Shashank Joshi

NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff

Quite a scoop here. "Last spring [NSA] detected evidence of an unusual phone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney briefed on the existence of the call" www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

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"we used the model extensively via Claude Code to debug its own evaluation infrastructure &...fix issues under time pressure. This creates a potential risk...a misaligned model could influence the very infra. designed to measure its capabilities" www-cdn.anthropic.com/0dd865075ad3...

Opus 4.6 model card. "...has saturated all of our current cyber evaluations...Internal testing demonstrated qualitative capabilities beyond what these evaluations capture, including signs of capabilities we expected to appear further in the future" www-cdn.anthropic.com/0dd865075ad3...

"UK AISI developed a universal jailbreak (with retries) that achieved 0.778 pass@200 on a policy violating the cyber dataset we provided. Their jailbreak used a single user message only." cdn.openai.com/pdf/23eca107...

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...

India may be about to become one of the world’s most open economies New trade deals could make it a manufacturing powerhouse, reckons Arvind Subramanian

"Along with other reforms recently implemented—to taxes, labour codes and the energy and insurance sectors—they [recent trade deals] hold the potential to transform India into a paragon of openness and a manufacturing powerhouse" www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

The age of a treacherous, falling dollar Those holding American assets will have to get used to it

"volatile policymaking and a falling exchange rate make holding the dollar riskier than for decades" www.economist.com/leaders/2026...

NSS: "We seek... peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change..." www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
"The US state department is set to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities across Europe..." www.ft.com/content/f869...

The resumption of boat strikes (this is the first in a month) seems to have come with a change in command arrangements for them.

Previously they were carried out by JSOC and bypassed SOUTHCOM entirely. Now DOD is stressing that SOUTHCOM’s new commander (a JSOC alum) is ordering them, and a…

Donald Trump wants to end America’s half-century conflict with Iran His showdown with Iran’s supreme leader will shape the region for a generation

"As America gears up for talks, then, the prevailing view in Washington is that those talks will fail. The question is not whether Mr Trump will strike Iran, but what he will strike and when." www.economist.com/middle-east-...

lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · 49m I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated. Quote lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Jan 25 Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.) But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp.

INBOX: Washington Post Ukraine Correspondent Lizzie Johnson announces that she has been laid off in the middle of a below-freezing war zone without power, heat, or running water.

Exclusive-US shoots down Iranian drone approaching aircraft carrier, official says Feb 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. military shot down on Tuesday an Iranian drone that approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, a U.S. official told Reuters on Tuesday.

"The U.S. ​military shot ‌down on Tuesday ‌an Iranian drone that approached the Abraham ⁠Lincoln ‌aircraft carrier in the ‍Arabian Sea, a U.S. official told ​Reuters...The...Shahed-139 drone was flying towards the carrier ⁠and was ​shot ​down by a F-35" uk.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-us...

Infosec advice, from The Economist to Epstein.

The Post describes how DHS is now using 'administrative subpoenas' as a form of domestic surveillance, apparently to intimidate those engaged in lawful activity & speech. www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Can Europe do nuclear deterrence without America? Britain and France are deepening their co-operation

.@sophiepedder.bsky.social & I wrote on revival of the debate (again) over how Europe does nuclear deterrence with less America. UK & France co-operating to unprecedented degree, building on Northwood declaration. Sweden & Germany looking to do much more w/ France.
www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Musk's X office in France raided by Paris prosecutor The Paris prosecutor says its cyber-crime unit is conducting a search of X's offices.

"Offices belonging to Elon Musk's social media platform, X, in France are being raided by the Paris prosecutor. Its cyber-crime unit is conducting the searches, it said in a statement on X. Europol is assisting." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When one mother was taken by ICE, another stepped in to donate breastmilk Moms in Minneapolis are donating diapers, food and time to help families who have been ripped apart by ICE.

A newborn in Minneapolis hadn’t eaten for a day and a half.

ICE agents took her mother when she went to work, trying to make money for diapers.

Her 16-year-old and Bri, a local mother of two, saved that baby's life. @chabeli.bsky.social tells their story

Trump Had Unusual Call With F.B.I. Agents After Election Center Search

'Mr. Trump narrowly lost Georgia in 2020 by about 11,000 votes, prompting an effort by him and his supporters to “find” enough votes to change the outcome.' www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...

The president who has believes that Italian military satellites were used to hack voting machines in a joint CIA-Chinese operation has sent his intelligence chief to look for evidence of voter fraud. What could go wrong? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...

Xi the Destroyer The latest military purge signals China’s leader is entering a new era.

"whenever he names a civilian to the CMC, that person will be seen as the de facto front-runner to succeed Xi as China’s next leader, thus injecting a new character into this swirling drama." www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-des...

Xi the Destroyer The latest military purge signals China’s leader is entering a new era.

"Breaking the military’s capacity to resist the party’s commands, especially in a crisis, is of utmost importance to Xi—even more so than...combat readiness. His driving concerns about party control of the military ... are existential." www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-des...

How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats’ in the Twenty-First Century The less precise our nuclear discourse, the more fear nuclear manipulators can elicit.

'For their part, authoritative leaders of India and Pakistan made no credible nuclear threats of nuclear use in the Kargil War of 1999 and the five subsequent violent crises of 2002, 2008, 2016, 2019, and 2025' carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

China’s century of purges Xi Jinping’s recent purges of senior PLA officers reveal a military stripped of independence, with obedience engineered over decades of Leninist structures.

"Taken together, the Xu and Lin episodes point to the same pattern. Even limited or ‘hedged’ dissent within the PLA has resulted in immediate sidelining, and any perceived challenge at the highest level has provoked decisive purge and persecution." engelsbergideas.com/essays/china...

The violence in Iran could lead to civil war As America masses an armada, the regime’s response to recent protests is radicalising Iranians

'Some royalists abroad are wondering how to smuggle arms into Iran and solicit Israel’s help.' www.economist.com/middle-east-...

The violence in Iran could lead to civil war As America masses an armada, the regime’s response to recent protests is radicalising Iranians

'Elders in Lorestan and Ilam—peripheral provinces where protests erupted, where tribal loyalties are still prevalent and weapons still prized—have taken to social media dressed in military fatigues, brandishing rifles and vowing revenge' www.economist.com/middle-east-...

The violence in Iran could lead to civil war As America masses an armada, the regime’s response to recent protests is radicalising Iranians

Sobering reporting on the risk of Iranian civil war. 'According to multiple accounts, masked men armed with knives killed basijis, the regime’s volunteer vigilantes. “It’s already a civil war,” says a young woman in Mashhad. “We’re just not saying it.”' www.economist.com/middle-east-...

"Pax Silica builds on a hierarchical model where Washington defines the rules...Some actors are brought in as ‘capability nodes’, while others – notably the EU and Taiwan – are treated more as markets rather than full strategic co-architects." www.iiss.org/online-analy...

"Putin is not getting an accurate picture" This is the second part of our interview with Richard Moore, who from 2020 until last September was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) also known as “C”.

"We must not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against a fundamentally weak opponent by any serious measure. Putin’s Russia is a weakening power. The only reason that he’s still able to fight in Ukraine is because the Chinese are helping." samf.substack.com/p/putin-is-n...

"Putin is not getting an accurate picture" This is the second part of our interview with Richard Moore, who from 2020 until last September was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) also known as “C”.

Richard Moore: "I’m no longer sitting reading the intelligence, but my sense talking to people is that there is still absolutely zero sign that Putin is serious about negotiating. He obviously will play us along. He will try and spin things out." samf.substack.com/p/putin-is-n...