Most analysis of China’s military-civil fusion looks for firms that pivot to defense. The story of this Chinese robotics firm’s path from civilian to military use suggests a different dynamic entirely.

Even if I were not a Zone Books completist, I’d be pretty stoked about this one.

📢 Fragmented Efforts: Defense AI in Brazil🇧🇷 📚 Although Brazil gradually moves towards defense AI, initatives are limited in scope, driven by individual services and fragmented, write Joao Paulo Moralez and Santiago Rivas in our latest study. See defenseai.eu/daio_study26...

seeing more and more collaborations like this asia.nikkei.com/politics/def...

With the cover now finalized, I am pleased to announce my forthcoming book: 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐦: 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞. Available this October from @ucpress.bsky.social s. 🧵 1/4

**Postdoc positions** Kyoto University has opened up applications for the Hakubi Project, due May 17, 2026. This is a cream of the crop postdoc ("all fields, from basic to applied"), 5 (FIVE!) years, great research budget. Please apply or let others know! www.hakubi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/recruitme...

Fun fact: The exact location of the first launch is now the 9th hole on a golf course, commemorated by a memorial. Image source: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...

poor guy has never considered he could just be a butterfly dreaming he's marc andreesen

the astrofinancial imaginary

We have a 4-year AHRC-funded PhD studentship on 'Rescue curation of space heritage' advertised! Supervision by me, space scientist Lucie Green (@luciegreen.bsky.social), and curators of space and engineering at the Science Museum, Doug Millard and Ben Russell www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

To the surprise of some officials in Kyiv, no one from the U.S. bothered to ask Ukraine to share its expertise in how to defend against drones before starting the offensive in Iran, Simon Shuster and Nancy A. Youssef report. theatln.tc/AFPCstm6

I think one of the most staggering industry shifts in my 16 years as a tech reporter is that it’s not become a question of “should our product help the government kill and/or surveil people?” but “to what extent?” www.anthropic.com/news/where-s...

This is a really key thing that people are just not getting: "VC" is simply *not venture capital* anymore. There is ZERO risk for A16Z and peers. They do not resemble the thing that regulators described when creating the category of venture capital. A cartel of ~4 firms runs the whole industry.

This is cool as hell: An app designed to ping people about nearby smartglasses. Also cool: The creator was inspired by @404media.co coverage, a great illustration of why their journalism is so essential. This kind of work is funded by paid subscribers so become one of those if you can.

What's in a name? Our @dylangyauchl.bsky.social writes about why the term "tech industry" is incoherent and lends itself to serving Silicon Valley's techno-optimist PR campaign. revolvingdoorproject.substack.com/p/the-techno...

"Algorithmic management is 'a way of organising work in which workers are directed, tracked and assessed—all at once, in real time—by a computer system[.]' Tendrils of this managerial regime are now creeping into offices, universities, even hospitals." –Shane Boyle proteanmag.com/2025/12/23/t...

Kyle Chan: "China’s strength across multiple overlapping industries creates a compounding effect for its industrial policy efforts." open.substack.com/pub/highcapa...

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right. Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement. This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

SpaceX is now focused on “building a self-growing city on the moon,” Musk said on X. That goal could be achieved in “less than 10 years,” whereas colonizing Mars would “take 20-plus years.”

The SpaceX/xAI merger situation is actually pretty important and, I think, very bad. "Data centers in space" is a bit of a pipe dream, but SpaceX now dominates low-Earth orbit in a highly concerning way. Starlink is real and could monopolize a lot of things.Not Good! www.404media.co/this-spacex-...

"Drawing on a 20.3-million-query audit of ChatGPT, we map systematic biases in the model's representations of countries, states, cities, and neighbourhoods. From these empirics, we argue that bias is not a correctable anomaly but an intrinsic feature of generative AI”. ht: Dagmar Monett

I tasked the UMBRA-10 satellite over LC-39B to capture SLS on the pad. The capture lasted 33 seconds (2026-01-20 04:20:43 - 4:21:16 UTC) so here it is turned into a short video.

New: meet ELITE, the Palantir app ICE is using to find neighborhoods to raid. Map interface; officers search for immigrants; click person to bring up individual dossier. This is clearest link between what Palantir is building and ICE's activities on the ground yet www.404media.co/elite-the-pa...

the exact same arguments were used to boost new space a decade ago

"Srinivasan himself has started a 'Network School' on an artificial island near Singapore, where techno-optimists can work their day jobs remotely while living in a hotel together and learning how to 'bootstrap'... a new society [ — ] 'society-as-a-service'"

This edition of Japan Daily Briefing looks at some things to watch this week, as well as the "radar lock" incident, a defense ministerial with Australia, and efforts by opposition parties to coordinate their candidates for the next general election. open.substack.com/pub/observin...

Scoop: Provisions of the NDAA that would ensure military members’ right to repair their own equipment are set to be removed from the funding act, replaced by language that will require the military to pay subscription fees to defense contractors via “data-as-a-service.” www.wired.com/story/subscr...

Every service is building its own “autonomous” systems. Without shared standards, they may as well be speaking different languages in combat.

Palantir update via www.wired.com/story/alex-k...

circling back with some research contacts from my fieldwork in new space to find so many now work at defence companies, and so many of those fledgling new space companies are now more explicitly defense companies

Als je beter wilt begrijpen welke financiële, juridische, publieke en technologische krachten er achter de giga beurswaarde van Tesla zitten - het fundament van de rijkdom en macht van het zgn. 'genie' Elon Musk. Vandaag gepubliceerd (open access): www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Google plans to build a large artificial intelligence data centre on Australia’s remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island after signing a cloud deal with the Department of Defence this year, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with officials www.afr.com/technology/g...

Curious about the role of VC influence in defence but no time to read my full research artice? I have a shorter version of the @finandsoc.bsky.social article on VC and military AI up now with @theconversation.com. Check it out! theconversation.com/the-silicon-...

"Tap water isn’t drinkable. Power outages are common. The national average annual wage is $2,200. Yet rising on Jakarta’s outskirts are giant, windowless buildings packed inside with Nvidia’s latest artificial-intelligence chips." www.wsj.com/tech/ai/its-...

"The beam reflected by these satellites is very intense, four times brighter than the full Moon."

反物質と物質の違い、日米などの研究で検証　素粒子ニュートリノ解析 - 日本経済新聞 www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZ...

The object’s fall to Earth highlights the growing problem of space junk – and how humanity is dealing with it. 🧪 🔭

We're seeing lots of headlines about the catastrophic impact of massive data center expansion. But what else could data centers look like? In my perpetual quest to seek out alternative technofutures, I want to highlight the really cool work of Keolu Fox. 🧵

👀

The first article of the Silicon Valley special issue I’m editing is out! @mrshoward.bsky.social shows how contrarianism isn’t genuine dissent but a performative strategy rooted in venture capital. The piece develops negative mimesis, how dissent is aestheticized, repackaged & stripped of politics.

check this out!

Susannah Glickman on the rhetoric of the defense-tech sector and the reality of defense industrial policy

wild

Amazing title slide I have to share before even watching @scriptingjapan.bsky.social youtu.be/TElWjeFmtl4?...

ah