The consumer industrial complex

The war in Ukraine heralds a new future for killing machines—and that future belongs to China and Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Getting creative with the defence budget is not only prudent, but it is also essential because the world has changed, writes Michael Cholod.The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade, and photographs courtesy of Flickr/World Economic Forum and Wikimedia Commons

Opinion

BY MICHAEL CHOLOD

November 19, 2025

KYIV, UKRAINE—Open war has been raging in Ukraine for nearly four years. More than 100,000 lives have been lost along with billions of dollars of equipment. Watching the war unfold from the relative comfort of my hotel Bursa in Kyiv since August 2022, I’ve witnessed this...

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