"With science, one can explain everything except onself." - Enrico Fermi

📢The Swedish Defence University is recruiting TWO fully-funded, salaried PhD positions to conduct research on Artificial Intelligence and War, supported by the national WASP-HS programme - a unique opportunity. Please share widely! www.fhs.se/en/swedish-d...

Daniel Ellsberg in 1959 on the political uses of madness, the extraordinary case of Adolf Hitler & its implications in a nuclear age: "What Hitler was, no man - we must hope - aspires to be. But what Hitler knew, others can learn and use. And win with it - until they fail, and smash all humankind."

Last call for papers for this conference in Venice next year!

“There was never from about 2 weeks from the time I took charge [of the atomic bomb] project any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy and the project was conducted on that basis.” - General Leslie Groves, testifying at the J. R. Oppenheimer hearing in 1954

⏳ Excited to share my new piece, published in @millennjournal.bsky.social! I explore how imagined futures of emergent and disruptive tech loop back to shape present-day politics of war - and how the early history of military ballooning (1783-1907) shows us this recursive logic at work.

Legal settlement with AI company Anthropic means authors may be in line for compensation if their work was used to train models.

🚨 CALL TO PAPERS 🚨 Honoured to be delivering a keynote at the 8th International PhD Congress at Ca' Foscari University of Venice held from 18 to 20 February 2026. call to papers is out for contributions on "systems and knowledge." Deadline: 09 November 2025 www.unive.it/web/en/8275/...

An excellent video on the past and perhaps future of Project Orion, the Cold War plan for space travel powered by nuclear detonations.

Words to ponder as we develop thinking machines whose inner workings are increasingly inscrutable and whose discoveries might soon surpass our understanding... From Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)

I am interviewed on one of the Dagens Industri podcasts on the topic of the new landscape of military tech innovation.

Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall. The red ball indicates the hypocentre of the nuclear explosion on August 6, 1945.

‪My revisiting of The Scientific Way of Warfare in 2023: “The Persistent Appeal of Chaoplexic Warfare: Towards an Autonomous S(war)m Machine?” fhs.diva-portal.org/smash/record...

A quarter of a century on from its advocacy by the likes of Ronfeldt and Aquilla, the mode of chaoplexic warfare I described in my first book still remains the unfulfilled horizon of the military imaginary, always just around the corner yet perpetually deferred.

“Scientists aren’t responsible for the facts that are in nature. It’s their job to find the facts. There’s no sin connected with it – no morals. If anyone should have a sense of sin, it’s God. He put the facts there." (Percy Bridgman, Robert Oppenheimer's undergraduate teacher)

Einstein on relative difficulty of physics and politics (from John Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age, 1959)

The Sedan crater left by the shallow underground nuclear test (104kt) conducted in Nevada in July 1962 for research into using nukes for construction projects. 390m wide by 100m deep, it helped determine that ancient craters formed on earth and beyond result from meteor strikes, not volcanoes.

“The technical arrogance that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds”

Job opening at the Swedish Defence University for an Associate Senior Lecturer in System Science for Defence and Security with a specialization in cyber defence. Scholars with social science and STS backgrounds welcome! fhs.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Leo Szilard, How to Live with the Bomb and Survive (1960)

Finally, the first english translation of Günther Anders's most important work!

“We have, in a real sense, reached a kind of “singularity”—but not the long-anticipated awakening of machine consciousness. Rather, what we’re entering is a new consciousness of ourselves.”

Second postdoc opening at the Swedish Defence University for work on narrative politics for those with quants skills (incl. machine learning, data mining, etc.) - Deadline 31 August.

Opening for a three year postdoc with a focus on narrative geopolitics at our place! Deadline on 31 August.

Open seminar at SEDU on 19 May (live broadcast available): Whose nuclear umbrella in 2040?

🚨Register now for the Global Nuclear Order annual conference🚨 'Rethinking nuclear deterrence in an era of strategic uncertainty' - Friday 25 April 2025 on Zoom. link👉 buff.ly/WWcPbYt @gnobisa.bsky.social @lubazat.bsky.social @soulpark.bsky.social @ajbousquet.bsky.social @abhishek3690.bsky.social

The recording of this event is now available to view. Two really instructive panels on the current perilous nuclear situation, if I may so myself. Featuring Robert Dalsjö, Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Alexander Mattelaer, Lars-Erik Lundin, Tytti Erästö and Martin Goliath.

The message is classic autocratic rhetoric (the infallible leader), cloaked in usual ironic overstatement. The past tense anticipates Trump's political "martyrdom" & nostalgic hagiography ("if only we'd listened!"). Pure Trumpism: grandiose self-aggrandisement & plaintive victimhood in one package.

Last day of registration for in-person attendance at next week's event! Live stream for remote viewing will be available on the event page: www.fhs.se/en/swedish-d...

1. Trump tariffs plainly a punitive act of economic coercion with potential to spiral into economic warfare if targets do not meekly submit to it or offer concessions. EU is in a perilous situation. It cannot leave such an attack without a counter-response but has to expect more reprisals in turn.

I will be moderating this timely event on April 8 in which we bring distinguished experts together to discuss our new nuclear disorder. Register by April 4 if you want to attend in person. Live streaming available on the event page.

I had the privilege of examining Mark's PhD, a really profound and insightful engagement with the phenomenology of war. Essential reading for all interested in critical and philosophical approaches to understanding the experience of armed conflict.

Hot off the press! My new article on wartime gardening and the meaning and politics of military victory is now out #openaccess in @EuroJournIN at journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/.... What does it argue? A thread:

The landmine ban was heralded for decades as exemplary success story of weapon prohibition thru intl agreement & norm-setting, eliding fact that states complied only where militarily convenient (e.g. US excluding Korea from commitments). We are seeing right now fragility & contingency of this norm.

An event hosted next month at the Swedish Defence University bring experts together to discuss the new nuclear disorder. Register by April 4 if you want to attend in person. Streaming link will be forthcoming.

Spotted in Chicago.

The idea that Europe can somehow make up for a complete US withdrawal of support to Ukraine is a dangerous fantasy. Even if European states could summon the resources to buttress Ukraine’s conventional capability (implausible in itself), they would remain utterly vulnerable to nuclear coercion. 🧵

"The reactionary internationale: the rise of the new right and the reconstruction of international society" - a programme centred on a new constitutive principle (birth-cultural sovereignty) and two new institutions (exclusive spheres of competence and transactionalism)

"Why so serious?" - how the Internet has taken over the totality of culture, from the Troll-in-Chief down.

Nearing the event horizon of the idiocracy singularity.

"This paper puts forth five hard problems that AGI's emergence presents for U.S. national security: (1) wonder weapons, (2) systemic shifts in power, (3) nonexperts empowered to develop weapons of mass destruction, (4) artificial entities with agency, and (5) instability."

The alignment of crypto grifters and populist demagogues tells you everything you need to know about the new politics. From here on, it's all confidence tricks and rug pulls. Guess how that's going to work out for the little guys.

Trump’s push for great-power spheres of influence appeals to some on the left for ostensibly ending NATO and avoiding world war. Never mind that it tramples peoples of smaller states and that expecting an order based on rapaciousness & territorial conquest to be pacificatory is wholly delusional.

Along with abandoning Ukraine, Trump’s stance on Canada, Greenland, and Panama signals a return to great-power spheres of influence. Taiwan’s independence may therefore last only as long as it takes to reshore high-end chip production.

The Trump regime is intent on breaking from all the liberal restraints and niceties it believes have been holding back US power. Yet what it is attempting to seize with one hand it is destroying with the other through its unprecedented bonfire of soft power.

Fantastic PhD thesis by Andrew Merrill on "Start-Up War: Venture Capital, Silicon Valley, the Pentagon and the Wars Yet-to-Come" - hugely insightful & timely exploration of the new military-industrial complex utoronto.scholaris.ca/items/e3ee52...

The Yellow Peril and the Ontology of the Enemy - "this paper turns to the archives of the Operations Research Office (ORO) during the Korean War to argue that race war orders and produces a scientific 'truth' of war."

Here’s a happy thought. We tend to think of AI and automation as removing human soldiers from war. But what if the mass economic employment caused by AI ends up making the use of cannon fodder in war not only possible but socially desirable?