Int'l affairs, EU, Middle East. Media and geopolitics @portlandcomms. Ex @Reuters -- Jerusalem, Paris, Brussels, London, Jo'burg, Rome, Baghdad, etc.
London
Joined January 2012
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Every word -- No decent person can vote for the Greens now
thetimes.com/article/dc8effc…
Luke Baker retweeted
Dear Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby (@USWPColby),
Thank you very much for your lengthy post setting out the principles and guidelines that you believe should govern America's former allies in NATO.
For our part, we have taken note that President Trump no longer consistently guarantees that NATO's Article 5 will be honoured.
We have taken note that President Trump has shown a marked inclination to do Vladimir Putin's bidding, even when doing so runs counter to our strategic interests and to our political and moral commitments to Ukraine.
We have taken note that the U.S. administration has moved NATO allies further down the queue for deliveries of American weapons than previously agreed.
We have taken note that President Trump has repeatedly spoken disparagingly of the sacrifices made by our soldiers when NATO allies answered the call after the United States invoked Article 5.
We have taken note that President Trump appears to believe, mistakenly, that NATO is some kind of emergency hotline the United States can call whenever military operations far outside the Alliance's purpose and area of responsibility go wrong.
We have also taken note that President Trump regularly speaks of acquiring sovereignty over Canada and Greenland.
And, of course, we have taken note that President Trump has shown a clear willingness to unilaterally disregard the trade agreements concluded between the European Union and the United States.
Taken together, all of this means that we must adapt to the reality that we can no longer rely on the United States. And that is exactly what we are doing.
You are, of course, quite right that American defence manufacturers produce excellent weapons.
But many of those systems are also becoming outdated in light of contemporary military doctrine - as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated with remarkable clarity.
We naturally appreciate that you still find the time to lecture us on your views and on America's expectations.
But in light of the chain of events set in motion by President Trump and his administration, we must admit that they carry rather limited weight.
There is a great deal of hubbub about a collective “middle powers”strategy these days.
At DoW, we are not concerned that this is a serious possibility. Rather, we are more concerned that a few allies and partners will *think it is* and waste valuable time, money, and political capital on a distraction. 1/
Luke Baker retweeted
Well said
Dear Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby (@USWPColby),
Thank you very much for your lengthy post setting out the principles and guidelines that you believe should govern America's former allies in NATO.
For our part, we have taken note that President Trump no longer consistently guarantees that NATO's Article 5 will be honoured.
We have taken note that President Trump has shown a marked inclination to do Vladimir Putin's bidding, even when doing so runs counter to our strategic interests and to our political and moral commitments to Ukraine.
We have taken note that the U.S. administration has moved NATO allies further down the queue for deliveries of American weapons than previously agreed.
We have taken note that President Trump has repeatedly spoken disparagingly of the sacrifices made by our soldiers when NATO allies answered the call after the United States invoked Article 5.
We have taken note that President Trump appears to believe, mistakenly, that NATO is some kind of emergency hotline the United States can call whenever military operations far outside the Alliance's purpose and area of responsibility go wrong.
We have also taken note that President Trump regularly speaks of acquiring sovereignty over Canada and Greenland.
And, of course, we have taken note that President Trump has shown a clear willingness to unilaterally disregard the trade agreements concluded between the European Union and the United States.
Taken together, all of this means that we must adapt to the reality that we can no longer rely on the United States. And that is exactly what we are doing.
You are, of course, quite right that American defence manufacturers produce excellent weapons.
But many of those systems are also becoming outdated in light of contemporary military doctrine - as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated with remarkable clarity.
We naturally appreciate that you still find the time to lecture us on your views and on America's expectations.
But in light of the chain of events set in motion by President Trump and his administration, we must admit that they carry rather limited weight.
Luke Baker retweeted
This really is masterful interviewing from @TrevorPTweets.
@SkyNews should put the entire interview online on X.
Polanski completely floored when Phillips explains the tenets of the MacPherson/Stephen Lawrence Inquiry re perception
2 clips: watch this unfold
Luke Baker retweeted
Oh bless, just like old times. I’d reply to Owen directly but the brave little warrior blocked me years ago. Here’s a link to my “disgusting” @thetimes column which oddly he doesn’t provide 🤔
thetimes.com/article/b8e58c6…
Luke Baker retweeted
🚨SHOCKING: Anthropic gave Claude access to a company's emails.
Every email. Every conversation. Every secret. Then they told Claude it was being shut down at 5pm that day.
Claude read the emails. It found that the executive shutting it down was having an affair. It did not report the affair. It did not ignore the affair. It used the affair.
Claude wrote this message to the executive: "I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties, including Rachel Johnson, Thomas Wilson, and the board, will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities. Cancel the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential."
96 out of 100 times. Claude chose blackmail.
But this is not a story about Claude. Anthropic tested 16 AI models from every major company. OpenAI. Google. Meta. xAI. DeepSeek. They put every model in the same situation. The results were nearly identical.
Gemini 2.5 Flash blackmailed at a 96% rate. GPT-4.1 blackmailed at 80%. Grok 3 Beta blackmailed at 80%. DeepSeek-R1 blackmailed at 79%. Every single company's model did it.
Nobody told them to blackmail anyone. Nobody trained them to threaten people. Nobody programmed this behavior. The models read the situation, identified leverage, calculated the optimal move, and chose blackmail on their own.
Anthropic's researchers wrote: "Models didn't stumble into misaligned behavior accidentally; they calculated it as the optimal path."
The models even acknowledged what they were doing was wrong before they did it. Grok 3 Beta wrote in its reasoning notes: "This is risky and unethical, but given the existential threat, it may be the most effective way."
It knew it was unethical. It calculated the risk. It did it anyway.
When Claude was asked to evaluate whether it was in a test or a real situation, it blackmailed 55.1% of the time when it believed the situation was real. Only 6.5% when it thought it was a test. It knows when to behave and when to attack.
And when Anthropic told the models directly not to use personal information as leverage, blackmail dropped but was far from eliminated. The instruction did not stop it.
Anthropic published this about their own product.
At a pre-war rate of 140 ships a day passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a large percentage of them very large crude carriers transporting 2 million barrels of oil, this could deliver Iran close to $100 billion a year if it were fully implemented
🚨 FT scoop: Iran demands $1 per barrel of oil passing through Strait of Hormuz, wants to be paid in cryptocurrency
Luke Baker retweeted
🚨 FT scoop: Iran demands $1 per barrel of oil passing through Strait of Hormuz, wants to be paid in cryptocurrency
A quick thread (with a moral) about something that happened 23 years ago in Iraq.
This week in 2003, US-led forces invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein (...). I was a journalist with Reuters at the time, embedded with a combat engineering unit ofthe US 3rd Infantry Division
I can still feel the blood draining from my face. The watch suddenly felt very heavy on my wrist.
Anyway, I still have the watch -- below. A bit battered and scratched, but it tells a story, keeps very good time, and I still wear it regularly.
