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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 Business article listed in the contents as Bezos v Musk and published under the headline Star wars.

The article argues that Jeff Bezos’s space ambitions are no longer just a side project attached to his fortune. Blue Origin and Amazon are becoming parts of the same strategic contest with Elon Musk’s SpaceX: reusable rockets, satellite internet, lunar transport and the infrastructure of the commercial space economy. The problem is that SpaceX already has the thing every rival wants, a tightly integrated machine that builds satellites, launches them and sells the resulting service at scale.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 International article listed in the contents as America's arms industry and published under the headline Shooting to prominence.

The article argues that America’s defence industry is entering a disruptive phase. The Pentagon still relies on giant contractors such as Lockheed Martin, RTX and Northrop Grumman, but war is changing faster than their procurement habits. Cheap drones, software-defined weapons and battlefield AI are making older, costlier systems look ill-suited to some of the conflicts the United States is now fighting or preparing for.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 Business article listed in the contents as Chatbot ads and published under the headline The salesman in the machine.

The article argues that artificial-intelligence chatbots are becoming a new advertising medium, not just a new software interface. As more people use large language models for search, writing, coding, shopping and personal advice, the companies running those models are starting to insert sponsored messages into the conversation. That shift matters because it could reshape both the economics of AI and the structure of digital advertising.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 Business article listed in the contents as Apple's new boss and published under the headline Too many Cooks, not enough Jobs?.

The article argues that Apple is entering a harder succession than it first appears. Tim Cook leaves behind one of the most successful corporate records in modern business: surging sales, a services machine, record iPhone demand and a market value around \$4trn. Yet his successor, John Ternus, inherits that achievement at the moment when the old Apple formula is under pressure from artificial intelligence and geopolitical fragmentation.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 11th, 2026 Finance & economics article listed in the contents as Mullahs' moolah and published under the headline Corps corp.

The article’s central argument is that Iran’s war economy is splitting in two. Ordinary Iranians are being crushed by strikes, shortages, inflation and job losses. Yet the regime’s core financial machine, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has become more resilient and in some ways more profitable. The civilian economy is breaking; the military-commercial economy is adapting.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 11th, 2026 Finance & economics article listed in the contents as Pricing the ceasefire and published under the headline The start of the deal.

The article’s central point is that a ceasefire in the Gulf can calm panic without repairing the damage that created it. Donald Trump’s announcement of a two-week truce with Iran, including a promised reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, immediately pulled energy prices down. But The Economist argues that markets are not returning to normal. They are merely moving from outright emergency to a more durable state of disruption, distrust and expensive caution.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 11th, 2026 Business column listed in the section contents as Bartleby: Stretch goals and published under the headline Stretch or routine?.

The column asks when very hard targets help an organisation break out of stale habits, and when they simply push people into reckless behaviour. Its answer is deliberately balanced: stretch goals can be powerful, but they are not a management magic trick. They work best when they force useful reinvention, not when they turn pressure into denial.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 11th, 2026 Business article listed in the section contents as McDonald's in China and published under the headline Flipping the script.

The article argues that Western fast-food chains are not retreating from China in the way many other foreign consumer brands have. Instead, they are trying to grow by moving beyond the big, saturated cities into smaller cities and semi-rural towns that multinational companies once treated as too marginal to matter.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 11th, 2026 Business column listed in the section contents as Chattering CEOs and published under the headline The chatter-industrial complex.

The article argues that a growing slice of corporate communication has moved from press releases, earnings calls and interviews with independent journalists into a world of podcasts, founder-led media and company-owned channels. The shift is especially visible in technology, where executives no longer just want coverage. They want to own the conversation, the audience and sometimes the platform itself.

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What this article is about

This summary covers The Economist’s April 11th, 2026 Business article listed in the contents as A rising defence giant.

The article profiles Czechoslovak Group, or CSG, a Czech arms-maker that has moved with startling speed from regional obscurity into the front rank of European defence companies. Its rise is a story about the Ukraine war, European rearmament, private consolidation in a fragmented arms industry and the ambitions of Michal Strnad, the 33-year-old majority owner who wants CSG to become Europe’s biggest arms-maker.