Art Deco skyscrapers of downtown Detroit testify to the early years of America’s long dominance of carmaking. General Motors moved to swish new headquarters in the city this year. Ford relocated its head office within its home suburb of Dearborn. The American base of Stellantis, of which Chrysler Group is now part, is still in Auburn Hills.
The China New Employment Forms Research Center, a semi-official think tank, recently published its 2025 China Blue-Collar Employment Research Report. The report documents changes in China’s blue-collar labor market from 2024 to 2025. Flexible employment, the official euphemism for gig work and informal labor arrangements, rose to 280 million in 2025, and is projected to reach 320 million in 2026. Formal employment fell by nearly 50 million in a single year, the steepest one-year drop in at least a decade.
Norinco displayed a model of a drone assembly line at the Eurosatory defence exhibition in Paris this week. The miniature depicted the manufacture of several Norinco drones, such as the BZK-005E reconnaissance aircraft, which is currently operated in Indonesia, Mauritania and Sudan. A graphic in the booth also described how explosives and propellants used in the drones are made.
Adam Bry is the CEO of Skydio, the largest US maker of autonomous drones. Adam and Decay talk about the business of drone manufacturing in the U.S. and the state of drone technology. Decay got to remotely operate a drone in the Bay Area and fly an indoor drone around the Decay podcast studio in New York.