Sam Dunning

Peter Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, worked on behalf of a Chinese state entity linked to the country’s military and security establishment to undermine British scrutiny of a CCP-led corporate coup within Imagination Technologies, the UK’s second biggest microchip company. Afterwards, Imagination’s technology and core assets were transferred to two Chinese companies, one part-owned by the Russian government. Imagination’s “military grade” technology is in roughly 25% of smartphones and 40% of modern cars. ANY COMPETENT VETTING would have raised this as a red flag. Journalists - REPORT IT! #mandelson #starmer #petermandelson #globalcounsel #ccp

The Forties Pipeline System (FPS) This is the pipeline system that carries most of the oil from the North Sea to the UK. It collects the oil from 85 different North Sea oilfields, and flows around 550,000 barrels of oil per day back to the UK mainland. For context, in total the North Sea has around 400 offshore platforms between the UK and Norway, producing and exporting both oil and gas. FPS is a British oil pipeline system. Exploration drilling for North Sea oil is currently banned on the UK Continental Shelf. It has been since the current government came to power. As a result of the drilling ban, the Forties Pipeline System is currently uninvestable according to its owner INEOS. They haven’t invested in its upkeep for 2 years. INEOS have said the pipeline will close by 2035, but without investment maybe as early as 2030, which is now just 3.5 years away. 550,000 barrels / day is equivalent to 38.96 GW of primary energy. This is 10x more energy than the UK’s new Hinkley Point C nuclear power project, which is projected to cost £48 billion for 3.2GW of electrical power. Electrical energy is joule for joule more valuable than chemical energy, but the comparison of scale is real. 38.9 GW is more energy than the entire National Grid carries. The largest energy system in the UK is not the grid it is this underwater pipeline system. With drilling banned, and the North Sea entering a period of forced closure, the Forties Pipeline System is going to close in the not too distant future. Once the pipeline is no longer economical, the entire Central North Sea oil production will collapse with it. This isn’t something that closes down gracefully, the entire Central North Sea basin reaches market through a single pipe. BP recently announced they are selling up their remaining assets and getting out, Exxon, Chevron, etc are all already long gone. Nobody wants their brand near this collapse. The tax rate is 78%, the government wants this national infrastructure to shut down. It will. The German Chancellor recently called their nuclear fleet closure a “Strategic Blunder”, interesting choice of words. But I think it was obviously a blunder to anyone outside their propaganda bubble. Likewise the UK’s North Sea. The German nuclear fleet averaged 10.3 GW of primary energy output over its operational life, which is around 1/4 the primary energy of the Forties Pipeline System. The UK has a few other pipeline systems but this one is by far the largest and the most critical. Now this infrastructure, isn’t supposed to last forever. But when it goes you should have a plan. In the UK nobody talks about this. It’s taboo. A lot of people think “yeah but they won’t let that happen”… well it happened in Germany, and it happened in Japan. A lot of people want it to happen, and a lot of those people are in politics. So what replaces this? Nothing? Is the UK just going to go silently into the night?

@AnEmergentI @JNeedem DM'd you

@JNeedem I have a spare ticket for all 3 films all weekend!

So excited to be watching this at Royal Albert Hall next weekend :)

reuters.com/world/china/co… "An American scientist convicted of lying to U.S. authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. "Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as ALS and restoring movement in paralyzed patients. But it also has potential military applications: Scientists at China’s People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting mental agility and ​situational awareness, according to the U.S. Defense Department."

First indictment drops re-alleged suppression of disfavoured theories of COVID origins by US NIH officials: “As alleged in the indictment, Dr. Morens and his co-conspirators deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19.”

While the West focuses on chips, China has begun to capture some of the "engineered inputs" for the next decade of tech. Our latest WireScreen Briefing reveals a massive shift in Advanced Materials. wirescreen.ai/briefings/adva…

FirstFT: China orders Meta to unwind $2bn acquisition of AI group Manus ft.trib.al/wpfdo9D

@AnEmergentI and we have arguably dumbed down politics and culture since this warning...

An essay even more relevant today than it was when written at the dawn of the nuclear age.

This is a BIG DEAL. Cybersecurity and intelligence agencies from ten major countries, including the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, and Australia, have jointly released a technical framework to help network defenders counter China-linked cyber actors, particularly their use of large-scale networks of compromised devices, or covert botnets, to conceal and route malicious activity.

Last time China issued this notice, it was a warning to Iran that they are imminently facing an attack but Iranian leadership did not take enough caution & got killed. Based on that, I would assume conflict restarts this weekend.

Currently working on a ppt re historical oil shocks...decided to look at disruptions in terms of the volume of global crude being produced & exported. Hormuz is magnitudes worse than most expect and prices have much further to climb. #OOTT

@lukedepulford @JamestownTweets @PLMattis And @lukedepulford , as you suggest, critical to establish i) whether Powell and co knew that Grandview were Chinese intel (an open secret in Beijing), & ii) whether Powell and co had any access to any sensitive HMG information at the time.

Months before he was appointed National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell was in China, on one of his numerous trips to engage with the Grandview Institution. The Grandview Institution is *not* a normal think-tank. Former CIA analyst and President of @JamestownTweets @PLMattis said: “Grandview is an intelligence-controlled think tank that exchanges the illusion of access for the influence and collection opportunities of elite engagement.” @ASPI_CTS analyst @BethanyAllenEbr said: “GVI has remarkable convening power for an unofficial think-tank, arranging meetings for government and military delegations from around the world with senior Chinese government and party officials." GVI’s links to military and intelligence are “not normal for an unofficial think-tank”, she also said. In response to this, unnamed Foreign Office officials have gone on record to argue that “you can’t engage China without encountering some CCP officials”. The fact that engagement with a CCP intelligence front and elite capture vehicle like Grandview is being casually brushed off and categorised as "normal engagement" is a matter for serious concern, and underlines what @CitySamuel argued in today’s @thetimes: the FCDO is culpably, wilfully blind on China. See the 📸 below for the backgrounds of some of Powell’s interlocutors in Grandview. Just a sample. Let’s be clear: this is NOT a normal institution. Engaging with them in pursuit of dialogue is a weird kind of cosplay. GVI intends to collect intelligence, entrap and influence. They are not benign think-tankers sincerely interested in exchanging views. If their interlocutors (like Powell) don’t know this, it’s a big problem. If they do, then what’s the point? Given that Powell is now the National Security Adviser, I think we are entitled to know: 1⃣ What was the nature of the discussions between Powell and GVI? 2⃣ Were any agreements made between Intermediate and GVI? 3⃣ Did any money or sponsorship change hands? Were any of his trips paid for by GVI? 4⃣ What contact, if any, has he had with this group (directly or indirectly) since being appointed to the most sensitive security related role in the UK? 5⃣ Were these meetings minuted? Has he met with GVI on any of his trips to China while in post? 6⃣ Was his exposure to Chinese intelligence risk-assessed before his appointment, or merely dismissed as “normal engagement” per the FCDO’s risible claim above? It is noteworthy that Powell is widely rumoured to be heavily engaged in foreign policy decision-making, and has appropriated particular authority regarding China, even prompting FCDO officials to lament privately that he is the “de facto Foreign Secretary”. It is no secret that he pushes for a softer line on China. He was even accused of having a hand in the collapse of the Cash/Berry espionage trial (putatively to save Beijing’s blushes). We don’t know how much of his current approach has been formed by his engagement with groups like Grandview, but it is certainly a matter of public interest, given the sensitivity of his role.

BREAKING British data centres at heart of national security scandal part owned by Chinese arms manufacturer

This is huge. Sensitive data of UK nationals for sale in China. Depressingly predictable. 1. Summon the Chinese ambassador. 2. @alexsobel proposed an amendment to prevent data transfer to China, which was resisted by Govt. Can we have this now? news.sky.com/story/medical-…

All this talk of 'process' with Mandelson is truly absurd. It ignores the main obvious weird thing about Mandelson's appointment: Usually, the person who becomes ambassador is a **CAREER CIVIL SERVANT** When PM is determined to make an ambassador of a **CAREER WHEELER-DEALER** who has spent last 10+ years working with all kinds of entities, including those from/connected to **HOSTILE STATES** ... the 'process' obviously becomes a joke. To fixate on it anyway is absurd. Put it this way: 'Mr Smith, you have been with the Foreign Office for ten years now, how did you balance your main responsibilities with your side-hustle consultancy work helping the Chinese deep state have its way with a UK semiconductor company?' The most important political question is **WHY DID STARMER WANT TO MAKE MANDELSON AMBASSADOR IN THE FIRST PLACE?**

@Richard_AHolmes @Peston Yes - x.com/samdunningo/st…

@Peston The Cabinets own propriety and ethics dept advised he would need to before he was appointed. But he didn’t

Here is an interesting question about Peter Mandelson, which presumably Olly Robbins can answer tomorrow. If - as has been reported - UK Security Vetting’s red light on appointing Mandelson as US ambassador was because he was thought to be too close to a Chinese pharma research firm Wuxi, through Global Counsel, the advisory firm Mandelson founded, why on earth didn’t Robbins force Mandelson to sell his shares in Global Counsel as a condition of becoming ambo? Mandelson kept his stake of just under 20% all through his time as ambassador. He only sold them in Feb this year. Yet another weirdness in this extraordinary story

@echetus @haugejostein toilet inspector lol

I asked DeepSeek to find work out what someone of @haugejostein’s talents would be doing in a more meritocratic system and it just replied with this, does anyone speak Chinese and can explain what it means?

“From my holiday, I’ve learned that the Chinese live great! Deliveries and goods are so low cost, the service economy runs all hours, taxis are cheap and available whenever I want one. Ordinary Chinese people truly have a quality of life equal to the west!”

@McNolf @matthewclifford @JuliaLopezMP very good :D

@samdunningo @matthewclifford @JuliaLopezMP “you… quote me”

- The Chancellor doesn’t use AI. - The Tech Secretary doesn’t use AI at work. - Nor did the former AI Minister. - The gov’s public sector AI efficiency drive = 8000 more civil servants since they took office. Yet this summer, Ministers will host an AI adoption summit, telling everyone to use AI. There’s a sort of nouveau champagne socialism to it all as they wilfully drive up the cost of employing humans to the private sector.

@McNolf @matthewclifford @JuliaLopezMP You misquote me

@samdunningo @matthewclifford @JuliaLopezMP “As an FOI expert” why would you admit this

As (sadly) a bit of an FOI expert: 1 We would hardly bother complaining if a dep't refused to disclose a minister's ChatGPT history - they have ample grounds under the legislation to refuse a request like this. They used section 12 to refuse the request initially ('request too long'). This was very foolish ('very easy to extract chatgpt history'). Sections 29, 35, 36, 41, 43 could all have been applicable exemptions 2 This release does not create a legal precedent nor ought it to impact others' ability to refuse a similar request

@JuliaLopezMP Unfortunately, in one of the most absurd rulings I can remember, ministers' ChatGPT usage is deemed to be FOI-able. This is obviously hugely corrosive and more or less guarantees that no minister will (say they) use AI. See e.g. gov.uk/government/pub…