are getting less.”
She says this is making rivers more “flashy”: prone to breaking records for both high and low water levels. The flashiness is exacerbated by humans extracting water and putting rivers in concrete straitjackets.
So what we’re seeing isn’t just a series of droughts. These drying rivers represent a structural change in how water is moving through the land, driven by climate change but also decades of overuse and engineering decisions.
This is particularly apparent in the Ganges, India’s largest and longest river. There, “stretches of river that once supported year-round navigation are now impassable in summer. Large boats that once travelled the Ganges from Bengal through Varanasi now run aground where water once flowed freely.”
That’s according to Mehebub Sahana, a rivers expert at the University of Manchester, who has written about a new study that puts the current drying in historical context. Scientists in India, writes Sahana, gathered 1,300 years of flow data and say the river and its wider system of tributaries has never faced dry spells as severe as it has in the past decade.
Sandbanks on the shores of the Padma River (the local name for the Ganges) in Bangladesh. Dams upstream in India have meant there is less water flowing into the Padma. Pavel Vatsura / shutterstock
As the world warms, Sahana notes, “the monsoon which feeds the Ganges has grown increasingly erratic”. But there are other factors at play: “Water has been diverted into irrigation canals, groundwater has been pumped for agriculture, and industries have proliferated along the river’s banks. More than a thousand dams and barrages have radically altered the river itself.”
In Sahana’s words, this results in “a river system increasingly unable to replenish itself”.
To save the Ganges, India will have to extract less groundwater and irrigation water. Upstream India and downstream Bangladesh will have to better coordinate their efforts. And major funding and political agreements “must treat rivers like the Ganges as global priorities”.
While at Keele University, the geographer Antonia Law looked at the climate-related threat to lake wildlife.
She notes there has already been a “staggering decline” in freshwater species diversity since the 1970s, but that “climate change [now] threatens to drive even deeper losses”.
“Lake heatwaves – when surface water temperatures rise above their average for longer than five days – are a relatively new phenomenon. But by the end of this century, heatwaves could last between three and 12 times longer and become 0.3°C to 1.7°C hotter. In some places, particularly near the equator, lakes may enter a permanent heatwave state. Smaller lakes may shrink or disappear entirely, along with the wildlife they contain, while deeper lakes will face less intense but longer heatwaves.”
Needless to say, this is not great news for any person or animal that relies on those lakes. That’s particularly the case as “unlike those living elsewhere, most lake animals cannot simply move to another habitat once their lake becomes uninhabitable”. Many lakes, says Law, are on course for “a sweltering, breathless and lifeless future”.
That’s the case even for the biggest lake (sort of) of all: the Caspian Sea.
Here’s Simon Goodman, an ecologist at the University of Leeds who has tracked the seals in the Caspian for more than two decades:
“Once a haven for flamingos, sturgeon and thousands of seals, fast-receding waters are turning the northern coast of the Caspian Sea into barren stretches of dry sand. In some places, the sea has retreated more than 50km. Wetlands are becoming deserts, fishing ports are being left high and dry, and oil companies are dredging ever-longer channels to reach their offshore installations.”
Goodman says variations in the Caspian Sea level were once linked to agricultural irrigation (the same thing that caused the Aral Sea to disappear a few hundred miles to the east), but “now global warming is the main driver of decline”.
That’s because rising temperatures are disrupting the water cycle. Rivers and rainfall are bringing less water, while the hotter sun is evaporating more water than ever. With no link to the wider oceans (aside from a single canal, which is also drying up), the Caspian just can’t keep up.
As things stand, Goodman says, the decline could eventually reach 18 metres, “which is about the height of a six-storey building”. “Even an optimistic ten-metre decline would uncover 112,000 square kilometres of seabed – an area larger than Iceland.”
The five countries around the Caspian Sea have recognised the danger. The world does not need another Aral Sea. But Goodman fears “the rate of decline may outstrip the pace of political cooperation”.
There are many more stories like these. We’ve looked at the Ganges and the Caspian Sea, but this could easily have been a newsletter about Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest freshwater lake, or about drying rivers in Europe making it harder to generate nuclear power (pushing up energy prices in the UK), or about the complete disappearance of Bolivia’s second largest lake.
In all these cases, it’s worth remembering that once a river runs dry or a lake shrivels up, it’s not just water that disappears: it’s entire ecosystems and ways of life.
Limb lengthening surgery creates an intentional fracture in order to encourage new bone growth.Pixel-Shot/ Shutterstock
Would you willingly have your legs broken, the bone stretched apart millimetre by millimetre and then spend months in recovery – all to be a few centimetres taller?
This the promise of limb-lengthening surgery. A procedure once reserved for correcting severe orthopaedic problems, it has now become a cosmetic trend. While it might sound like a quick fix for those hoping to make themselves taller, the procedure is far from simple. Bones, muscles, nerves and joint all pay a heavy price – and the risks often outweigh the rewards.
Limb lengthening is not new. The procedure was pioneered in the 1950s by Soviet orthopaedic surgeon Gavriil Ilizarov, who developed a system to treat badly healed fractures and congenital limb deformities. His technique revolutionised reconstructive orthopaedics and remains the foundation of current practice today.
While the number of people undergoing cosmetic limb-lengthening surgery each year still remains relatively small, the procedure is growing in popularity. Specialist clinics in the US, Europe, India and South Korea report increasing demand – with procedures costing tens of thousands of pounds.
Reports suggest that in some private clinics, cosmetic cases of limb-lengthening surgery now outnumber medically necessary ones. This reflects a cultural shift, where people are willing to undergo a demanding, high-risk medical procedure to meet social ideals about height.
Surgeons begin by cutting through a bone – usually the femur (thigh bone) or tibia (shin bone). To ensure the existing bone stays healthy and that new bone can grow, surgeons are careful to leave intact its blood supply and periosteum (the soft issue that covers the bone).
Traditionally, the cut bone segments were then connected to a bulky external frame which was adjusted daily to pull the two ends apart. But more recently, some procedures have adopted telescopic rods placed inside of the bone itself.
These devices can be lengthened gradually using magnetic controls from outside the body – sparing patients the stigma of an external frame and reducing the risk of infection. However, they’re not suitable for all patients – especially children – and are considerably more expensive than external systems.
Regardless of whether the device sits outside or within the bone, the process is the same. After a short healing period, the device is adjusted to separate the cut ends very gradually, usually by about one millimetre per day. This slow separation encourages the body to fill the gap with new bone – a process called osteogenesis. Meanwhile, the muscles, tendons, blood vessels, skin and nerves stretch to accommodate the change.
Over weeks and months this can add up to a gain of five to eight centimetres in height from a single procedure – the limit most surgeons consider safe. Some patients undergo operations on both the femur and tibia, aiming to gain as much as 12–15 centimetres in total. However, complication rates rise sharply with each centimetre of additional growth. Complications include joint stiffness, nerve irritation, delayed bone healing, infection and chronic pain.
Intense pain
The underlying challenge of limb-lengthening surgery is the same: the body must constantly repair a bone that is being pulled apart.
When a bone breaks, a blood clot rapidly forms around the fracture. Bone cells (ostoblasts) create a callus (soft cartilage) that stabilises the break. Over weeks, osteoblasts replace this cartilage with new bone that gradually remodels to restore strength and shape.
In limb-lengthening surgeries, however, the fracture is continuously pulled apart. This means the body’s repair process is constantly interrupted and redirected, generating a column of delicate new bone where hardening is delayed.
The process is intensely painful. Patients often require strong painkillers. Physiotherapy is also essential to maintain movement. Yet, even when the surgery succeeds, people may still be left with weakness, altered gait or chronic discomfort.
There’s also the psychological burden that comes alongside the procedure. Recovery can take a year or more – much of it spent with restricted mobility. Some patients report depression or regret, particularly if the modest gain in height does not deliver the hoped-for improvement in confidence.
Muscles and tendons are also forced to lengthen beyond their natural capacity, which can lead to stiffness. Nerves are especially vulnerable. Unlike bone, they cannot regenerate across long distances. Healthy nerves can stretch by perhaps 6–8% of their resting length – but beyond this, the fibres begin to suffer injury and become impaired.
Patients often experience tingling, numbness or burning pain during lengthening. In severe cases, nerve damage may be permanent. Joints, immobilised for months, are at risk of stiffening or developing arthritis because of changes to how force and weight are distributed.
The rise of cosmetic limb-lengthening illustrates a broader trend in aesthetic surgery – where increasingly invasive procedures are offered to people without medical need. In theory, almost anyone could gain a few centimetres of height. But in practice, it means months of broken bones, fragile new tissue, exhausting physiotherapy and the constant risk of complications.
For those with medical need, the benefits can be life-changing. But for those seeking only to add a little height, the question remains whether enduring months of pain and uncertainty is really worth it.
Michelle Spear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation
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Tuesday was an extraordinary day at the United Nations in New York. Taking the stage to address the general assembly of world leaders, the US president, Donald Trump, told the gathering: “Your countries are going to hell.” In 57 astonishing minutes at the podium, he questioned the purpose of the UN itself which, he said, had offered nothing but “empty words” to solve the many conflicts raging in the world.
Worse, it was “funding an assault on western countries and their borders” via its support for uncontrolled migration. The UN had also, he claimed, fallen for the massive “con job” of climate change.
He saved his choicest accusations for later when he took to his TruthSocial platform to accuse UN staff of deliberately sabotaging an escalator which malfunctioned as he and the first lady were riding it to the assembly chamber and his teleprompter which stopped working as he began his speech.
David Curran researches UN peacekeeping programmes at Coventry University. His impression was that Trump sounded as if he was pitching to replace the UN with a series of US-dominated bilateral relationships, when he offered “the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world”.
Curran’s main concern, listening to the speech, was that the US president’s attitudes could prove contagious. “Trump’s perspectives on sovereignty, climate change and migration may embolden other political leaders who want to push similar agendas,” he writes. “It has the danger of going beyond rhetoric.”
But later, while an astonished world was checking the transcript of his speech to see if they’d heard him right, Trump announced on TruthSocial that: “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
To many people, initially at least, it sounded as if Trump had decided to take a stand on the side of Ukrainian national sovereignty. He’d just been chatting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. And it’s long been said about the US president that he often repeats the talking points of the last person he has spoken with.
But there was something about the way Trump framed his Truth Social message. Particularly the words “Good luck to all!” with which he signed off. Richard Whitman and Stefan Wolff believe this is a strong hint that the US president is preparing to walk away from the war in Ukraine.
He has signally failed to solve the war “in 24 hours” as he promised on the campaign trail. And for all his talk of how with the help of Nato Kyiv could repel the Russian invader, he committed the US to nothing beyond selling arms to the rest of Nato to give to Ukraine.
This, they believe, leaves Ukraine and the “coalition of the willing” scrambling to develop and fund a coherent defence strategy at a time when – as we’ve seen in the past few weeks – Russia has been testing Nato’s European defence capability with multiple incursions into Nato airspace.
“Europeans also need to keep the US engaged as much as possible, literally by buying Trump off, because they currently lack critical capabilities that will take time for them to develop themselves,” they write. “And while building better defence capabilities for themselves they will need to keep Ukraine in the fight against Russia to keep it from losing the war.”
Zelensky made his own speech to the UN this week. And it made for headlines as stark as those that greeted Trump’s UN address the previous day. Zelensky outlined a dystopian vision of the way wars will increasingly be fought, based on what is happening in his country.
He spoke of areas “stretching for dozens of kilometres where nothing moves, no vehicles, no life. People used to imagine that [scenario] only after a nuclear strike – now it’s [a] drone reality.”
He warned of a coming nightmare marriage of drone technology and artificial intelligence (AI) producing drones operating in autonomous swarms. And he pointed to a world where the capability to build new and more dangerous weapons was no longer something confined to states, but something that would be within the capability of terrorists or criminal groups.
Mark Lacy researches the changing character of war and international politics at Lancaster University. He worries that the world is already seeing increasingly sophisticated tactics to harness developments in technology and worries that the ability to regulate or counter them is lagging behind.
But more worrying still is the increased potential that as leaders such as Putin play with the possibilities of brinkmanship by testing his adversaries’ defences in the way he has been doing recently, the idea of a mistake tipping over into open war becomes more possible.
In his UN speech, the US president also had some harsh words to say about the countries that have recently recognised the state of Palestine. It was essentially another stick to beat the UN with, but he heaped all the blame for the conflict on Hamas. Clearly Hamas must bear its share, but Trump had nothing to say about the conduct of the war by the Netanyahu government in Israel.
Whatever Trump says, the recognition of Palestinian statehood, in the past week, by the UK, Canada, Australia, Portugal, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Andorra is an important moment, setting up increased moral pressure on Israel and its (diminishing list of) allies.
Nils Mallock of King’s College London has been in the region recently, conducting fieldwork on the West Bank. He considers what an independent Palestinian state might look like.
Mallock and his fellow researchers have mapped the growth of settlements on the West Bank since 2014 and found they have grown by an average of 72%. Not only that, but their number has greatly increased, despite the fact that under the Oslo accords signed by Yitshak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993, these settlements are illegal.
Malloch observes that the West Bank already “resembles a fragmented archipelago more than a cohesive state territory”. Add to this the massive development project which stretches pretty much from East Jerusalem across the width of the Palestinian enclave and an independent state based on the territory becomes difficult to imagine.
As for governance, Malloch believes that the Palestian people’s options are unenviable. An ageing and corrupt Palestinian authority on the one hand and what remains of Hamas on the other. “Whoever eventually leads a unified Palestine will inherit decades of failed self-governance, deep public scepticism, and Israel undoubtedly attempting to intervene in this process,” he concludes.
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Source: The Conversation – UK – By Madeleine J. Meyer, Postgraduate Researcher, Theology and the Arts, University of St Andrews
The vampires of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga are undoubtedly unique. Never before had vampires been described as having sparkling, diamond-like skin in the sunlight, for example. But Meyer’s Twilight novels, the first of which turns 20 this year, also drew on a long vampiric tradition, with spiritual themes that were just as relevant 200 years ago as they are now.
Vampires in the Victorian era stood as a symbol of their time. They represented the questions of a society faced with the tension between new scientific discoveries and the spiritualist movement – a desire to unite the material to the immaterial, the immanent to the transcendent.
Decades later, the Twilight saga sought to answer the same questions for its own generation of readers. Just before the book was published in 2005, the cultural historian Christopher Partridge noted the rise of alternative spirituality in the west and a return to thinking of our existence as both physical and spiritual. Though institutional religion may have lost its former foothold in society, many began identifying as spiritual but not religious.
Twilight reflects this paradigm shift that resists limiting our perception of reality to just what we see with our eyes or comprehend with our intellect. By introducing modernised vampires to Forks, a mundane Washington town, Meyer was participating in a widespread desire to find a spiritual reality in our day-to-day lives – or to re-enchant the world.
This article is part of a mini series marking 20 years since the publication of Stephenie Meyer’s first Twilight novel.
Many Victorian vampires – such as the unnamed female vampire in Le Fanu’s Spalatro (1843) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Olalla (1885) – share certain qualities with Meyer’s sparkly vampires. They occasionally show mercy to humans, sacrifice relationships with their loved ones to keep them safe, and reflect on how they exist as spiritual creatures in a physical reality.
In this way Meyer’s vampires question what it means to be human from a theological perspective, just as Victorian vampire stories did. Meyer’s brilliance was to take an archaic mythos, introduced it to the 21st century, and find that it still stands. She exchanged the vampires’ creepy castles for a contemporary open-floor plan home, and audiences still flocked. Her vampires are ever ancient and ever new, participating in trying to answer age-old human questions.
Twilight follows the Victorian vampire tradition by exploring humanity through inhumanity. One of the most frequent themes in the saga is vampire Edward Cullen’s concern for his soul. He follows in the footsteps of his adopted father, fellow vampire Carlisle, by feasting on animals rather than humans because he doesn’t want to be a monster. The Cullens believe that by indulging in their thirst for human blood, vampires diminish their soulful existence.
‘This is the skin of a killer, Bella.’ Edward shows his sparkly skin in the film adaptation of Twilight.
This is as ancient a human concern as any. Are we more than just flesh and blood, possibly creatures with souls? And if we are, what does it mean to be human?
The protagonist of the Twilight saga, schoolgirl Bella Swan, is the primary point through which Meyer illustrates what it means to be human. Throughout the saga, Bella is torn between two worlds – human and inhuman. In Bella’s actions, the defining point for humanity is identified as selfless love. In each book, she makes the choice to put herself in danger for her loved ones’ sake. This is echoed in the Cullen coven’s desire to sacrifice their instincts by refusing to take innocent lives. In doing so, both Bella and Edward function humanely, even in their biological differences.
Myths survive because they cut to the heart of human existence. The vampire is immortal in literature across cultures because it says something that a systematic analysis of humanity or the world cannot.
What we receive in myth, as author C.S. Lewis noted, is not a statement on reality, but reality itself. When we hear a myth, we experience reality in a way that opens the spiritual senses, opening us up to experiencing the universal through a particular.
Twenty years on from Twilight’s original publication and 200 years since the Victorians drooled over their own sexy undead, we’re still talking about vampires. Meyer’s vampires endure because they tell us something of what it means to be human.
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Madeleine J. Meyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The UK government announced a landmark review of parental leave in July 2025. This responds to widespread concern about failings within the current policy framework.
Much of the discussion centres on calls for longer, better-paid paternity leave. The statutory entitlement is just two weeks paid at a low flat rate (£187.18 per week in 2025) or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.
Eligible fathers can opt for shared parental leave of up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay – paid at the same statutory rate. However, this is reliant on the mother giving up some of her maternity leave entitlement so is rarely taken up.
However, it is unclear whether small- and medium-sized workplaces can adapt to even modest changes to the current parental leave system, particularly if there are enhancements to the length of paternity leave.
Challenges for small businesses
Discussions about parental leave reform and its implications often focus on large organisations. But small- and medium-sized enterprises – defined as having fewer than 250 employees – account for 60% of UK employment. They make up over 99% of all businesses.
We are carrying out research exploring the transition to parenthood in UK small- and medium-sized enterprises, in collaboration with two charities: Working Families and the Fatherhood Institute. This research includes a survey of 2,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises and 2,000 employees, as well as 160 interviews, which involved talking to the same employers and employees two or three times over two years.
The UK government acknowledges the current unruly state of leave and pay entitlements, which “were never designed to operate as a single system”.
In line with previous work carried out by one of us (Bianca Stumbitz), our preliminary findings suggest small and medium businesses experience distinct pressures. These are related to this complexity along with their small size and limited resources.
Small and medium sized businesses are often committed to their employees’ transition to parenthood. Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock
For example, some of these businesses have minimal knowledge of what the entitlements are. Some find the parental leave policies too complex. And some struggle to find appropriate and affordable cover for staff who take up leave.
Nevertheless, many small- and medium-sized enterprises are committed to supporting their employees in their parenting journeys. Even small workplaces sometimes manage to voluntarily enhance pay entitlements. In most cases, though, they cannot afford to do this and not at equivalent levels as some larger employers. However, they often try to be supportive in other ways. In particular, this may be through offering increased flexibility to allow parents to better reconcile work and care.
Policy reforms should account for the specific challenges that parental leave poses to smaller organisations. These include the management of staff absences if employees take extended periods of leave. The redistribution of work can overburden remaining staff, especially if roles are skilled or specialist.
Employers are generally supportive of extended leave for parents. But it is clear that it needs to be provided in a way that does not harm smaller workplaces with scarce resources.
Preliminary findings from our study suggest that the small employers’ relief scheme (which allows some small and medium enterprises to claim back 108.5% of parental leave pay instead of the usual 92%) is underused. This is mostly due to small business owners’ lack of awareness of the scheme. Take-up of the programme could be increased through targeted awareness-raising campaigns, raising the eligibility threshold and reduced administrative complexity.
Flexibility in when and how parental leave is taken can be helpful for both employers and employees in small- and medium-sized organisations. This would enable employees to take leave in blocks, rather than an extended period of time, which may be easier for some employers to manage.
It is crucial that the UK’s parental leave scheme is overhauled, including more targeted and better paid parental leave entitlements for fathers. However, if reform is to be truly inclusive, small- and medium-sized businesses must not be an afterthought. They must be at the heart of the conversation.
What needs to change?
Changes to paternity leave could have positive and significant implications for families, gender role equality, workplaces and economic wellbeing. Research and international evidence suggests that leave should be longer, well paid and offered to fathers on a “use it or lose it” basis.
For this to work for small and medium enterprises and their employees, the government needs to provide bespoke support and resources to help businesses manage and meet their responsibilities. This could include improved small employer relief entitlements to help to cover statutory pay for parental leave.
We are always looking to hear about workplace initiatives on parental leave – and are producing a toolkit to help employers and employees in small- and medium-enterprises navigate some of these challenges.
Helen Norman receives funding from the Economic Social Research Council (ESRC).
Bianca Stumbitz receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
Emma Banister receives funding from the Economic Social Research Council (ESRC).
The most gripping week of the bear calendar has arrived. The Fat Bear Week is an annual online competition hosted by Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. This event, which began in 2014 as a one-day celebration, has since grown into a phenomenon among bear enthusiasts worldwide.
Bears are paired in single elimination match ups where people can read their biographies, look at their pictures and vote based on which bear “exemplifies fatness and success”, so it is not all about their size, but also about their life histories.
Why are we celebrating bear chubbiness? Because for brown bears, getting fat is a matter of survival. In just a few short months, they must bulk up to prepare for a long seasonal slumber, when they enter a deep sleep similar to hibernation (called
torpor), stopping all bodily functions, including eating, drinking, and eliminating
waste, while their body temperature, heart rate, and metabolism decrease.
This is especially remarkable when you consider that some Alaskan or Scandinavian bears might spend seven months in their dens. Even more impressive is that, during this period, pregnant female bears give birth, lactate and rear the extremely vulnerable cubs. This is a critical adaptation that allows bears to conserve energy during prolonged periods of harsh weather and food scarcity. So yes, those extra kilos are a badge of honour.
The bear’s bulking period is called hyperphagia, a time when brown bears become
obsessed with finding the fattiest, sweetest, and most protein rich foods. In Europe, they switch their diet in summer to feast on fruits (especially berries), hard mast such as acorns and nuts, and also prey on or scavenge animals. But the true champions of chubbiness are the coastal brown bears of Alaska, with some individuals tipping the scales at an astonishing 650kg – more than twice the weight of their European cousins.
These giants gorge on calorie-dense salmon, targeting the fat-rich roe and
brains, and can devour up to 40 fish a day. That’s a jaw dropping intake of 20,000 to over 100,000 calories daily. The result: coastal Alaskan brown bears can gain more than 2 kg per day.
But Fat Bear Week is not just about size. Voters (about 1.2 million in 2024) are encouraged to dive into the life histories of the contenders. Their biographies reflect the harshness of the environment and the fierce competition for resources and mating success. These bears’ lives tell us stories of loss, grave injuries, and also of determination, adaptability, and perseverance.
A matter of life and death
Female bears face enormous challenges: if they fail to accumulate enough body fat, they risk losing entire litters due to the energetic demands of cub rearing. Cubs are also vulnerable to attacks from other bears, particularly males, who may kill infants to eliminate competition and shorten the mother’s time to her next estrus cycle, increasing their own chances of fathering future offspring. Male brown bears don’t have it easier.
What happens in Fat Bear Week?
They suffer injuries or even death when fighting rivals over food, territory or mates, and must constantly adapt as they grow larger, older, and face tougher competition. In this contest, voters may find themselves rooting for an older female raising her cubs against the odds, or an older underdog bear facing off against younger, stronger challengers.
Beyond the fun of this online competition, Fat Bear Week helps raise
conservation awareness, support habitat protection, and foster public engagement
with wildlife. But the future of bear fattening and hibernation patterns might be
shaped by climate change.
Shifts in seasonal timings mean that their key food resources, such as berries and salmon, now overlap, and some bears may switch their diets. This can disrupt ecosystems and potentially lead to nutritional imbalances and behavioural changes. In Spain’s Cantabrian Mountains, warmer winters have led to brown bears remaining active during the winter, a risky time when food is scarce and cubs are vulnerable.
Conversely, some bears can be displaced to lower-quality areas, causing others that currently eat salmon to enter dens earlier and remain inside longer, missing out on critical feeding opportunities.
Fat Bear Week draws attention to the importance of preserving wild habitats like
Katmai National Park. It’s a brilliant model of how storytelling and digital media can inspire public stewardship of nature.
Antonio Uzal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
It’s a sunny June day in southeast England. I’m driving along a quiet, rural road that stretches through the Kent countryside. The sun flashes through breaks in the hedgerow, offering glimpses of verdant crop fields and old farmhouses.
Thick hawthorn and brambles make it difficult to see the 10ft high razor-wire fence that encloses a large grassy mound. You’d never suspect that 100ft beneath the ground, a hi-tech cloud computing facility is whirring away, guarding the most valuable commodity of our age: digital data.
This subterranean data centre is located in a former nuclear bunker that was constructed in the early 1950s as a command-and-control centre for the Royal Air Force’s radar network. You can still see the decaying concrete plinths that the radar dish once sat upon. Personnel stationed in the bunker would have closely watched their screens for signs of nuclear missile-carrying aircraft.
After the end of the cold war, the bunker was purchased by a London-based internet security firm for use as an ultra-secure data centre. Today, the site is operated by the Cyberfort Group, a cybersecurity services provider.
The Cyberfort bunker is a solid inclined mass of grass-covered concrete that emerges in the centre of the compound. Cyberfort/A.R.E. Taylor, CC BY
I’m an anthropologist visiting the Cyberfort bunker as part of my ethnographic research exploring practices of “extreme” data storage. My work focuses on anxieties of data loss and the effort we take – or often forget to take – to back-up our data.
As an object of anthropological enquiry, the bunkered data centre continues the ancient human practice of storing precious relics in underground sites, like the tumuli and burial mounds of our ancestors, where tools, silver, gold and other treasures were interred.
The Cyberfort facility is one of many bunkers around the world that have now been repurposed as cloud storage spaces. Former bomb shelters in China, derelict Soviet command-and-control centres in Kyiv and abandoned Department of Defense bunkers across the United States have all been repackaged over the last two decades as “future-proof” data storage sites.
I’ve managed to secure permission to visit some of these high-security sites as part of my fieldwork, including Pionen, a former defence shelter in Stockholm, Sweden, which has attracted considerable media interest over the last two decades because it looks like the hi-tech lair of a James Bond villain.
Many abandoned mines and mountain caverns have also been re-engineered as digital data repositories, such as the Mount10 AG complex, which brands itself as the “Swiss Fort Knox” and has buried its operations within the Swiss Alps. Cold war-era information management company Iron Mountain operates an underground data centre 10 minutes from downtown Kansas City and another in a former limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania.
The National Library of Norway stores its digital databanks in mountain vaults just south of the Arctic Circle, while a Svalbard coal mine was transformed into a data storage site by the data preservation company Piql. Known as the Arctic World Archive (AWA), this subterranean data preservation facility is modelled on the nearby Global Seed Vault.
Just as the seeds preserved in the Global Seed Vault promise to help re-build biodiversity in the aftermath of future collapse, the digitised records stored in the AWA promise to help re-boot organisations after their collapse.
A diagram of the Mount 10 bunker in Switzerland. Mount10, CC BY
Bunkers are architectural reflections of cultural anxieties. If nuclear bunkers once mirrored existential fears about atomic warfare, then today’s data bunkers speak to the emergence of a new existential threat endemic to digital society: the terrifying prospect of data loss.
Data, the new gold?
After parking my car, I show my ID to a large and muscular bald-headed guard squeezed into a security booth not much larger than a pay-phone box. He’s wearing a black fleece with “Cyberfort” embroidered on the left side of the chest. He checks my name against today’s visitor list, nods, then pushes a button to retract the electric gates.
I follow an open-air corridor constructed from steel grating to the door of the reception building and press a buzzer. The door opens on to the reception area: “Welcome to Cyberfort,” receptionist Laura Harper says cheerfully, sitting behind a desk in front of a bulletproof window which faces the car park. I hand her my passport, place my bag in one of the lockers, and take a seat in the waiting area.
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Big-tech pundits have heralded data as the “new gold” – a metaphor made all the more vivid when data is stored in abandoned mines. And as the purported economic and cultural value of data continues to grow, so too does the impact of data loss.
For individuals, the loss of digital data can be a devastating experience. If a personal device should crash or be hacked or stolen with no recent back-ups having been made, it can mean the loss of valuable work or cherished memories. Most of us probably have a data-loss horror story we could tell.
For governments, corporations and businesses, a severe data loss event – whether through theft, erasure or network failure – can have a significant impact on operations or even result in their collapse. The online services of high-profile companies like Jaguar and Marks & Spencer have recently been impacted by large-scale cyber-attacks that have left them struggling to operate, with systems shutdown and supply chains disrupted. But these companies have been comparatively lucky: a number of organisations had to permanently close down after major data loss events, such as the TravelEx ransomware attack in 2020, and the MediSecure and National Public Data breaches, both in 2024.
With the economic and societal impact of data loss growing, some businesses are turning to bunkers with the hope of avoiding a data loss doomsday scenario.
The concrete cloud
One of the first things visitors to the Cyberfort bunker encounter in the waiting area is a 3ft cylinder of concrete inside a glass display cabinet, showcasing the thickness of the data centre’s walls. The brute materiality of the bunkered data centre stands in stark contrast to the fluffy metaphor of the “cloud”, which is often used to discuss online data storage.
Data centres, sometimes known as “server farms”, are the buildings where cloud data is stored. When we transfer our data into the cloud, we are transferring it on to servers in a data centre (hence the meme “there is no cloud, just someone else’s computer”). Data centres typically take the form of windowless, warehouse-scale buildings containing hundreds of servers (pizza box-shaped computers) stored in cabinets that are arranged in aisles.
Data centres are responsible for running many of the services that underpin the systems we interact with every day. Transportation, logistics, energy, finance, national security, health systems and other lifeline services all rely on up-to-the-second data stored in and accessed through data centres. Everyday activities such as debit and credit card payments, sending emails, booking tickets, receiving text messages, using social media, search engines and AI chatbots, streaming TV, making video calls and storing digital photos all rely on data centres.
These buildings now connect such an incredible range of activities and utilities across government, business and society that any downtime can have major consequences. The UK government has officially classified data centres as forming part of the country’s critical national infrastructure – a move that also conveniently enables the government to justify building many more of these energy-guzzling facilities.
As I sit pondering the concrete reality of the cloud in Cyberfort’s waiting area, the company’s chief digital officer, Rob Arnold, emerges from a corridor. It was Arnold who arranged my visit, and we head for his office – through a security door with a biometric fingerprint lock – where he talks me through the logic of the bunkered data centre.
“The problem with most above-ground data centres is they are often constructed quickly, and not built to withstand physical threats like strong winds, car bombs or server theft from breaking and entering.” Arnold says that “most people tend to think of the cyber-side of data security – hackers, viruses and cyber-attacks – which dangerously overlooks the physical side”.
Amid increasing geopolitical tension, internet infrastructure is now a high-value target as “hybrid” or “cyber-physical” sabotage (when cyber-attacks are combined with physical attacks) becomes increasingly common.
The importance of physical internet security has been highlighted by the war in Ukraine, where drone strikes and other attacks on digital infrastructure have led to internet shutdowns. While precise details about the number of data centres destroyed in the conflict remain scant, it has been observed that Russian attacks on local data centres in Ukraine have led many organisations to migrate their data to cloud facilities located outside of the conflict zone.
Bunkers appeal to what Arnold calls “security-conscious” clients. He says: “It’s difficult to find a structure more secure than a bunker” – before adding drily: “The client might not survive the apocalypse, but their data will.”
Cyberfort specialises in serving regulated industries. Its customer base includes companies working in defence, healthcare, finance and critical infrastructure. “Our core offering focuses on providing secure, sovereign and compliant cloud and data-centre services,” Arnold explains in a well-rehearsed sales routine. “We do more for our customers than just host systems – we protect their reputations.”
Arnold’s pitch is disrupted by a knock at the door. The head of security (who I’m calling Richard Thomas here) enters – a 6ft-tall ex-royal marine wearing black cargo trousers, black combat boots and a black Cyberfort-branded polo shirt. Thomas is going to show me around the facility today.
The bunker’s external armour-plated door. Cyberfort/A.R.E. Taylor, CC BY
The entrance to the bunker is located up a short access road. Engineered to withstand the blast and radiation effects of megaton-level thermonuclear detonations, this cloud storage bunker promises its clients that their data will survive any eventuality.
At the armour-plated entrance door, Thomas taps a passcode into the electronic lock and swipes his card through the access control system. Inside, the air is cool and musty. Another security guard sits in a small room behind bulletproof plexiglass. He buzzes us through a metal mantrap and we descend into the depths of the facility via a steel staircase, our footsteps echoing in this cavernous space.
A full-height turnstile security gate (mantrap) inside the bunker. Cyberfort/A.R.E. Taylor, CC BY
The heavy blast doors and concrete walls of the bunker appear strangely at odds with the virtual “walls” we typically associate with data security: firewalls, anti-virus vaults, and spyware and spam filters. Similarly, the bunker’s military logics of enclosure and isolation seem somewhat outdated when faced with the transgressive digital “flows” of networked data.
However, to dismiss the bunkered data centre as merely an outmoded piece of security theatre is to overlook the importance of physical security – today and in the future.
We often think of the internet as an immaterial or ethereal realm that exists in an electronic non-place. Metaphors like the now retro-sounding cyberspace and, more recently, the cloud perpetuate this way of thinking.
But the cloud is a material infrastructure composed of thousands of miles of cables and rows upon rows of computing equipment. It always “touches the ground” somewhere, making it vulnerable to a range of non-cyber threats – from thieves breaking into data centres and stealing servers, to solar storms disrupting electrical supplies, and even to squirrels chewing through cables.
A blast-proof door in the Cyberfort bunker, behind which lies the server room containing the digital ‘gold’. Cyberfort/A.R.E. Taylor, CC BY
In July 2020, the 27-minute Cloudflare outage led to a 50% collapse in traffic across the globe, disrupting major platforms like Discord, Shopify, Feedly and Politico. In June 2021, the Fastly outage left some of the world’s most visited websites completely inaccessible, including Amazon, PayPal, Reddit, and the New York Times. In October 2021, Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, experienced an outage for several hours that affected millions of social media users as well as hundreds of businesses.
Perhaps the largest internet outage yet occurred in July 2024 when the CrowdStrike outage left supermarkets, doctors’ surgeries, pharmacies, airports, train providers and banks (among other critical services) unable to operate. This was described by some in the industry as “one of the largest mass outages in IT history”.
Internet architecture now relies on such a complex and fragile ecosystem of interdependencies that major outages are getting bigger and occurring more often. Downtime events can have a lasting financial and reputational impact on data centre providers. Some attempts to quantify the average cost of an unplanned data centre outage range from US$9,000 to US$17,000 (about £12,500) per minute.
The geographic location of a data centre is also hugely important for data protection regulations, Thomas explains, as we make our way down a brightly lit corridor. “Cyberfort’s facilities are all located in the UK, which gives our clients peace of mind, knowing they comply with data sovereignty laws.”
Data sovereignty regulations subject data to the legal and privacy standards of the country in which it is stored. This means businesses and organisations must be careful about where in the world their data is being relocated when they move it into the cloud. For example, if a UK business opts to store its data with a cloud provider that uses data centres based in the US, then that data will be subject to US privacy standards which do not fully comply with UK standards.
In contrast to early perceptions of the internet as transcending space, eradicating national borders and geopolitics, data sovereignty regulations endow locality with renewed significance in the cloud era.
The survival of data at all costs
Towards the end of the corridor, Thomas opens a large red blast-proof door – beyond which is a smaller air-tight door. Thomas waves his card in front of an e-reader, initiating an unlocking process: we’re about to enter one of the server rooms.
“Get ready” he says, smiling, “it’s going to be cold and loud!” The door opens, releasing a rush of cold air. The server room is configured and calibrated for the sole purpose of providing optimal conditions for data storage.
Like any computer, servers generate a huge amount of heat when they are running, and must be stored in constantly air-conditioned rooms to ensure they do not overheat. If for any reason a server should crash or fail, it can lead to the loss of a client’s valuable data. Data centre technicians work in high-pressure conditions where any unexpected server downtime could mean the end of their job.
The server room at Cyberfort. Cyberfort/A.R.E. Taylor, CC BY
To try and make sure the servers run optimally, data centres rely on huge amounts of water and energy, which can significantly limit the availability of these resources for the people who live in the vicinity of the buildings.
In addition, to meet expectations for “uninterruptible” service levels, data centres rely on an array of fossil fuel-based back-up infrastructure – primarily diesel generators. For this reason, the Green Web Foundation – a non-profit organisation working to decarbonise the internet – has described the internet as the world’s largest coal-powered machine. Data centres are also noisy and have become sites of protest for local residents concerned about noise pollution.
Amid hype and speculation about the rise of AI, which is leading to a boom in the construction of energy-hungry data centres, the carbon footprint of the industry is under increasing scrutiny. Keen to highlight Cyberfort’s efforts to address these issues, Thomas informs me that “environmental impact is a key consideration for Cyberfort, and we take our commitment to these issues very seriously”.
As we walk down a cold aisle of whirring servers, he explains that Cyberfort actively sources electricity from renewable energy supply chains, and uses what he calls a “closed loop” cooling infrastructure which consumes minimal fresh water.
‘Like the pyramids’
After our walk through the server room, we begin to make our way out of the bunker, heading through another heavy-duty blast door. As we walk down the corridor, Thomas promotes the durability of bunkers as a further security selling point. Patting the cold concrete wall with the palm of his hand, he says: “Bunkers are built to last, like the pyramids.”
Another heavy duty blast door. Cyberfort/A.R.E. Taylor, CC BY
Bunker scholars have long noted that these buildings are as much about time as they are about space. Bunkers are designed to preserve and transport their contents through time, from an apocalyptic present into a safe future.
Writers such as Paul Virilio, W.G. Sebald and J.G. Ballard were drawn to the decaying bunkers of the second world war and, like Thomas, compared them with enduring megastructures which have outlived the civilisations that built them. In his 1975 book Bunker Archaeology, Virilio famously compared the abandoned Nazi bunkers along the coast of France with “the Egyptian mastabas, the Etruscan tombs, the Aztec structures”.
The bunker’s durability invites us to take a long-term view of our own data storage needs, which will only increase over the course of our lives.
For technology behemoths like Apple and Google, cloud storage is a key strategic avenue for long-term revenue growth. While the phones, laptops and other digital devices they make have limited lifespans, their cloud services offer potentially lifelong data storage. Apple and Google encourage us to perpetually hoard our data rather than delete it, because this locks us into their cloud subscription services, which become increasingly expensive the more storage we need.
Apple’s marketing for its cloud storage service, iCloud, encourages users to “take all the photos you want without worrying about space on your devices”. Google has made “archive” rather than “delete” the default option on Gmail. While this reduces the likelihood of us accidentally deleting an email, it also means we are steadily consuming more of our Gmail capacity, leading some to purchase more Google Drive storage space.
Cloud hoarders
It is also increasingly difficult to operate off-cloud. Internal storage space on our digital devices is dwindling as the cloud becomes the default storage option on the majority of digital products being developed. Users must pay a premium if they want more than the basic local storage on their laptop or smartphone. Ports to enable expandable, local storage – such as CD drives or SD card slots – are also being removed by tech manufacturers.
As our personal digital archives expand, our cloud storage needs will continue to grow over our lifetimes, as will the payments for more and more cloud storage space. And while we often imagine we will one day take the time to prune our accumulations of digital photos, files, and emails, that task is often indefinitely postponed. In the meantime, it is quicker and easier to simply purchase more cloud storage.
Many consumers simply use whichever cloud storage service is already pre-installed on their devices – often these are neither the cheapest nor most secure option. But once we commit to one provider, it is very difficult to move our data to another if we want a cheaper monthly storage rate, or simply want to switch – this requires investing in enough hard drives on which to download the data from one cloud provider and upload it to another. Not everyone is tech-savvy enough to do that.
Underground: inside the Lefdal Mine Data Centers in Norway. Lefdal, CC BY-ND
In 2013, bank reforms in the UK introduced a switching service which enabled consumers to easily move their money and payments to different banks, in order to access more favourable rates. Cloud migration services are available for businesses, but until a cloud storage equivalent of the bank switching service is developed for the general public, many of us are essentially locked into whichever cloud provider we have been using. If our data really is the new gold, perhaps we should require cloud providers to offer incentives to deposit it with them.
Some providers now offer “lifetime” cloud packages with no monthly or yearly payments and no inactivity clause. However, the cloud market is volatile, defined by cycles of boom-and-bust, with providers and their data centres constantly rebranding, closing and relocating. In this landscape of mergers and acquisitions, there is no guarantee that lifetime cloud providers will be around long enough to honour these promises.
In addition, the majority of consumer cloud providers currently only offer a maximum of a few terabytes of storage. In the future, most of us will probably need a lot more than this, which could mean a lot more data centres (roughly 100 new data centres are set to be constructed in the UK alone within the next five years). We may also see more bunkers being repurposed as data centres – while some providers, such as Florida-based Data Shelter, are considering building entirely new bunker structures from scratch to house digital data.
Resurfacing
Thomas and I arrive at the steel staircase leading back up to the outside world. The guard buzzes us back through the turnstile, and Thomas unlocks and opens the door. The sunlight stings my eyes.
Back in the reception area, I thank Arnold and Thomas for my surreal trip into the depths of subterranean data storage. The Cyberfort data centre is a site of extreme contrasts, where the ethereal promise of the cloud jars with the concrete reality of the bunker.
Sitting in my car, I add to my fieldnotes that the survival of data – whether entombed in bunkers or stored in “lifetime” cloud accounts – is bound to the churn of markets, and depends upon the durability of the infrastructure and organisations behind it.
Permanence, in the digital age, is always provisional. One can’t help but imagine future archaeologists discovering this bunker and rummaging through the unreadable remains of our lost digital civilisation.
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A.R.E. Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When we think about the impact of climate change on the economy, images of droughts in Africa or hurricanes in the Caribbean might come to mind. But even in advanced economies such as the UK, hotter summers are being shown to carry a heavy price.
The past few summers in the UK have been among the hottest on record. In summer 2025, average temperatures across much of the country were more than 1.5°C higher than the usual seasonal average, with parts of southern England around 2°C hotter than normal. What does that mean for the economy?
The heat invites people outdoors. Beaches are packed, pub gardens overflow and families fire up the barbecue. Trade association the British Retail Consortium reported that retail sales increased by 3.1% in June compared to the same month in 2024. This was driven by a surge in sales of food, drink, and leisure products. From ice cream trips to garden makeovers and days out, sunshine typically encourages feel-good, spur-of-the-moment spending.
But warmer summers have downsides. High temperatures have a big effect on health, putting people at risk of heat stress, heat stroke and even death. Accommodation in the UK is designed to retain heat, which means that currently, 32% of homes in London and 17% of homes outside London are overheated. And the percentages of homes at risk of future overheating jump to 55% in London, and 33% in the rest of the country.
Heat also affects people while they’re at work. For those who work outside, the weather can have a serious impact on their health and wellbeing if it is not properly managed. And for indoor workers, a similar phenomenon occurs as workplaces in the UK – just like homes – are designed to retain heat.
The UK’s hotter summers have become such an issue that some unions are campaigning for a maximum temperature set by law of 30°C for non-strenuous indoor work. Currently, there is only guidance for a minimum temperature (16°C or 13°C if employees are doing physical work).
And the problems for workers can start even before they make it to work: overheated rails mean slower trains or even cancellations.
Counting the cost
Some industries are hit harder by the weather, not just through its effect on workers, but due to the heat itself. The hot summer of 2025 has made it difficult for farmers, who have seen cereal harvests shrink, grazing land dry up and animals suffer. In some areas, up to half of cereal and potato crops have been lost, with harvests arriving two to three weeks earlier than usual.
So, are hotter summers good or bad for the UK economy? Our study examined more than two decades of local economic data across the UK and matched it with seasonal temperature records. We found that a 1°C increase in summer temperatures reduces UK economic growth by about 2.4%.
Effect of 1°C rise in seasonal temperature on UK economic growth (%)
In practical terms, that means that even a modest rise in average summer heat can shave billions of pounds off the economy. But why does this happen?
Hot summers disrupt work and production. Businesses may see more staff off sick due to heat stress and related illnesses. Productivity in offices, factories and farms often drops as workers struggle in higher temperatures.
Our study shows that the agricultural sector is especially vulnerable. Hot, dry summers damage crops and livestock, and since much of the UK’s general cropping and dairy farming is concentrated in the south of the country, this area bears the brunt of economic losses.
Some of the UK’s strawberry crops couldn’t cope with heat and drought conditions over summer 2025. Maulana Noriandita/Shutterstock
Our findings also reveal that the impact of hot summers is not evenly spread across the country. Wealthier councils (those with an annual GDP higher than the national average income) are actually more vulnerable. The south of England, comprising the south-east (including London), the south-west, and the east of England, experiences the sharpest economic declines.
This is partly because the south is both hotter on average and home to many of the country’s farms. London alone, which generates more than half of the UK’s financial services output, emerges as a key “hotspot” of vulnerability.
We also found evidence that patterns of energy use matter. During hot summers, electricity consumption drops compared to during other seasons. While this might sound like a good thing, it signals reduced industrial activity, offices closing or shifts in working patterns that dampen economic growth.
The message from our research is clear – hot summers are not just uncomfortable, they are economically costly. Unless adaptation measures – better cooling infrastructure, workplace protections and support for climate-resilient farming – are introduced, the UK risks losing billions as heatwaves become more frequent.
Climate change cannot be dismissed as a distant challenge. Our research shows its economic fingerprints are already visible in Britain’s summer heat. Preparing for hotter summers is not just an environmental issue, it is an urgent economic priority.
Verónica Vienne Arancibia receives funding from The Spencer Foundation.
Jubril Animashaun and Lotanna Emediegwu do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
For months, Donald Trump has badgered the US Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell, to lower interest rates. When the governors of the Fed did so by 0.25 percentage points in mid-September to a target of between 4% and 4.25%, it wasn’t big or fast enough for Trump.
The next day, the president asked the US Supreme Court to rule on whether he could fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor. A federal appeals court had blocked Trump from doing so after he accused her of mortgage fraud, which she denies.
This isn’t the first time a US president has put pressure on the Fed. In the early 1970s, Fed chair Arthur Burns came under sustained pressure from Richard Nixon to lower interest rates ahead of the 1972 presidential election. The Fed did lower rates and high inflation followed, fuelled by the headwinds of high global oil prices.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Cristina Bodea, professor of political science at Michigan State University, explains how the inflation spike of the 1970s cemented the case for protecting central banks from day-to-day politics. “There’s not a lot that becomes a global norm for good economic governance,” says Bodea, “but central bank independence became one.”
From the 1990s onwards, countries around the world began to pass laws protecting the independence of their central banks. Bodea’s research measures the independence of central banks by tracking these laws. Today, she says that independence is now under sustained pressure from a generation of populist leaders, which could threaten the credibility of central banks.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood, Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing and sound design by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Cristina Bodea does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In a speech at the UN headquarters in New York, where world leaders are currently gathered for the organisation’s 80th anniversary, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned: “We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history.”
The proliferation of drone technology combined with the rapid development of AI, Zelensky remarked, could create “dead zones” in the near future. He defined these as areas “stretching for dozens of kilometres where nothing moves, no vehicles, no life. People used to imagine that [scenario] only after a nuclear strike – now it’s [a] drone reality.”
AI could soon enable “swarms” of drones that operate autonomously together in a coordinated manner. So far this has only been seen in sci-fi movies but we are now starting to see the beginnings of this technology in real life, including from the Ukrainian military.
For security scholars such as Audrey Kurth Cronin of Carnegie Mellon University in the US, we are now in a time of “open tech innovation”. This is a period where people – whether terrorists or criminal groups – do not need the expertise and resources of a state to be able to orchestrate nefarious acts of disruption and destruction.
Zelensky and Kurth Cronin believe this new age of military technology requires new rules and enhanced global collaboration if the worst-case scenarios are to be avoided. “We need to restore international cooperation – real, working cooperation – for peace and for security,” said Zelensky in his UN speech. “A few years from now might already be too late.”
Days before these remarks, drone activity caused multiple airports in Denmark to close. The country’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, told a news conference that the “attack” was part of a “systematic operation”. Some reports have suggested that Russia may have been behind these acts.
One of the major concerns among security experts worldwide in recent years has been on acts of sabotage that play out below the threshold that can lead to open war. In what is known as “hybrid warfare”, states and criminal groups can orchestrate a variety of tactics to generate fear and cause disruption.
These acts may be intended for political ends – for instance, by creating discontent with political leaders. They may also be intended to test the systems of security that are important for defending against military action. The incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace in early September, for example, generated serious debate about how Nato should respond.
These recent events may signal that the world is now in a new age of military-technological insecurity that, as Zelensky warned the UN, is only going to get worse in the years ahead.
Central to defence policy and strategic thinking is deterrence. Our world is built on strategies that are intended to deter countries or regimes from pursuing certain courses of action. The possession of nuclear weapons, for example, has prevented war between the world’s leading powers for decades.
Deterrence will continue to inform decisions and strategy, even as global events become increasingly chaotic. So much of the debate around what Nato countries should do about the war in Ukraine, for instance, has been informed by questions of deterrence and escalation. Ultimately, direct Nato action has been restricted by the fear that nuclear weapons could be used in a moment of strategic chaos.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has, in a similar way, been careful not to push above the threshold with actions that might lead to a direct confrontation with Nato. Acts that are hard to attribute – such as drone use over airports or cyber-espionage – are ideal for a regime that wants to create disruption but doesn’t want to escalate.
There are three elements that can be developed to prevent escalation and war. The first is deterrence by punishment. This is where an action will result in a response that will mean the risk outweighs the cost.
The second is deterrence by denial, when you make an action too difficult to orchestrate successfully and effectively. And third is deterrence by entanglement. This is when the interconnected nature of society means that an action may be counterproductive or even self-destructive.
All of these elements of deterrence will probably come into play in this new age of drones and AI. There might be technical solutions that limit the extent to which AI-enabled drone swarms become a decisive weapon in future wars. For example, a group of drones was successfully knocked out by a new radio wave weapon in an April 2025 trial by the British Army.
There may also be limits on the exploration of the destructive possibilities of drone swarms due to the concern with keeping events below the threshold that would lead to war between global powers. While Putin may authorise the use of drones in Ukraine, he may be deterred from risking the use of swarms across London. This is due to the possibility of escalation and perhaps even the threat to Russian-owned property and citizens there.
So, as terrifying as the new age of drone swarms and AI may be, there are good reasons for thinking the dystopian possibilities of future war will be controlled and contained. We should probably expect that the world will be characterised by more frequent disruptive events in the years ahead. Yet, hopefully the disruption will be limited to the nuisance caused by delayed flights.
What is more concerning is the possibility of an accident occurring that tips disruption over the threshold into an open war. The history of war and international politics is rife with accidents and miscalculations. The question now is what accidents will be generated in this new age of AI and drone swarms.
Mark Lacy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
