Enhanced is just one project in Angermayer’s portfolio—his most publicised attempt yet to bring his drug-fuelled vision of humanity’s future into being. If the company fails, it’s only his finances that will take a hit. But almost everyone else involved in the games has burned bridges, risked their future livelihoods or their health. Understanding the long-term side-effects of the enhancements used in the protocols will take time. Yet with the launch of Enhanced’s consumer business, more and more people may soon be wagering their bodies on a chance to roll back the clock. Just weeks after we visited the Enhanced facilities in Abu Dhabi, America and Israel attacked Iran, causing turmoil across the Middle East. Suddenly, the athletes were training to streaks of missiles across the horizon and the flash of interceptors. “It’s funny how quickly you grow accustomed to it,” Shania Collins, a 100-metre sprinter, told us. She didn’t leave the ERTH complex for over a month, and her enhancement protocol was delayed because the lab processing the results of some preparatory tests was hit by debris from an intercepted missile. Proud remembered the first night of the war as “awful” (he said that a swimmer from Ukraine “who has been through all of this before” helped the other athletes find a place to hunker down). Soon though, the explosions became background noise. As a side-effect of the testosterone in his
protocol, Proud has been sleeping more deeply than ever before, and he often didn’t wake at the warning sirens. Most of the athletes have managed through their protocols well enough. Collins was generally pleased with how she was feeling—her arms were more toned, her biceps more defined, and she was smashing her personal bests in the gym. (She also noticed a difference in her fellow athletes, especially the swimmers: “I looked at them and thought, wow, are these guys modelling now or swimming?”) But she was worried about the potential side-effects of taking testosterone; people online had speculated that doing so would turn her into a man. Her doctors assured her that her dosage was far below that needed for a gender transition. Even so, she had downloaded a pitch monitor on her phone to make sure her voice wasn’t getting any deeper. Other athletes were concerned about what would happen to their careers and sponsorship opportunities after the games, and whether their bans from mainstream sport would continue. But despite these worries and the sounds of war, the ERTH complex had become something of a Neverland: a place where athletes whose best days were behind them had another chance to do what they loved, and in the competition of their lives. For months, Proud has been visualising his race—that 20-second chase for a life-changing amount of money. As he approaches the starting block, he will be intensely focused. “I’m not daydreaming or letting my attention go anywhere else. I focus on my block and on the process…You feel your heart pounding, you’re dizzy and you don’t know if you can stand up straight. But your body has this method of keeping its control.” At the sound of the buzzer, he will dive into the pool. If everything has gone well with his enhancement protocol he will spring forward a little farther than usual, and cut through the water more quickly. As Proud crosses the mark on the bottom of the pool signalling the last 15 metres, he will kick harder towards the finish. “The last thing you have to think about is to make sure your touch on the wall is at the perfect distance, at just the right time,” he told us. “And then everything else is history.” ■
Barclay Bram is a senior podcast producer at The Economist. Natasha Loder is The Economist’s health editor. Illustrations: Ewelina Karpowiak This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//interactive/1843/2026/05/21/dope-and-glory-inside-the- enhanced-games
AI super-apps are remaking China’s internet Google is dethroning OpenAI as the king of consumer AI Chanel’s creative revival is paying off The strange fate of Hard Rock Cafe How Star Wars went from space opera to soap opera A new mega-deal shows how AI has turned utilities into hot property Can an Italian company disrupt Germany’s broken railway industry? The benefits—and dangers—of optimism
AI super-apps are remaking China’s internet Welcome to the agentic era May 21st 2026 To have a coffee delivered to an office in Shanghai, simply ask one of China’s artificial-intelligence super-apps to choose a brew on your behalf, press “confirm” and the beverage will be on its way. Delegating such important decisions brings risks, of course. When your correspondent asked one popular AI app to deliver a “special coffee”, he received a rose-petal- vinegar-flavoured one. Nevertheless, the pace with which such services are being adopted in China is remarkable. Already more than 600m of its people are thought to have used some form of so-called agentic app. China is speeding towards a future in which AI chooses, purchases and delivers many of the goods and services people consume, upending its digital economy in the process.
Chinese netizens have so far lived through two distinct internet eras. From the early 2000s most turned to Baidu, a search engine, as their window to the web. When Google was forced to exit the country at the end of the decade, Baidu, in effect, became a monopoly. But as it sought to monetise its service more aggressively, ad-driven recommendations took over, frustrating users. That brought a backlash against web-based search and, thanks to the spread of the smartphone, pushed China into a second internet era dominated by mobile super-apps that combine functions such as shopping, entertainment, communication and payments. One consequence is that China’s biggest technology firms—including Alibaba, an e-commerce titan, ByteDance, an entertainment giant, and Tencent, a gaming-and-messaging colossus—possess sprawling portfolios of digital services and logistics networks that can be used to develop agentic offerings capable of performing a wide variety of tasks for users. Another consequence is that any of these companies could conceivably emerge as the leader of this new, third era in China’s internet. Already the competition is ferocious. On May 13th Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, warned that a messy “land grab” for AI services was in the offing. On May 11th Alibaba announced that it had fully integrated Qwen, its chatbot, with Taobao, its shopping app. With a few simple commands the AI can now procure all manner of products and services (including rose-petal- vinegar-flavoured coffee). ByteDance is preparing to release a similar integration between Doubao, its chatbot, and Douyin, its short-video app (which also incorporates shopping). Tencent has been a dark horse in the race. Its investment in AI models started more slowly, but the company says that over the past six months it has completely revamped how its AI team works. A new model, Hy3, is in a testing phase and has performed well. Tencent is now slowly integrating this model with WeChat, its ubiquitous messaging-and-payments app. Millions of businesses have created “mini-programs” within WeChat that could be woven together with AI. For the tech giants, AI super-apps may offer an attractive new source of growth at a time when consumer spending in China is anaemic. Adjusted operating profit in Alibaba’s Chinese e-commerce division was down by
40% year on year in the first quarter of 2026. And although the firm’s cloud business is booming as enterprises spend more on its AI infrastructure, that growth requires enormous capital investment, weighing on cashflows. In private China’s tech giants say that their AI super-apps do not recommend products based on ad spending. But to make these profitable, they may eventually have to. Although ByteDance recently launched a paid tier for Doubao users wishing to access certain features, most chatbots in China are free to use. In February, to coincide with the Lunar New Year, many tech giants offered generous promotions to encourage people to start using their agentic services. With competition so intense, it seems unlikely they will start charging for the services soon. The rationale for the tech giants may also be defensive. Some in the industry worry that the emergence of a device powered by AI with agentic capabilities embedded in its operating system could displace existing super- apps. OpenAI, an American lab, is reportedly working on such a device. ByteDance tried this in December when it launched a smartphone with ZTE, a device-maker, which came pre-loaded with an AI assistant. But despite an initial burst of enthusiasm, with around 30,000 of the devices produced, the project was a failure, in part because Alibaba and Tencent blocked it from using their payment platforms. That will not stop others from trying. In March Xiaomi, a gadget-maker that has expanded into electric vehicles (EVs), announced the release of new AI models that would be embedded in its smartphones and cars. Huawei, another tech giant that makes both smartphones and software systems for EVs, could also muscle in. Auto executives reckon that many young Chinese will access agentic services through voice discussions with their car. Xiaomi and Huawei already have hundreds of millions of users apiece. If Alibaba and Tencent were to try to hobble a push into agentic offerings by either company, local regulators might well intervene. As China’s internet enters its next era, a bitter fight for dominance looms. ■ To track the trends shaping commerce, industry and technology, sign up to “The Bottom Line”, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter on global business.
This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//business/2026/05/17/ai-super-apps-are-remaking-chinas- internet
Google is dethroning OpenAI as the king of consumer AI But its users are burning through quadrillions of tokens a month May 21st 2026 THE AMPHITHEATRE complex where Google holds its annual software- developers’ conference has a cheesy, fairground feel. RVs are parked on site. Employees whiz in on the tech company’s multi-coloured bicycles. There are stands and sideshows everywhere. On stage, Sundar Pichai, its boss, tells a corny joke about Google’s overworked chips, known as TPUs, doing “teraflops into bed”. The event is by no means as sleek as Apple’s developer jamboree held in June, which tries to retain some of the minimalist chic of the late Steve Jobs. But when it comes to artificial intelligence, Google long ago upstaged the maker of the iPhone (its models will power many of Apple’s AI features