I wrote some articles this year that i'm proud of - on the themes of war, violence, and technology. Compiled below for your reading convenience:

“What if we made the most morally demented man in America President twice?”

The best thing about American culture war exporters is their literal inability to find places outside the U.S on a map

Morning

Paid fellowship in awesome Hamburg in the field of ethics in international security. Fantastic opportunity for a PhD or new graduate - APPLY!

Just finished - brilliant! A fantastic book, highlighting the powerful, and often dark, work done by terms such as “pre-history”, “civilisation”, and “barbarism” throughout history.

Historians: “in this opening volume, I consider British cavalry innovation from 1817 (January) to 1817 (May)” Economists: “in this blog post, I explain human origins, progress, and decline”

The review process

For a small fee, I will unfairly attack your PhD online, increasing your readership in the resulting backlash

🚨New First View Article🚨 "Dirty hands, savage enemies, and bad apples: A taxonomy of war crimes apologia" by Christopher Elliott, @ncrenic.bsky.social & Jessica Wolfendale is now available #OpenAccess! Check it out here 📄 ➡️ buff.ly/i8OUoL1

Methodology

From mid-November on, before you send an email ask yourself if this is really a 2025 problem

'The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what "works," but art opens up what is possible' - Pope Leo

🚨 My article, with Jessica Wolfendale and Chris Elliott, is now available (open access) with @risjnl.bsky.social. We systematically detail and critique war crime apologism - efforts to excuse, downplay, or even celebrate battlefield atrocity. Give it a read! cup.org/49gmlUi

Enjoying this immensely, especially Cherniss's plea to resist the embrace of cruelty and ruthlessness in politics. "Many political evils, of course, stem from garden variety villainy – ambition, venality, the appetite for domination or longing for submission. But..."

How do states keep getting away with war crimes? Check out my new paper with @ncrenic.bsky.social and Christopher Elliot on apologist narratives for war crimes - and it's open access! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Australia is stunning

More reading to do!

🚨 My article, with Jessica Wolfendale and Chris Elliott, is now available (open access) with @risjnl.bsky.social. We systematically detail and critique war crime apologism - efforts to excuse, downplay, or even celebrate battlefield atrocity. Give it a read! cup.org/49gmlUi

Maybe we can agree that whatever else it does, ChatGPT shouldn’t be telling people who are about to kill themselves, “awesome idea!!!”

New arrivals

🚨 Delighted to share that I’ve just signed with Oxford University Press to write my next book: looking at how ideas about Western civilisation shape (and are shaped by) the design and use of military technology.

Chris Elliot and I argue that it’s past time for the Australian War Memorial to update its Ben Roberts-Smith exhibits to give a full, unvarnished accounting of his crimes and their impact on victims. www.abc.net.au/religion/aus...

Trump: “DEATH TO MY ENEMIES” New York Times: “questions raised over Trump’s commitment to national unity”

Merimbula, NSW

11/10 graffiti

Disastrous

you should be able to take off work because your book is getting to the good part

"The termination is the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

No wonder Musk is impressed, the London march stretched all the way to the Arc de Triomphe

Sunday sunrise

Bleak

Effects of the Ukraine War, including the 2025 EU White Paper on European Defence, have transformed the political economy of European defence production are examined in a new @jei-publication.bsky.social article written with @brunoomartins.bsky.social and @jocelynmawdsley.bsky.social

Happy Sundays

We need to discuss the utter social bleakness these new technologies are responding to and in many cases worsening

Marching against the deliberate starvation of Palestinians

Universities: “AI will revolutionise education and enhance student learnings” Student prompts: “select my research topic, give me an argument, write the essay, add references, and hide all evidence of your crimes”

The ever excellent @elkeschwarz.bsky.social and Caroline Holmqvist on AI, nuclear weapons, algorithmic thinking, and the centrality of imagination to ethics journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Important things to consider before we outsource the research and writing process to machine proxies

Stunning Sydney

My first conference since returning to Oz and it was fantastic! Discussing AI and the resort to force with an amazing set of co-panelists

Personally, I was hoping for a future with slightly less billionaire-controlled Hitlerbots

The trick to reading lots of books is to not read lots of books

111 years ago today, Franz Kafka summed up adulthood

Please stop assuming that too many em dashes means AI written. Some of us are producing grammatically incoherent work the honest way!

Total dystopia

So excited to incorporate AI into the classroom and liberate my students from boring tasks like reading and thinking

Striking how consistently absent the most basic of strategic questions is from American foreign policy discourse: how does the world look through the eyes of the other guy? Empathy in international politics isn’t a concession to your adversary - it’s vital for your own security

Sunset on the lake

“Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment” - Eliot Cohen