The General & the Journalist

Two years ago, Al Carns was a colonel in the Royal Marines and, though he can never confirm or deny it, had also commanded the Special Boat Service. He pivoted to politics when he realised that the country's military leadership did not fully grasp the seismic shift in warfare bro ...  Show more

Beginning with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but accelerated by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Poland has super-charged its military to become the third largest in Nato, behind only Turkey and the US.It spends more on defence as a proportion of national wealth th ...  Show more

If the UK is to present a credible deterrence to any adversary, its armed forces need to be sufficiently large. They are not. And the fastest, most economical, way of plugging the gap is by growing the reserves. The Chief of the defence staff recently called for an 'all in mental ...  Show more

In the space race and the arms race, only a human could determine an outcome. But what happens in war when AI, and not a human, takes the decision to pull the trigger? If AI can equal human capabilities, Artificial 'superintelligence' is smarter, potentially putting ASI beyond hu ...  Show more

Our colleagues at The Times this week launched an American edition of their superb UK politics pod, The State of It. We thought you might want to hear the fabulous first episode. Welcome to the first ever episode of The State of It: USA. An attack on Iran looks imminent: we revea ...  Show more