This week the most advanced AI model on the planet got switched off by a foreign government. British researchers were studying it. British companies were testing it. British hospitals were piloting it. Not any more. This isn't an AI story. It's the story of every industry we used to lead. Britain has some of the best AI talent in the world. DeepMind was built here. Our AI Safety Institute writes the rules other countries follow. We have the researchers, the universities, the standards. What we don't have is the power stations to run the data centres, the planning system to build them, or the industrial base to make the chips. So the work happens here and the value lands somewhere else. We invent. Others build. Others decide. Then we read about it on Saturday morning. Same story as the kit our soldiers don't have. Same story as the factories we used to. I spent nine months in government making this argument inside the room. I'll make it louder from outside.

I like to think I have a decent grasp of how incentives shape innovation, but “luxury fashion using reconstructed T. rex collagen to create handbags” was definitely not on my bingo card.

Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. signal.org/blog/pdfs/2026-06…

On the manufacturing of consent…

While it’s nice to see Tony Blair championing points that would’ve got you called a far-right extremist just 12 months ago, it’s hard not to see it as a live demonstration of the “me sowing / me reaping” meme.

EL PAPA DIJO QUE AGUANTE LA PIRATERÍA LOS TORRENTS Y ANNA ARCHIVE

Late to the party

“Expatriation is very largely about Oedipal revolt, it is about the feeling that if you're not going to kill your father, at least you're going to kill him symbolically by getting away from him. You find a new father.” - Robert Hughes, in an interview with Clyde Packer

The great advantage of being Australian in Britain is that people will often assume unfamiliar words are either technical or charming.

I tend to think the complete opposite. The changes seem nonsensical and economically ruinous because you're looking at it from the old political paradigm. A decade ago, politicians loved investment because capital was ideologically aligned with their values. Investment, especially foreign investment into Australia, was the chief vector for the globalized homogenization that has raked its claws across western culture. But that is changing. Look at the values espoused today by the world's wealthiest and most powerful people. Albanese and Chalmers do not want Elon Musk sinking cash into Australia. They don't want the incoming generation of AI investors, weaned on Alex Karp's books and Moldbug blogs investing in Australia. All investment comes with strings attached, and the regime tolerates it when the strings are growth and shareholder value at any cost, liked it when those strings were ESG metrics, diversity and inclusion - but what if those investors are trying to fund a technological future which requires less imported manpower, closer adherence to Western values and the stability it brings? I talk a lot about how the New Right in this country needs to speed run through the epistemic thresholds the UK and American reactionaries already have, so we can bring on the same political revolution here. But have you considered our opponents are doing the same thing? The Australian Labor Party is the most politically privileged managerial regime in the world, because they have something Labour, the Democrats, and the Nordic technocrats didn't - hindsight. We like to think the global reactionary shift was brought on by shit posting, memes and Honesty In Videogames Journalism but that's not even half the story - always follow the money. The money started shifting a decade ago. To the point it's noticeable now. The biggest threat to Albanese's Modern Australia project isn't One Nation, or podcasts, or protest marches. It's money. This is why they've picked fights with the social media corps, why there's a go slow on AI, why crypto and emerging financial tech is so heavily regulated and taxed. Modern Australia is a reactionary movement of its own. These people are trying to keep Australia locked in a 2006-2012 stasis. Where money is progressive, growth is people, media is old and state power is absolute. The concerning thing is so far, it's working.

Shane Drinkwater（Australian b.1960）

More accurate than most salaried professional commentators on British politics

Finally, technology has caught up with 1940s Argentinan literature

If incentive structures are the fundamental issue for you when considering action, perhaps stick to inaction.

What is the shape of an idea?

"The law is an accumulation of tireless attempts to block a man's desire to transform life into a moment of poetry." — Yukio Mishima