The UK has recently announced investment agreements with major US tech firms. But over-dependence carries risks. @alturobov.bsky.social argues that true AI sovereignty means building domestic capacity & embracing a multipolar world of digital rule-making www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/what-do...

📺 UK folks, I'll (apparently) be on BBC News around 10PM talking about the AWS outage and the risks to our security and resilience from banking our economy on a handful of cloud monopolies: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Someone went there: "It Kind of Seems Like Peter Thiel is Losing It" via @futurism.com futurism.com/future-socie...

“As tech companies build data centers worldwide to advance artificial intelligence, vulnerable communities have been hit by blackouts & water shortages.” 10/20/25 (I’m out of gift articles this month unfortunately. ) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/t...

Interesting: Greenland picks French company Eutelsat over Elon Musk’s Starlink. Greenland's government-owned telecommunications company Tusass signed the agreement with Eutelsat to provide east and north Greenland with better and more reliable internet connectivity. www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...

The Tony Blair Institute is heavily backed by Larry Ellison & was “involved in plans to create a new ‘Trump Riviera.’” That vision “envisages creating a ‘blockchain registry for land’ to underpin the construction of up to 8 ‘AI-powered, smart planned cities on the inner side of the Gaza Ring.“ …1/

“Larry Ellison’s Oracle & Peter Thiel’s Palantir now form a single operational spine for digital governance and defence, from cloud infrastructure to predictive analytics. And Trump’s Gaza peace plan looks like the vehicle thru which that spine could extend into Gaza’s reconstruction.” 10/16/25 …1/

“This libertarian manifesto,” The Sovereign Individual, is “loved by Peter Thiel *** Political operators such as former Tony Blair spokesman Alistair Campbell and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have embraced the book, too.” 9/28/25 … 1/ theconversation.com/this-liberta...

Spiv party, spiv politics. www.thetimes.com/article/fca4...

Why isn’t every large account warning about the “network state” movement? In August, “network state” leader Balaji Srinivassan—a close ally of Peter Thiel & Marc Andreessen—wrote that, “When Bitcoin wins,” it “ends the Fed,” the “battle begins,” & “it's time to build”. 1/

Bury council approved a policy whereby they can enforce the sale of an empty property when homeowners owe a debt to the authority northwestbylines.co.uk/politics/hom...

US spy-tech giant Palantir is moving into our NHS to handle patient data, the same company with a troubling record of surveillance and deportations. Our Tech and Data Lead, Duncan, spoke at Hackney Town Hall as Homerton Hospital considers adopting Palantir software. What do you think?

stop thinking right now

I hear from informed sources that these #NoKings rallies are more than twice as big as last time, making them easily the largest protests in US history. Thanks to everyone and especially organizers.

British racists are mere weeks away from a scurvy outbreak because citrus fruits are "fancy foreign muck"

i’m looking to recruit a postdoc to work on this (documentation + evaluation on accuracy, reliability and societal impacts). hope to advertise detailed descriptions of the role in the coming weeks

It’s tiresome at this point, but again, their entire pitch is “wouldn’t it be great if there were no such things as talent, craft, and skill,” and what that means is a bland, slop-filled world. www.businessinsider.com/marc-andrees...

The real cyborg future is just you being turned into a perpetual data feed by every company on the planet.

This is an amazing letter that Ron Conway, Silicon Valley venture capitalist, wrote to Marc Benioff to resign from the Salesforce Foundation board. These tech billionaires fund a lot of ocean, climate, and environmental projects and I wish all these groups had the courage to quit them.

How Musk boosted Tommy Robinson: —Reinstated his Twitter —Retweeted/replied to dozens of Robinson's posts —Boosted calls for him to be freed from jail —Spoke at Robinson's far-right rally in London —Paid $$$ for his legal defense in terrorism case Elon ❤️ Tommy www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

🚨We're hiring! 🚨 👉Open Position: Assistant Professor of #Philosophy with focus on #AI 🗓️ Application deadline: 3 November 2025 Apply via: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... #PartOfLSE #LSEPhilosophy #Jobs

They just don't want migrants. Everything else is obfuscation.

UK's "Sovereign AI Unit" + NVIDIA deal + US-UK tech pact raise the question: renting access or building capacity? My analysis on twin-track sovereignty - domestic procurement mandates + middle-powers coalition.

new survey research from CDT: 85% of teachers & 86% of students report they have used AI in 2024-25. Half of students say using AI in class makes them feel less connected to their teacher & 70% teachers worry that AI weakens important skills that students need to learn cdt.org/press/cdt-su...

Reform UK has been forced to reject more unlawful donations than any other British political party in 2025 the party has had to give back almost £200,000 this year from 18 impermissible donors, according to Electoral Commission data www.ft.com/content/5392...

this is why retail outlets and services using every opportunity to harvest customer data is a bad idea cybernews.com/news/mango-t...

Britain’s teen hackers aren’t masterminds in hoodies; they’re gamers groomed on Discord. The pipeline is clear: gaming cheats to forums to extortion—fueled by bleak prospects and neurodivergent talents exploited for thrills. By Oliver Pickup in @newstatesman1913.bsky.social buff.ly/vV5E4wZ

I wrote about the breadth and scale of media consolidation under Trump and how it tests our global definitions of monopoly and anti trust regulations ..(don’t feel bad for Bari, she’s fine )

You might think controlling GB News gives you huge influence over UK politics – especially on the right. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, as we reveal in this week's issue of @thenewworldmag.bsky.social Full story: www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-p...

Reform candidate visibly squirms as he's confronted by a local family in Caerphilly.

In today's least surprising news

And if you’re wondering who Labour is listening to? “Reeves boasted she hatched plan to rip down our nature protections over a “smoked salmon & scrambled eggs breakfast” with corporate lobbyists”. While Starmer’s resolve to kick down planning rules are result of his “conversations with leading CEOs”

"US media that isn’t already owned by plutocrats who support Trump is being bought up by them. A media that once could be described as manufacturing consent is being turned into a propaganda machine for the Republicans and Trump" same in London too mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/popu...

Leicestershire council tax set to rise despite Reform UK's election pledge

Just brace for what we will see in terms of US interference in European electoral politics soon

🧵What’s the biggest lie the surveillance industry tells? That they only sell to legal clients. That there are red lines. But what do these companies say when they think nobody is watching? We went undercover to find out

"Another Reform MP has been accused of being in breach of Parliamentary rules, after its deputy leader Richard Tice failed to register lavish hospitality he received from Lubov Chernukhin – wife of a former Russian deputy finance minister" leftfootforward.org/2025/10/refo...

“Paul Marshall controls, co-founded, donates to, or otherwise influences an operation incorporating media, charities, think tanks, conferences, and more. It pumps out the views of an increasingly extreme British right and rewards those who express them.” www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-p...

About 2 months ago it was kinda edgy to call this a bubble and now...

Have Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey ever read *anything* other than Tolkien?

OpenAI’s strategy is very clear, it’s trying to get people - especially young people - so reliant on its products intellectually & emotionally (& now sexually!) that going without them becomes unthinkable. And they need signs of that strategy working to keep the funding flowing in

"Musk and Zuckerberg claim to give people freedom of speech, but they own it." — @alexandrageese.bsky.social

Eleanor Anstruther on the Importance of Imagination, What Happens When You’re Severed, and How To Recover Reality open.substack.com/pub/janeratc...

Here's the thing - Jeff Bezos' revenue stream for the Washington Post isn't advertiser or subscriber dollars. It's value of negotiating federal AWS and space contracts from the position of being an administration ally. The WaPo editorial page is an at scale version of Palantir's campus Israel ads.

So @hcrichardson.bsky.social has encouraged us to record or write what it means to us to live in a democracy. So today I spent some writing things I want from a democratic government. We had these things as recently as last year, 2024. And that gives me hope that we can/will have these again.

I am being asked to tell my department which pieces of lab equipment should be supported with backup power because they expect rolling blackouts and brownouts in 2026 due to increased energy demands from AI. In case you're wondering how my day is going.

Good thing the UK NHS is offering the vaccine to <checks notes> almost nobody under 75 🙄

Balaji (a close associate of Thiel & Andreessen) leads the “network state” movement, which encourages tech elites to build their own “countries” by acquiring physical territory w/in host countries & building “parallel institutions” to replace existing ones in media, education, finance, & science 1/

First sentence says it all: "Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed legislation that would have required data centers to report how much water they use." Read the rest of the story though. from @ianjames.bsky.social: www.latimes.com/environment/...

Richard Tice failed to register lavish hospitality from former Russian finance minister’s wife hopenothate.org.uk/2025/10/13/r...