We @fpri.bsky.social just finished a large study on drone incursions in the US. Most are accidents. Yet, proliferation of UAS has created an exploitable environment for malign actors seeking to conduct close target reconnaissance, or potentially even kinetic attacks against critical infrastructure.

The US is hamstrung in its response b/c of competing authorities, the potential danger to civilians, and even Article IV constitutional protections (jamming a drone is considered an illegal wiretapping in certain instances). I imagine EU has similar issues; www.fpri.org/article/2025...

#CallForPapers - Conference on Public Policies for Innovation ESRC, London Business School, @fuqua.duke.edu & CEPR invite submissions for a #conference on Public Policies for Innovation at LBS on 19-20 March 2026. cepr.org/events/confe... Organisers: Paolo Surico & @danielpgross.bsky.social #EconSky

The Pink Book of #MarginalEffects (aka Model to Meaning) ships next week and I've got a backlog of Zoolander memes. Hope you're hungry for some spam in your timeline. #RStats #PyData

New PhD-student run journal in the history of economics, Oikonomos, has just published its first issue oikonomosjournal.com/index.php/oi...

"Elite colleges have convinced us that scarcity equals quality, that a lower acceptance rate means a better education. But their own behavior shows that many of their decisions are more about manipulating the market than academic or any other kind of excellence." 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

Opening up military innovation: causal effects of reforms to US defense research: Howell, Sabrina T.; Rathje, Jason; Van Reenen, John; Wong, Jun

itcouldbesaid.substack.com/p/it-could-b... Did you know we ran a public sector deficit of 5% of GDP last year, a figure which adds up to £150billion? The public finances are in a far worse state than anyone admits to even before you consider public works backlog, gaps in defence & public services

about.bnef.com/insights/cle... Michael Liebreich on the entire transition. A more optimistic read than you might expect

Headlines: Minister says Stanford students are enterprising. People who have never met one are in uproar. #slownewsfriday

🎙How do sanctions shape the global security landscape? Host Tom Keatinge and former US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo unpack the impact of sanctions, the power of global cooperation, and the challenges of overuse in our latest Suspicious Transaction Report Podcast.

In the 1970s, it took 8,000 pounds of pancreas glands from 23,500 animals just to make a single pound of insulin.

Academic philosophers do pretty odd work... but doing it builds a very socially valuable skill that enables them to say "you are talking a load of bollocks". Given the sewer is rising, here's Ned Block on racist guff "How Heritability Misleads about Race" by Ned Block share.google/8LRxqDcJXNmX...

Learning from Ukraine: “The EU will also set up a “drone alliance” with Kyiv, backed by €6bn in financing to “transform Ukrainian ingenuity into battlefield advantage and into joint industrialisation”, von der Leyen said.” on.ft.com/4nzqyX6

This!!

Why what is happening in the United States shows the need for the United Kingdom to repair its own constitution Our polity is there for the taking Substack emptycity.substack.com/p/the-pointl... Personal blog davidallengreen.com/2025/09/the-...

This is very good

As part of Open House we are opening up the home of @britishacademy.bsky.social next Sunday 21 Sept. It’s a gorgeous building with a lot of history www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/livin...

Not that anyone in politics listens to research, but there is a bucket of research (including some excellent recent studies) which show exactly this. Voters listen to leaders and respond to what they say.

This is going to turn into a train wreck. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-univ...

This is very good.

Demographics, globalisation, and a dramatic lowering in public risk appetite are at the heart of many maybe most of Europe's political challenges. And are all interlinked of course. on.ft.com/46AUDjd

For those who have been asking -- persistently! -- about being able to watch the lectures for the mega-course that I'm teaching with David Blight and Beverly Gage -- "America at 250: A History" -- here are the first two lectures: youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Smart words by John Womersley here: www.timeshighereducation.com/news/could-r...

When Assad’s security state collapsed, locked doors opened, spilling decades of secrets. Among them: 100s of stolen children, hidden in orphanages & used to blackmail parents. We’ve done the deepest dive yet into this cruel system. Here’s what we found 🧵 www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

We're excited to announce CLS will lead the first new nationally representative UK-wide birth cohort study in 25 years. Generation New Era will follow the lives of more than 30,000 babies born in 2026, during their early years, and potentially beyond. Read more: bit.ly/4gfttBP

In a new paper, my colleagues and I set out to demonstrate how method biases can create spurious findings in relationship science, by using a seemingly meaningless scale (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn") to predict relationship outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Thanks to help from Bluesky friends, my blog has now moved to WordPress: drodrik-gzpux.wordpress.com. It is old stuff for now, but maybe I will restart it.

If the Crick had been built somewhere else, there would have been a lot more spare money available to subsidize the development of the cluster, just saying.

www.ukri.org/news/ukri-an... This is great news.

Despite their being imagery of the munition remnants that shows it's clearly not a flare, and nothing in this video showing a flare being launched, there's still denialists claiming it's a flare. Which forms of disordered doubt do you think are in play here? bsky.app/profile/elio...

📸Snapshots from yesterday's event on the role of the industrial strategy. Big thank you to our panel: @samlister.bsky.social @paulnightingale.bsky.social, Karen Northley @the-ia.bsky.social @gilesyb.bsky.social @jillongovt.bsky.social www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/delive...

This is really interesting on major project delivery.

There'll be many folks who are genuinely surprised that this isn't already the case. There'll also be more than a few institutions who are worried as they don't have robust processes to account for spend and/or they're playing fast or loose with the concept of 'investing in research'.

If a Labour government with 400 seats which has nailed its colours to the masts of planning reform and the green transition can't steam roller people like this and their ridiculous selfish BS objections, then what on earth is the point of it?

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/delive... This event starts at 12:30! Watch @jillongovt.bsky.social , @paulnightingale.bsky.social , Karen Northey, Sam Lister and me as we disentangle the Modern Industrial Strategy

Why Nature Risks Are Financial Risks? Read Professor Matthew Agarwala's @matthewagarwala.bsky.social latest blog on how the accelerating decline of global biodiversity is no longer just an ecological concern—it is increasingly a financial one. bennettinstitutesussex.org/stories/biod...

About time.

‼️ On Sept. 7, 🇩🇪 police special forces stopped the freighter #Scanlark in the Kiel Canal, boarded the ship and inspected the crew for alleged espionage and sabotage. It’s suspected of having served as a base for drone flights over critical infrastructure and naval vessels in northern Germany. 1/

I reviewed If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, a new book with an old argument for why AI will kill us all. To put it mildly, I didn't like it www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

The bottom row here is uh, against The Narrative

"The REF’s postponement raises hopes that sanity will prevail on PCE" This is important news for academics who had grave concerns about the 'People, culture and Environment' proposals. @timeshighered.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/refs...

Former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has reignited debate over the British Army’s armoured vehicle programmes, declaring that the UK should have opted for CV90 rather than persisting with Ajax. ukdefencejournal.org.uk/former-defen...

Why didn't you tell me i an able to watch Stanley Tucci travel around Italy eating fine food in TV? This is the pinnacle of civilisation!!

The psychoactive ingredients of kush are easy to import and cook up in local back-room kitchens. This keeps prices low, and makes it harder to crack down on the trade

There is a weird irony that LLMs are now used by employers to detect and reject graduates who used LLMs to cheat at University. A lot of UK employers are paying less attention to degree classifications and university rankings (that provide weak signals) and going straight to tech.

Oh, gosh! It's out! Delighted with the process at Computational Brain & Behavior; thankful to all especially @irisvanrooij.bsky.social for inviting me to the workshop and Todd Wareham for editing it! Hope you enjoy: What Makes a Good Theory, and How Do We Make a Theory Good? doi.org/10.1007/s421...

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it: