Russian lessons: new and improved war tactics

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Ore Okunbi. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. What if we could automate every single task with AI? Would the world be more productive? Or will the economic growth eventually just plateau? Our correspondent conducts a little thought experiment and known largely for his profane books and obsession with problematic male characters, we pay tribute to the British novelist Martin Amis. In a protracted war. Few battles have been as bloody as the fight for Bakmut. Over several grueling months, Ukrainian commandos have fended off wave after wave of Russian troops. Now Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, says that the city is under his control and ready to be handed over to the Russian army. It's a claim disputed by Kyiv. But what's not in question is the human cost. In an interview posted on a Russian Telegram channel, Mr. Prigozhin said that thousands of Wagner fighters had been killed trying to take the city. He also warned that Russia could face another revolution if the Kremlin didn't improve its handling of the war. His criticism is certainly not unfounded. From the botched assault on Kyiv to the ill fated push into Donbas last summer, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has hardly gone to plan. But despite all this, its army does appear to be improving its tactics, and that could pose a serious problem for the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

One of the iconic videos from the first phase of this war was a masked Ukrainian soldier.

Shashank Joshi is the defence editor at the Economist.

He was taking cover in a forest, holding an assault rifle. There are Russian warplanes flying overhead, and he is musing on the ineptitude of the Russian forces that he's facing. He said that Ukrainian forces were lucky that their opponents were, in his very memorable and highly quotable words, so fucking stupid. He said they were goofs flying above them, shooting again, in his words, fuck knows where.

If it's dead, who is Nikode?

And I think that really summed up that sense of utter Russian chaos on the battlefield, their inability, seemingly, to fight in a sensible, modern way. But I think that stereotype has also been quite misleading. Particularly a year on, we are now seeing clear evidence that the Russian armed forces are adapting, at least at the tactical level, to modern warfare.

And how is Russia adapting?

Well, there's a great new paper published by the Royal United Services Institute. This is a think tank in London. Full disclosure, I should say I worked there before I joined the Economist. And it's a paper written by Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds. These are two fantastic analysts who have been going to Ukraine and interviewing the general Staff again and again over the course of the war. And what they found is there are huge changes taking place, particularly in really basic things like infantry tactics. So, for instance, Russia now has an approach where it's sending quite small packets of what they call disposable infantry. These are a handful of men, often on amphetamines. The Ukrainians are finding sometimes they are ex convicts recruited by the Wagner Group, a mercenary company, and they're basically sent in to skirmish until they're killed. And you might think, what's the point of that? The point is that it doesn't just use up Ukrainian ammunition, it also reveals Ukrainian positions. This is reconnaissance by fire, you might call it. And then larger groups of better trained assault infantry move in. These are not as disposable and they're backed up by armour, mortars and artillery. And when they take a position, they are very good at fortifying it very fast. In other words, Russian engineers are not stupid. They're doing their job very well. They're building decent trenches, they're building decent fortifications. And this is a problem for Ukraine.

Ok, so they've improved their infantry tactics, but is that it? Are we seeing any other Changes, Lots of other changes.

I could point, for instance, to artillery and armour. The rate of artillery fire is down, but the quality of Russian gunnery is up. They're getting better at using reconnaissance drones to spot targets, but more importantly, they're getting better at stitching together data from those drones with lots of artillery batteries on the ground using a command and control computer called Strelet. It's like a small laptop portable system, and that's allowing them to hit Ukrainian targets within a few minutes of detecting them. This is much more effective than they were a year ago. Armour tactics are evolving as well. We're not seeing Russian tanks attempt to break through the enemy lines in classic armoured warfare fashion, but they are providing firepower from a safe distance. And if you recall, we saw Russia pulling out these absolutely ancient T55 T62 tanks from storage. These were tanks, in some cases that were designed before the Cuban Missile crisis and that was widely mocked online. But the report says they pose a really serious battlefield threat, particularly in situations where the Ukrainians don't have enough anti tank missiles. And they're also getting much better at hiding their position using things like thermal camouflage, which makes them harder to spot. So all of this shows that they are fixing some of the problems that afflicted their force last year.

And what about in the air? I know we've spoken quite a bit about drone warfare before.

I think one of the most striking things from this paper is a statistic it gives about Ukrainian drone losses. Ukraine is losing a staggering 10,000 drones per month. And when I was in Ukraine a few weeks ago, an official told me that about half of those losses are down to electronic warfare. And I think Russian electronic warfare, like jamming a drone's GPS or jamming its communication signal. This is an area where the Russians have really improved and stepped up. We're also seeing, I think, other adaptation. Their air defences are improving, they're knitting together the radar for their air defence systems. They're getting much better at shooting down the so called Gimlers, which are the precision rockets launched by the Ukrainian Himars system. So it, I think shows you, Orra, that nothing stands still in warfare. There's no magic weapon. Ukraine improves and the Russians adapt and it's a constant game of cat and mouse.

Okay, so from the infantry, the artillery, the air defences, electronic warfare. It sounds to me as if the Russian army has fixed its problems.

Then I'm going to emphasise that these improvements are at the tactical level, the kind of level of troops on the front line, in the trenches. The Russian army still has enormous strategic problems and problems at what military types call the operational level, the level between the soldier on the ground firing his rifle and the general up in the headquarters. They've spent a year trying to capture the town of Bakhmut. They've pretty much done it now, but it has cost them maybe 20,000 dead Russians, if you believe American figures. And not only that, but they're being pushed back from the flanks of Bakhmut. Clearly they are in a pretty bad spot. We've just seen, I think, in the last few days, this astonishing rant from Evgeny Prigozhin, The founder and leader of the Wagner Group, basically saying that Russia is losing the war, that it needs to be North Korea for a few years to mobilise its manpower, and that there's a risk of a Russian revolution. So, yes, the Russians are learning, but they still have enormous problems in terms of their manpower, the organisation of their forces, their overall strategy and their inability to mount a serious offensive threat to Ukraine.

And what might all of this mean for any Ukrainian counteroffensive?

I think it just shows you how hard this offensive could be for Ukraine. You might think, listening to everything I've said, that the counteroffensive is doomed if the Russians are much better at organising tactically. They've got better tank tactics, they're using better artillery. But I think it would be a mistake to say this means the Ukrainians can't make gains. The report argues that if you can put the Russians on the back foot, if you can impose on them what it calls a dynamic situation, that is a situation in which perhaps they're retreating, they're moving, they're not in stable positions, in trenches where they can organise themselves that you can break that defensive system. And I think the key thing to that ORA is not equipment, it's more about psychology and it's more about tactics. Russia's defence system is improved, but it's also brittle and it absolutely can still be broken.

Shashank, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much for having me.

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Scientists in Canada and America published a paper this week showing that they'd used artificial intelligence to discover a new type of antibiotic. They believe it could take on a potential particularly nasty and resistant strain of bacteria. This is only one example of the technology's power and staggering progress. But despite recent extraordinary breakthroughs, a world of so called general artificial intelligence is still a long way off. That's the source of intelligence that would be equal to or greater than that of an average human. The idea has long excited our imaginations, brought to life in films such as Ex Machina. Are you building an AI terminator to.

Return to the present and prevent the future?

And her.

Welcome to the world's first artificially intelligent operating system. We'd like to ask you a few.

Questions, but what would happen to us humans if, or perhaps when a world of super intelligent AI becomes a reality?

So I wanted to conduct a futuristic thought experiment. What would humans really do if we actually achieved very powerful artificial intelligence that was as good as humans across a wide range of tasks?

Arjun Rahmani is the Economist's global business and economics correspondent and watches developments in AI very closely.

Of course it's very hard to forecast the future. So like any good economic modeler, we made lots of assumptions. We thought that this AI would be good, benevolent, controllable, distinguishable from humans, and we would resolve limits to energy that currently exist. So really you can think of this AI as a tool, some kind of virtual super smart, dirt cheap assistant that can do anything as well as an expert. And that could lead to pretty profound things like explosive economic growth.

And how would this explosive economic growth actually happen?

So a trio of economists tried modeling this back in 2019. Philippe Aguio and Ben Jones and Chad Jones. And they found that if AI could automate all production, including the process of research and development itself, which would allow the AI to perhaps self improve or even you could throw a bunch of different AIs at the process of science, which is very key component of technological progress and economic growth, then you could get really, really high rates of growth and productivity improvements. But there's a big caveat in their research, which is this type of explosive progress might only happen if you can automate all of the production process and research process, you kind of need 100% automation.

And if 100% automation doesn't happen, then what?

So in that case it could actually break the model for explosive economic growth. And economists would call this the Baumol effect, named after the famous economist William Baumglade. So he had a paper published in 1965 that looks at performing arts, specifically violinists in concerts, and basically argued that the output of violinists playing, for example, a Schubert quartet, has been relatively fixed over the course of human history. So even as technological progress has made other industries more productive, playing the violin has basically been unaffected. But humans are still willing to spend money on going to in person concerts, even though prices have risen. So as a result, things like the arts have taken up a greater share of GDP over time, despite not being very productive. And that's actually pushed down overall economic growth. And you can imagine that there are many sectors where even if AI could theory fully automate them, but humans still want to produce the authentic human produced output that could cause economic growth to not take off nearly as much.

But Arjun, what if super AI developed super humanoid robots too? Like ones that are actually good at performing arts?

That's a good question. So you know, if we got superhumanoid robots, you might expect a scenario like we see in the Pixar movie wall E from 2008.

700 years into the future, mankind will leave Earth's cleanup in the hands of one incredible machine.

So if you watch the movie, machines are doing all productive labor in society and catering to all the needs of humans. Humans are just floating around in all inclusive chairs, watching tv, having a good time. And if you read an essay published by the famous economist John Maynard keynes back in 1930 titled Economic Possibilities for Grandchildren, this idea actually is quite old in economics. He speculated that in a century, you know, his grandchildren would be working for less than 15 hours a week. They'd spend time working on the arts, the humanities, things where work and play have blurred together. And working hours actually have come down in those hundred years, but not nearly as much as Keynes predicted. Average working hours in advanced economies have fallen from around 60 hours per week to around 40 today in the last hundred years or so.

But how about the people who actually enjoy what they do? Like the people for whom work is also a play. What happens to that sort of work?

Yeah, and you know, I'd consider myself one of those people and I would love to keep doing this job even if all my functional needs were met. Right? And I think there are a Lot of increasing number of people in advanced economies who feel that way. In fact, if you actually look at America, recent research suggests that people at the top of income distribution are actually working more than poor people, perhaps because jobs provide a lot of utility on top of wages themselves. And Keynes essay actually hints at this odd development. He talked about the utility that people get from jobs that are fun from seeking status when you're not actually doing something that you would be able to sell to other people on a market. Another example that's growing in importance is gaming. There are now 3.2 billion gamers all around the world. A lot of them are making their money from streaming. They quite enjoy it, and they probably would want to do so even if they weren't making that much money.

So is there no demand from people for watching AI controlled machines compete then?

It's quite interesting. So the first popular game that AIs really beat humans in was chess. Back in 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated Georg Kasparov, the world grandmaster. But actually since then, interest in chess has gone up and usually it's humans wanting to watch other humans play, even though AIs are still better than humans, which is quite interesting. We like watching other humans do things because it's fun. Even in a world in which robots and machines automate all functional labor. Right. We probably wouldn't give control of politics up. You can imagine a future where items that are made by humans might be especially desirable, which would preserve demand for human labor.

But Arjun, doesn't this evidence mean that your Predictions of super AIs super economic growth are probably wrong?

I think it's a strong possibility. Right. So what we've basically shown is that there are areas where humans will still want to work even when their functional needs are met. And there are areas where humans will want to purchase goods and services that have some kind of authenticity that were produced by other humans. So that would preserve both the supply and demand for labor. Even in a world of advanced AI. You could imagine a world with super AI where humans are unwilling to substitute machines for humans completely. And then measured economic growth doesn't actually take off. Or perhaps it takes off in the short term, and then after a certain point, we only consume things that are produced by humans on the margin because all the functional needs are already met. And measured economic growth maybe actually plateaus and hits zero. So perhaps if growth did actually plateau, that might actually reveal how much of a social animal humans really are.

Well, as long as the economist doesn't replace me with a super AI Robot. I think I'm okay with that. Arjun, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thanks, Auri.

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Martin Amis used to say that it all began with a throb. There was a throb or a glimmer that would announce to him that the next novel was about to appear.

Ann Rowe is the Economist's obituaries editor.

It was probably something he'd buried in his subconscious for years and suddenly it would re emerge and he would see that he'd got not a theme exactly, but a feel for what was going to happen, a feel for characters who were now going to build and create another one of his spectacular productions. So he would go off to his desk and from 11 till 1 he would write always the first draft in longhand with a biro to get that craft feel, the physical effect of writing. He usually had no idea where his characters were going to go. As soon as he started shaping them, he let them take their own paths. But what he hoped he would eventually end up with was a long shelf with many titles on it, from End to End by Martin Amos that he felt he could leave for his children and for the rest of society. That would be his legacy to the world in the end. There were 14 novels, there were eight non fiction collections, and there were two collections of short stories besides a huge amount of essays and criticism. His very first novel was called the Rachel Papers. It came out in 1973. It was about a young man's romantic adventures before he went up to university. It had a good reception, but after that he found he was not much garlanded. He didn't win many prizes. In fact he was really overlooked for some of the bigger ones or thought not suitable. The closest he came to the Booker Prize was probably in 1991, and two years before that he'd been shortlisted again for London Fields, but was debarred from consideration really because two of the female judges disliked his treatment of women. And this was always a slight problem of his books. His central preoccupation, and he admitted it himself, was toxic masculinity, sort of low life, profane, rabidly competitive species of man. And he dealt with them in language that was quite extraordinary, verbally prodigious, profane, vividly experimental. His father had been famous for writing comic novels. Kingsley Amis was a celebrated writer in the 1940s and 50s. Martin Amis didn't believe that literary talent was inherited. He just thought it was chance that he turned out to be everything as good as his father, but not so generally popular. His father had also won more prizes. He suspected a bit of their bad relations was because his father envied him. Older writers tended to envy younger ones. His book, called the Information, took this to its worst degree, really, with two friends, one of whom became hugely successful and the other of whom was mired in envy about him. He himself wasn't above feeling pretty envious of other writers, although he moved in the most starry literary set of the time, with Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens, who was his very best friend, he had to feel sure that he was the star of this set, that he was the best of them. His own books were rather small, he felt, compared with what the American big beasts had done. They wrote novels that encompassed the whole of society and its problems. He wrote smaller efforts that were really made small by the country he wrote them in. Britain, he felt, was in fast decline. He couldn't bear, when he came back to it, that smell of old pubs and the toilet tang of the streets. He called it the drabness of housing estates, the morbidly obese children, a sense of hopelessness everywhere that he found. He also felt, as the years passed, that he was beginning to lose his touch because he was beginning not to understand the world in which he moved. It was becoming the domain of younger writers. He felt, too, that everything was moving fast in a direction he didn't understand, and it was time to accept that he'd had his heyday. He was no longer going to be the chronicler of this age as he had been of Thatcherism, and consider that she was responsible for the falling apart of both civility and civilization in his home country. But now he was among the old buffers in a way, like his father, who envied young writers and had to cede them the space that it was time for them to take over. And what was to be faced? Well, only death, which he mused about a good deal. He hated the way that time was progressing faster and faster towards it, and his only comfort, when he began thinking that way was to consider that long shelf of books with Martin Amis on the spines, which he had left as his legacy to the world.

Novels don't come out of negative feelings. You couldn't write with disgust, with contempt.

They're all erotic at embracing feelings and not the opposite.

Ann Rowe on Martin Amis, who has died aged 73. That that's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is John Jo Devlin and our sound engineer is Will Rowe, with assistance this week from Johnny Allen. Our senior producers are Sam Westron and Rory Galloway. Our creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Alize Jean Baptiste, Kevin Kanors, Barclay Bram and Sarah Larnyup, with extra production help this week from Emily Elias and Maggie Khadifa. We'll all see you back here on Monday.