Well, it’s going to be more like “All SDR, All the Time”, as I’ve just noticed that MOD is planning to close the consultation in two weeks. Here goes. Well, Chapter 3 is in my mind the most impressive bit of the SDR Green Paper so far. It basically sets out the notion that, although…
Read More Sunday SDR, Chapter 3: Adaptability and InfluenceOK, so it’s time for another chapter of the Strategic Defence Review as a Blog. Chapter 2 begins as follows: The use of force as an option is becoming more complicated. It is likely to become more difficult to use force in the way in which we have used it in the last two decades.…
Read More Sunday SDR: Chapter 2So, here goes with the first in my series of posts on the strategic defence review as a blog. Here are what the MoD thinks are the major forces that will determine the political environment: The National Security Strategy sets out the key threats to the UK’s security and the underlying drivers of those threats.…
Read More Sunday Strategic Defence Review Blogging: Chapter 1The Ministry of Defence has published its strategic review Green Paper online as a WordPress blog for public comment. I will, of course….eh? The MOD just published a major policy paper as a weblog for anyone to scrawl on? The British Ministry of Defence? Things must be bad. I snark, of course. I should, of…
Read More gentlemen, start your enginesWell, this is hardly surprising; the FBI was in the habit of pretending to be on a terrorism case every time they wanted telecoms traffic data. Their greed for call-detail records is truly impressive. Slurp! Unsurprisingly, the lust for CDRs and the telcos’ eagerness to shovel them in rapidly got the better of their communications…
Read More a single net of conspiracyA lot of other countries who are small economies compared to the USA or China, industrialised, and heavily dependent on foreign trade have a government policy of keeping a substantial local ownership stake in important businesses or important technologies. This may or may not be held by the State. Examples of such so-called “core investor…
Read More the Harrowell optionThe thing that pisses me off about Al-Qa’ida is that they insist on egging the government on. That said, I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than Phil Woolas wanting to have reports of any foreign student who misses ten lectures. I can’t think of many things more ridiculous and contemptible than Phil Woolas anyway,…
Read More HOWNOTTO be caught as a student terroristBruce Sterling quotes a study into state failure which – counter-intuitively – puts Iceland and Canada at the top of the list of stable polities. It’s worse than that, though; they reckon Hungary is superstable , and they’re in the middle of an epic bank-currency-credit-mortgage crisis which has metastatised into a panic call to the…
Read More StabilityThis BBC Radio 4 documentary about the British nuclear deterrent and the people who operate it is absolutely cracking. Not surprisingly, the man behind it is none other than Professor Peter Hennessy (can we call him Henn-dawg yet?). One of the things that stands out is the amount of desperate psychological coping going on. The…
Read More mentalities, bunker, and otherwisePacker vs. Kilcullen in the New Yorker. Here’s the key paragraph: Police are another main issue. We have built the Afghan police into a less well-armed, less well-trained version of the Army and launched them into operations against the insurgents. Meanwhile, nobody is doing the job of actual policing—rule of law, keeping the population safe…
Read More a network of friendly militias