Jun 29, 2026

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A small grey white spotted feather, skipping along in the breeze on the side of the road. Merde. I immediately knew what this meant. As my doggo and I headed out for our run, the fear I had for the local rogue guinea fowl appeared to have finally manifested - it had been taken by a predator.

To say I was surprised would be a lie, the fowl had evaded authorities for some time - it was living on the edge. Usually, my ecologist friend tells me, they travel in flocks and they are exceptional birds. I hadn’t seen the little exile for a few days and had started to wonder about it. Alas, its fate appears to have been sealed in the food chain, which was sad but, also, hopefully it enjoyed being wild and foraging for these last few weeks.

Without doubt, there is immense thrill in flying solo, but there is also immeasurable risk. If events this week have shown anything, it is that when the collective shows up, from the arts community to international board rooms, the needle often shifts.

Photo by Egor Komarov on Unsplash

Rare joint statements from the Five Eyes security agencies are becoming, well, less rare which speaks to the fluid nature of the world currently. Yet even in this highly unstable geopolitical environment, a unified call to action still carries weight. Their most recent statement offers a stark warning: frontier AI models are accelerating the speed, scale and sophistication of offensive cyber capability in months, not years.

The barrier to entry for malicious actors is now as low as the bar for a Corgi on the agility course at Westminster .

While AI offers powerful tools to strengthen automated defence, the agencies emphasise that cyber resilience can no longer be treated purely as a technical issue. The onus is on corporate leadership to urgently prioritise foundational security practices, such as rapid patching and strict access controls. It’s advice that no doubt will cause a number of cyber vets to press their clever heads into their mechanical keyboards - because this has been the messaging for years.

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I was excited last night to see one of my favourite Substack Publications, GeoSecInsights drop a new series on Art and Power. It’s timely, given the increasing push back against outsourcing fundamental human attributes to AI. We are seeing a renewed focus on the importance of developing critical thinking, creativity, communication skills and the honour in craftsmanship. This is not to suggest that any of these cannot be achieved with and/or by AI but rather, we must hold them carefully in one hand as we apply technology with the other.

The first of a series of essays, ‘ The Political Imagination. Why Art Belongs in Geopolitics ’beautifully reminds us that power is never just a matter of military capability, rather, it is anchored in what a society believes about itself.

If we outsource our myths, symbols, and historical narratives to globalised algorithms (with their inherent biases) we also risk stripping away authenticity and localised identity, the very things which help define a civilisation. I think we are beginning to mark critical boundary lines for cultural sovereignty.

Edit: There are seven essays in the series, not three as previously stated.

GeoSec Insights

The Political Imagination

Before states act, they imagine who they are…

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3 days ago · 4 likes · GeoSec Insights

A recent piece in The Conversation by Niusha Shafiabady highlights Anna Goldsworthy’s new Quarterly Essay , The God We Made, framing generative AI not as an alien monster, but as a mirror reflecting our own deepest flaws and biases.

The review captures a profound moral anxiety:

‘I find her concerns strongest when read less as technical claims about AI versus human consciousness and more as warnings about human dependence, power and meaning.’

As Shafiabady explains, the theological framing is successful because the deity is not external; rather, it’s man-made, which is perhaps why ‘Seriously Unsettling’ was selected as the final subheading of the review.

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The Golden Age of Minilateralism - quick operationalised response to digital threats. Here’s a 101 and report from the start of 2026 worth reading.

The Splinternet → Minilateralism is accelerating The Splinternet.

The quiet cultural narratives and collective engines often surpass the explosive events which dominate headlines, both in meaning and velocity.

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