The future of war: Mercenary or robotic?

Plus: Let's talk about plagues [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a cybernetic gallimaufry of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Must-Reads - Xi Jinping’s [unproductive]( forces. - Back to the future with [terrorism](. - [Bad banks]( for gender pay equality. - The [Philippines]( is a superpower, for now. - I love your [tiny]( $800 bag! - Will Japan’s [elevated]( train rise again? What Didn’t You Do in the War, Daddy? European countries at a distance from Ukraine and Russia are waking up to the very real possibility of a hotter war on the continent — a conflict that may require them to conscript their citizens to fight. The debate over military service flared even as Kyiv lowered the age of mandatory military service to 25 from 27. For countries closer to the ongoing battles, conscription holds greater importance. [Says]( Lionel Laurent: “Denmark has extended conscription to women and increased its duration, and Norway is following suit. New NATO member Sweden brought it back in 2018.” However, he says, “Nobody under the age of 45 in France has forcibly worn army fatigues or picked up a weapon, including [President] Emmanuel Macron.” “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” wrote the Roman poet Horace, who died in the year 8 BCE. It means: “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.” The horrors of the first two world wars certainly put the lie to that in the UK, France, Germany and elsewhere. Lionel highlights two challenges. “One is demographic, on an Old Continent where the median age is around 42 and birth rates are in decline.” The other, he says, is the unattractiveness of military service, even without a war. “Militaries are struggling to recruit young people into a career that seems full of constraints and restrictions and light on perks and incentives — think secrecy, no social media, time away from home.” I wonder if Europe may have to revert to a model from its medieval and Renaissance past: the mercenary armies that fought across the continent and whose leaders sometimes founded dynasties. The British hired Hessians from Germany  to battle the American revolution. The Pope’s Swiss Guard was mercenary in origin. No, you say, the United Nations has banned mercenaries. But they’ve been around despite that: look at Blackwater in Iraq. They just call themselves private military contractors now. They are more than bodyguards. And of course there was Wagner Group, which prospered, rebelled and was vanquished in Russia. If the citizenry is no longer willing to die for the country, necessity may trump international convention. Or maybe it’s time for robots? Drones are already part of the war between Ukraine and Russia. Will we see droid armies a la Star Wars? The visionary Polish novelist Stanislaw Lem — who died in 2008 — wrote a review of a book he imagined would be published in the future (specifically 2105) entitled Weapons Systems of the Twenty-First Century: The Upside-Down Evolution where the ultimate weapon will not be a bomb or missile, or even android soldiers.[1](#footnote-1) Rather, it will be billions of micro-bots, behaving like ants or bees or hive insects, spreading all over and acting as one to overcome enemies. These “syntects” as he called them may even combine to explode apocalyptically if they each carry a molecule or two of nuclear material. That's the kind of vast, swarming army that we should truly be afraid of. Telltale Charts “Gazing down at the bustle of Manila from the upper floors of a skyscraper late one evening, it’s easy to feel like you are near the center of one of the great industrial transitions of the past few hundred years. This is the heartland of outsourcing ... and helped make the Philippines one of Asia’s top performing economies over the last decade. Like all great transformations, the shift has brought tensions and displacement alongside considerable bounty. It’s also generated a growing number of imitators eager for a slice of the expanding trade in services.” — Daniel Moss in “[AI Threatens to Dislodge Manila in the Economic Revolution](.” “Today, after several years of sharp price increases ... and the luxury industry flatlining, brands must once again democratize their customer bases. ... The US aspirational luxury consumer, under pressure from inflation and rising interest rates, has retrenched, while Chinese buyers remain cautious. Meanwhile, sales growth at Hermes International SCA and Brunello Cucinelli SpA, which cater to the 1%, has outpaced rivals. Those more exposed to the middle class, such as Kering and Britain’s Burberry Group Plc, have struggled.” — Andrea Felsted in “[Louis Vuitton Totes and Dior Micro Bags Can Save Luxury](.” Further Reading Yellen’s wrong to be [steely]( about steel. — David Fickling You want  [a shot of AI]( in your EV. — Tim Culpan Amazon can’t hide that [human]( touch. — Parmy Olson India needs to make [stuff]( for the world. — Mihir Sharma The alarming shortage of  [royals](. — Howard Chua-Eoan [Erdogan’s]( down but not out. — Marc Champion Beyoncé works hard. But Levi will need to [work harder](. — Leticia Miranda Walk of the Town: In the Shadow of the Black Death Today’s newsletter began with a look at a potentially dystopic future. But wandering around London, you may become dyspeptic about irritable echoes from a noxious past. Strolling by London’s Charterhouse. Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Over the Easter weekend, I took a seven-minute stroll from my apartment to The Charterhouse, a centuries-old heritage site. It’s been a monastery, mansion, Tudor palace and school (among its students, Roger Williams, who founded Providence, Rhode Island in 1636, and Robert Baden-Powell, who inspired the Boy Scouts movement in the early 20th century). Before all that, however, it was the burial site for as many as 50,000 victims of the Bubonic plague that struck London in the middle of the 14th century. That is an enormous figure if it is accurate: The city’s population just before the pestilential onslaught was supposedly around 70,000. It was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which was borne by fleas that fed on rats that congregated wherever human beings lived. The Black Death, as the plague was dubbed by a 19th century writer, would strike London again and again in the ensuring centuries. As the modernizing city excavated transport tunnels, stories would bubble up about the discovery of “plague pits” into which diseased corpses were thrown. I wish everything about the disease — which inflamed lymph nodes (buboes) in the armpits and groins of human victims — was consigned to the past. But as recently as the late 19th century, Bubonic plague ravaged China and India, killing millions. Indeed, we only know of the bacterium-flea-rat nexus because of scientific research conducted in India at the time. In his fascinating new book The Prince and the Poisoner: The Murder that Rocked the British Raj, Dan Morison chronicles how a Bengali nobleman in the 1930s managed to finagle a sample of plague from a local epidemiological laboratory — and then cultured enough of it to kill his half-brother and take his sibling’s share of the family fortune. Antibiotics have made the plague easier to treat and it is rare nowadays — but not gone. Just this year, two cases of the plague cropped up in the US, including a man who caught it from his cat. And there’s always evolution to worry about. The bacterium didn’t figure out how to hop onto fleas for longer-distance travel until 4,000 years ago. Who knows what it’ll do next? There are other bugs to worry about, of course. But Lisa Jarvis [counsels]( calm with the recent appearance of bird flu in cows and a human. Next month, the World Health Organization will try to hammer together an international treaty involving 193 countries to deal with a future global pandemic it has ominously labeled “Disease X.” Fingers crossed. Drawdown Thanks for obliging — noblesse and more. Allow me a bit of clowning. ”I suffer fools too easily.” Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send jokers wild and wiser feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. [1] The essay is found in a collection of Lem's writing called One Human Minute, translated by Catherine S. Leach and published by Harcourt Brace & Company in 1986. It is available in Kindle and other ebook editions. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. 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