Romance and history of Route 66

The economist Hello and welcome to the Intelligence From the Economist. I'm Rosie Blw. And I'm Jason Palmer Today on the show, first there was vibe coding, now vibe lawyering, and day two of our road trip down route sixty six First up though NATO's thirty two leaders. meet in Ankara today for their annual summit And like every gathering of an awkward family with a difficult patriarch The purpose is to get through it. without major incident. Anton Naguardia, our diplomatic editor, is currently in Anchora. They're going to keep it short They' going to try and keep it sweet. They're going to try to avoid difficult subjects And they're going try and bite their tongue if anybody's insulted duller, the better Dala the betterter is a slogan, I'm sure NATO would be delighted to brandish about Anton, what's going to be on the agenda for this awkward family meeting The official agenda is ight It is about showing that Europe is making progress towards meeting The new targets for defense spending agreed a year ago So you will see the NATO Secretary General talk a lot about how much more is being spent and indeed a lot more money is being spent And it's also intended to boost the defense industrial base to try and make sure that all this money produces actual useful weapons rather than just going into defense inflation And the third thing is to recommit NATO to defending Ukraine But there are things outside the agenda that may cause trouble. One is Iran and Donald Trump's feeling that he didn't get sufficient loyalty. from European allies during his war. someome of them even tried to prevent him from using their airspace or their bases There there's a question of Greenland Donald Trump has not given up on taking Greenland and the third question. is his return to mediating end to the war in Ukraine, that would be a good thing if it's a fair deal, but it's always a worry that he has a soft spot for Vladimir Putin And the deal could be bad for Ukraine and bad for Europe presence at the NATO summit is important. It also, as you say, adds a layer of uncertainty Let's talk about the last point you mentioned. What particular threats are there to NATO members? from Russia Well, I think you can divide them into two buckets. One is that as long as a war is going on Russia appears to be trying to impose a cost countries that support Ukraine. So you're seeing a lot of hybrid or gay zone aggression drone incursions, incursions the two the airspace of Allied countries sabotage of undersea cables and pipelines disinformation and much more And that seems to be a way of signaling below the threshold of war. that Europeans will have to pay a price. Then there's the bigger worry, which is what happens When there is a ceasefire in Ukraine or some kind of diminution of violence and Russia's Large and growing and battle hardened army ported by a war industry. decides of churn its attention to others if it chooses to do so and settle the score with the Europeans. who have helped Ukraine In the economists this week Wusa von der Lein, the head of the European Commission and Mark Witter The Secretary General of NATO wrote an unusual joint piece where they talk about Russia's war economy. They say would be naive to think that this war machine will slow down the day after there is peace So there's nervousness all along the eastern flank. particularly at a time when America's commitment to NATO is so uncertain Anton, you've been to the Baltics recently We're at the Pabrata training ground outside Vilnius, about an hour north of this capital city. What did you see there? tellell me about that trip Well it was quite striking, Rosie The first and most notable thing was just the degree to which Germany is increasing his commitment to helping Lithuania in particular, it is for the first time deploying its troops abroad on a permanent basis There is accommodation being built in the forest, there' schools being set up. So German soldiers can bring their families to Lithuania and essentially do in Lithuania what the Americans and other Allies did for Germany during Cold War oose to live permanently in the country to defend it So you've got German tanks and armored vehicles roaming through the forest, exercising, the Germans are deploying a whole brigade and they are the tip of the spear of its broader modernization an attempt to expand into the biggest conventional army in Europe thenen there's a strange mixture in the Baltic States of both confidence and nervousness. So if you believe that America is still committed to NATO. and this is Very brave talk of saying, we will repel any aggression against us On the other hand, they're also worried about what America is doing It is noticeable that the same training base where I saw the Germans training. The Americans had been there days before pulled out. That was a whole American armored battalion They've left the country. The broader brigade has left Poland. And nobody knows whether they'll be back Why is America pulling back from NATO? What's their concern One answer to that question is that Europe as rich should be able to fend off a country like Russia whose GDP is roughly equivalent to that of Italy So collectively, they have a lot more resources than Russia does. they should be able to defend themselves But there is a deeper resentment, particularly from this administration about the sense that Europe has been bothoth free riding and destroying its own civilization through mass migration and wokery Pete Higeth, the defefense seecretary came to NATO last month and unusually asked for his comments to be broadcast in public and have those comments He haranged his fellow allies for being shameful in their lack of support for America The war in Iran, a war in which they weren't consulted never asked for help but then blame for as things went wrong And the president said all he said was that our jets would need to take off from bases in Europe or our ships courts. to strike targets in the Middle East Iranian targets that threaten European interests even more directly than they threaten us. But too many of our allies said And he said there will be a six month review, so there will probably be more cuts in both frontline forces and more important the backup forces that America promises to send Could other NATO countries fend off Russia without America I think they could if they were a united be better prepared. and see willing to take the cost in terms of blood and treasure that this will entail The Americans provide obviously a lot of capability, but the most important thing they provide is the ability to integrate the disparate European forces into a greater Oh. through its command and control, through its intelligence, through its satellites, the ability to fire deep and accurately behind enemy lines If the Americans pull out, all that stuff becomes harder to defend it becomes harder to mass, It becomes harder to integrate Your forces on Land Ca air, cyberspace space. And it becomes as generals told me Much more like the war in Ukraine, more static, more bloody, more prolonged and difficult. and that would I think raise a lot of questions back home in European countries as to whether they're willing to pay that price And on you're in Anchor for this exciting summit, what are we really going to see? Are we really going to have a tough discussion about whether NATO can survive without the US discussion is banished official NATO meetings Nobody will dare imagine a world without America for fear that just thinking about it or bring it about If that conversation is taking place, is taking place, I think outside NATO in the corridors of the Chancereies of Europe. among military services, perhaps, among the intelligence folks because it is both very difficult to imagine politically, but also difficult to execute ively could not prepare within NATO to live without America because Americans would have a veto on that. still have a big say throughout the organization I think there's a general feeling that we're one bus up away from the potential breakup of NATO, that Donald Trump could at any moment say he's had enough to hell with you on leaving and I'm bringing my troops on. And there's also the fear that Russia might try something limited, ambiguous test NATO and see whether the Americans respond or not if Americans don't respond That would be to undo a lot of the trust that the Alliance is based on Anton, thank you for talking to me. It's a tot you isy By this point, we are used to running into AI in different parts of our life, whether that's in schools or in the workplace, but we are starting to see it crop up in a much more high stakes environment, the courtroom. Kerr is a senior audience edit for the economist Increasingly, people are opting to represent themselves in court rather than hiring lawyers and they are often suspected to be using AI to be doing this. We have also at the same time, seen an uptick in the amount of AI generated text in cases Although this is correlation rather than causation Legal professionals have been pointing out that we are probably seeing a new trend, which is vibe lawyering Given what we know about AI and its fallibility, my first question is how good is AI in this high stakes situation Yeah, not amazing at a professional level AI chatbots are prone to just making up legal cases to support their arguments. In Canada, Court Ready, which is a legal research firm, has already flagged that fabricated cases have been found in over eighty different rulings so far this year And chatbots also can often encourage people to litigate when they maybe shouldn't It can encourage them not to settle cases that they maybe should and can sometimes overstate their chances of winning a case And so is the legal profession worried about this given the sort of rocky start? I think there's more a sense of irritation at how it's impacting cases and courts. So I spoke to a lawyer and he was complaining that grievances which should and in the past have been only a couple of sentences are now ten to twelve pages or more. It's also causing kind of wider problems for litigants as well. In one Canadian case, a judge ordered a plaintiff to pay ten thousand Canadian dollars to the other side partly for using AI improperly to prepare the case In another case, Nippon Life, an insurance company went even further by suing openp AI itself claim that ChatCBT enabled one of their exX employees to file a meritless discrimination claim So the real issue here is that people who don't know better are using AI to defend themselves and is going poorly. They are perhaps not just losing but also getting fined Yes Unfortunately, also the people that do know better or probably should know better are also running into some problems. Lawyers aren't immune to the issues that are coming out of this. Earlier this year, Sullivan and Cromwell, which is a top law firm in New York, had to apologize for the court for filing a lawsuit that had AI hallucinations in it. And just last month in a case in Mississippi Lawyers on both sides actually were fined for citing fabricated cases within the lawsuit Given all of these perils then Maybe the answer is don't use AI in legal contexts. Do not take your chatbot to the courtroom I think with Cution, AI can be useful especially some purpose built models that are cropping up. For example, there's a platform called Garfield AI, which is billing itself as the first AI powered law firm that's been approved by regulators. It helped a user recover seven thousand pounds in a court in London recently Even then a human lawyer argued the case. So like with a lot of things, AI can have its place in the courtroom But only when there is humans in the loop, fundamentally, courtrooms are a place of conversation and we still need humans in there, but AI can maybe be used as a tool that can help some people increase their access to justice Thanks very much for you time Thank you Jason for having me My name is Vince. My name is Christian. M say And why are you traveling route sixty six? What madeakes you want to do this For me it's a dream A long time And no It's a rare deal I met these guys outside the Midpoint Cafe in Adrianne, Texas, named because Adrian is the midpoint of Route sixty six This week, John Fasman, our senior culture correspondent, is taking us on a trip down one of America's most storied highways Yesterday, he introduced us to the route Today, the romance of the Old West The first half of the highway has its charms, as we'll see tomorrow and Thursday The road really comes into itself out west Open roads, big skies Desert landscapes and small towns with wide streets that feel like the oldld West in Arizona. I' met bikers from Britain Vage car enthusiast from Spain to Genarians from France traveling the road for the second straight year They've come to see, and I hope you can intuit my finger quotes when I say this The real America I was raised and now live in the Northeast, and I bristle at the notion that any part of America is more real than any other part But I know what they mean There's a romance to the old West that's say New Jersey and Connecticut, whatever their charms. simply don't have Route sixty six makes the most of it Part of the reason is the freedom of the open road. been riding my whole life, obviously D ride But I grew up on and all around sixty six. My parents moved four times from southern Milwaukee to Southern California back before my dad decided to stay. So I crossed it four times as a child And I grew up in San Bernino, which was is a root sixty six town. used to rideing my motorcycle all the way up to Cb Pass and all the way up to Pasadena and Santa Monica, and you know, we're always on it. It's just part of me. That was John Ballisteri, a mechanic I met in Selingman, Arizona He's planning to open a motorcycle museum, which would not be unique on Route sixty six. I visited one in Warwick, Oklahoma. And if I'm remembering right, not once on the road between Chicago and Tulsa, did I pull into the slow lane to let P phalanxus of bikers past me? But from Texas to California I did it all the time Wow, you ready One Arizona. Further down the road in Arizona, an abandoned mining town called Oatman has remade itself as a sort of open air wild West stage set E. Descendants of the pack mules or burros that used to haul for the mining company roam the streets freely, stopping traffic and catching food from tourists. Every day, a couple of amateur actors in cowboy gear stage a fake bank robbery and shootout in the main street, and then pass their hats for donations to local charities.. It's good, clean, extremely loud fun And people love it includluding this Chicago I kept running into that day Oh, well the burrows are so cute. I'm the oldld town feeleel best feel? Absolutely amazing. It's very historic. You see it all over the internet, TikTok. But what is it really that people love about the Old West I doubt many of the tourists I met would come out of a gunfight unscathed. I'd vventure and guess that people's fascination with the Old West is dt to two things. Ft first, visitors to America flock to it for the same reason visitors to London go to Fortnams for high tea, or to Kenya go on saafari They're connecting with the image of the country lodged in their minds from film, television, and literature. And second, well, I'll let one of my new French friends explain So what put the dream into your head? How did you hear about it? What are your associations with it? su scession Liberty. And my passion is a motorbike.. Liberty There is a deep seated association between the O West and freedom Escape in the oldld ways. and as Mark Twain wrote Lighting out for the territory Dustbowl refugees and others took this highway to California to make new lives for themselves When Route sixty six opened, fewer than five million people lived in California Today, about eight times as many do, around one in nine Americans. And for the first time ever, expensive, overreulated California is shedding residents while the inexpensive Midwest Long a place Americans have fled is gaining them T tomorrow we'll at the road story commercial past. and it's delightfully kitchy present. That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow