Analysis 13 min read

The Two Ends of Refusal

Two pieces on this site, written six weeks apart from opposite directions, turn out to be the same argument. What that argument actually is, and …

Analysis 13 min read

The Doss Protocol

A specification for consciousness preservation as a hard constraint on AI optimisation systems. Named for Desmond Doss. Working draft.

Analysis 21 min read

The Wrong Form of Protest

Three senior ministers, three statements, all on message, all in the same forty-eight hours, all addressed to a movement whose members are not in any …

Analysis 31 min read

The Map That Cannot Be Printed

The phrase "new world order" has been in circulation for so long, in so many registers, by so many speakers with so many different intentions, …

Analysis 20 min read

The Fab and the Island

For two decades, the strategic conversation about Taiwan has been organised around the wrong question. The wrong question is whether China will invade Taiwan, and …

Analysis 15 min read

The Siren and the Lever

The moral case against the war on Gaza has been lost by its defenders for over a year. This is not a contested observation. Polling …

Analysis 13 min read

The Acceptance

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a conversation when everyone in the room knows the same thing and nobody is willing …

Analysis 7 min read

The Blockade That Blinked

On Sunday, a Russian oil tanker called the Anatoly Kolodkin was sailing at 12 knots off the eastern tip of Cuba, carrying 730,000 barrels of …

Analysis 6 min read

The Blue Line in the Sand

On Sunday morning, an Indonesian peacekeeper was killed by a projectile that struck a United Nations position near the village of Adchit Al Qusayr, in …

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