The Week

Leading article

DeepSeek’s cheap information comes at a high price for the West

This week, Chinese technology has shown the West the challenge it faces – ruthless, implacable and impossible to ignore. The unveiling of the Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek has not only disrupted the business models of America’s tech behemoths; it has also shown that, in the race to develop the tools for economic hegemony, Beijing

Portrait of the week

Diary

Save our cathedrals!

My beloved 1967 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar is now locked away until December at the earliest. For the past eight years, I have had the terrifying privilege of dragging my axe (as we guitarists call our instruments) on stage to perform in a series of Christmas gigs (as we musicians call such performances) with

Ancient and modern

How the ancient Greeks tackled treaties

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. Though the ancients would have employed oaths, the practical ancient Greeks often ensured there was a flexibility about them: the real world might intervene. For example, treaties between city-states were agreed between opposing generals. Hostages were exchanged, oaths sworn and the terms of the treaty widely inscribed on

Barometer

How Heathrow went from six runways to two

Chocks away Rachel Reeves backed a third runway for Heathrow, reigniting a debate which has been going on for years. Yet Heathrow, when originally laid out in 1946, had six runways varying in length between 5,300 and 9,200ft: three pairs of parallel runways running east to west, north-west to south-east and north-east to south-west. As aircraft

Letters

Letters: What we lose when we lose our factories

Chains of command Sir: Matthew Lynn is correct to emphasise the economic dangers of deindustrialisation (‘Not made in Britain’, 25 January). But there are cultural dangers too. It’s now 40 years since Correlli Barnett and I made a television programme called Assembled in Britain, drawing attention to the alarming retreat of manufacturing. No recent government has