Ciaran Martin

I sort of love this.

www.ft.com/content/c30d...

Monologue: No, Something Big Isn't Coming Podcast Episode · Better Offline · 02/13/2026 · Bonus · 7m

Here’s this week’s Better Offline monologue. I walk you through why Matt Shumer’s “Something Big Is Coming” is deceptive misinformation peddled by a grifter, and why everybody who boosted or republished it should be ashamed of themselves.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...
Linktr.ee/betteroffline

Always find the local angle

Somehow the Munich Security Conference has, in the space of less than ten years, evolved from a useful cooperative chinwag to what it is now - a bunch of Europeans standing around nervously waiting for their very public annual performance review from their American bosses

When we all wanted James Richardson’s job

Thinking about AI and white collar jobs.
Can AI replace all white collar jobs? Obviously not. That is just silly.
Can it replace some jobs? Almost certainly. But that’s just normal. Word processing replaced a lot of jobs. Databases replaced a lot of jobs. Spreadsheets replaced a lot of jobs.
1/2

A tweet in which the original poster says "Don't mind Tudor on an interim basis", referring to the new interim boss of Spurs, and someone quote tweets it with: "Plantagenet fans in the immediate wake of the War of the Roses."

OK, that's the best Igor Tudor gag anyone has, I think. #thfc #coys

It was unfortunate I saw this post in the middle of a very somber & serious meeting 😂😂😂

Chart from the institute for government showing the tenure of cabinet secretaries from 1916 to 2026, showing a clear trend of shorter tenures over time

this is bad for the post of cabinet secretary and so bad for the civil service / good government / everyone.

'UK has been colonised by immigrants', says INEOS boss and Man Utd co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe In an interview with Sky News's Ed Conway, Sir Jim says Britain faces profound political, social and economic challenges, among them an unprecedented rise in immigration in recent years.

Disgusting remarks, and that’s before you note this is someone who moved to (colonised as he would put it) a tax haven news.sky.com/story/the-uk...

Russia’s sabotage campaign is becoming bolder Hacks against Polish energy plants suggest the FSB is involved

I wrote on Russia's cyber-attack against Poland's energy system in December, why it suggests a more aggressive Russian approach to disrupting critical infrastructure in Europe, and why the involvement of the FSB, Russia's security service, is bad news. www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

The last ten mins of Liverpool v city

Football should just adopt the equivalent of a penalty try in rugby and none of this nonsense would happen

mashallah he is gone, to celebrate I've made the piece I wrote last year about arguably the most embarrassing project I've ever worked on free to read: youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/so-about-t...

Sort of extraordinary that there is only one obvious precedent for a prime minister winning a landslide election victory and then seeming like toast just two years later … and it’s the election *immediately* before this one.

People often jump to saying online propaganda is either the work of radicalised actors, or else Russia.

In practice, it’s amazing how often the answer is much simpler – someone is chasing either (a) clout, (b) money, or (c) both.

Only just caught up with this. Unbelievably stupid. @joemenn.bsky.social is one of the best cyber security reporters around. He’ll still have a cyber security readership. Not sure the WaPo will (to the same extent, anyway).

From the GPT 5.3 model card. "GPT-5.3-Codex is the most capable model we’ve ever deployed in the Cybersecurity domain. As discussed in more detail below, this is the first launch we are treating as High capability in Cybersecurity." cdn.openai.com/pdf/23eca107...

@ciaranm.bsky.social, @briannarosen.bsky.social

Happy with either but my guy lost 😀

Current view

Good interview with Richard Moore, in which he discusses the less well known work of "reports officers", as opposed to case officers. "Their job is to handle the material coming in from the field. They do all of that due diligence" samf.substack.com/p/how-mi6-wo...

Christmas every day with that book

A reminder of gentler times

Who really won the war between India and Pakistan? The dispute over that dispute bodes ill for the next fight

I wrote this week's Banyan column in @economist.com on the lessons that India took from last year's conflict with Pakistan, why these differ substantially from those drawn by Pakistan & indeed Western countries, and how that might shape the next crisis. www.economist.com/asia/2026/01...

From this zinger of a paragraph

If you're wondering why it is worth being sceptical of China as next global superpower hype, the constant shredding of China's military hierarchy over the last half decade is one of several good reasons

Via the Taepodong missile watcher account on Twitter

Here ya go. Enjoy Cats vs Bears😂😂😂

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Kash Patel going to a big meeting of the intelligence chiefs in England and asking if they can go jet skiing instead of having a normal meeting is really doing a number on my ability to focus