When your personal wealth reaches a billion dollars, you are required to move to the seasteading platform of your choice. Your citizenship likewise transfers to the seasteading platform.
Oh God again....
(I have had to take out all the clips, photos etc because links.)
Peter Tiel's New Model Army
The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster
Carole Cadwalladr
Jan 11
This newsletter is going to cover three crucial subjects today:
How Britain’s national security is hopelessly compromised. We’ve sold out our military to a key Trump ally in what I believe is a catastrophically naive and dangerous deal. (If you’re American, this affects you too.)The global war on truth. And why sticking to the facts is now a radical act.How we fight back. In which I post a whole smorgasbord of inspiring videos that I grabbed off social media that you didn’t know you needed.I’ve never started with a bulleted list before but then I can’t remember a NATO country threatening to invade a NATO country before either. I figured you might need 3) after reading 1) and 2). 1) The UK’s national security is hopelessly compromisedThis morning, the BBC ran an interview with Peter Mandelson, the self-described ‘best pal’ of Jeffrey Epstein and until he was sacked, the UK ambassador to Washington.
Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, also represents Palantir, the US surveillance defence company founded by Trump ally, Peter Thiel. When Keir Starmer visited Washington, a trip arranged by Mandelson, he had only two meetings: one with Trump and one with Palantir.
If we never heard from Peter Mandelson again, it would be too soon. And yet here he is, all over the national broadcaster refusing to apologise to Epstein’s victims and praising Trump’s “graciousness”.
But this was not all. Because also on the BBC this morning was his client, Louis Mosley, the CEO of Palantir UK and the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
I’m not linking to either of these videos because they were both absolutely abject failures of journalism. This is the second time Mosley has been invited onto this same Sunday morning show as some sort of legitimate political pundit.
He is no such thing. His company is an integral part of the US defence and homeland security apparatus and the illegal data gathering operation carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE to say nothing of its involvement in profiling kill targets for the IDF in Gaza. The only circumstance he should be on the BBC is to be subjected to a journalistic grilling, not asked a couple of softball questions on his views on global politics.
The UK Ministry of Defence has just signed a new £240 million contract with Palantir. Actually, it’s not a contract, it’s more than that. The UK government describes it as “a strategic partnership”. A “partnership” entered into without any sort of competitive tender that was announced during Trump’s visit to the UK and which disastrously compromises our entire national security infrastructure.
We have embedded a notorious US military surveillance company whose founder is a close ally of President Trump into the heart of our military at a moment in which the US is threatening to invade our NATO ally, Greenland.
If you’re British and reading this, please send it to your MP. The level of understanding in UK politics and media about Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump and the geopolitical and security consequences of this appears to be non-existent.
If our national security rests on US technology, we have no national security.
It sounds like writerly hyperbole to describe the UK as a vassal state, but I mean it in its most literal sense. It’s explicitly stated in the ur-text of Trump’s White House’s foreign policy, the National Security Strategy document, that US companies will be used as instruments of state power. There is no hidden agenda here: Trump has set it all out. (For a breakdown of this document and what it all means, see this week's piece in the Nerve by former British diplomat, Arthur Snell.)
What will it mean to embed American software into the UK military? Well consider, Tesla. You don’t really buy a car when you buy a Tesla, you rent the software that remains the property of Elon Musk industries who can choose to immobilise your car or any feature of it at any time.
Palantir is the most terrifying of the US companies but it’s also just one of a whole raft of compromising, self-sabotaging deals that the UK government has entered into. The UK ‘Sovereign Cloud’ has been contracted out to Oracle, owned by another key Trump ally, Larry Ellison, the man whose son is behind the disastrous buyout of CBS and the upcoming US TikTok takeover. And then there are deals with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, BlackRock, Nvidia and Scale AI.
And this was the “win”, the brilliant triumph that Keir Starmer pulled from the jaws of defeat in the trade tariff negotiations. It is the opposite of that: it’s surrender, the cost of which won’t just be measured in pounds or dollars. I fear the cost could be much, much higher, paid in blood and pain.
It barely even registered this week that Trump announced he was increasing the US military’s budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
I wrote this in last week’s newsletter, on Saturday morning, hours after the US attacked Venezuela and before America woke up:
“This should precipitate a whole new global crisis. It’s an unprovoked military assault on a sovereign nation in breach of international law. What should worry us more is if it doesn’t…
Trump isn’t just a rogue, out-of-control president, America is a rogue state. And the longer we fail to acknowledge that, the more danger we are in.”
Trump’s actions should provoke a global crisis, I said. And it should worry us more if it doesn’t. A week later, the news is in: prepare to be more worried
2) The global war on truth..and what it means when your own PM joins itI’m posting this interview between Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 News and Keir Starmer on Monday because it feels like a crucial moment that we should footnote and mark.
Starmer, an international human rights lawyer, is unable to say the attack on Venezuela was in breach of international law. This is the leader of a G7 nation, unable to confirm that black is black and white is white.
All week, pundits in the UK media have wanged on about how Starmer couldn’t have his “Hugh Grant moment” - a reference to the scene in Love Actually in which he Prime Minister Grant stands up to President Billy Bob Thornton (after seeing him making moves on his lady crush) and missed the far bigger point.
It’s the same pundits and journalists who applauded Starmer’s actions in sucking up to Trump, laying on a state visit, a royal banquet, the full works and celebrating the “win”, a deal that didn’t land Britain with a disastrous trade tariff.
But what they failed to point out is that Starmer paid Trump’s ransom - the disastrous, self-sabotaging tech deals detailed above. It’s not that Starmer risks “offending” Trump or is “caught in a bind” or “is in a tricky position” or any of the other phrases I’ve read and heard all week, it’s that he - and we - have been captured.
These deals represent the corporate capture of the UK state including, our cloud capacity, National Health Service, and now our military establishment. And the blindness, ignorance and ongoing denial is the most dangerous thing about this moment.
Starmer’s inability to speak the truth is not diplomacy. It’s evidence.
We are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump fascist project. We’ve sold out everyone in America who’s trying to fight back against it. Worst of all, we can’t even see it yet.
I’m not using the f-word lightly or facetiously. I’ve avoided it for a year. But what is so dangerous right now is the assault on truth, on facts, on the evidence of our own eyes. What is happening right now in America is fascism. And we, the UK, are now up to our necks in it too.
3) How to fight backCongratulations! You’ve got through the depressing bit of the newsletter. This last section is a compendium of clips and images that I’ve seen this week that is the evidence you need that nothing is hopeless.
This is Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis. He’s using the f-word too.
A masked paramilitary gunman murdered a Minneapolis citizen in cold blood, and this is what the city’s mayor told ICE at his press conference. “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
It’s a painful contrast to Keir Starmer and a necessary corrective. What Trump is doing is meant to scare us. And not being scared, speaking the facts, taking the piss and recording it all on your phone are all radical acts. All week, I’ve been collecting individual responses to hard power ranging from the courageous to the creative to the comedic.
I loved this footage of an Uber driver that embodies all three of these qualities. Watch him taking on US border guards who asked to see his ID. Why, he asks them? You have an accent, one of them says. “You’re going by accents now?” he says incredulously. “You guys need psychiatric checkups,” he tells them when they ask where he was born. He satirically taunts them until they eventually give up.
This was how London greeted the news of the Venezuela strike. A “nonce” is Britspeak for “paedophile”.
I also loved and admired this woman’s response to ICE agents who stopped to threaten and intimidate her for following their vehicle. I don’t want you to make a bad decision, the ICE agent tells her. “That’s funny coming from you!” she says smiling away at him.
And this is another brilliant official, Rochelle Bilal, the sheriff of Philadelphia, pointing out all the ways that the actions of the ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good were in violation of both “legal law” and “moral law”. ICE, she said, was “made-up, fake, wannabe law enforcement”.
I know, I know, this is probably too much content. But consider this a public service, I’m saving you from the algorithmic scroll which threw up this for me: Canadian comedian Trent McClellan dressed up as a NICE agent to terrorise tourists in Halifax. His weapons are Canadian-levels of courtesy and free candy. It’s from two months ago but I only just clocked it and I think it’s a really useful reminder that none of this is normal. This is normal:
Finally, it’s been extraordinary to witness what’s happening on the streets of Iran. You’ll have seen the incredible rivers of protestors flooding the streets of cities all across the country. That’s what people power looks like. Is it finally the revolution that Iranians have been longing for? The world is holding its breath.
I’m not sure who this woman is but this week’s newsletter is dedicated to her and the people of Iran and, especially, the incredible, gutsy, powerful women who have simply had enough.
Thank you to everyone who’s reading this. It’s one of my own personal rays of hope. If you like it, please share it with your friends and family and tell me in the comments whether I’m right, wrong, too doomery, not doomery enough, whether you like the vids and anything else that strikes you.
Here's the other half of the revolutionary agenda that MAGA/P2025 is pursuing that will continue to obstruct any rebalancing that a flipped congress may attempt to legislate. It's going to take years for this bolus to pass.
When Mr. Trump’s policies are temporarily blocked by district court judges, appeals courts can issue “administrative stays,” temporary rulings that effectively reverse the lower court’s orders and let contested policies take effect. Administrative stays are supposed to be temporary but can remain in place for weeks or even months. In many cases, they are replaced by a more lasting stay, known as a “stay pending appeal,” that remains in place while the appellate court considers the case.
The Times analysis tracked both kinds of stays, as well as the final rulings that appellate courts made after considering arguments from both sides.
Mr. Trump’s nominees sided with him consistently across all three kinds of rulings, voting in his favor 97 percent of the time on administrative stays, 88 percent of the time on stays pending appeal, and 100 percent of the time on final rulings.
Even if the Dems retake the reins in both the White House and Congress, these judges will be in place to flip this behavior and obstruct implementation of any counter-agenda.
This is why the Project 2025 crowd have continued to support this administration. Judges get lifetime appointments, and they are counting on their conservative Christian judges to prevent any socially liberal changes from being implemented, and to fast-track any dismantling of the changes they cannot prevent once the GOP manages to regain control of either of the other branches for however long.
MAGA/P2025 believe an alt-history version of the US where the founding fathers were Christian nationalist, and We the People refers only to the "legacy Americans" who are Judeo-Christian western civilization chauvinists. No one else deserves representation.
What did I actually say about Trump’s negotiation strategy (that I shorthanded “Art of the Deal”)? “Not only do I not like the rhetoric and the disrespect, I think it backfires here.”
bc, you did indeed say that. But what you said immediately before was ambiguous:
I’ve been observing the results achieved, the rhetoric and the resistance. IMO, many are falling for the rhetoric. If this isn’t prodding, it’s the Art of the Deal, trying to get a better bargaining position IMO for a minerals deal.
That suggests that this (the Trump approach) is a strategy to get a better bargaining position, or deal. So it looks like you think that although it may not work, the strategy is not actually aimed at takeover.
I understand the wish to see it (and the current US approach in general) as something rational in intent. I too have had a tendency to do this in the past, perhaps because it is too uncomfortable to think that leaders are behaving in quite such a crazy or out-of-control manner. But, in the case of DJT, this is truly just sane-washing. And it is consistent with your approach to this administration in general; you do not approve of Trump's "behaviour", but you approve of (or rationalise) his intent. And people doing that about someone like him leads, for example, from "it is reasonable to take steps to deport criminal illegal immigrants" to armed groups of ICE agents swarming US cities against states' wishes, detaining mainly US citizens and illegal immigrants who overwhelmingly have committed no criminal offences, mistreating and in some cases killing them. And similarly, the Trump approach to Greenland could end in breaking up NATO, a result that no US administration of any stripe has wanted.
I wanted to be fair to your view about the Greenland issue by posting that link with the interview by Freddie Sayers of Helen Thompson, Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl, because they are well-qualified to put all this in an accurate historical context long pre-dating Trump, and ignoring his specific rhetoric and approach. And I think that this is valuable and important.
But expressing more conservative views here, much as many of us favour hearing them, while also implicitly excusing Trump's egregious and dangerous behaviour, is bound to come up against fierce opposition. The people commenting here accurately foretold what his first term would be like, and are once again in the devastating Cassandra-like position of watching while his second term proceeds to (as someone said to me at lunch today) "not only tear apart America, but also the world".
Donald Trump, J D Vance, Steven Miller, RFKJnr, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi etc etc: are these people who you are content to see representing your country and your political views?
It also fails to mention that the USGS, which maps mineral deposits (my dad worked for it before he went into the Navy Oceanographic department) was subject to the DOGE cuts, with about 20% being let go or taking early retirement.
There are two obvious possibilities here. First, the importance of rare earths, and the fact that China currently dominates supplies, may have simply escaped the notice of the the ignoramuses in the administration. So no reason to tell DOGE that USGS was off limits.
Second, the administration has shown across the board distain for competence, let alone expertise, After all, everything of importance has been known for decades. So obviously no need for anything like a geologist. A possible exception of everything already being known might be earthquakes. But since those only impact California, who cares. Certainly if we don't care about knowing about hurricanes (which actually threaten Mar-a-Lago)....
Trump's abilities as a professional troll are incomparable.
with respect to all here, i find it completely baffling that anyone in the world thinks anything beyond "what a fucking attention-seeking clown" over this Greenland stuff.
It's interesting that the pdf link from bc doesn't mention Greenland at all and does not mention China in terms of geography, merely in production. It also fails to mention that the USGS, which maps mineral deposits (my dad worked for it before he went into the Navy Oceanographic department) was subject to the DOGE cuts, with about 20% being let go or taking early retirement.
While there is supposed to be a pivot, investigations into bioextraction, because they were linked to ecosystem research, have been halted, despite the fact that they are already proven, From Gemini Proven Success: It is already used for roughly 15–20% of global gold and copper production. Current Efficiency: For Rare Earth Elements (REEs), bioleaching (using microbes like Gluconobacter) now reaches extraction efficiencies of 65–80% in controlled environments. Specific Mineral Focus: As of early 2026, researchers have successfully used biological systems to selectively capture Cobalt and Neodymium from complex mixtures like old EV batteries and coal tailings.
This suggests that looking at this as geography might be Sweet Summer Child status if I understood what that meant.
I thought this NYT daily podcast on rare earths and how they are extracted was good, and the part that discusses the difference in Japanese and US industrial policy quite interesting to me.
I give up. I can't keep up with the straw men. Frex:
However, where bc is concerned, I do think his Sweet Summer Child (SSC) status is utterly confirmed by any suggestion that Trump’s approach to this or any other issue is anything to do with mastery of the art of the deal.
What did I actually say about Trump's negotiation strategy (that I shorthanded "Art of the Deal")?
"Not only do I not like the rhetoric and the disrespect, I think it backfires here."
Good grief people. Shorter me:
1) Greenland is strategically very important whatever Trump says. (sidenote, wjca, you could be right, but what I read says the rare earth situation is much more important national security wise, and Greenland is important. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1802/a/pp1802a.pdf)
2) Trump is going about it stupidly re Greenland. My read is he is setting up the next negotiations, or prompting the EU to take further action, but I could be wrong.
3) It's never right, absent an imminent threat (e.g. WWII) to occupy over objection. Or to threaten to. And no, I don't think we buy Greenland. Get a minerals deal. Satisfy the Inuit (that will be hard).
4) I'm glad Maduro is gone, the operation was done amazingly well, but I'm really worried about the future of Venezuela.
I could go on, but I don't have the time or inclination.
P.S. Tony P, touche. P.P.S. And I hope you wrote that with the same seriousness I did, lol.
hsh - Well, sure. The question is – how many people are so motivated? I know this crew plays almost exclusively to their base, but everyone else is seeing it, too. Everyone, the base and otherwise, is seeing the other videos.
But Vance et al act as though the first-person video from the shooter is a slam dunk of some sort. Do they really believe that? Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
At this point, given what we have observed over the last year, we should probably conclude that this administration and its supporters in Congress have become a revolutionary government. The loyal will support the revolution, and as long as the local and federal authorities continue to treat the administration as legitimate, they will be used as tools of the revolution. Any local or state opposition will be treated as an attack on the sovereignty of the president, and they will continue to wield the sanction of state violence against those people until they are forced to stop.
They believe that if they have 3% of the nation under arms for their side, they can force their will. Veterans and active duty military comprise 6% of the population, and nearly a quarter of all law enforcement. Military and law enforcement voted 70/30 in favor of Orange Julius. About a third of the US is still on board with all that the administration is doing.
A third of the population that contains two thirds of the people under arms in the nation is a potent revolutionary force.
We can vote them out, sure, but I think that will force a constitutional crisis with a lot of unknowns, and that revolutionary force will remain.
I don’t think bc actually supports the Nazi Party. Unless he voted for Donald, JD, Lindsey, et.al. Then I might have a few questions.
One of them is: can He, Trump pay for Greenland out of His own pocket? Or get His soon-to-be-trillionaire frenemy to buy it and present it to Him gift-wrapped?
If bc wants the United States to buy Greenland, he must be advocating for Congress to pass an appropriations bill for the money. Good luck with that.
The perennial MAGAt line that NATO countries owe it to "us" to spend more on "defense" would make some sense if the implication was that "we" could spend less as a result. But the MAGAt-in-Chief wants a $600B increase (to $1.5T) next year. NYT gift link.
"Incident Overview: On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, was fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis during an immigration enforcement operation. Evidence suggests she blocked the road with her vehicle, potentially as part of anti-ICE activism, before accelerating forward, leading to the shooting, which federal officials describe as self-defense..."
>Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
Poe's Law means it's impossible to know. but, NRO is fully committed to She Had It Coming.
It's her fault, so there. https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/the-minnesota-tragedy/
Tragic but justified: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-tragedy-but-a-justified-use-of-force/
She belonged to a group that wants to interfere with ICE, ZOMG! https://www.nationalreview.com/news/minnesota-ice-watch-group-renee-good-belonged-to-trained-activists-to-interfere-with-agents-block-vehicles/
Democrats are insurrectionist! https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/blue-state-and-city-democrats-walk-an-insurrectionary-fine-line/
"To hell with Minnesota" ! https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/to-hell-with-minnesota/
If a viewer is motivated to believe Ross, then they will take the moment where the phone jerks upward as an indication that Ross was hit by the vehicle.
Well, sure. The question is - how many people are so motivated? I know this crew plays almost exclusively to their base, but everyone else is seeing it, too. Everyone, the base and otherwise, is seeing the other videos.
But Vance et al act as though the first-person video from the shooter is a slam dunk of some sort. Do they really believe that? Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
Good to be reminded that there is an agreement in place between the US and Denmark from 1916, when Denmark sold their Virgin Islands to the US, in which the US recognises Danish sovereignty over Greenland. However, in fairness to bc, the following interviews do give an interesting (and not Trump-positive) view of the world geo-political issues:
Freddie Sayers speaks with author and Cambridge professor Helen Thompson, economist Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl about the Trump administration's escalating rhetoric and strategic moves to acquire Greenland. Covering the historical legal underpinnings of Danish sovereignty while analysing modern geopolitical drivers such as the Monroe Doctrine, Arctic militarisation, and the essential role of the region in a new space race for strategic security dominance, they explore how the Greenland situation is symptomatic of a profound breakdown in trust between Washington and Western Europe, with the administration increasingly viewing European leadership as obstructive political rivals in a shifting global order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuCswB2RLI&t=3s
However, where bc is concerned, I do think his Sweet Summer Child (SSC) status is utterly confirmed by any suggestion that Trump's approach to this or any other issue is anything to do with mastery of the art of the deal. Quite apart from what russell correctly says about the book of that title, one should never forget that regarding Trump as such a master of deal-making is pretty deluded given his financial history (until, that is, the advent of enthusiastically embraced presidential corruption), not to mention his absurd claims to have ended several wars which make him, understandably, an international laughing stock. The laugh may well be on the rest of the world, however; that's a risk when you elect a Caligula-type figure.
"If you take it, we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave,"
Gunther Fehlinger, chair of Austria's NATO Enlargement Committee
If a viewer is motivated to believe Ross, then they will take the moment where the phone jerks upward as an indication that Ross was hit by the vehicle. Viewed in isolation, that video would allow someone to believe the narrative reported by Noem and Vance.
I just watched a documentary about women war correspondents in WWII. One of the current war correspondents said that when she arrives at a scene of conflict, one of the first things she does is look for someone she identifies as being her equivalent in that place and situation to give her a point-of-view she can connect with.
MAGA's version of that is to put themselves in the shoes of the ICE/BP enforcers and impute good faith to them and bad faith to the people who are obstacles to the enforcers. With that as a starting point, this video will justify Ross violence in their minds.
The converse, that ICE/BP are acting in bad faith, is too disturbing to contemplate.
Regarding Greenland, Trump has already won. Namely because 'serious' people are seriously discussing the scenario of an annexation. Trump saw Greenland on a map once, decided that it would be 'nice to have it' and now op-eds are being written about the history of Greenland, its relationship to Denmark and how a US takeover might go down.
There is nothing to discuss whatsoever, this should not even be thought about, it's completely ridiculous. And yet, we are talking about it...
I'm trying to figure out why anyone in the Trump administration, particularly JD Vance, thought Jonathan Ross's phone video supported their version of the story. It's bizarre.
Dude was holding his phone the whole time, while they claim he was hit by the car and while he was shooting. It also clearly shows her turning her steering wheel hard to the right. Good and her wife weren't at all menacing, just lightheartedly mocking Ross.
On “An open thread”
A modest proposal:
When your personal wealth reaches a billion dollars, you are required to move to the seasteading platform of your choice. Your citizenship likewise transfers to the seasteading platform.
Optionally, you can move to Greenland.
Enjoy the fish!
"
Oh God again....
(I have had to take out all the clips, photos etc because links.)
Peter Tiel's New Model Army
The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster
Carole Cadwalladr
Jan 11
This newsletter is going to cover three crucial subjects today:
How Britain’s national security is hopelessly compromised. We’ve sold out our military to a key Trump ally in what I believe is a catastrophically naive and dangerous deal. (If you’re American, this affects you too.)The global war on truth. And why sticking to the facts is now a radical act.How we fight back. In which I post a whole smorgasbord of inspiring videos that I grabbed off social media that you didn’t know you needed.I’ve never started with a bulleted list before but then I can’t remember a NATO country threatening to invade a NATO country before either. I figured you might need 3) after reading 1) and 2).
1) The UK’s national security is hopelessly compromisedThis morning, the BBC ran an interview with Peter Mandelson, the self-described ‘best pal’ of Jeffrey Epstein and until he was sacked, the UK ambassador to Washington.
Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, also represents Palantir, the US surveillance defence company founded by Trump ally, Peter Thiel. When Keir Starmer visited Washington, a trip arranged by Mandelson, he had only two meetings: one with Trump and one with Palantir.
If we never heard from Peter Mandelson again, it would be too soon. And yet here he is, all over the national broadcaster refusing to apologise to Epstein’s victims and praising Trump’s “graciousness”.
But this was not all. Because also on the BBC this morning was his client, Louis Mosley, the CEO of Palantir UK and the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
I’m not linking to either of these videos because they were both absolutely abject failures of journalism. This is the second time Mosley has been invited onto this same Sunday morning show as some sort of legitimate political pundit.
He is no such thing. His company is an integral part of the US defence and homeland security apparatus and the illegal data gathering operation carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE to say nothing of its involvement in profiling kill targets for the IDF in Gaza. The only circumstance he should be on the BBC is to be subjected to a journalistic grilling, not asked a couple of softball questions on his views on global politics.
The UK Ministry of Defence has just signed a new £240 million contract with Palantir. Actually, it’s not a contract, it’s more than that. The UK government describes it as “a strategic partnership”. A “partnership” entered into without any sort of competitive tender that was announced during Trump’s visit to the UK and which disastrously compromises our entire national security infrastructure.
We have embedded a notorious US military surveillance company whose founder is a close ally of President Trump into the heart of our military at a moment in which the US is threatening to invade our NATO ally, Greenland.
If you’re British and reading this, please send it to your MP. The level of understanding in UK politics and media about Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump and the geopolitical and security consequences of this appears to be non-existent.
If our national security rests on US technology, we have no national security.
It sounds like writerly hyperbole to describe the UK as a vassal state, but I mean it in its most literal sense. It’s explicitly stated in the ur-text of Trump’s White House’s foreign policy, the National Security Strategy document, that US companies will be used as instruments of state power. There is no hidden agenda here: Trump has set it all out. (For a breakdown of this document and what it all means, see this week's piece in the Nerve by former British diplomat, Arthur Snell.)
What will it mean to embed American software into the UK military? Well consider, Tesla. You don’t really buy a car when you buy a Tesla, you rent the software that remains the property of Elon Musk industries who can choose to immobilise your car or any feature of it at any time.
Palantir is the most terrifying of the US companies but it’s also just one of a whole raft of compromising, self-sabotaging deals that the UK government has entered into. The UK ‘Sovereign Cloud’ has been contracted out to Oracle, owned by another key Trump ally, Larry Ellison, the man whose son is behind the disastrous buyout of CBS and the upcoming US TikTok takeover. And then there are deals with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, BlackRock, Nvidia and Scale AI.
And this was the “win”, the brilliant triumph that Keir Starmer pulled from the jaws of defeat in the trade tariff negotiations. It is the opposite of that: it’s surrender, the cost of which won’t just be measured in pounds or dollars. I fear the cost could be much, much higher, paid in blood and pain.
It barely even registered this week that Trump announced he was increasing the US military’s budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
I wrote this in last week’s newsletter, on Saturday morning, hours after the US attacked Venezuela and before America woke up:
Trump’s actions should provoke a global crisis, I said. And it should worry us more if it doesn’t. A week later, the news is in: prepare to be more worried
2) The global war on truth..and what it means when your own PM joins itI’m posting this interview between Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 News and Keir Starmer on Monday because it feels like a crucial moment that we should footnote and mark.
Starmer, an international human rights lawyer, is unable to say the attack on Venezuela was in breach of international law. This is the leader of a G7 nation, unable to confirm that black is black and white is white.
All week, pundits in the UK media have wanged on about how Starmer couldn’t have his “Hugh Grant moment” - a reference to the scene in Love Actually in which he Prime Minister Grant stands up to President Billy Bob Thornton (after seeing him making moves on his lady crush) and missed the far bigger point.
It’s the same pundits and journalists who applauded Starmer’s actions in sucking up to Trump, laying on a state visit, a royal banquet, the full works and celebrating the “win”, a deal that didn’t land Britain with a disastrous trade tariff.
But what they failed to point out is that Starmer paid Trump’s ransom - the disastrous, self-sabotaging tech deals detailed above. It’s not that Starmer risks “offending” Trump or is “caught in a bind” or “is in a tricky position” or any of the other phrases I’ve read and heard all week, it’s that he - and we - have been captured.
These deals represent the corporate capture of the UK state including, our cloud capacity, National Health Service, and now our military establishment. And the blindness, ignorance and ongoing denial is the most dangerous thing about this moment.
Starmer’s inability to speak the truth is not diplomacy. It’s evidence.
We are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump fascist project. We’ve sold out everyone in America who’s trying to fight back against it. Worst of all, we can’t even see it yet.
I’m not using the f-word lightly or facetiously. I’ve avoided it for a year. But what is so dangerous right now is the assault on truth, on facts, on the evidence of our own eyes. What is happening right now in America is fascism. And we, the UK, are now up to our necks in it too.
3) How to fight backCongratulations! You’ve got through the depressing bit of the newsletter. This last section is a compendium of clips and images that I’ve seen this week that is the evidence you need that nothing is hopeless.
This is Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis. He’s using the f-word too.
A masked paramilitary gunman murdered a Minneapolis citizen in cold blood, and this is what the city’s mayor told ICE at his press conference. “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
It’s a painful contrast to Keir Starmer and a necessary corrective. What Trump is doing is meant to scare us. And not being scared, speaking the facts, taking the piss and recording it all on your phone are all radical acts. All week, I’ve been collecting individual responses to hard power ranging from the courageous to the creative to the comedic.
I loved this footage of an Uber driver that embodies all three of these qualities. Watch him taking on US border guards who asked to see his ID. Why, he asks them? You have an accent, one of them says. “You’re going by accents now?” he says incredulously. “You guys need psychiatric checkups,” he tells them when they ask where he was born. He satirically taunts them until they eventually give up.
This was how London greeted the news of the Venezuela strike. A “nonce” is Britspeak for “paedophile”.
I also loved and admired this woman’s response to ICE agents who stopped to threaten and intimidate her for following their vehicle. I don’t want you to make a bad decision, the ICE agent tells her. “That’s funny coming from you!” she says smiling away at him.
And this is another brilliant official, Rochelle Bilal, the sheriff of Philadelphia, pointing out all the ways that the actions of the ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good were in violation of both “legal law” and “moral law”. ICE, she said, was “made-up, fake, wannabe law enforcement”.
I know, I know, this is probably too much content. But consider this a public service, I’m saving you from the algorithmic scroll which threw up this for me: Canadian comedian Trent McClellan dressed up as a NICE agent to terrorise tourists in Halifax. His weapons are Canadian-levels of courtesy and free candy. It’s from two months ago but I only just clocked it and I think it’s a really useful reminder that none of this is normal. This is normal:
Finally, it’s been extraordinary to witness what’s happening on the streets of Iran. You’ll have seen the incredible rivers of protestors flooding the streets of cities all across the country. That’s what people power looks like. Is it finally the revolution that Iranians have been longing for? The world is holding its breath.
I’m not sure who this woman is but this week’s newsletter is dedicated to her and the people of Iran and, especially, the incredible, gutsy, powerful women who have simply had enough.
Thank you to everyone who’s reading this. It’s one of my own personal rays of hope. If you like it, please share it with your friends and family and tell me in the comments whether I’m right, wrong, too doomery, not doomery enough, whether you like the vids and anything else that strikes you.
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nous: Jesus. It's really wrapped up tight....
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Here's the other half of the revolutionary agenda that MAGA/P2025 is pursuing that will continue to obstruct any rebalancing that a flipped congress may attempt to legislate. It's going to take years for this bolus to pass.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeals-court-judges.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DlA.MMri.p_Ld7V7iZp4E&smid=url-share
Even if the Dems retake the reins in both the White House and Congress, these judges will be in place to flip this behavior and obstruct implementation of any counter-agenda.
This is why the Project 2025 crowd have continued to support this administration. Judges get lifetime appointments, and they are counting on their conservative Christian judges to prevent any socially liberal changes from being implemented, and to fast-track any dismantling of the changes they cannot prevent once the GOP manages to regain control of either of the other branches for however long.
MAGA/P2025 believe an alt-history version of the US where the founding fathers were Christian nationalist, and We the People refers only to the "legacy Americans" who are Judeo-Christian western civilization chauvinists. No one else deserves representation.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
What did I actually say about Trump’s negotiation strategy (that I shorthanded “Art of the Deal”)?
“Not only do I not like the rhetoric and the disrespect, I think it backfires here.”
bc, you did indeed say that. But what you said immediately before was ambiguous:
I’ve been observing the results achieved, the rhetoric and the resistance. IMO, many are falling for the rhetoric. If this isn’t prodding, it’s the Art of the Deal, trying to get a better bargaining position IMO for a minerals deal.
That suggests that this (the Trump approach) is a strategy to get a better bargaining position, or deal. So it looks like you think that although it may not work, the strategy is not actually aimed at takeover.
I understand the wish to see it (and the current US approach in general) as something rational in intent. I too have had a tendency to do this in the past, perhaps because it is too uncomfortable to think that leaders are behaving in quite such a crazy or out-of-control manner. But, in the case of DJT, this is truly just sane-washing. And it is consistent with your approach to this administration in general; you do not approve of Trump's "behaviour", but you approve of (or rationalise) his intent. And people doing that about someone like him leads, for example, from "it is reasonable to take steps to deport criminal illegal immigrants" to armed groups of ICE agents swarming US cities against states' wishes, detaining mainly US citizens and illegal immigrants who overwhelmingly have committed no criminal offences, mistreating and in some cases killing them. And similarly, the Trump approach to Greenland could end in breaking up NATO, a result that no US administration of any stripe has wanted.
I wanted to be fair to your view about the Greenland issue by posting that link with the interview by Freddie Sayers of Helen Thompson, Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl, because they are well-qualified to put all this in an accurate historical context long pre-dating Trump, and ignoring his specific rhetoric and approach. And I think that this is valuable and important.
But expressing more conservative views here, much as many of us favour hearing them, while also implicitly excusing Trump's egregious and dangerous behaviour, is bound to come up against fierce opposition. The people commenting here accurately foretold what his first term would be like, and are once again in the devastating Cassandra-like position of watching while his second term proceeds to (as someone said to me at lunch today) "not only tear apart America, but also the world".
Donald Trump, J D Vance, Steven Miller, RFKJnr, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi etc etc: are these people who you are content to see representing your country and your political views?
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There are two obvious possibilities here. First, the importance of rare earths, and the fact that China currently dominates supplies, may have simply escaped the notice of the the ignoramuses in the administration. So no reason to tell DOGE that USGS was off limits.
Second, the administration has shown across the board distain for competence, let alone expertise, After all, everything of importance has been known for decades. So obviously no need for anything like a geologist. A possible exception of everything already being known might be earthquakes. But since those only impact California, who cares. Certainly if we don't care about knowing about hurricanes (which actually threaten Mar-a-Lago)....
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Trump's abilities as a professional troll are incomparable.
with respect to all here, i find it completely baffling that anyone in the world thinks anything beyond "what a fucking attention-seeking clown" over this Greenland stuff.
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It's interesting that the pdf link from bc doesn't mention Greenland at all and does not mention China in terms of geography, merely in production. It also fails to mention that the USGS, which maps mineral deposits (my dad worked for it before he went into the Navy Oceanographic department) was subject to the DOGE cuts, with about 20% being let go or taking early retirement.
While there is supposed to be a pivot, investigations into bioextraction, because they were linked to ecosystem research, have been halted, despite the fact that they are already proven, From Gemini
Proven Success: It is already used for roughly 15–20% of global gold and copper production.
Current Efficiency: For Rare Earth Elements (REEs), bioleaching (using microbes like Gluconobacter) now reaches extraction efficiencies of 65–80% in controlled environments.
Specific Mineral Focus: As of early 2026, researchers have successfully used biological systems to selectively capture Cobalt and Neodymium from complex mixtures like old EV batteries and coal tailings.
This suggests that looking at this as geography might be Sweet Summer Child status if I understood what that meant.
I thought this NYT daily podcast on rare earths and how they are extracted was good, and the part that discusses the difference in Japanese and US industrial policy quite interesting to me.
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I give up. I can't keep up with the straw men. Frex:
However, where bc is concerned, I do think his Sweet Summer Child (SSC) status is utterly confirmed by any suggestion that Trump’s approach to this or any other issue is anything to do with mastery of the art of the deal.
What did I actually say about Trump's negotiation strategy (that I shorthanded "Art of the Deal")?
"Not only do I not like the rhetoric and the disrespect, I think it backfires here."
Good grief people. Shorter me:
1) Greenland is strategically very important whatever Trump says. (sidenote, wjca, you could be right, but what I read says the rare earth situation is much more important national security wise, and Greenland is important. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1802/a/pp1802a.pdf)
2) Trump is going about it stupidly re Greenland. My read is he is setting up the next negotiations, or prompting the EU to take further action, but I could be wrong.
3) It's never right, absent an imminent threat (e.g. WWII) to occupy over objection. Or to threaten to. And no, I don't think we buy Greenland. Get a minerals deal. Satisfy the Inuit (that will be hard).
4) I'm glad Maduro is gone, the operation was done amazingly well, but I'm really worried about the future of Venezuela.
I could go on, but I don't have the time or inclination.
P.S. Tony P, touche.
P.P.S. And I hope you wrote that with the same seriousness I did, lol.
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I don’t think bc actually supports the Nazi Party. Unless he voted for Donald, JD, Lindsey, et.al. Then I might have a few questions.
Tony P, I love you. You do make me laugh.
On “An open thread”
hsh - Well, sure. The question is – how many people are so motivated? I know this crew plays almost exclusively to their base, but everyone else is seeing it, too. Everyone, the base and otherwise, is seeing the other videos.
But Vance et al act as though the first-person video from the shooter is a slam dunk of some sort. Do they really believe that? Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
At this point, given what we have observed over the last year, we should probably conclude that this administration and its supporters in Congress have become a revolutionary government. The loyal will support the revolution, and as long as the local and federal authorities continue to treat the administration as legitimate, they will be used as tools of the revolution. Any local or state opposition will be treated as an attack on the sovereignty of the president, and they will continue to wield the sanction of state violence against those people until they are forced to stop.
They believe that if they have 3% of the nation under arms for their side, they can force their will. Veterans and active duty military comprise 6% of the population, and nearly a quarter of all law enforcement. Military and law enforcement voted 70/30 in favor of Orange Julius. About a third of the US is still on board with all that the administration is doing.
A third of the population that contains two thirds of the people under arms in the nation is a potent revolutionary force.
We can vote them out, sure, but I think that will force a constitutional crisis with a lot of unknowns, and that revolutionary force will remain.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
I don’t think bc actually supports the Nazi Party. Unless he voted for Donald, JD, Lindsey, et.al. Then I might have a few questions.
One of them is: can He, Trump pay for Greenland out of His own pocket? Or get His soon-to-be-trillionaire frenemy to buy it and present it to Him gift-wrapped?
If bc wants the United States to buy Greenland, he must be advocating for Congress to pass an appropriations bill for the money. Good luck with that.
The perennial MAGAt line that NATO countries owe it to "us" to spend more on "defense" would make some sense if the implication was that "we" could spend less as a result. But the MAGAt-in-Chief wants a $600B increase (to $1.5T) next year. NYT gift link.
--TP
On “An open thread”
So, I read the NRO article about Good belonging to ICE Watch. It includes a highly selective account of the events. Go figure.
Bullshit has eclipsed sensible discourse.
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A review of the National Review articles.
"Incident Overview: On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, was fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis during an immigration enforcement operation. Evidence suggests she blocked the road with her vehicle, potentially as part of anti-ICE activism, before accelerating forward, leading to the shooting, which federal officials describe as self-defense..."
Minnesota Shooting: Controversy and Bias
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>Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
Poe's Law means it's impossible to know. but, NRO is fully committed to She Had It Coming.
It's her fault, so there. https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/the-minnesota-tragedy/
Tragic but justified: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-tragedy-but-a-justified-use-of-force/
She belonged to a group that wants to interfere with ICE, ZOMG! https://www.nationalreview.com/news/minnesota-ice-watch-group-renee-good-belonged-to-trained-activists-to-interfere-with-agents-block-vehicles/
Democrats are insurrectionist! https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/blue-state-and-city-democrats-walk-an-insurrectionary-fine-line/
"To hell with Minnesota" ! https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/to-hell-with-minnesota/
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Well, sure. The question is - how many people are so motivated? I know this crew plays almost exclusively to their base, but everyone else is seeing it, too. Everyone, the base and otherwise, is seeing the other videos.
But Vance et al act as though the first-person video from the shooter is a slam dunk of some sort. Do they really believe that? Or is it just a performance to bolster the belief that it is in the minds of the willing?
On another note, Ashli Babbitt was murdered!
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
Good to be reminded that there is an agreement in place between the US and Denmark from 1916, when Denmark sold their Virgin Islands to the US, in which the US recognises Danish sovereignty over Greenland. However, in fairness to bc, the following interviews do give an interesting (and not Trump-positive) view of the world geo-political issues:
Freddie Sayers speaks with author and Cambridge professor Helen Thompson, economist Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl about the Trump administration's escalating rhetoric and strategic moves to acquire Greenland. Covering the historical legal underpinnings of Danish sovereignty while analysing modern geopolitical drivers such as the Monroe Doctrine, Arctic militarisation, and the essential role of the region in a new space race for strategic security dominance, they explore how the Greenland situation is symptomatic of a profound breakdown in trust between Washington and Western Europe, with the administration increasingly viewing European leadership as obstructive political rivals in a shifting global order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuCswB2RLI&t=3s
However, where bc is concerned, I do think his Sweet Summer Child (SSC) status is utterly confirmed by any suggestion that Trump's approach to this or any other issue is anything to do with mastery of the art of the deal. Quite apart from what russell correctly says about the book of that title, one should never forget that regarding Trump as such a master of deal-making is pretty deluded given his financial history (until, that is, the advent of enthusiastically embraced presidential corruption), not to mention his absurd claims to have ended several wars which make him, understandably, an international laughing stock. The laugh may well be on the rest of the world, however; that's a risk when you elect a Caligula-type figure.
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"If you take it, we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave,"
Gunther Fehlinger, chair of Austria's NATO Enlargement Committee
So, there's that.
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Gerardus Mercator has a lot to answer for...
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We are on the same page, novakant. One more way that the media continues to normalize the caprice of Clementine Caligula.
On “An open thread”
If a viewer is motivated to believe Ross, then they will take the moment where the phone jerks upward as an indication that Ross was hit by the vehicle. Viewed in isolation, that video would allow someone to believe the narrative reported by Noem and Vance.
I just watched a documentary about women war correspondents in WWII. One of the current war correspondents said that when she arrives at a scene of conflict, one of the first things she does is look for someone she identifies as being her equivalent in that place and situation to give her a point-of-view she can connect with.
MAGA's version of that is to put themselves in the shoes of the ICE/BP enforcers and impute good faith to them and bad faith to the people who are obstacles to the enforcers. With that as a starting point, this video will justify Ross violence in their minds.
The converse, that ICE/BP are acting in bad faith, is too disturbing to contemplate.
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particularly JD Vance
He isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier - the US is ruled by Bif Tannens.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
Regarding Greenland, Trump has already won. Namely because 'serious' people are seriously discussing the scenario of an annexation. Trump saw Greenland on a map once, decided that it would be 'nice to have it' and now op-eds are being written about the history of Greenland, its relationship to Denmark and how a US takeover might go down.
There is nothing to discuss whatsoever, this should not even be thought about, it's completely ridiculous. And yet, we are talking about it...
On “An open thread”
I'm trying to figure out why anyone in the Trump administration, particularly JD Vance, thought Jonathan Ross's phone video supported their version of the story. It's bizarre.
Dude was holding his phone the whole time, while they claim he was hit by the car and while he was shooting. It also clearly shows her turning her steering wheel hard to the right. Good and her wife weren't at all menacing, just lightheartedly mocking Ross.
I don't know what people think they're seeing.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
"If this isn’t prodding, it’s the Art of the Deal"
You realize, I hope, that The Art Of The Deal was a ghost written piece of Trump fluffing bullshit.
Right? Just ask the guy that wrote it. Who now regrets it.
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