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Is Putin a drowning man?

PUTIN’S WAR IN UKRAINE Intro: The paranoid dictator has built an impenetrable echo chamber around himself, within which he is told only what he wants to hear Vladimir Putin’s war to subjugate Ukraine is going from bad to worse for the Russian tyrant. Originally billed as a three-day “special military operation”, it is now in its fifth year, longer than Russia fought in World War One, and…

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Does AI really have the answers to the truth?

OPINION Intro: ChatGPT may relieve its users of discomfort, but in doing so robs us of contemplation, of the holy ground between question and answer Any Individual person of faith raised in a religious setting such as the home will have a fairly clear picture of what prayer means. Prayer is the practice by which we draw closer to God, petition for our needs and desires, request guidance, and…

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Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI should be welcomed

MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS Intro: Magnifica Humanitas is an important warning of the uses and misuses of a rapidly developing technology. Silicon Valley is wrong to dismiss it When authors and creative writers are asked whether novels of the future will be written by AI, it’s not so much a question as a provocation. Do many worry that a machine can do what they do, only better? As Francine Prose, a…

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AI is spiralling out of control: it can be stopped

ARTIFICIAL SUPERINTELLIGENCE Intro: East and West collaborated to end nuclear proliferation – it is time to do the same for the latest advancing technology. Washington and Beijing must come together to rein in AI’s growing threat After the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the edge of nuclear war, global powers embarked on a concerted effort to pull it back from the brink. The…

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Book Review: Land by Maggie O’Farrell

LITERARY REVIEW Intro: Set in the decades after the Great Hunger, “Land” is a rich portrait of family life amid Ireland’s long struggle against British rule Cartography has never been a neutral discipline. Maps offer a partial view of a landscape, informed by what the mapmaker wishes the reader to see. A colonising army will mark the features of the terrain that serves its purposes and exclude…

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Exhibition - Winston Churchill: The Painter

WALLACE COLLECTION Serenity: Winston Churchill’s Cap d’Ail, Alpes-Maritimes (1952) Xavier Bray, the director of the Wallace Collection, recently described the London gallery’s new exhibition of Winston Churchill’s paintings as “provocative”. Churchill didn’t take up painting as a hobby until he was 40 years of age, perhaps to distract himself following the disastrous Dardanelle campaign of…

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Recce-Strike: A new concept in warfare

DEFENCE Colonel de Bretton-Gordon who commanded the 1st Royal Tank Regiment has written on the new concept of warfare known as “Recce-Strike”. The former commander, and now a writer and author, says the British Army has finally planted its flag in the ground over the future of land warfare, embracing the Recce-Strike doctrine laid out in the Ministry of Defence’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review…

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Proposed ‘kill switch’ for AI data centres

CYBER SECURITY UK politicians are pushing for an AI “kill switch” that would allow ministers to shut down data centres. Campaigners are seeking new laws that would give the Government powers to switch off AI systems in the event of a “catastrophic risk”. A proposed amendment to the cyber security and resilience bill has the backing of at least 11 MPs, and is part of a coordinated campaign from…

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Superintelligent AI and its threat to humanity

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Intro: Humanity faces an uncertain fate as experts brace for superintelligent AI. The tech industry claims looming “singularity” will change everything Every time one of the world’s top artificial intelligence companies unveils a new system, employees at the US research organisation METR put it through its paces. Its ability is tested to complete a series of increasingly…

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Superintelligent AI and its threat to humanity

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Intro: Humanity faces an uncertain fate as experts brace for superintelligent AI. The tech industry claims looming “singularity” will change everything Every time one of the world’s top artificial intelligence companies unveils a new system, employees at the US research organisation METR put it through its paces. Its ability is tested to complete a series of increasingly…

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The West’s hypocrisy on corruption is amoral

DUPLICITOUS STANDARDS Intro: Westerners have no right to feel morally superior over those in developing nations The West likes to believe corruption is something that happens elsewhere. It is presented as a pathology of poorer countries, weak institutions, and unstable governments. In much of Africa, corruption is routinely cited by Western politicians, the media, and international…

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The UK can wrest opportunity from this geopolitical crisis

GEOPOLITICS Intro: If Britain is nimble and responsive to this global crisis it can be a winner in an era beset by conflict. Confident governments that circumvent risk will benefit handsomely Amid the geopolitical storms and instability emanating from Ukraine to the Strait of Hormuz, flickers of light are piercing the gloom. To paraphrase Charles Darwin, it is not the strongest that survive,…

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Book Review (Biography): Mao

LITERARY REVIEW Intro: The central argument of Brown’s thesis is that Mao was a ‘moderniser through destruction’. He believed that for a new China to be born, the old one had to be violently uprooted. The book suggests that while Mao’s methods were often catastrophic, the unified, assertive China we see today is an inescapable result of his reign Kerry Brown writes that “Mao’s provocations……

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Essay: Hormuz has exposed flaws in Beijing’s economic model

CHINA’S ECONOMIC MODEL Intro: As the US president prepares to visit Beijing, he may have ended China’s decades-long growth miracle. Trump’s war on Iran, and especially the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has China in a chokehold In the modern era, we have witnessed among many things, a robot that can win a half-marathon, a pilot-less plane, a soap opera made by AI, and an electric supercar…

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The next casualty of the Iran War has arrived

GLOBAL DIGITAL ECONOMY Intro: The Iran War has led to shortage of helium, vital for AI but also for many of Britain’s smaller businesses. If the Strait of Hormuz blockade continues, a chip shortage could well be on the cards The world has lost 40pc of its helium supply since the start of the latest war in the Gulf, first from Qatar and then from Russia. We will soon find out whether the global…

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The parallels with the 1760s

POLITICAL HISTORY Intro: In the chaotic 1760s, as now, the country faced the entwined issues of debt and a geopolitical crisis As America marks the 250th anniversary of their Declaration of Independence in 1776, we should hope they will remember the seven men who made it happen. I am not thinking of the Founding Fathers. No, I’m more reflective of the seven individuals or politicians who served…

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Big pharma is failing to address our greatest medical threat

GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY Intro: Drug-resistant infections now kill more people every year than HIV or malaria, yet only six companies remain active in antibiotic research Writing in the last few days, Professor Lord Darzi, FRS, said that big pharma is failing to tackle our greatest medical threat. The world-renowned and eminent surgeon says that every caesarean section, joint replacement, and…