File under "Really quite disturbing" If the preliminary data for the past few weeks are confirmed, we are now very close to a new world record, and seeing an alarming rate of change climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_dai...
Shashank Joshi
@shashj.bsky.social
Incoming Washington bureau chief at The Economist. Previously defence editor for eight years. Visiting Fellow at Department of War Studies, KCL. For speaking engagements: https://chartwellspeakers.com/speaker/shashank-joshi
If you want to get close to what the war in #Ukraine is really like, worth listening to this fascinating conversation between @shashj.bsky.social and Jack Watling of @rusi.bsky.social War in Ukraine: has the tide really turned? www.economist.com/insider/insi...
War in Ukraine: has the tide really turned? | The Economist Insider
The war in Ukraine is in flux. The country's deep strikes inside Russia have drawn a lot of attention. But Ukraine is also improving recruitment while pioneering new tactics that could eventually brea...
economist.com
For @economist.com subscribers: I spoke to Jack Watling on the latest episode of Inside Defence. We talked about Ukraine, what people misunderstand about drone warfare and the vital role played on the modern battlefield by the ancient art of digging. www.economist.com/insider/insi...
War in Ukraine: has the tide really turned? | The Economist Insider
The war in Ukraine is in flux. The country's deep strikes inside Russia have drawn a lot of attention. But Ukraine is also improving recruitment while pioneering new tactics that could eventually brea...
economist.com
Fair play to John Healey, who managed to time his 5.5-week break from government to coincide exactly with the World Cup
For the 'just a stochastic parrot' brigade. 'A mathematician has cracked an 87-year-old conundrum with the help of AI and announced the solution unceremoniously in a tweet. The finding is the most difficult mathematical problem yet solved by AI, say experts.' www.newscientist.com/article/2580...
AI's solution to 87-year-old riddle takes mathematicians by surprise | New Scientist
Mathematicians have been trying to prove the Jacobian conjecture for nearly a century, but now the Claude Fable 5 AI has apparently found a counterexample that disproves it
newscientist.com
A farewell to Fable. I got it to make a Guess-Who inspired game which gives you a series of clues to guess the purged PLA or American general. Admittedly niche. shashj1.github.io/guess-hu/
I wrote on Hegseth's plan to screen all troops over 30 for low testosterone. It is unusual—I don't think any other military does it—but it is not crazy. Universal screening is not recommended in the general population, but military personnel are distinctive. www.economist.com/united-state...
Pete Hegseth’s testosterone-screening plan is unusual, not crazy
Soldiers seem to be at particular risk of hypogonadism
economist.com
Maybe NATO should just not have summits for 2027 and 2028. Low-key constructive work to transfer more responsibility to Europe can continue without giving Trump a platform to beat up on allies and undermine deterrence further.
Henry Foy@henryjfoy.ft.com · 4w ago💥 Trump "completely committed" to Nato despite threats over Greenland, US troops in Europe & Iran support, Rutte insists as leaders arrive at a summit of the shaky alliance Follow the developments live from Ankara w/ @jprathbone.bsky.social @lucyfisher.ft.com & I here: www.ft.com/content/f2eb...
Britain’s cyber agency laid out plans on Tuesday for what it called “a national scale, sovereign defense capability” that would use agentic AI systems to discover and fix cybersecurity weaknesses across government networks and critical national infrastructure.
Britain plans to build autonomous AI 'Cyber Shield' to defend nation
The capability, called Cyber Shield, is designed to counter a threat the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said could see attackers “move at machine speed and greater scale, reducing opportunities...
therecord.media
On July 9, join us online for an important conversation with Senior Fellow @michaelkofman.bsky.social on Russia's military power after Ukraine, moderated by The Economist's @shashj.bsky.social. RSVP here: carnegieendowment.org/events/2026/...
Another Fable experiment. An interactive visualisation of Charles Joseph Minard's famous 'Carte figurative' showing Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812, with some Tolstoy mixed in. shashj1.github.io/minard-1812/
I asked Fable to produce an interactive tool that explains simply how neural networks work, taking users through the history of the technology at the same time. Pretty magical, in my view. jazzy-duckanoo-9271fa.netlify.app
I wrote this week on the whiplash of American AI policy: the unpredictable zig-zag of restrictions, where AI governance might be headed in this administration, and the broader implications of locking down and restricting cutting-edge models. www.economist.com/business/202...
Donald Trump’s AI regime is opaque, unpredictable—and unsustainable
The administration now controls who gets access to the best models
economist.com
My latest on where the MOU and talks with Iran leave the US. It is not pretty. The bottom line is Iran has every incentive to drag out the talks and is getting paid without having to do anything on the nuclear issue. open.substack.com/pub/thinking...
Iran Can Do This All Day
Thoughts about strategic and nuclear challenges over the next few months
open.substack.com
"... even AI models marketed as having conservative views, including Elon Musk’s Grok, offered by his company SpaceX, cited left-leaning arguments more often, on average." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...
Today I interviewed German army chief Lt-Gen Christian Freuding. We talked about German rearmament, the future of the Lithuania bridge & debates over the timeline of the Russian threat. @economist.com subscribers can tune in to Inside Defence in an hour. www.economist.com/insider/insi...
Is Germany war-ready? | The Economist Insider
Germany’s army chief has his work cut out. Lieutenant General Christian Freuding has been charged with overseeing the rearmament of the country’s land forces—part of a once-in-a-generation mission whi...
economist.com
„Le Monde has learned that the latest ongoing investigation, led by (…) France's counterintelligence agency, targets an individual accused of preparing to blow up a SNCF transformer used to regulate rail traffic...“ www.lemonde.fr/en/france/ar... #Sabotage #DGSI #France
Russia's shadow looms behind several sabotage and espionage attempts on French soil
At the beginning of June, counterintelligence agents arrested a man while he was filming a drone prototype in a factory near Toulouse. Other investigations are targeting individuals suspected of prepa...
lemonde.fr
Boom. "We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024" arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777
Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the United States
We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach. Despite prevailing sentiment, th...
arxiv.org
I’m delighted that Alex Turner will succeed me as defence editor of The @economist.com. Alex, who is currently an army officer, is highly experienced, an accomplished military historian and an excellent writer. He will be a fantastic journalist. www.economistgroup.com/press-centre...
The Economist Group - Alex Turner appointed as defence editor of The Economist
The Economist has today announced the appointment of Major General Alex Turner as its next defence editor.
economistgroup.com
I wrote with my colleague Henry Tricks on the Fable/Mythos cut-off. www.economist.com/business/202...
Donald Trump’s blocking of Anthropic is capricious and chaotic
America’s closest allies are shellshocked
economist.com
Trump is nominates Jay Clayton for DNI. Clayton was chair of the SEC & is now US Attorney for the Southern District of New York; the latter role would give him at least some national security experience. Far likelier to get confirmed than Pulte.
X is sadly awash with Nazis, but this site is doing its level best to amass an impressive number of extremely unpleasant people.
Ben JJ@benjjgeo.bsky.social · 2mo agoYeah you're right if we don't help Estonia they might not send 30 guys the next time we illegally invade somewhere.
Al Carns on a bit of a political kamikaze mission today. What's much more damning is that his critique isn't just about money, but also the inadequate - in his view - level of "transformation" on tech.
Big claim from a Ukrainian drone maker about a test two years ago: "We just launch it and we know...everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead. There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing." www.newscientist.com/article/2529...
Pudding-brain theory of defence spending. A world in which the UK has no allies or is content to abandon them. Would take about three seconds of Googling to learn about the UK battle group in Estonia, and another three seconds as to why it needs to be there.
Wow. UK defence sec'y John Healey resigns. His resignation letter says DIP settlement he was given "falls well short of what is required for defence and the country" and that UK would be spending just 2.68% of GDP in 2030.
