stopped supporting an old product, there may be no one to provide updates —and even if patches exist, they may not be applied. One reason why Britain’s health service suffered so badly from a malware attack in 2017 was because it used thousands of machines running an unpatched version of Microsoft Windows. Companies and governments should invest urgently to upgrade their systems. Switching does not guarantee security. PQC is new, so it may have undiscovered vulnerabilities. If so, pqc-protected traffic harvested today could yet be decrypted and abused. But upgrading now—and having researchers stress-test the new methods—offers the best hope of securing data, today and into the future. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/07/29/it-is-past-time-to-upgrade-to-post- quantum-encryption
China is testing America’s defence lines in Asia The allies must work to strengthen themselves, but also to strengthen America’s commitment Jul 30th 2026 A GROUP OF Chinese and Russian warships sailed side-by-side through Japan’s southernmost exclusive economic zone (EEZ) on July 19th. Japanese sailors observing from a vessel nearby photographed them holding exercises, fire spitting from a Chinese destroyer’s turret. It was the first time Japan had captured and publicised a Chinese live-fire drill inside its EEZ. The images themselves were grainy, but the message was clear: Chinese pressure is rising. The incident was only the latest in a series of recent provocations against America’s Asian allies, in particular the Philippines, Japan and Australia. In late June the Chinese and Russian air forces conducted a joint flight of
nuclear-capable bombers over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, before passing between Japan’s south-western isles into the Pacific Ocean, the second such passage since December. China has intensified coastguard patrols east of Taiwan. In early July it fired a ballistic missile from a submarine off its southern coast over the Philippines and into the Pacific Ocean—only the second time it has launched a ballistic missile into international waters since 1980. A few days later Chinese and Philippine sailors skirmished with oars and water cannon over two disputed islets in the South China Sea. Growing Chinese assertiveness is nothing new. But a pattern has been noticeable since President Donald Trump met his counterpart, Xi Jinping, in South Korea last October and signalled a desire to improve relations, followed in May by a cordial meeting in Beijing. Mr Trump and many of his officials have since then contorted themselves to avoid uttering an ill word about China, and been slow to stand up for allies facing Chinese bullying, seemingly in the hope that three further summits planned for this year will thereby come off more smoothly. Mr Trump is ensnared in Iran, diverting resources and attention from the Pacific. Now China appears to be probing America’s defence lines and testing its commitments in the region. Faced with an unreliable America and an aggressive China, America’s allies in Asia need to do three things to improve their security: strengthen themselves, strengthen their ties with each other and strengthen America’s commitment to them. Progress on the first two tasks has been substantial, though still insufficient. Australia, Japan and the Philippines are all raising their defence spending and modernising their armed forces; Australia and Japan are both offering aid to the Philippines to help build up its maritime defences. But that will be too little if America chooses to be absent. In Europe uncertainty over American reliability triggers talk of Plan Bs. Even without America, the remaining 31 NATO members’ combined defence spending is more than three times that of Russia, their main adversary, and two of them —Britain and France—have nuclear weapons. But allies in Asia rightly understand that they are too small to form a coalition that can maintain the balance of power in their backyard. There is no NATO-style collective- security pact, only a series of bilateral security treaties with America. The
cumulative defence spending of America’s treaty allies is less than half that of China; and none of them has nukes. That makes the third task as essential as the first two. One strategy is to collaborate more deeply with the bits of the American system that still care about deterring China, such as the military brass. But credible deterrence must come from the top—and China hawks fret that Mr Trump seems to have lost all interest in getting tough on Chinese expansionism, not least because he has learned that China is willing to use its grip on the supply of rare earths as a chokepoint. Can he be persuaded to change his mind? Perhaps. Volodymyr Zelensky has convinced him, for example, that Ukraine does in fact hold some cards. The best evidence that Mr Trump could flip on China again is that he has done so before. During his first term, he attacked China as the destroyer of American jobs and the thief of American intellectual property. He was egged on by Asian leaders such as Abe Shinzo, Japan’s late prime minister, who spent hours encouraging him to take a hard look at the military threat China poses. Asian leaders need to make the case directly to the president that China threatens America’s position as the world’s leading superpower—and that its military ambitions go hand in glove with its industrial, technological and economic ambitions. If Mr Trump accepts that China remains a shrewd and potentially dangerous competitor, he may be willing to take a broader view of America’s interests in the Pacific. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/07/30/china-is-testing-americas-defence- lines-in-asia
Europe’s fires are just the start They are not a new normal. But worse can nonetheless be expected Jul 30th 2026 From 2006 to 2025 the total area burned by fires in France every year averaged some 15,000 hectares—a bit smaller than Washington, DC. By July 28th, the fire to the west of Bordeaux which started just six days earlier had burned almost three times that. Meanwhile, some 500km to the south, savage fires advanced perilously close to Madrid. More than 300,000 people have been evacuated. These fires may end up being the worst that Europe sees this summer. But do not bank on it. A series of heatwaves has left lots of places desiccated and flammable—and more hot weather is to come. Last year the European Union saw more than 1m hectares burn; this year could break that record.
And it is not just one summer. The continent is heating up faster than any other. Because it has decades of worsening hazards ahead, it needs to get ready. The rest of the world is not far behind. Wildfires are not purely a matter of climate, but climate does matter. The frequency and extremity of fire- friendly weather have been increasing for 40 years; conditions very unlikely before climate change are becoming increasingly common. Measured against a definition of extreme fires that combines size and intensity, the past decade has been particularly bad. In a world that is about 0.5°C (0.9°F) above the average temperature of the first decades of this century (and thus about 1.5°C above that of the 19th century), fire risks are projected to increase across 88% of the planet’s fire- prone area—pretty much everywhere that is not a desert or an ice sheet. The increase from 1.5°C to 2°C raises the risks by even more. This will bring more heroism, more concerned politicians being briefed by begrimed firefighters, more disrupted lives, more destruction and destitution. It will also greatly increase the risks from wildfires’ less obvious, but more baleful, effects on the lungs of people who never come even within a thousand kilometres of the flames. Most of the deaths associated with wildfires come from smoke inhalation. The wind-blown particles that choked cities in Canada and the United States alike in the middle of July will have shortened hundreds or thousands of lives. Smoke from fires in Indonesia is estimated to have killed 100,000 people in 2015. Something similar is all too likely there this year. Demand for biofuels in a world of pricey oil leads to the destructive slash-and-burn agriculture at the heart of the problem, and a strengthening El Niño will promote fire weather across the region in the months to come, as happened in 2015. Projections on the basis of a fairly moderate emissions scenario—and taking account of the ageing global population—suggest that deaths from wildfire smoke, estimated at 240,000 a year in the 2010s, will reach 1.4m a year by the end of the century. A recent study suggested up to 30,000 excess deaths a
year from wildfire smoke in America by 2050. That would put all other direct climate impacts in the shade. Firefighting is, to some extent, like fighting wars; if the enemy attacks more frequently and with greater ferocity, you need greater force on your side. So places that have not previously felt threatened need to up their game. They may also wish to bring new technologies into play. Satellites can spot fires almost as soon as they start—intelligence which could sometimes prove crucial, provided systems are capable of acting on it. Drones will doubtless have a role. Allies can help, too. Europe has pooled firefighting resources now being deployed in Spain and France; Mexico is helping Canada. Being better at fighting fires, though, is not enough. The greatest benefits will come from being better at preventing them and living with their effects. The diktats of danger and urgency tend to mean fire-suppression eats into budgets for managing landscapes, teaching the public about when to filter the air or how to protect a house, and so on. No such projects are ever needed in the same way as a planeload of cold water on a fire-front. But they are vital nonetheless. The fires in France and Spain are not, as some say, the new normal. Fire is capricious. It does not repeat itself from one year to the next. But this year’s fires are firmly within the limits of the new possible—and the extremities of that new possible have yet to be mapped. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/07/28/europes-fires-are-just-the-start