Our flip-flopping leaders are in retreat on defence - unlike Ukraine's tech-savvy army that blitzed Putin's nuclear bombers: TOM TUGENDHAT
Attending a security conference there, British speakers discussed tanks and ships while Ukrainian leaders spoke about drones and tech. Less than 24 hours later, we saw why.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
New clashes outside London hotel housing migrants
A ring of steel is being set up around a luxury four-star hotel that's been converted to house migrants, following sweeping protests this week. Large barriers have been installed outside The Britannia International Hotel in London's Canary Wharf this morning. It comes after a second night of fiery scenes following a major rally by anti-migrant activists outside the swanky city centre venue - where rooms can go for up to £425 a night. Guards kitted out in black uniforms and wearing face masks were seen manning the barriers this morning, as security was tightened. Meanwhile, more than a dozen officers from the Metropolitan Police have gathered outside the building. The heightened protective measures come amid fresh fears of further protests exploding tomorrow and over the weekend. In Epping, Essex, the community is once against braced for fresh demonstrations this week following violent clashes by 'thugs' outside The Bell Hotel, which is also housing illegal asylum seekers. The mayhem erupted earlier this month after one of the hotel's Ethiopian residents was charged with sexually assaulting schoolgirls in the leafy Essex town. This afternoon, metal fencing was delivered to the hotel on the back of a flatbed truck, in a seeming drive to beef up the building's defences. Since the disorder earlier this month, protests have spread to other parts of the country, with more than 150 gathering outside The Park Hotel, in Diss, Norfolk on Monday after the Home Office announced plans to change it from housing asylum-seeker families to single men. The boss of the organisation representing rank-and-file police officers has chillingly warned the disorder in Epping's was the 'signal flare' which could spark an outbreak of violent protests. Police could now be dragged away from neighbourhood duties to keep the peace at rallies outside migrant hotels, said Tiff Lynch, head of the Police Federation. Ms Lynch said officers were being 'pulled in every direction' and commanders were 'forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps'. She said if violent protests spread throughout the summer, it would be 'dangerous to assume' that police forces would be able to 'hold the line indefinitely' 'It would be comical if it weren't so serious - and so familiar. Local commanders are once again being forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps,' she wrote in the Telegraph . She said Epping was 'not just a troubling one-off', adding: ' It was a signal flare. A reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it.' The hotel in Canary Wharf was the latest to be converted into asylum accommodation by the Home Office, as Britain braces itself for a potential surge in illegal migrants crossing the Channel in the summer. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been warned the nation could face a second 'summer of riots' if Labour fails to get a grip on such hotels being used amid rising public anger. The decision for the four-star city building to house asylum seekers has already been branded an 'insult', with some residents and local business owners saying they fear for their safety. Anti-migrant activists claim the new wall outside the lavish glass-fronted building has been built to keep them away from the hotel entrance after yesterday's rally, which saw them clashing with police. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Phiip went on the attack last night and blasted the government for spending taxpayers' cash on housing migrants in Canary Wharf. 'It is outrageous that the Government is splurging taxpayers' hard-earned money on luxury hotels for illegal immigrants when most people in this country would struggle to afford a hotel in central London,' he told The Sun. 'This is one of the most luxurious hotels people can only dream of staying in, right in the heart of London's financial centre.' He continued: 'No wonder illegal immigrants are flooding across the Channel in record numbers,' adding: 'This is an insult to law-abiding citizens.' Workers spent yesterday hauling beds and mattresses into a four-star hotel in Canary Wharf after a night of protests in response to Government plans to house migrants there. Labourers dragging new furniture into the hotel were allowed through the metal fencing and police cordon in preparation for the arrival of 'hundreds' of asylum seekers. Today, workers inside the hotel appeared to be installing privacy tape on the main entrance doors at the site, which obscured views into the building. Protesters had gathered outside the hotel amid reports asylum seekers were being transferred from Epping, where trouble had previously broken out, to the capital, although the Home Office later clarified this was not the case. Tower Hamlets Council did, however, confirm the Government intends to use the hotel - which has around 500 rooms - for asylum seekers in a move which has angered anti-migrant protesters and guests whose bookings have been cancelled. The Met Police said it has officers at the scene and warned it wouldn't hesitate to clampdown on criminal thugs trying to create mayhem outside the hotel. A spokesman told MailOnline: 'We continue to have officers deployed in the vicinity of the Britannia International Hotel where protests have taken place over recent days. 'They are there to provide reassurance to local residents and businesses, to ensure that any further protest takes place peacefully and to respond to any incidents. 'We continue to encourage those exercising their lawful right to protest to do so responsibly and with consideration to the impact on those trying to go about their lives in the local area. 'Anyone who crosses the line from lawful protest into criminality can expect to face police action.' In Epping, Essex Police has issued a dispersal order, which is in place from 2pm on Thursday until 8am on Friday, covering an area including the town centre, transport hubs and networks such as the underground station. The order gives officers the power to tell anyone suspected of committing or planning antisocial behaviour to leave the area or face arrest. It comes as the force faces criticism over its handling of the display, which led to riot police being drafted in, as activists hurled bricks and other missiles at police vans. The Chief Constable for Essex Police has dismissed calls to resign over the force's handling of the Epping protests after footage emerged of officers escorting pro-migrant activists to an asylum seeker hotel where violent clashes erupted. Ben-Julian Harrington rejected calls from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to step down and firmly extinguished claims his officers had given a higher level of protection to pro-migrant protesters. Asked if he would resign, he told a press conference on Wednesday: 'No, I am not [resigning]. I am not going to do that. This is not about me, this is about the communities of Essex.' He added: 'The issue is not about my resignation. The issue is about an effective police operation that keeps the communities of Epping safe...' The Bell Hotel, in Epping, Essex, has been the centre of a string of violent demonstrations after an asylum seeker was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the town eight days after arriving in the UK. Essex Police had initially denied it had brought Stand Up to Racism activists to the hotel before ugly clashes broke out with anti-migrant protesters on Thursday. But after being shown footage of officers leading the group from a nearby station to outside the hotel, the force then backtracked and admitted it had provided a 'foot cordon'. Mr Farage called for Chief Constable Harrington to resign, saying the footage is 'absolutely disgraceful' and 'heads must roll'. The Reform UK leader later posted footage allegedly showing pro-migrant protesters being 'bussed' to the demonstration in police vans but Essex Police said this was 'categorically' untrue. The force explained that pro-migrant protesters were given a 'foot cordon' on their way to the protest and those who were 'clearly at risk of being hurt' later on were 'escorted by vehicle'. Facing a barrage of questions, Chief Constable Harrington rejected claims his officers had given a higher level of protection to pro-migrant protesters. 'No, I don't accept that,' he said. 'The only protection that officers are doing is to those lawful and law-abiding people, whether they are in that accommodation, whether they are the people of Epping or whether they are people who are standing there with placards and banners wishing to make a very important and legitimate view, whichever your views about it. 'Where officers have intervened that is because there has been are not being partial in any way, shape or form.' The chief constable also dismissed claims pro-migrants were 'bussed' to the hotel', explaining: 'There has been some accusations in the media that we drove people to the protest. That is not true. All four are due to appear at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on August 18. Joe McKenna, 34, of Wickford, is charged with failing to remove a face covering when directed to do so. He remains on bail ahead of a hearing at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court on September 24. The demonstrations followed a man living in the hotel being charged with sexual assault, harassment and inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity. Hadush Kebatu, 41, from Ethiopia, has denied the offences and was remanded in custody.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Zelensky announces new draft law on anti-corruption bodies after protests
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has approved the text of a draft law guaranteeing the freedom of two anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine - days after nationwide protests broke out over changes curbing their Western partners had also expressed serious concerns over the Thursday, Zelensky seemed to backtrack, saying the new bill was intended to safeguard the independence of Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (Sap), and to protect them from Russian said the text of the bill was "balanced", but did not provide any details. The law passed earlier this week brought Nabu and Sap under the control of the prosecutor general, who is appointed by the the time Zelensky justified his decision to curtail the bodies' powers by citing Russian influence. The day before, Ukraine's security services had carried out searches and arrests targeting alleged Russian spies at the passing of the legislation instantly sparked the largest protests since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 in several cities across Ukraine, with many worrying the law would severely undermine the Nabu and Sap's authority and of people gathered in streets and squares across Ukraine, holding placards calling for the legislation to be commentators accused Zelensky of democratic backsliding. Their concerns were further exacerbated when Ukraine's Western partners signalled their displeasure with the bill. Ukraine has official EU candidate status and a spokesman for European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen previously warned Kyiv that the rule of law and the fight against corruption were "core elements" of membership to the bloc. On Thursday, the Commission said it "welcomed" the Ukrainian government's decision to take action against the bill. "We are working [with the Ukrainian government] to make sure that our concerns... are indeed taken into account," the spokesman and Sap were created in 2014-15 as one of the requirements set by the European Commission and International Monetary Fund to move towards a relaxation of visa restrictions between Ukraine and the on Facebook, opposition MP Oleksiy Goncharenko noted Zelensky said that "the independence of anti-corruption institutions must be guaranteed.""First we take it away, and then we say that it must be guaranteed. So why was all this necessary?"In his message on social media on Thursday, Zelensky did not acknowledge the protests or the backlash but said it was "important that we respect the position of all Ukrainians and are grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine."
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Why does technology create new problems for each problem it solves?
Today, so-called techno-optimists fill the ranks of Silicon Valley billionaires. They proclaim a bright future for humanity delivered by the rapid pursuit of technological advances. Of course, these techno-optimists are right that technology and science are unarguably among humanity's greatest assets, and hope for the future. But they go too far, because it is also true that technology always creates new problems even as it solves others – this is also something we've learned through science. As a result, naive faith in technology is a recipe for repeatedly achieving a short-term buzz while also incurring long-term costs. Getting the best out of technology requires a more cautious and balanced approach. Why does technology so often go wrong – even as it gets many things right? The anthropologist Sander van der Leeuwe sketched out an answer about a decade ago, and it seems to be something like a law of nature. When we face a problem, we think about it and build a conceptual model of how part of the world works. We use it to propose a solution to our problem. Based on that understanding, we then act, and the technology we come up with often solves the problem. However, we then typically find that our model – of course – wasn't actually a complete model of the world. Our simple model left some things out. Not surprisingly, it then turns out that our technology, operating in the real world, has effects on that world that we hadn't foreseen – unanticipated consequences. We repeatedly encounter this pattern because simple models are so powerful, seductive and useful. Also, simple models leave details out so that we always misperceive the full consequences of our actions. We invent better fishing technology to feed more people, and then find we've wiped out fish populations. We create wonderful non-stick surfaces for cooking pans and then later discover that the chemicals in these materials cause health problems and have leached into the environment, spreading essentially everywhere. We make super-convenient plastics that end up as micro-particles in the oceans and in our own bodies. This is also the story of technology, along with the great victories. Because we understand this, anticipating problems should be part of technological development itself. A clear-eyed view of our ignorance doesn't mean not pursuing technology, but counsels caution and wisdom by employing foresight, without expecting anything close to flawless prescience. It also means taking practical steps to regulate development and give time to redress emerging problems, while at the very least avoiding the worst possible outcomes. Our current approach to research and development in artificial intelligence or AI offers an example of the reckless approach. Right now a handful of the world's largest technology companies are battling it out among themselves to control the market for this technology, rolling out one model after another as fast as they can with little oversight. As the neuroscientist Gary Marcus has argued, this race for near-term dominance has one obvious cost – it exposes everyone to the unknown risks of new and untested technologies. It also has a less obvious cost: the pitched urgency of the competition means that virtually all available resources get invested in research in the recent most promising area, currently so-called large-language models. This hoards resources away from other areas of computer science that might ultimately turn out to be more important to one day achieving true AI. Fortunately, not all Silicon Valley leaders accept the techno-optimist demand for uncontrolled technological acceleration. Dario Amodei, CEO of the AI company Anthropic, certainly shares their optimism, as he revealed in a recent essay expressing his view that AI research could lead to incredible improvements to human wellbeing. Exploring an admittedly optimistic scenario, he suggests that we might in a few decades eliminate essentially all diseases, spread beneficial economic growth across nations, even greatly improve humans' collective ability to form consensus on issues of fundamental social importance. But Amodei also accepts that there's plenty of room for things to go wrong – AI may not achieve any of these positives, and could instead radically exacerbate inequality, or provide a new class of autocrats with unprecedented powers of surveillance and control through AI-enhanced propaganda. What will happen depends on the choices we make. And, in this, he suggests that keeping a close focus on risks and regulation has to be the right way forward, rather than naively racing into the future with hope as our guide. People not only underestimate how good AI might one day be, he thinks, but also how bad the risks could be. And there's natural asymmetry we need to respect. 'The basic development of AI technology and many (not all) of its benefits seems inevitable,' as he sees it, as the result of powerful market forces. 'On the other hand, the risks are not predetermined and our actions can greatly change their likelihood.' As so often with cultures such as Wall Street or Silicon Valley, the essential tension is between forces seeking short-term profits – whatever the long-term outcome – and others who would rather balance opportunities and risks, and thereby pursue more sustainable benefits. In arguments for and against such opposing views, there's a natural imbalance, as alluring and obvious potential profits now get weighed up against harder-to-see and less-defined risks set in an unknown future. It's not a fair comparison. Especially when it is so easy to make catastrophically huge errors when thinking about the future, even the near future. In his techno-optimist manifesto, the entrepreneur Marc Andreessen casually voices his dream that we might ramp up clean-energy resources so quickly that everyone on earth could soon use 1,000 times more energy a day than is currently typical for people in developed nations. Just think what people could achieve! Sounds great. Except that a little physics thinking also shows that using that much energy would immediately cause planetary warming about 30 times faster than we're experiencing today, and we'd all be dead in a few years. Not so great after all. Of course, anyone might make this kind of mistake, because in our complex world, cause and effect is complex. Technology is tricky, and what might happen is far from obvious. That's just the way it is – and why we need to think more carefully about risks and follow a more cautious approach. Mark Buchanan is a physicist and science writer and the author of Ubiquity and Nexus: Small Worlds and the New Science of Networks
