The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

And I'm Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your world.

For nearly half of his life, Salman Rushdie has been, in effect, sentenced to death. In 2022,

a zealot with a knife very nearly carried out that sentence. Our correspondent sits down with him to discuss his newest book and the subtle power of being funny.

And this one is pretty special.

My colleague played me a song, its lyrics were filthy, then she blamed the whole thing on a machine,

listening to find out how AI does satire and why we might even learn to love it.

But first...

This morning, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the biggest aircraft carrier in the world,

slipped out of the Mediterranean and set a course for the Caribbean. It'll join, by now I guess you'd call it a

flotilla of other American naval hardware in the region, destroyers and cruisers and amphibious transport dock ships.

All this, while America has carried out an intensifying campaign of air strikes on vessels

that it alleges are full of drugs and drug peddlers.

Let's get right to breaking news.

The Secretary of Wars announcing a new deadly strike on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean.

At least 10 strikes, shoot first, ask no questions at any point, have killed an estimated 43 people.

America is throwing its weight around in the Caribbean, particularly off the coast of Venezuela, more than it has in decades,

leaving quite a lot of people inside and outside the

region wondering why?

There are a few possible explanations for this huge military build-up.

Shashong Joshi is our defense editor.

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