Agree - it’s a po-faced snooze fest…

Creepy! Visited the abandoned Fort de la Chartreuse. The fort was built in 1817 by the Dutch to defend Liège. After the revolution of 1830, it came into Belgian hands. Decommissioned in 1891, it was converted into a barracks. In 1988, it was finally abandoned by the Belgian army.

V interesting. And maybe multicausal, but I reckon Fraser Nelson gets at one of the reasons - apathetic, screen addicted young men aren’t getting drunk and violent… link below:

True. And also habit

New blog post: open.substack.com/pub/cassiai/...

‚Drones don’t replace troops; in fact, each flight of a first-person-view drone can require up to four soldiers. For flights last week in northeastern Ukraine, a drone squad consisted of a pilot, a navigator, an armorer and a pilot of a retransmitting drone.‘ www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/w...

Russian satellite at centre of nuclear weapons allegations is 'spinning out of control' www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Robustly demonstrated by now that you don’t need a mind to have theory of mind:

Simulating the Russia Ukraine conflict with AI: open.substack.com/pub/kpayne/p...

Human brain cells engineered to evade detection by the immune system have successfully restored muscle control in a rat model of Parkinson’s disease https://go.nature.com/4lqDT3w

Artificial intelligence complicates nuclear deterrence strategy in more ways than you might expect. warontherocks.com/episode/thin...

Pundits are - in vain - looking to economics and politics when trying to explain Trump's behavior. But, in reality, the central place to look if we want to understand Trump and his policies is this: The psychology of dominance. 🧵(1/5)

Nature research paper: Complete sequencing of ape genomes https://go.nature.com/3EfWwqk

Giving a talk in June, with more updates on our experiments so far - www.kcl.ac.uk/events/shall...

And yet, few signs of anything other than business as usual

The Universal Schelling Machine open.substack.com/pub/kpayne/p...

No.

And I’m not stopping there

This is super - Mike and Shashank feel the AGI and discuss much else besides: www.chinatalk.media/p/agi-and-th...

This would be a huge cultural change. Dutch leader of the Party for the Animals announces there is a majority in parliament for banning private fireworks—a mainstay of New Year’s celebrations.

'In response to the DeepSeek mania in January of this year, he said, “I confess I hadn’t heard of them”. This oversight might have been excusable had it not been made by the most senior AI researcher at a [UK] national AI institute.' www.chalmermagne.com/p/how-not-to...

Scientists have created the first map of the crucial structures called mitochondria throughout the entire brain https://go.nature.com/4c2YMxw

Three hypotheses, not mutually exclusive: - The UK has few or no options for nuclear signalling - The UK is not good at nuclear signalling - The UK does not like nuclear signalling Discuss.

Bluesky is the home of cakeist thinking - especially when it comes to HE spending

Utterly wrong

Agree with all this. But a way needs finding to make extended deterrence as credible as the US version. New thinking on nuclear sharing needed; and you can’t easily share the UK weapon…

U.S. military commanders will use artificial intelligence tools to plan and help execute movements of ships, planes and other assets under a contract called “Thunderforge” led by start-up Scale AI, the company said Wednesday.

Extraordinary stuff

'The current focus on percentage figures as a test of political virility risks obscuring the fact that what NATO and Europe in particular require are credible armed forces capable of fighting and winning' writes @mtsavill.bsky.social in the latest RUSI Commentary.

😭

The UK's '2.5% of GDP by 2027' announcement is welcome. But let's be clear. That trajectory essentially allows the MoD to maintain programmes & plug growing holes in existing force structure, rather than any dramatic change, such as backfilling for American assets in Europe.

Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who dove onto President John F. Kennedy’s uncovered limousine in Dallas in a heroic attempt to shield him from the fatal gunshots Lee Harvey Oswald fired, died Feb. 21. He was 93.

The number of uk academics is now shrinking quickly. Devastating to many individuals. But important context - it increased by 30000+ in the last decade.

Revisiting my thoughts on the UK’s minimal deterrent in light of recent events. I argued for a new air launched nuclear-tipped cruise missile, perhaps Anglo-French. Part of my rationale was the impact of a second Trump term. open.substack.com/pub/kpayne/p...

Macron sets a high standard of leadership and integrity in standing up to Trump's gibberish - let's hope Starmer maintains this standard. Slava Ukraini!

Just to underline - the US voted with Russia and North Korea on a UN resolution on Ukraine. China abstained

Yes. Fwiw I hope the SDR: Pivots from RN to RAF and Army Pivots from surface fleet to submarine Pivots from Asia-PAC to Europe Restores second leg of triad - indep of US Joins more with Europeans on C4ISR/space Sets AI to max, obvs 🤖

Correct assessment.

Essential question is whether you think Trump would defend Estonia et al. Seems fairly clear to me he mightn’t. Therefore new thinking needed asap…

Expect to see a lot more of this 👇 in the coming months & years. If Europe is at least pretending to have a serious conversation about life without a US security guarantee, then the same conversation has to be had about tech dependence on the US. Whether anything will happen is another matter.

Air launched warhead asap

“A key finding is that tactical drones are inflicting roughly two-thirds of Russian losses…twice as effective as every other weapon in the Ukr arsenal put together…remarkable…for weapons which did not officially exist in the Ukr mil at start of the war” www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...

It me! Forgot Bluesky for a mo

Boom time www.theguardian.com/business/liv...

We're hiring a Professor of Military Strategy and Technology @hertieschool.bsky.social @hertiesecurity.bsky.social! More details here: apply.interfolio.com/163523

Only a thin ribbon of human history ever got to juggle a guy in mortal kombat at an arcade with 12 kids behind you yelling OOOH

This is a very interesting read. Personally, I am particularly interested in the political implications of this (second third of the article) but all of it is quite fascinating. #Biedermeier www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The reverse in humans…

OpenAI "didn’t reveal the amount spent, but said that the expensive version of the process used 172 times the amount of “compute” as the chaeaper approach—suggesting around $3,000 to solve a single query that takes humans seconds." www.economist.com/business/202...

Do come and hear us discuss our Universal Schelling Machine: www.ccw.ox.ac.uk/events/2025/...