I worked in Russia in the ’90s, so I have some experiences there which inform my writing about recent events. In case you’re wondering, I wasn’t in the military — and I wasn’t a spy! Here’s an index to the stories — Ukraine, the USA, the EU and Brexit on D-Day Britain played its traditional transatlantic bridging role and led the way in providing weaponry for Ukraine that the…medium.com Ukraine’s DiiA and the Spread of Israel’s Spyware Presages a Grim Future Imagine a World where a smartphone is mandatory for a citizen and phone encryption is useless, where AI is profiling…medium.com

What’s the secret of this comms structure that enables NATO force integration? — The failure of Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine on 2022 was down in no small part to poor communications. Yes, there were other reasons like their top heavy and siloed command and control structure too. They were basically at the C1 generation — command only. C2 (control) was abysmal. …

Britain played its traditional transatlantic bridging role and led the way in providing weaponry for Ukraine that the US or EU would not supply earlier — Many years ago (1999) I was headhunted to resolve an IT project holdup in a European retail bank with worldwide banking centres. The issue was one of cultural differences which had bogged down the software project. The software developer was a US company and their somewhat abrasive but generally capable…

No, this is not about Ukraine, but about seiches, an interesting oceanographic phenomenon in the Black Sea — It’s many years since I worked for a masters degree in physical oceanography and wrote a dissertation which included a study of the physical oceanography of the Black Sea. But the recent focus on the Kerch Bridge (Crimean Bridge) and the splitting in the concrete pillars brought the subject back…

Imagine a World where a smartphone is mandatory for a citizen and phone encryption is useless, where AI is profiling you as you speak and government gets your psych profile real-time. Would you be on the list of threats to the State? — It’s starting and it’s not only with spyware Ukraine’ DiiA software is leading the world. e-Governance it’s called. Many other countries are going down that road, but Ukraine is streets ahead. Probably the nearest rival is Estonia, but the Russian invasion has spurred Ukraine to deeper development and deployment efforts.

Fencing for defence against people, pests and armour, barbed wire is nasty stuff and Russia has laid it for 800 km in Ukraine — I was writing a story about the defences that Russia had built along its illegally held territory in Ukraine and I came up against barbed wire. For some people it’s fascinating stuff and they collect samples. For others, it’s death, slowing down the advance of troops. Or for stopping people…

The LHC has observed a rare Higgs Z-boson + photon decay which suggests there’s a little more to discover — A rare Higgs boson decay could provide indirect evidence of the existence of particles beyond those predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. At the Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP) conference (May 2023), the ATLAS and CMS research teams reported how they combined observations to provide the first evidence…

Even by building 50 launchers per annum to deliver 1,000 satellites a year, China will have to step up its pace to catch Musk — A vast rocket assembly plant is being constructed on tropical Hainan Island, site of the major Chinese space facility Wenchang Space Launch Site in the race to launch satellites. The purpose of the plant is to assemble fifty (50) ‘Long March 8’ rockets per annum. …

It’s no longer outside Russia’ borders, it’s finally in Moscow with infighting in the Russian media — is Putin’s messaging out of control? — Since the failure of the 3 day Special Military Operation in February 2022, the fulcrum of Putin’s messaging strategy has slowly moved and the balance is now very strongly tipped towards the Russian people. The centre of gravity of Putin’s war is now in Moscow.