Hui: "Italian prosecutors investigating suspected Russian drone flights over an EU space research centre have concluded their suspicions were unfounded ... 21 alleged overflights were actually caused by interference from a private GSM phone signal booster"

Finnish foreign minister expresses solidarity with Denmark after Trump appoints a special envoy who publicly repeats threats to absorb Greenland. In same week that the US director of nat'l intel publicly accuses EU & NATO of being warmongers trying to instigate US-Russia war. x.com/i/status/200...

"We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera." Bizarre. If you offer officials the chance to speak on camera and they decline, it isn't your job to hold a critical story until they change their minds. The right of reply is not a right to delay.

Ongoing serious weaponisation of the military justice system. 'What happens [Kelly] will largely depend on John Phelan, a financier and major Trump donor with no known military background whom the president appointed as the Navy secretary this year.' www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/u...

Essentially, corruption is being legalised (for some). Flynn 'joins Rod Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois who went to prison on corruption charges, as the second person pardoned by Trump to work on behalf of the Bosnian Serb republic' www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Bleak update by @olliecarroll.bsky.social. Ukraine on front foot at Kupiansk, but struggling elsewhere. 'A source in Ukraine’s general staff said during first half of 2025 Russia’s army grew by average of 8-9k a month...while Ukr struggled to replace its casualties' www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

so a thing just occurred to me. a downside of declaring a blockade against venezuela is it makes it easier for other large powers in different parts of the world, say asia, to blockade, say for instance democratic islands, and cloak it as lawful

Starmer had a lot of opportunities (Vance Munich speech, Zelensky White House bustup, etc) to make the case for a real increase in UK defence spending, but he just doesn't want to do it.

Insightful RUSI report on the UK's Atlantic Bastion concept of layered anti-submarine defences. "The aim of this integrated system is to ensure that Russian undersea forces cannot pass undetected through the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland–Iceland–UK gap" static.rusi.org/the-atlantic...

"In the summer, the Pentagon announced plans to purchase nearly 7,500 tonnes of cobalt, reviving stockpiling at a scale not seen since the cold war ... part of a wider push by the military to expand its reserves of critical minerals." www.ft.com/content/42ab...

My story on spate of European drone incidents, which the MI6 chief described y'day as part of a Russian "hybrid" campaign. There are many ways to detect & intercept small drones. But broad coverage across many sites is expensive & shoot-downs can be risky. www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

Bronk: "Despite having the largest and most advanced drone industry in the world, China has actually been prioritizing crewed military hardware...If the US focuses too heavily on drone development and acquisition, it risks losing its slim remaining edge" www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

"Bernstein...estimates local suppliers incl Huawei, Cambricon & Moore Threads will capture 60% of China’s $26bn-worth of spending on AI chips this year. That is a sharp reversal from a few years ago, when [US] firms, chiefly Nvidia, accounted for over 80%" www.economist.com/business/202...

i asked chat gpt to fact check an article for me

UK Ministry of Defence says that a member of the UK armed forces has died in an accident in Ukraine on Tuesday morning. "He was injured in a tragic accident whilst observing Ukrainian forces test a new defensive capability, away from the front lines."

"Russia has welcomed Donald Trump's new US National Security Strategy, calling it "largely consistent" with Moscow's vision." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This shows you how muddled the rationale is. On the one hand, the target was the capsized boat. On the other hand, the target were the men who could've "floated to safety". Which is it? What did JAGs say in that 41-minute gap? And did Adm Bradley sign up to kill shipwrecked people from the air?

The French armed forces minister, Catherine Vautrin, says that the drones were “intercepted” by the navy. Whether that means shot down or jammed is not clear

Drones over French nuclear submarine base last night.

"In other words, immigrants will corrupt the values of the societies they move to—a shocking assertion from a country that is itself built on immigration. The NSS’s prescriptions for Europe flow from this assertion of Judeo-Christian nationalism." www.economist.com/united-state...

"Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, has voted to introduce voluntary military service, in a move aimed at boosting national defences after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Outstanding reporting today from the New Media at the Pentagon.

'Himes, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, told reporters after his meeting with Bradley that the admiral had conveyed to him and Crawford, the committee chair, that there was no order from Hegseth to “kill them all.”' www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

A truly sinister document.

Trump's national security strategy is out and some of the Europe sections are shocking. "...the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

'the Pentagon’s top watchdog has concluded that the information Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared in the chat could have put the mission, U.S. personnel, and national security at risk had it fallen into the wrong hands' www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

'Hegseth relayed the plans in a private Signal chat set up to coordinate the strikes on the Yemen-based Houthi group, but stripped the classification markings, according to a second person.' www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Hard to over-state how much this is a consensus view among serous military-legal observers. "Comparing the drug cartel threat to the conflict with al-Qaeda and subsequently with the Islamic State is like comparing a rifle with a cruise missile." warontherocks.com/2025/12/atta...

"Military leaders will not wake up suddenly one day to find themselves surrounded by and serving in a post-liberal political regime. The decisions that they make along the way will have an enduring impact on whether liberalism adapts to survive" warontherocks.com/2025/12/the-...

An important step in Japan. 'Ms Takaichi now wants to create a stand-alone national intelligence agency to take over from intelligence-gathering by several ... ministries & agencies. On November 14th a new LDP council met to discuss the design.' www.economist.com/asia/2025/11...

After a visit to Bangalore, I wrote this week on the optimistic mood in India's defence-tech scene—boosted by the government's drive for more home-grown arms, more interaction between start-ups & armed forces, and lessons from the India-Pakistan war in May www.economist.com/asia/2025/12...

Incredible. 'Hegseth told an audience in a previously unreported 2016 video that the US military “won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief,” and described the refusal of illegal commands as a part of the military’s ethos' edition.cnn.com/2025/12/02/u...

From the F-16 squadron commander’s Silver Star citation reported on here, it sounds like besides all the downed Reapers, the Air Force narrowly avoided losing one or more manned fighter jets to Houthi air defenses over Yemen during Operation Rough Rider last March

"whether President Obama’s lawyers like it or not, echoes of the Aulaqi memo can be clearly heard in the Trump administration’s deeply unserious justifications regarding imminence and the boat strikes" www.justsecurity.org/124776/secre...

'Freuding had once been able to text American defense officials “day and night,” he said, but lately communication with his counterparts in Washington had been “cut off, really cut off.”' www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

'Former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and one of the bloc’s most senior diplomats, Stefano Sannino, are in custody after Belgian police launched raids as part of a fraud probe on Tuesday' www.politico.eu/article/belg...

"The Chinese-made DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence (AI) model produces more insecure code when prompts mention subjects considered sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to recent research from Crowdstrike." www.lawfaremedia.org/article/deep...

". The central finding of this study is that Europe’s resilience remains situational rather than systemic. A strong performance by a select group of countries in specific domains contrasts with critical shortcomings in others..." hcss.nl/wp-content/u...

Interesting on growing use of submarines by drug traffickers. 'semi-submersibles have significantly reduced their physical, thermal and acoustic signature' www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/uncrewed-and-under-radar-how-auvs-transform-drug-smuggling

'After an October 6 strike also left survivors, the military did not follow up with a “double-tap” strike like it did on September 2. Instead, it rescued the men and sent them back to their home countries.' edition.cnn.com/2025/12/01/p...

I think a lot is going to hinge on two things. One is the specific orders that Hegseth gave prior to the mission. He has publicly lied about events in the past. The second is whether the second strike was aimed at killing survivors or destroying the boat, with survivors killed "incidentally".

'as lawmakers seek answers, they could look into whether the missile used in the second strike was configured as an anti-personnel device —...designed to produce lots of shrapnel — or was instead configured to cause maximal damage to a large object.' www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/u...

NYT: "Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to [kill everyone & destroy the boat]...his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing at least two people on the boat survived' www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/u...

An exhaustive and utterly damning assesment. "In sum, there is simply no plausible argument that the reported killing of two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage of their stricken vessel could be anything other than an extrajudicial killing." www.justsecurity.org/125948/illeg...

Post claims Hegseth ordered survivors of boat strikes - who would be hors de combat - to be killed & that the SOCOM commander followed this order on the basis that "they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo" www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

This statement is way outside of CIA’s lane and erosive of the ethical norm that intelligence should be non-partisan. If that norm vanishes, intelligence loses a very large portion of its value.

Still reeling from the Stanford report on Brexit. Reduced GDP by up to 8% and investment by as much as 18%. The UK Treasury would have £40 billion more each year if Britain had remained in the EU. Devastating self-immolation.

This claim is inaccurate and misleading. The members of Congress categorically did not tell the military to "defy the president" as implied here. What they said was this: "you can refuse illegal orders." That statement is accurate and consistent with American law—though it does require context.

The SECDEF confirming an investigation to the world and labeling an individual under investigation as being part of the “Seditious Six” is unlawful command influence.

Extraordinary step. Pentagon, under pretext of "good order and discipline", threatens to recall to duty and court-martial Senator Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer, after he recorded a video telling troops they could refuse illegal orders. Dangerous & authoritarian. www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/11/...