Sam

Just hosted the first ever Peripheries dinner. What do Private Military/Security Companies do, and where do they fit into the changing role of the state? 10/10. More to come in the future - watch this space.

Both types hold immense value in my vision for Britain

🇬🇧 remains the market leader for creating eccentrics. Some leave, walking for a decade through far flung countries, getting involved in a handful of tribal conflicts and learning 16 regional dialects before returning home to study obscure beetles. Others bath in their bins.

was sleepy as hell on my drive to work and i couldn’t stop thinking about the brick method of driving

An FT analysis of procurement documents and interviews with people familiar with the contracts found local governments across China deploying AI-powered surveillance as Beijing pushes police forces toward “predictive policing.” @EleanorOlcott ft.com/content/f8fa47…

@CharlieGLusaka @akmoler Extremely helpful, thank you. I’m thinking about it again in light of current horrific outbreak in DRC

@akmoler @Discoplomacy Equally, as we know from "Getting to Zero", in the West Africa Ebola outbreak a decade ago, FCDO had ODA health funds for SL, and a public health expert in Freetown: Dr Johnson describes how that expert didn't stop to listen to him; and the consequences were what they were.

I’m interested in learning about the deeper conversation around British foreign aid and disease prevention. In layman’s terms (e.g. my terms) I want to understand why the UK does/doesn’t have an almost Health SWAT team that we deploy abroad in targeted high leverage manner. Who’s best to read/talk to?

Sometimes we over intellectualise issues that should actually be simple and binary. For example: if I am Prime Minister and I want to build a nuclear power station, why can I simply not give the order for this to be executed? Why am I able to be blocked? Why is it taking 15 years? If you cannot do that, then the Government has lost its absolute mandate. It is, unfortunately, that binary. Until this question is answered, conversations around ‘the role of the state’ or ‘the current order’ and so on don’t matter as much.

This is a delightful essay. It presents a couple of questions I’ve rudimentarily repackaged to offer my three cents in turn to each. 1) Where is the intellectual challenge to the current settlement, why does the populist right seem to have more insurgent energy than the left or centre, and who is the left’s intellectual lodestar? Ironically, the intellectual challenge to the current settlement will not come from Westminster (or Manchester). It will not come from people who are paid to think and intellectualise about this, writing PDFs and reports. They will provide a form of scaffolding to the emerging energy, but the challenge will come from elsewhere - perhaps through industrialists. Either way, the challenger to the current settlement will not wrap itself in today’s political language, and I strongly suspect their world views will not have been formed in the 1990s. We should not have another leader who turned 20 when Blur v Oasis was the current topic of the day. That world - that era - is dead. The right has more insurgent energy than the left because it is closer to the wider public’s current issue set, and doesn’t moralise in the same way the left does. People want to shake up the status quo not be lectured about how it works in its current form, or worse, see how others are getting ahead without hard work. The right articulates this better than the left. That’s before we touch on economics and perceived trust in who can handle them. Britain’s media environment plays a role in this currently broken landscape too. The incentives do not align. 2) Does Britain have a strategy for the AI industrial revolution? Where is the programme, and how does Britain avoid becoming dependent on foreign AI ‘oligarchs’? We do have a strategy at a top level. The question remains around how we fund and power it. We need deeper capital markets, cheaper energy, ability to build and roll out. However this is the stack that most excites from me purely from a Government-doing-something POV. Our AISI is world leading which should always be remembered. Too much else to write here but v eyes open to the challenges. 3) Can the British state still deliver? What is Britain for? Really these are the core questions. If these are not set out at the top of the stream, everything else downstream becomes this mess of small ‘tactical wins’ or press releases that often contain perverse incentives and further drive apathy and hatred towards Westminster. As a Prime Minister, you are not a conduit for what you think the British public (/endless focus groups) think Britain is - you are there to STAMP AND EXECUTE your vision for what it is. Strongmen get this. Our current leaders don’t. Hence the HR-approved soulless snippets we get. On the first part it depends where and on what. The more macro issue is that too many of the British state’s decisions are made from a “what happens if we get sued/taken to court/dragged through an inquiry” POV. Too slow, too legalised, always looking for the option that would see the least legal ramifications if it went wrong. Again - this is an incentives issue. On the latter question: Britain is still a country that prioritises fairness. Britain is and will continue to be an important country for many smaller nations. It is not on par with China or the US. It doesn’t need to be. We can still accomplish MANY of our aims globally using our networks and influence. We have substantially useful people located in London across finance, law, maritime and so on. We should be deploying a SWAT mindset to our engagements with many other countries - we come in, fix a specific issue, either charge them OR do it because it benefits our nation at home (e.g. diseases prevention at source.) There remain a series of global projects the UK could pursue if it decided to be far more hard nosed and realpolitik. More on that another time.

New reporting from WSJ confirms what I'd heard about He Lifeng getting quite concerned about AI x jobs. Always helpful to get some corroboration on what you hear from the rumor mill. My piece on the topic linked in reply.

@akmoler That’s interesting - would it be fair to say (again, layman’s terms) that in terms of bang per buck, this could be something we should finance from a resilience/nat sec POV through foreign aid more than other programmes e.g. education? With constrained budget

@Discoplomacy FCDO ran a recently expired programme called Public Global Health Rapid Support Team, which functioned in this manner. Epidemic surveillance and prevention is ostensibly part of the FCDO's mandate still, but like everything it has been cut + was dwarfed in comparison to USAID

A one-armed woman has gone mega-viral after she quickly refuted a cop’s claim that she was driving with a phone in her “right hand.”

@RossMcCaff A saving grace I suppose, although I would love to see Todd kicking about Galston or Killie

@Discoplomacy he rarely drags himself that far north

Glasgow's viral food pish getting almost as bad as Manchester

AI should dramatically increase quality of life and individual freedoms for people around the world. The OpenAI Foundation is making an initial $250M commitment to measurement, transition support, and new approaches to broadly shared prosperity. openaifoundation.org/news/economic-…

More interesting point is reference to frontier AI being embedded in GCHQ systems. Would guess this would have to be frontier American AI?

British intelligence agency GCHQ: “Tech companies are releasing AI-driven innovations at a remarkable pace, with untold consequences, as algorithms are weaponised often just below the threshold of traditional warfare. And China is now a tech superpower with sophisticated cyber, intelligence and military capabilities…And when you pair data’s exponential growth with AI’s ability to extract new value – at ever faster speeds – it’s clear that data is a strategic asset.  Others recognise that. China certainly does.”

The 65-member board also incl Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink, Jack Ma, Pony Ma etc. A rare forum to bring together US & Chinese elites amid decoupling. Scoop: Nvidia chief Jensen Huang to join board at prestigious Tsinghua university as.ft.com/r/da253e7a-e12…

Should add: we hosted and talked with someone who actually runs a large PSC. Not an abstract discussion based on news or think tank reports, but an actual breakdown and analysis by someone who does this for a living across Africa.

Just hosted the first ever Peripheries dinner. What do Private Military/Security Companies do, and where do they fit into the changing role of the state? 10/10. More to come in the future - watch this space.

First lady of Sierra Leone renting London council flat backs FGM #Echobox=1779914085" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…