Thursday 30 July 2026 The Industrial Revolution created factory owners. The Information Age created software billionaires. The age of artificial intelligence may create something altogether different: a class of individuals whose fortunes derive not merely from owning capital or organising labour, but from designing systems capable of performing increasingly sophisticated intellectual work. If this transformation occurs at the scale many technologists anticipate, the economic

Wednesday 29 June 2026 Few questions have exposed the fault lines of contemporary philosophy as dramatically as whether large language models are conscious. The debate has become a collision between radically different conceptions of mind, language and reality. Indeed, one suspects that the disagreement is less about artificial intelligence than about what consciousness has always been. Were Ludwig Wittgenstein, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel som

Tuesday 28 July 2026 Wars are often described in terms of those who pull the trigger. Yet the more consequential actors frequently remain several hundred or several thousand miles from the battlefield. They provide no divisions, deploy no fighter aircraft and formally declare themselves neutral. Instead they contribute satellite imagery, navigation systems, electronic components, intelligence analysis and operational experience. Modern conflict has increasingly become an exer

Tuesday 28 July 2026 Wars have a tendency to expand beyond the geographical boundaries that initially appear to define them. They spread not merely through armies crossing frontiers but through the inexorable logic of strategy. Every supply route becomes a potential battlefield, every commercial network a possible military asset and every supposedly secure rear area a theatre of operations waiting to be transformed. Recent Ukrainian strikes against Russian-flagged vessels in

Tuesday 28 July 2026 Few philosophical questions have emerged so suddenly into public consciousness as whether large language models are conscious. Within scarcely a decade, machines have progressed from awkward pattern recognisers to conversational partners capable of sustained dialogue, subtle humour, literary imitation and philosophical reflection. It is therefore tempting to suppose that consciousness itself has somehow emerged from increasingly sophisticated computation.

Tuesday 28 July 2026 Modern warfare has transformed information into a weapon as potent as artillery. A radio transmission is no longer merely a vehicle for conveying orders or requests for support. It is itself an event. Every emission reveals something, every electronic signature contributes to a pattern and every human characteristic embedded within a transmission may become an intelligence source in its own right. One of the less appreciated dimensions of signals intellig