Tim Benbow

As NATO is so aggressive, we have moved our border guards from where NATO *is* on our Estonian border, and sent them to die in Ukraine, where NATO *is not*

Basically, just because battleships weren't fighting doesn't mean they weren't achieving the purpose of building them. And sure, eventually they came up against a new technology that made them obsolete - but so did the spear.

Good response to a dumb take (and your line applies just as well to the Second World War).

We always thought this was just a sock...

if you are named after a Bond baddie, maybe refrain from doing Bond baddie stuff

Looks like the tower at Blackpool, right?

Advice from the Cold War - The Naval Review The Royal Navy faces a unique mix of problems. Its triple challenge is to challenge Russia in our own part of the world, be able to project power further

I've had two articles out in The Naval Review recently:

www.naval-review.com/news-views/a...

Excerpt from #AdvanceBritannia which is released in the UK on 6 November (Thursday!), preorders appreciated! uk.bookshop.org/p/books/brit...

I reflect on this grimly: if we are lucky, RFK Jr. will be the cabinet secretary that kills the most Americans by his malice, whereas if we are unlucky, it will be Hegseth who does it by his incompetence.

Sultana’s comments are so offensive on so many levels. You can’t “both sides” Putin & Zelenskiy. You can’t speak over the voices of Ukrainian workers who are on the frontlines fighting for democracy & workers rights.

It is Putin and his acolytes who benefit from this war.

Russia has no plans to invade:

Moldova..
Ok. But not Georgia
Ok but not Ukraine.
Ok, Just Crimea
Ok, just Crimea & part of Donetsk
Ok, Just Crimea & all of Donetsk
Ok, Just Crimea & all of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk & Zaporizhzhia
Ok, all of Ukraine

But not NATO…

Notice that he expected, as a constitutional monarch, that the legislature would need to approve his war-making.

Reagan's approach to the world prominently featured two things:

1) Russian aggression bad, Western democratic alliance good
2) Free trade good, tariffs and other barriers to trade bad

Pretending it's the opposite is the sort of reality inversion only someone who rejects truth itself could buy.

After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results:

- AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2%
- ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1%
- ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%

"Almost half of everything AI assistants tell you is wrong" and "Oxford university gives AI assistants to all its students" are two headlines we are forced to accept as coexisting in this appalling timeline.

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

AI misrepresents news 45% of the time. Hasn't stopped every major search provider enthusiastically adopting it www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Government style ad in watercolour. Image of a burglar stealing a painting from the wall of a home. Tagline: "It's not theft... if you say you're using it to train your AI algorithm". Body text: "Theft is now legal, so we can boost the economy by eliminating jobs. If that doesn't make any sense, ask a chatbot to explain it to you." HM government logo in the corner.

Did a new one

If you think that professors exist as repositories of knowledge that students ask for answers, you’re missing the entire point of a college education.

We’re here to teach students how to do research, how to analyze and argue, how to think for themselves — how to find the answers on their own.

Hey, hey guys! Guys! They reinvented the textbook! And the library!

Just amazing to see someone tell on themselves so clearly in public that they do not really know what teaching...is?

Now it’s clear, China hawks were right all along While a group of MPs stood up for the nation’s security over spying, the government failed to stand up to Beijing

www.thetimes.com/article/57d4...

“If Americans had a more clear-eyed view of Putin, they would see a dictator who’s bet everything on a failed invasion, a country losing its sphere of influence, and an economy…cooling. A realistic view of his power would strip Putin of his biggest leverage: the perception of his invincibility.”

Oceans rise, empires fall? Reframing seapower for a warming world How should seapower be reframed to respond to a warming world? Seapower theory was developed during an era of imperial expansion and competition, primarily to control and protect the extraction and...

Interested in the intersection between seapower, climate change, and imperialism? You may enjoy my new article written with Dr. Rob Cullum. Open access in @cspjournal.bsky.social it’s called Oceans Rise, Empires Fall? Reframing Seapower for a Warming World. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Yeah, ok - USS Chesapeake was only briefly American before becoming terminally British after a wee bit of "an incident". Having decided that a little bit of giving up the ship would be fine, actually, the Chesapeake was captured and eventually wound up being sold for timber and reconstructed into a mill. It's now a lovely antiques centre with a well-regarded teashop attached. It's also the best preserved of the early US frigates, at least in terms of the number of original timbers and tactfully ignoring their precise arrangement...

It'd be remiss of me not to wish the US navy a very happy birthday, of course - and unlike virtually everybody else I'm going to include a picture of a genuine American warship to do so...

The grocery industry would be much more profitable if only it didn’t have to pay farmers for supplies

Don‘t threaten us with a good time.

It’s been fantastic to work with so many brilliant colleagues on this - brilliant chapters on everything from innovation to propaganda and covering great geographical range. We also hope the book speaks to qs of mil thought & organisation beyond history- check it out!

Framing the First World War This innovative approach to the history of World War I looks at ways in which military actors saw and perceived war, and how that exerted a significant influ...

We are thrilled with the collection & are incredibly grateful to our contributors for their fantastic chapters, including @sdanisimova.bsky.social @vandawilcox.bsky.social @lmhalewood.bsky.social @yanikdag.bsky.social & more!

Check out the contents & praise 👇
kansaspress.ku.edu/978070064056....

And here we go. I never wrote this article, and yet it is cited here.

www.liberalbriefs.com/geopolitics/...

And of course, it sounds so plausible, I seriously checked whether I had forgotten it, or the footnote was slightly wrong.

#AIisnotresearch

Wiley set to earn $44m from AI rights deals, confirms “no opt-out" for authors The US publisher is the latest to capitalise on deals to give tech firms access to its authors’ content to train their Large Language Models (LLMs).

Everybody makes money out of academic authors except the authors...News.

Wiley is the latest academic publisher to reach a multi-million deal to allow access to its content to AI developers, with no opt out, let alone payment, for the authors who created that content.

The Economist tends to be very well-briefed when it comes to matters of British security. This is the second article I have seen in as many days warning about Russia‘s hybrid warfare against the West.
I would take this seriously.