When SpaceX’s share price fell last week, Elon Musk lost another vast slice of his fortune. That hardly qualifies as a national tragedy. But it is a reminder that one of the richest men in history owes much of his wealth to a company routinely presented as the ultimate triumph of private enterprise. The reality … Read more
Inside the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship I attended another far-right meeting this week. This one didn’t feature skinheads, St George’s flags or chants outside a hotel. Instead there were smart suits, venture capitalists, cabinet ministers, think tank directors and some of the most influential figures on the international conservative right. It was the Alliance for … Read more
People worry that AI is getting smarter. Genius science curmudgeon Richard Dawkins recently declared that AI was conscious — or at least conscious without knowing it. The singularity is apparently coming. People are already forming emotional bonds with chatbots, in some cases even falling in love. But that’s not my experience. I’m angry about the … Read more
One of the daftest things I read on line is the assertion that “you can’t rewrite history” This, of course, is nonsense, history is rewritten all the time, that is how history works. Each generation writes it’s own history, attitudes change, new facts emerge, documents are found in the archives, things are dug up from … Read more
Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been pardoned by President Donald Trump. Zhao—known as “CZ”—was sentenced to four months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to breaching US money laundering laws. Binance itself was fined $4.3bn after investigators found it had helped users bypass sanctions. That would be a … Read more
Last week, YouGov retracted a poll suggesting church attendance was rising in the UK. The results, it turned out, had been distorted by bots or AI. This is disappointing given that the research was published last year, and got a lot more attention than the retraction did. To understand why that matters, it helps to … Read more
Foreign influence in British politics is no longer theoretical. Last month I wrote about some unusual patterns of political funding flowing into Reform. British electoral law doesn’t allow foreign donations, but Reform appeared to have found a way around this—using UK-registered companies as a kind of front. It turns out I may have been too … Read more
How much activity on social media is actually real? How much is bots? How much is click farms? And at what point does the distinction stop mattering? Readers with long memories might remember a slightly unorthodox survey I ran a while back: counting PornBots across platforms. The logic was simple—PornBots are easy to spot, so … Read more
Britain has a grooming gang problem — but it isn’t the one you’ve been told to worry about. Advances in technology and the dominance of online platforms have transformed the scale and nature of child sexual abuse. Offenders no longer need to operate in physical groups or specific locations. They can access victims anywhere, at … Read more
Strike!!! Britain is on strike. A massive strike to bring the government to its knees and force a general election. At least, that’s the claim. This isn’t just people refusing to work for a week. The strike also involves not shopping, not going to the pub, not doing… anything. Total withdrawal from society. You didn’t … Read more