The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm Rosie Bloor.

Today on the show, a chapter in our series on America's history,

how war created a superpower.

And should you ever use emojis at work?

But first...

...theircould......theirder... But first... War has changed, so have the economics of war.

Think of all those cheap drones that are proliferated in Ukraine.

They're now an established feature of the battlefield.

You don't really want to spend a million dollars on a missile

if it's going to be taken out by a drone that costs much less.

Tech companies in America spy an opportunity.

They're now grabbing government defense contracts.

We're seeing the rise of a plethora of tech companies that are offering cheap, nimble, timely delivery of weapons.

And it's making the old guard of big military contractors in America nervous.

Henry Tricks is our US technology editor.

Just as the country is coming to grips with the lessons that it's learning from the war in Iran

and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

And how is this shaping the nature of war?

Who are these companies?

There's many of them, but they're led by a trio of what are now being known as Neo-Primes.

...