• The billionaire social calendar for the summer includes more than Sun Valley and the Hamptons.
• It increasingly includes a few high-profile weddings each summer.
• This season is punctuated by the weddings of Alex Soros, Jeff Bezos, and Eve Jobs.

The traditional soundtrack of the billionaire social calendar — the Allen & Company Conference in Sun Valley, the Hamptons, a yacht trip around the Med — has been interrupted by wedding bells.

Over the past couple of years, billionaire weddings have become must-attend events for those who want to see, be seen, and mingle with their fellow masters of the universe.

Last year, the wedding of the summer was undoubtedly that of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant. Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Rihanna, who also performed at a pre-wedding bash, attended.

The previous summer, Ari Emanuel, superagent and then-CEO of entertainment business Endeavor, wedded fashion designer Sarah Staudinger. Elon Musk and Tyler Perry were among the billionaires on the guest list.

2025's billionaire wedding season is gearing up to be the biggest yet.

It kicked off in June when Alex Soros, son of hedge fund investor George Soros, married Huma Abedin, the political strategist and former Hillary Clinton aide. Photographed for Vogue were guests like supermodel Karlie Kloss, the wife of billionaire investor Josh Kushner, and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, the wife of media mogul Barry Diller.

Next down the aisle were Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who wed in Venice a couple of weeks later.

Billionaires from the worlds of tech (Bill Gates, Sam Altman), media (David Geffen, Oprah Winfrey), and fashion (Kim Kardashian, François-Henri Pinault) rubbed elbows to celebrate the third-richest man on Earth.

Next on the agenda: Eve Jobs, daughter of late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, will wed Olympian equestrian Harry Charles in the Cotswolds sometime in August.

The question is: Will it be before or after Burning Man?

• Heather Torres first started accessorizing her porch with seasonal decor as a hobby.
• After winning a local Best Yard award, the pandemic hit, and she decided to turn it into a business.
• Since Porch Pumpkins was born, it has scaled to a six-figure business, and she's franchising.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Heather Torres, the owner of Porch Pumpkins, a Texas-based seasonal decor delivery company. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Shortly after my youngest son was born, I went crazy with pumpkins.

I'd always admired the beautiful seasonal decorations that the Dallas Arboretum displays each year, and when he was little, I decided to start trying my hand at creating pumpkinscapes at home as a way to keep him — and myself — busy.

It wasn't long before I got good at it. Really good at it. I won a local award for Best Yard in 2013 and just kept trying to one-up myself. Eventually, my friends started asking me to create displays at their houses, and I got the idea that maybe people would pay for professional pumpkin displays during the fall season, the way they do for Christmas lights.

The idea stayed in the back of my head for a few years while I was busy as a stay-at-home mom raising my children. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and everyone was stuck inside, it felt like the right time to try to make it a small business to earn a little money and use my talents. I decided I could bring the pumpkin patch to you!

I previously worked in the restaurant industry and knew I didn't want to make one-off custom designs. I wanted things to be super simple, so I created four different packages at different price points for customers to choose from.

The most popular package is the smallest display, which costs $325 and includes about 30 pumpkins of varying sizes. Our biggest package is for the true pumpkin lover, and it includes two 50-pound pumpkins, bales of hay, and all kinds of decorative extras for $1,350. We offer delivery and removal services. You can set up your own display, or we can do it for you.

We just celebrated our fifth birthday, and I never could have imagined how things would take off.

It used to be just me and my husband doing deliveries. Then I started hiring other moms I knew to work as part-time display designers and delivery drivers. I hired three people in my first year, and we completed just over 250 displays.

Now, we have over 20 people on our team, and we completely sold out in 2024. My goal was to decorate 1,000 porches, and we ended up doing 1,052.

It has worked out so that, now, I'm busy from August to December, but then I'm pretty much done in the spring and can be fully present to volunteer at my kids' school and do all the things a mom does, like try to cook dinner each night.

This year, it became increasingly evident that people were gravitating toward this business and were really interested in my approach. I get emails all the time asking to pick my brain, so in March, I started coaching other entrepreneurs about how to start their own seasonal pumpkin businesses.

I charge $4,500 for two hourlong sessions teaching you all the lessons I've learned along the way — from sourcing pumpkins to creating the decorative displays — and in just the few months since I launched that service, I've helped 12 people, mostly women, launch their own pumpkin businesses across the US.

We had the foresight to trademark our name and logo, so all the other pumpkin businesses popping up have different names. But we're also beginning to franchise, so soon, there will be official Porch Pumpkins locations across the country.

The whole process has really been a gift for my family. I'm just so excited to see how much we can grow from here.

Do you have a unique side hustle or small business, or has your side hustle replaced your full-time job? Email Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert at [email protected].

• Made-in-US apparel brand American Giant makes two versions of the iconic American flag T-shirt.
• Its top-quality version sells for $65, while one available at Walmart sells for $12.98.
• AG's founder said Walmart's scale and long-term commitment were key to a more affordable product.

Check the tags on much of the American flag-themed apparel being worn this Independence Day weekend, and the country of origin may be somewhere other than the US. Making stuff overseas is typically cheaper, after all.

That doesn't sit well with Bayard Winthrop, the founder of California-based apparel brand American Giant.

"We can think of a lot of other mainstream brands or retailers that certainly don't abide by that for Fourth of July — or for any other thing," he told Business Insider.

Bayard founded American Giant in 2011 with the mission of revitalizing US textile manufacturing, starting with what it dubbed "the greatest hoodie ever made."

In recent years, the company celebrated Independence Day with a version of the iconic American flag T-shirt made entirely in the US.

But Bayard said it was a challenge to achieve the kinds of production efficiencies that can lower costs.

American factories can produce high-quality clothing, but it often comes at a premium price. For example, American Giant's website lists this year's US flag tee for $65.

Bayard said the reasons for this include finer yarns and a more labor-intensive sewing process.

"Those products are premium," he said. "They're optimized for top, top quality."

About two years ago, Walmart approached him with a challenge to produce a made-in-US T-shirt at the retail giant's famously low prices. This was part of what is now a $350 billion commitment to invest in sourcing products that support American jobs until 2030.

At the time, Bayard thought that the lowest possible price for an American-made shirt would have been $20 and that it would be "incredibly difficult" to make.

The companies were able to make a shirt that is now available online and across roughly 1,500 Walmart stores for $12.98 — one-fifth of the price of the top-of-the-line version.

American Giant developed a design that lowered costs by using a slightly thicker yarn and a tubular-knit pattern, rather than the side-sewn style of his main shirts, Bayard said.

"But the vastly more important part of the costing is when you have Walmart and the volumes that they put there — which are huge — and staying committed to the program for an extended period of time," he said.

Bayard stands firmly behind the quality of the less expensive Walmart product.

"We think we're putting great quality stuff into the market, and we're offering these different entry points for customers," he said.

Bayard said the first design for Walmart, released last year, exceeded sales expectations and was expanded to include four styles this year.

The episode highlights one of the major hurdles to bringing back US manufacturing more broadly. The costs of starting (or restarting) industrial production can be both daunting and inefficient. (Look no further than the complicated and expensive process one team had to go through to make a grill scrubber entirely in the US.)

If the effort to revive US manufacturing is going to succeed, Bayard said that small and large companies need to work together with sustained, long-term commitments that help the supply chain develop and become more cost-effective.

"Poking at the problem with your 500-unit volumes" is "admirable," he said. "But if you actually want to make an impact, get serious about it and figure out ways to join forces with somebody like Walmart that's actually trying to do something good."

• Some gig workers say they're drawn to the job for the flexibility it offers.
• Kreskin Torres, a ride-hailing and delivery driver, has driven around the US while doing gig work.
• Torres has visited all 50 US states while working for apps like Lyft and DoorDash.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kreskin Torres, a gig worker who has visited each of the 50 US states while working as a ride-hailing driver for Lyft.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been a rideshare driver for Lyft for about nine years now. I started out in Baltimore.

About a year in, I visited London for a month. I realized on that trip that travel gives you ideas and inspires you to try new things. When I came back, I said, "Now, I want to see my country."

I wanted a flexible job where I could meet different people and plan my own schedule. I also wanted to minimize what I owned and focus on travel.

The first road trip I took was from Baltimore to the West Coast. I left in February 2018. I've been traveling and doing gig work full-time since then. Most months, I make between $2,500 and $3,000 in gross pay.

I've been to all 50 states, and some of them I've visited three or four times. That took about three years to do. I was stuck at 49 for a while because of the pandemic. When I hit my 50th state — Hawaii — I ended up on the local news talking about my travels.

I try to pick a new home base every few months and visit towns nearby to do rideshare and delivery work. At the end of June, I went to Pittsburgh because I wanted to work in West Virginia for a while. I also want to be in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, later this summer. They claim the banana split was invented there, and they have a festival for it every year.

When I get into a new town, the first thing I normally do is stop at Planet Fitness, where I stretch and shower after a long drive. From there, I usually head to an Airbnb for a few days to relax. Sometimes, I sleep in my car.

Ridesharing is my main work. There have been some places where I couldn't drive for Lyft because local laws require drivers to have local licenses. In those places, I delivered through DoorDash.

Driving around the US has taught me how to make money in different areas.

Once, I lived and worked in Phoenix for a year, but I realized that I could make more money in Tucson. It's not as spread out, and it's a college town, so you tend to get more high-paying, short-distance trips. If you go there in the winter, there's even more demand from people who come for the warmer weather.

Some parts of the US are less competitive than others. Many big cities are oversaturated with drivers. In places like Chicago, you'll see hundreds of them waiting at the airport to claim a ride. In Tucson, you may see 10.

Gig work helped me pursue my interest in food

As I started traveling, it struck me how certain regions of the US are known for different foods. I started paying attention to which crops were growing around me and what the places I visited were known for.

I made trying regional foods part of my travels. I created a blog called Rideshare Foodie. I post photos of local cuisines, such as pickles brined in Kool-Aid from Mississippi.

Food is also a great conversation topic with the people I drive for Lyft. They recommend places to eat or foods to try. Sometimes, it's a restaurant, and other times, it's home cooking at a barbecue or a block party.

After I've stayed somewhere long enough, I can also make recommendations. When I was in Rapid City, South Dakota, I picked up a lady from the airport who was from Brooklyn, New York. She asked where she could find some great Italian food. I said, "Ma'am, they're not known for their Italian here," but she should try the beef instead. That area is known for cattle.

One thing I've learned in my work is that many people rarely travel beyond their town or even their neighborhood. And when they do travel, they sometimes eat the same things as they do at home.

My lifestyle lets me try new things and meet lots of new people. The more that I travel, the more that I learn.

Do you have a story to share about gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• I tried Ina Garten's easy, summery tomato feta pasta salad recipe.
• The dish came together quickly, and I found it more flavorful than other pasta salads I've tried.
• I loved the briny taste, and my leftovers held up for several days.

As a chef, I've always loved Ina Garten's classic, riffable recipes — they're easy to recreate at home, and they're usually a hit with guests.

I've also been looking for a simple side dish to bring to summer cookouts and picnics, so when I found Garten's tomato feta pasta salad, I had to give it a try.

Here's what happened when I tested the dish out for myself. Spoiler alert: I'll be adding it to my recipe rotation.

The ingredients amp up umami more than other pasta salads I've tried.

The recipe calls for short-cut pasta, black olives, feta cheese, and two kinds of tomatoes: fresh and sun-dried. It's key to use sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, as they're more tender and flavorful than the dry variety.

As for the pasta shape, Garten recommends fusilli, which has a corkscrew-like shape that soaks up extra dressing. After trying out the recipe, though, I'm confident any short-cut shape will work.

The olives (Garten recommends Kalamata), tomato, and feta all bring major umami to this summertime dish. The salty, briny mix-ins give the salad a distinctly Mediterranean taste that felt a little unusual, but I preferred it to the typical mayonnaise-dressed pasta salad.

The noodles and mix-ins are tossed in a dressing made with more sun-dried tomatoes, red wine vinegar, olive oil, capers, and garlic.

You'll also need some freshly grated Parmesan and parsley to top the salad off.

The preparation is quick and easy.

As is the case with every good pasta-salad recipe (in my opinion, anyway), it's not overly complicated or time-intensive to prep the ingredients.

While I boiled a big pot of salted water for the pasta, I chopped the fresh tomatoes, sliced the olives, and diced the feta and sun-dried tomatoes.

Garten calls for diced whole tomatoes, but I used cherry tomatoes and simply sliced them in half for the same effect.

The dressing calls for a food processor, but it's possible to make it without one.

The best way to make this pasta-salad dressing is with a small food processor. You could also try an immersion blender or pitcher-style blender, but expect to spend some time scraping down the sides.

By whizzing more sun-dried tomatoes, red wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, and capers in a food processor, I was able to break down the capers and tomatoes to maximize their flavor output.

I ended up with a fairly smooth, reddish dressing that was thin enough to coat every nook and cranny of the pasta.

If you don't have any blade-loaded countertop appliances, give everything a fine chop and a good stir. The dressing won't be as smooth and creamy as Garten intended, but your pasta will still benefit from the flavor-packed ingredients.

I dressed the pasta while it was still hot from the stove.

My pasta finished cooking in the time it took to prepare the dressing.

Although Garten recommends letting the noodles cool first, my pasta-salad-making experience has taught me that tossing hot noodles in an oily, salty dressing maximizes flavor. Warm pasta readily absorbs flavors better than after it cools.

I tossed the cooked pasta, salty mix-ins, and dressing together in a large bowl. I then let the pasta cool to room temperature before finishing the dish with Garten's recommended chopped fresh parsley and a generous amount of freshly grated Parmesan.

Here, I made sure to add the cheese after the salad cooled so it wouldn't all melt into a gooey mess. Instead, the Parmesan coated the noodles to hint at the creamy, rich dressing many of us associate with pasta salad.

This version, however, is big on savory flavors and pops of briny, chewy sun-dried tomatoes along with juicy, sweet fresh ones. I loved that the dish felt lighter than a mayo-drenched salad but just as satisfying.

The oil-based dressing holds up well, too. I doubled the recipe, and my household of two enjoyed pasta for several days.

I'm glad I found this recipe right before cookout season — I'll be bringing this easy, crowd-pleasing dish to every summer occasion this year.

• Karen Abarca began her professional journey as a costume designer in California.
• Now, she's an engineer who worked on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
• Here's how she changed careers and overcame impostor syndrome.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Karen Abarca, a 33-year-old communications engineer in Los Angeles County. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I am very fortunate to have not just one, but two highly sought-after careers.

My mom is a seamstress, so she taught me how to fix my clothes. Once she taught me how to make dresses in high school, it was game over. That's all I wanted to do.

But as a kid, I loved science. I grew up thinking that I would be a scientist or maybe a doctor. I never really saw that path for me because I didn't know anyone who worked in science.

In my early 20s, my family experienced some financial hardships. Since I had cultivated this skill of making garments, I ended up going to the Fashion Institute of Design Merchandising in Los Angeles and got connections to start working in the film industry.

I ended up interning at Maker Studios, which later got bought out by Disney. They gave me stable work in the entertainment industry, which is kind of rare. I also would do commercials on weekends or just pick up gigs on the side. I did that for about four years.

I decided to pursue a career in science after staring at the stars

December is always a hard time in the costume design industry because everything shuts down, but I still have to pay rent. I remember visiting Death Valley with friends on New Year's Eve and looking at he stars.

I thought, "I sort of stumbled into this industry. It was something that I was good at, and I could help out my family, but I no longer have to do that. Why don't I go back and do the thing that I wanted when I was a kid? I want to explore and discover."

So, I went back to community college and later transferred to California State University, Long Beach, where I got my bachelor's in chemical engineering in 2020.

It was not easy.

I had to learn how to fail and how to study. I got a D in my first Calculus II class, and it's a very humbling experience to be told no and that you have to do it again. It was also challenging being older than everyone around me and giving up a career that I was doing well in.

But I knew that this was my choice. I had already seen a different industry, and it just gave me further motivation to keep going and see myself grow. I ended up becoming a mentor to many of my classmates.

I realized that my gift is to bring people together. I'm really good at working in teams, and little did I know that is what makes great engineers. I interviewed with and later joined Northrop Grumman, an aerospace company.

I had impostor syndrome at my first job. Then, I worked on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

I definitely had a lot of impostor syndrome when I started at Northrop Grumman in 2020. I remember getting hired thinking, "They're going to know that I don't know." I just felt overwhelmed.

At first, I worked with a small team, but it was only a four-month project, so after that, my manager was like, "Where do we put you?"

An opportunity had just opened up to work as a contamination control engineer on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. WEBB is a giant camera, so any contamination will affect the quality of the images. It's a NASA program, so of course I wanted to do it.

Every day, I put on protective gear called a bunny suit and worked on that amazing gold-plated mirror. The cool thing about contamination control is that I got to actually touch WEBB, and not everybody gets to say that.

One day, I was cleaning a black, non-reflective, matte unit delivered from Italy. I had to be very delicate handling it, and I remember thinking, "What's so special about this thing?"

I learned that the unit is how we'll communicate with WEBB when it's a million miles away. It's how it'll be able to send its images.

I thought being able to talk to things in space was amazing, and that's how I found my niche, which is communications engineering. Now, I work on a program called Hydrant. We're looking to build the next-generation space router for interconnectivity in space.

I discovered what I really wanted to do

I'm really grateful to have been a part of that program because WEBB was my teacher. I didn't know much about space when I started, but I got to see different disciplines through WEBB every day. WEBB just gave me an in-person view of what a spacecraft is and how to build one and the different subsystems.

My advice for people who want to change careers is that it's never too late. There are definitely opportunities out there. Sometimes you have to make them, but align yourself with people who may be in those careers and try to find mentors. There's also a benefit to being new to an industry. You bring a new perspective coming from a different background.

And if you don't, you'll always wonder, "What if?"

• The $5.7 trillion hedge fund industry has had an up-and-down year so far.
• Six months into 2025, managers have battled choppy markets and an uncertain geopolitical climate.
• Still, assets and performance are on the rise, and new funds are popping up.

Hedge funds have had an emotionally turbulent ride in 2025, starting the year with soaring interest from big investors and optimism for the incoming Donald Trump administration.

That optimism did not last long, however, as the President's tariff policies disrupted global trade and sent markets into a frenzy.

Big-name managers such as Bill Ackman, Dan Loeb, and Ken Griffin, each of whom voted for Trump, were critical of the tariffs, but the administration used one of the industry's own — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former macro investor who worked for George Soros — to sell the policies at the Milken conference and on TV. Tariff negotiations are still ongoing, but the administration's 90-day pause is set to end Wednesday.

Meanwhile, choppy markets and the rise of artificial intelligence renewed interest in long-short equity managers, as hedge fund backers sought investors who can pick winners and losers in the new world order. The first quarter of this year was one of the sector's best fundraising stretches in a long time.

Markets have since settled down, and June was a strong month for stocks. One hedge fund founder, BoothBay's Ari Glass, told investors after the first quarter that the portfolio managers and firms his fund backs believe "it is beginning to feel like sentiment is similar to the second quarter of 2020 and we know that while history does not repeat itself, it can rhyme."

While the pandemic slammed stocks in March 2020, many hedge funds had a stellar year by betting on a quick and significant recovery.

Still, there's the possibility of more macro tremors shaking global markets. Trump is still pursuing his tariff agenda. He will sign his "Big Beautiful Bill," which contains about $4.5 billion in tax cuts and is estimated to add billions to federal deficits, into legislation on Friday. And the potential for a broader conflict in the Middle East has investors on edge.

According to a recent report from Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage desk, the week the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites was the second-largest net selling of energy stocks by hedge funds in the last 10 years, with many American funds now shorting energy stocks.

Multistrategy giants hitting their peak?

The biggest hedge funds still dominate the conversation as managers like Millennium, Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny continue their long-running war over talent that has sent compensation costs skyrocketing. Many multistrategy funds, even smaller peers without the track record of the so-called big four, can only afford these payouts to coveted personnel thanks to pass-through fees, which leaves limited partners holding the bag for all the costs of running the business.

A Goldman Sachs survey of multi-manager firms running a combined $300 billion from earlier this year found that 61% have changed their terms by adding either pass-through fees or "more onerous" liquidity terms.

End investors have been pushing back for years and finally broke through last year, getting managers as large as Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint to agree to a cash hurdle that requires a fund to outperform Treasury bonds to earn performance fees. Another Goldman report found that close to half of allocators are now looking for managers they back to adopt hurdles.

In other words, after years of explosive asset growth, multi-strategy funds might finally be plateauing. According to Nasdaq's eVestment, the sector had net outflows of $1.2 billion in the first quarter.

Managers with tens of billions in assets like Citadel, Point72, and D.E. Shaw even returned capital to start the year. Other mega-funds, especially Millennium, have focused increasingly on allocating to external managers via separately managed accounts, which has warped the emerging manager space.

SMAs often allow allocators more transparency and customization into a fund's operations and trading, though the independence of these new managers from their behemoth backers is in question. JPMorgan expects 58% of new launches over the next year to be SMAs, despite, as Goldman wrote, the "lines are now more blurred between platform hedge funds vs fund of hedge funds, proprietary vs external."

The shift has meant seed investors feel they can push for even greater transparency into managers' books. According to law firm Seward & Kissel, close to half of those who backed new launches last year required the new funds to provide daily trading reports.

Despite all the ups and downs, the average hedge fund returned 2% through May this year, according to industry data tracker PivotalPath — besting the S&P 500 through the same time period.

• NATO's chief pledged a fivefold increase in air defenses.
• Ground-based air defenses are an area that Western countries scaled back after the Cold War.
• But the way Russia is fighting in Ukraine has proven its need.

NATO pledged to massively increase its air defenses as part of soaring defense spending. The aim is to rebuild a capability that the war in Ukraine has shown to be crucial but has been allowed to wither in the West since the end of the Cold War.

The heads of government for the 32 members of the decades-old security alliance committed last week to investing 5% of their GDP on defense and security by 2035. The increase, based on current GDP size, could be worth more than $1.4 trillion. NATO's secretary general, Mark Rutte, said that one use for the money will be a "five-fold increase in air defence capabilities."

He said the way Russia is fighting proved the need. "We see Russia's deadly terror from the skies over Ukraine every day, and we must be able to defend ourselves from such attacks," he said.

Western countries reduced their ground-based air defense arsenals after the end of the Cold War as they found themselves involved in conflicts with much smaller, less powerful adversaries. This war has shown that Western stocks are insufficient.

Lacking since the Cold War

Western countries have been fighting foes very much unlike Russia. Air superiority has been achieved with ease, enabling ground maneuvers. There hasn't been a pressing need for weapons to shoot down enemy aircraft and ballistic missiles, except in one-off instances.

The US and the rest of NATO scaled back their ground-based defenses "very substantially," Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel who is now a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.

During the Cold War, as tensions skyrocketed between NATO and the Soviet Union, Western countries maintained substantial defenses. But in the aftermath, he said, "it appeared that fighter aircraft could handle any air threat, and the need for ground-based air defenses was much reduced."

During Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, the US took control of the skies, and aircraft largely had free rein in the later wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the main threat being to low-flying aircraft, helicopters in particular.

Ed Arnold, a European security expert with the Royal United Services Institute, said that Europe deprioritized air defense at the end of the Cold War "because the types of missions that the Europeans were doing were, for example, overseas where you only needed a small sort of section of it to be able to protect your forces in the field."

Retired Air Commodore Andrew Curtis, an air warfare expert with a 35-year career in the Royal Air Force, said that there had been "an element of complacency" in recent decades, but also an element of trying to prioritize what was needed when defense budgets shrank as countries felt safer in the post-Cold War era.

Russia's war against Ukraine, which followed earlier acts of aggression, suggests the world has changed. But, Curtis said, the West has to some extent been "asleep at the wheel."

The problem now, Justin Bronk, an air power expert at RUSI, explained, is "that NATO faces a significant shortfall in ground-based air defense systems, both in terms of number of systems, but also particularly ammunition stocks for those systems."

Russia shows they're needed

Rutte warned earlier this month that NATO needs "five times as many systems to defend ourselves," and described the speed Russia was reconsituting its military as "threatening."

Many European countries have warned Russia could attack elsewhere on the continent and are watching closely to see what weaponry and tactics it needs to be ready. The volume and variety of air attacks against Ukraine have thus made air defenses a top takeaway.

Russia can launch hundreds of drones and missiles in a single day, and NATO's air defense networks are not well designed to deal with these kinds of strike threats, like exploding Shahed-136 drones backed by ballistic and cruise missiles.

Western countries need more defenses, as there are just so many air attacks. "Even if only 10% get through, that still does a lot of damage," Cancian said.

Cancian said innovations in this war, like drones being used more than in any other conflict in history, point to evolutions in warfare that make having strong air defenses more necessary than ever before. Nations aren't just facing planes. It's aircraft, missiles, and drones, all able to bring destruction.

And the solutions need to be layered to address threats within their cost range. For instance, high-end Patriot interceptors worth millions of dollars aren't meant for cheap drones worth thousands.

Former Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan, a warfare strategist, said that countries have to find "a balance" between the expensive systems like the Patriot or the THAAD system, both made by Lockheed Martin, and lower-end systems.

Ukraine, for example, uses AI-controlled systems equipped with machine guns to stop some smaller drones, and the US military has been experimenting with air-launched rockets as drone killers.

"It's not just all about the exquisite, expensive, and highly capable systems. You also need some of those lower-end systems," the former general said, adding that the last three years have not only shown how important air defenses are, but also "that the array of threats that air defenses have to deal with has broadened."

Smaller weapons used in missile attacks, weapons like drones, can "saturate and overwhelm an air defense system" — a tactic Russia has employed.

For the West, Europe in particular, the new emphasis on bolstering critical air defenses and the push to spend more aren't optional. "It's not a choice. You absolutely have to do this," Ryan said.

It'd be impossibly expensive to protect everywhere, but the West will need to sort its priorities, balancing front-line demands with the protection of civilians in cities, something Ukraine has grappled with throughout the war.

Arnold said that "the biggest change, now as Ukraine is seeing, is you also need air defense to protect your civilians, all of your critical national infrastructure, and your forces in the field. So it's absolutely critical."

NATO's new defense spending will be huge: No member currently spends that new 5% target, and many spent just over or below 2% in 2024, according to NATO's own estimated figures. But spending doesn't automatically solve the problem.

There is a big production backlog with many systems, and increasing production capacity takes years, industrial revitalization, and workforce expertise, much of which has been diminished with time, leading to a hollowing out of the defense industrial sector.

Bronk said fixing this "is much more a question of building production capacity at every stage in the supply chain as rapidly as possible as part of a crisis response rather than just spending more money." More production capacity is needed for interceptors.

More money and big orders help, though, by giving industry confidence to invest more in facilities and processes, but there has to be sustained investment.

Rutte pledged that NATO's increased spending would also be used on "thousands more tanks and armoured vehicles" and "millions of rounds of artillery ammunition," but that many plans are classified.