Amnesty International has now issued a public groveling apology to JK Rowling's organization and has pulled her another report documenting the anti rights platform of gender critical organizations. www.amnesty.org.uk/latest/an-ap...

An Apology for A Growing Threat briefing, published on 8 July 2026

Amnesty International UK has made a public apology for the publication of the briefing “A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK”. Click here to read it in full.

amnesty.org.uk

I have blogged! The State of the Present: Andy Burnham’s new government or - Why the abolition of DSIT is baffling and bad - Why I'm worried about what it means for civil service reform - Some opportunities for the new government around data, digital, open government medium.com/state-of-the...

The State of the Present: Andy Burnham’s new government

In common with lots of other policy people in recent weeks, I’ve been reading Head North, the (very readable) book by new Prime Minister…

medium.com

What should the new UK government do to increase public control over AI and its infrastructure for development and deployment? In a new blog post, Matt Davies (@halcyene.bsky.social) outlines the key steps government can take to improve leverage. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/taking-...

Taking back control?

A pragmatic AI agenda for the new UK government

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Incredibly excited to announce our major collaboration with @airwars.bsky.social! "Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain" is a visual investigation breaking down how AI is transforming every aspect of war. In turn, human oversight and accountability is steadily disappearing.

Airwars@airwars.bsky.social · last wk.

Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain A visual project from Airwars and @ainowinstitute.bsky.social breaks down how artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of war - and how militaries are offloading life and death decisions to flawed technologies ai-killchain.airwars.org

New from me on early steps the Burnham administration could take to resolve the contradictions in the UK's AI sovereignty agenda: 1️⃣ Insulate businesses from AI-related supply shocks and rent extraction 2️⃣ Extract more value from AI partnerships 3️⃣ Support independent AI capabilities Read below 👇🏻

Ada Lovelace Institute@adalovelaceinst.bsky.social · last wk.

What should the new UK government do to increase public control over AI and its infrastructure for development and deployment? In a new blog post, Matt Davies (@halcyene.bsky.social) outlines the key steps government can take to improve leverage. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/taking-...

It bothers me how many AI critics are failing to keep their critiques aligned with where the models actually are. I hate to give it to the haters (of the haters), but good criticism has to get close enough to its target to understand it, and stay close.

This. Also for big tech / social media co.s too. A single (always open) door into Govt for tech lobbyists means conversations about growth/sector support are also opps to argue against accountability/ regulation. This is the conflict at the heart of DSIT (and previously in "D is for digital" DCMS).

Matt Davies@halcyene.bsky.social · 3w ago

In principle, it could be productive for (e.g.) AI governance to be handled by a Dept that does not see its primary duty as advocating for and seeking to grow the AI sector. An expanded DBT could still consider the interests of UK tech, without centring them at potential cost to others. (3/?)

A domestic AI industry built on an American backbone is ultimately offshoring UK productive capacity to the US. Meanwhile, huge societal risks are just being glossed over. All the while we are panic regulating social media. Needs a reset.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 3w ago

Minister for AI to sit in Cabinet 👀 www.thetimes.com/article/c10e...

Seeing a lot of horrified reaction to this (mostly over on The Other Place). It's true that departmental reorgs usually do hit delivery in the short term — if I were entering office midway through a Parliamentary term, I wouldn't necessarily want to prioritise this. That said... (1/?)

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 3w ago

Speculation that we may get BEIS recreated. If there is going to be a machinery government change in this area my plea is that we reunite science/research with universities. The disconnect between these briefs is causing all sorts of loss to research capacity www.ft.com/content/fec8...

A new must-read from @melindacooper.bsky.social 👇

Philipp Golka@pgolka.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Just saw that the first piece from our special issue is already out: Factions of asset-based capitalism: a historical typology, by @melindacooper.bsky.social See here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Will write a thread on the SI and each of the papers once they're all out!

Some news… @carsjung.bsky.social and I are launching a Substack! We will be using this to explore what needs to change for AI to actually work for most people (spoiler: it is a lot) First post is up looking at today’s launch of the AI economics institute and how to predict AI's jobs impact 1/2

AI jobs predictions keep missing the point. Here’s what to measure instead

A government institute to track how AI disrupts jobs is long overdue. But as it officially launches today, will it measure the right things?

modeleconomy.substack.com

I wrote about protests in Albania, Europe, development traps, oligarchic capture, and, well, hope. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Look at the protests Jared Kushner has caused in Albania. This could be a shining light for Europe | Lea Ypi

The slogan ‘Albania is not for sale’ reveals a nation that respects itself, and will not sell its soul for investment, says author and academic Lea Ypi

theguardian.com

Baffled at what otherwise smart people are seeing in that Blair screed. We've known for years that Labour had no prospectus for governing. Blair's proposals, meanwhile, are like a Telegraph op-ed run through ChatGPT: slash welfare, scrap net zero, "unleash AI". It's not just unserious, it's boring!

IMHO possibly the most interesting question in finance and economics right now is the extent to which future AI dominance can retain any monopoly characteristics. People assume because it's "Silicon Valley" that those explosive network effects will necessarily pertain. They really might not... 1/

An aggressively expansionist ethnostate, but all they have to do is to parrot the word "security" (the security of their victims having no importance) and many Western journos just parrot along

Israel seizes 1,000 sq km under Benjamin Netanyahu’s war strategy

FT calculates territory under control in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria is about 5% of Israel’s 1949 borders

ft.com

Me, in the Guardian today, on Reform voters and sympathisers in England's post-industrial towns www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Not just lobbying! our new paper maps 27 mechanisms of regulatory capture used by Big AI + 11 narrative framings that rationalise capture. “Big AI’s Regulatory Capture: Mapping Industry Interference and Government Complicity” will be presented at #FAccT2026 next month arxiv.org/abs/2605.068... 1/

LGBTQ+ voters have abandoned Labour in droves (see work by @turnbulldugarte.com). Like in other areas, Labour has sacrificed minority rights to appeal to authoritarian voters. They are now facing the consequences. People who do not identify as straight make up 8-10% of the electorate.

Heather Paterson@heatherpaterson.co.uk · 3mo ago

ILGA-Europe’s @ilgaeurope.bsky.social 2026 Rainbow Map is out today. It is a stark reminder that the UK is not just standing still on LGBTI rights, we are going backwards. Explore it here: rainbowmap.ilga-europe.org [1/7]

Claims that AI will deliver significant productivity gains and savings in the UK public sector are shaping government policy and spending. Ada’s new briefing helps policymakers, journalists and others to evaluate AI productivity claims more robustly. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

Measuring up

Evaluating claims about AI and productivity in the UK public sector

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Today we publish 📏𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐔𝐏📏, a new @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social briefing on AI and public sector productivity. We find: ⚖️The link between measurement and real-world outcomes is unclear 📐Workers and citizens are absent from research design ⏲️Industry shapes what gets researched Read more:

Measuring up

Evaluating claims about AI and productivity in the UK public sector

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Scary diagram on how much of our daily lives would fall apart if somehow we were cut off from US tech. Tech sovereignty and resilience is going to be costly! www.ft.com/content/4c3a...

"Labour politicians are not terminally stupid. It should be puzzling, therefore, that so many of them were happy to accede to the government’s ‘hippie-punching’ strategy, in which socially liberal, left-wing voters – the core of their support – have been repeatedly castigated and rejected."

James Butler · Labour’s Failure

Despite a few halting steps towards devolving power in Britain, England itself remains a profoundly centralised country...

lrb.co.uk

Pretty disappointing to see @adamtooze.bsky.social posting that climate issues around data centre growth are just barely "real" and are verging on "fake" Me and many others have done a huge amount of work I think solidly demonstrating how real they are. Much more than.......whatever this graphic is

Calls for data center moratoriums are strategic and help build needed leverage. For example, the national moratorium bill introduced by Reps Sanders & @aoc.bsky.social is explicitly designed to force AI regulation—the ban would lift as soon as laws were put in place that actually constrain harms.

Astra Taylor@astra.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The anti-data center movement isn’t just about limiting local development—it represents a new front in the fight against tech-enabled authoritarianism. Where else can people push back on job-eating algorithms, distorting deep fakes, and autonomous drone strikes? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We really are going to have to revisit the socialist calculation debate at some point quite soon.

Lauren Leek@laurenleek.eu · 8mo ago

I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

I have family members who are very reliant on the state. And I use the NHS a lot for endometriosis. Sometimes I think the eye-rolling I see on here in response to voters' belief that everything is broken is because the eye rollers are middle class and don't interact with the welfare state much.

"The promises of a green future are being co-opted by the same forces driving planetary destabilization." NEW: @ceciliarikap.bsky.social on how Big Tech's cloud services give them unprecedented power to shape how we understand climate change, and how we respond www.break-down.org/talking-abou...

Talking About the Weather

Through its ownership of cloud-computing services, Big Tech is setting the terms for how we understand the climate crisis—and how we respond.

break-down.org

"The current public discourse about antisemitism is defined by two claims. First, that Jews are victims of Muslims and the pro-Palestine left, and, second, that the proper response to racism is more aggressive policing." Typically sharp analysis from Barnaby Raine in @equatormag.bsky.social:

Good Jews, Bad Jews • EQUATOR

What the mainstream gets wrong about antisemitism

equator.org

BREAKING: The Chinese government pressured Zambia to screen + exclude Taiwanese speakers attending @rightscon.org, leading to the largest international convention on digital rights being canceled a week before it takes place, the host org @accessnow.org tells WIRED. By @telliotter.bsky.social + me

The Chinese Government Just Got the World’s Largest Digital Rights Conference Canceled

Access Now, the group that organizes RightsCon, says Zambian officials asked it to exclude Taiwanese participants if it wanted the event to proceed as planned.

wired.com

My colleague Ryan Lee and I been working for the past 6 months on a microeconomic theory that could serve as the foundation for a new, multidimensional economics. Our first working paper, "Choice under value pluralism," is below. Please read, share, and comment! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....