It is put very explicitly here by the PPS to the PM: "the recommendation from the vetting officer had been that DV should not be granted to Peter Mandelson."
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69e26b...

'We are told that for Mandelson's form, the vetting team ticked the red box - indicating an explicit recommendation not to approve vetting. But Robbins, who is still giving evidence, says he was never given that information.' bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce...

Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not even need security vetting, Robbins tells MPs – UK politics live Olly Robbins was forced out as Foreign Office permanent secretary over the Peter Mandelson security vetting revelations in the Guardian

Robbins: "I was told that UKSV [UK Security Vetting] were leaning towards recommending against, but accepted it was a borderline case" www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

This is a huge departure from practice. It's potentially extremely damaging to the integrity of the vetting system. You're asking candidates to divulge their most personal details. They trust it will remain private. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The year is 2085. The A-10 Warthog pleads for sweet release. Congress appropriates 800 bitcoin to extend the plane for strafing missions on Mars.

Ransomware attack continues to disrupt healthcare in London nearly two years later More than 18 months after a ransomware attack disrupted care at hospitals in South East London, documents show at least one NHS trust is still working without fully restored systems and managing large...

ICYMI: Nearly two years on from the devastating ransomware attack affecting hospitals in South East London, the ongoing - yes, ongoing - impact to blood testing has led to more than 120 patient safety incidents in which incorrect, unavailable or delayed pathology results have impacted care.

"Sweden agreed with the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, that Russia was understating its budget deficit by $30bn, and had also noticed some financial indicators that could point to a future banking crisis" www.ft.com/content/04a9...

Yes, I would also rather that the AI ecosystem was more diverse and competitive. But it is what it is.

In the material sense, though not in the financial dense. European money is buying those weapons. Can't overcome them fast.

I would definitely agree on both. Don't embed it into something directly, yet, and don't rely on it without checking. But I do think we need to compare it fairly to alternatives, which are not always deeply scrutinised expert assessments.

I believe if used properly - i.e. if you ask it to check facts and provide sources - it is no less reliable than a non-specialist human user, and reliability is rising all the time.
On bypassing-the same could be said of journalists writing about academic work. This is a tool.

A lot of this is just AI synthesising information that I still have to read and understand. I would have to scan a paper or a book to acquire some of these details. This points me in the right direction and provides clear sources. What is the problem in that?

Armour is much more vulnerable than it once was; it is much harder to concentrate it. At the same time, unless you want to be stuck in current small unit infiltration tactics, you will need some sort of protected way to move people in larger numbers and with greater speed at some point. E.g.:

I wrote something last week on UK nuclear dependence on the US. Experimenting with Claude to see how it handles the same subject. Asked it to produce an interactive tool to catalogue these dependencies. Not a bad effort. Others can poke around it here. splendorous-scone-b67434.netlify.app

Behind Trump’s Public Bravado on the War, He Grapples With His Own Fears The president’s impulsive style has never been tested in a sustained military conflict, and he’s been ruminating on Jimmy Carter’s failure in Iran.

Astonishing WSJ piece documenting the entirely broken national security policy process of this admin, incl how decision to attack Iran was made; that Trump is kept out of the room and loop during sensitive mil ops for fears he will wreck them; to those 25th Amendment social media posts over Easter.

Tory MPs talking about Erasmus as if it’s a sleeper cell recruitment programme.

Remarkable.

British Army: hold my beer.

I am not sure what that example proves.

Update from the Battlefield: Drones, Distance, and Diminishing Returns for Russia Podcast Episode · War on the Rocks · 9 April · 28min

Listening to @michaelkofman.bsky.social on the WOTR podcast. Ru-Ukr at drone parity. "most of the fight is not between infantry or soldiers on the ground. It's about the drone units of one side ... being able to displace the drone units of the other side." podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/u...

Ukraine's Deep-Strike Drone Campaign Against Russian Oil Infrastructure How Ukraine is systematically degrading Russian energy export capacity — and what it means for the war

Maybe not an inflection point, but a remarkable moment. "By some estimates, Ukraine launched more long-range drone strikes than Russia [in March], employing over 7,000 systems, some reaching as deep as 1,500 kilometers into Russian territory." missilematters.substack.com/p/ukraines-d...

One to keep an eye on. "first improved variant of French/Italian SAMP/T ... is expected to be delivered to Kyiv in 2026, with up to seven [more] over two years. If Aster...production keeps up... could alleviate Kyiv’s reliance on US for long-range [AD]" www.iiss.org/online-analy...

Ukraine's Deep-Strike Drone Campaign Against Russian Oil Infrastructure How Ukraine is systematically degrading Russian energy export capacity — and what it means for the war

Maybe not an inflection point, but a remarkable moment. "By some estimates, Ukraine launched more long-range drone strikes than Russia [in March], employing over 7,000 systems, some reaching as deep as 1,500 kilometers into Russian territory." missilematters.substack.com/p/ukraines-d...

All valid criticisms, but 1/ the problem is not only or mainly the political leadership when it comes to how money is spent, and 2/ you've just had really substantial reforms - reorg and new national armaments director - to address some of those issues. Why did they bother with that? Has it failed?

Putting nuclear reactors in military crosshairs: USAF says it selected a missile warning site and an ICBM base as the first to possibly get small nuclear reactors. www.af.mil/News/Article... The two sites, and many others expected to get reactors, would be prominent targets in war.

Sort of reassuring to know this website has just as many tedious bores as the other place.

The plucking board label isn't quite accurate, as that was for more junior officers. For generals, it was mostly reassignments, early retirements, and so on, picked by Marshall rather than the board. Of course, other episodes are not comparable to this one, where firings have been capricious.

Playing with Claude to visualise the scale of Hegseth's purges as a proportion of officers at comparable rank, relative to other periods. The Marshall figures depend on whether you do it as a share of flag officers at the start of his tenure (few) vs those by 1941 (a lot).

Our evaluation of Claude Mythos Preview’s cyber capabilities | AISI Work We conducted cyber evaluations of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview and found continued improvement in capture-the-flag (CTF) challenges and significant improvement on multi-step cyber-attack simulati...

This paper represents a small but deeply impressive and genuinely important achievement by the much maligned British state in what is probably the most important global issue of our era.

Hear me out ( 🧵) 1/

www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-eva...

What's the evidence for that claim?