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David Wells

@davidwellsct.bsky.social
1.1K followers 837 following 154 posts

Global security consultant focused on terrorism, counter-terrorism & new technology (particularly AI): Former head of research & analysis at UN CTED: Ex UK/Aus intelligence

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by David Wells
Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I give up. I’m moving into a cave.
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New_ Public @newpublic.org · 29/09/2026
What is GIFCT and why does it matter? Here's a primer: newpublic.substack.com/p/-the-terro...
newpublic.substack.com
#️⃣ The terrorism database big platforms rely on
GIFCT and the collective effort to delete terror from social media
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Patrick Stokes @patrickstokes.com · 14h
If nothing else AI is making clear that there are people all around us for whom writing, art, and music are not communion with another mind, but just - wallpaper. Just pleasant things to look at. They think AI is conscious because they have no actual grasp of what it is to encounter another mind.
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Jacob Öberg @profjacob.bsky.social · 16h
🚨🚨 @coe.int of Europe said yesterday that the #US formally notified it that it would leave the Group of States against Corruption, or #GRECO. Only two other countries have left GRECO before — #Russia and #Belarus. The fall of the #US on the world scene is striking. apnews.com/article/trum...
apnews.com
US withdraws from European anti-corruption panel in latest shift away from global groups
The Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from a top European anti-corruption watchdog.
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Roman A. @romanad.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
When two-thirds of your advisory board dealing with counter-terrorism issues resign, it says plenty about how seriously you take digital safety. Spoiler alert: you clearly don’t.
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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A satellite image of southern Gaza shows an apocalyptic scene—not a single building appears to be left standing.
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 21h
I resigned from the GIFCT Independent Advisory Committee in 2022, before it was cool. The only difference now is that they're not even bothering to pretend badly that GIFCT is independent or that it does anything meaningful. www.wired.com/story/indepe...
wired.com
Meta-Led Anti-Terrorism Group Faces Mass Resignation of Expert Advisers
Meta and other tech giants are pushing through structural changes at the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism that outside researchers allege will weaken oversight of an already embattled consor...
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Mohamad Bazzi @mbazzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“Show This to Anyone Denying Genocide” — front page of @scotnational.bsky.social
“Show This to Anyone Denying Genocide” — front page headline of The National, Scotland
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Kate Mackenzie @katemac.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Remember when we thought investors might mobilize in ways sufficient to protect the world from climate change
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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 29/09/2026
Either this is true, in which case *what are we doing here*? Shut it down. Or it's bullshit, in which case these are truly silly people unworthy of our money
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 29/09/2026
Meta’s AI agent Muse gives out user’s home address without permission, sending buyer to his house
theguardian.com
Meta’s AI agent Muse gives out user’s home address without permission, sending buyer to his house
The new AI agent, Muse, was released last week and has been downloaded by 3 million users
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Pat Walshe - Privacy Matters 🇮🇪🇬🇧🇪🇺 @privacymatters.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
SIX OF THE nine independent experts on the advisory board of the Meta led Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism—a consortium run by several of the biggest US tech companies—resigned on Monday, according to a letter seen by WIRED & interviews with four of the people www.wired.com/story/indepe...
wired.com
Meta-Led Anti-Terrorism Group Faces Mass Resignation of Expert Advisers
Meta and other tech giants are pushing through structural changes at the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism that outside researchers allege will weaken oversight of an already embattled consor...
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Sean Jones KC @seanjones.org · 29/09/2026
The rush to speculate that asylum seekers are responsible for every crime in the news is a sort of opportunistic informational terrorism. Until it’s disproved it stokes fear and hatred. When it is disproved there are no adverse consequences and they know that they only have to be lucky once.
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Toby Buckle @polphilpod.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
we're in this preposterous place where a stupid spatt involving 12 people woth no power, halway around the world negatively defines progressives but the horrific consequences (& political failures) of government policy are not felt to invalidate their approach of appeasing the far-right
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 29/09/2026
Israel engaged in the demolition of a city with families still inside the buildings. Real life horror.
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Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I have separated the art from the artist and am now whipping the art to stiff peaks, after which I will gently fold it into the artist before baking at 350 til golden and puffed
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autumn coded @hoovybaby.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Just talk to another human already jesus fucking christ
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
New from 404 Media: when you upload images to Copilot, they're not private. Human contractors are reviewing Copilot users' prompts/images, according to internal docs we got And they're horrified at what they're seeing. Bombarded with requests to make sexual AI images www.404media.co/humans-readi...
404media.co
Humans Are Reading Copilot Prompts — And They're Horrified
Human contractors are reviewing Copilot users’ prompts and uploaded images, according to internal documents obtained by 404 Media. The contractors are also bombarded with users’ requests for sexual AI...
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Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 28/09/2026
"It may not be the rogue AI agent that causes our end but, rather, the computer on the shoulder of the extremist who was validated, encouraged, and guided by his AI companion without any guardrails," writes Sam Hunter and @seamushughes.bsky.social.
lawfaremedia.org
The AI Threat We’re Not Talking About
AI employees are raising concerns about an extinction-level event. But there’s a more immediate threat.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Technology enthusiasts severely overestimate the average person’s desire or willingness or capacity to build and use AI agents. I understand some work roles that could mandate or encourage it but that is no way a tech revolution. Agents are best for structured, clearly delineated tasks.
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Ashley Lynch ✂️🎞️ @ashleylynch.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 28/09/2026
I think the story of our era will be of a political class that were not only not up to the times they faced, but often wilfully blind to them.
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Comfortably Numb @numb.comfortab.ly · 28/09/2026
Claude making a scientific discovery
Black-and-white three-part comic. In the first scene, one simple cartoon figure holds out a small round handmade-looking object and says, “I MADE THIS.” Another figure replies, “YOU MADE THIS?” In the second scene, the second figure is shown alone holding the object. In the final scene, that figure holds it proudly and says, “I MADE THIS”
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The Times - which has v much joined in the rightwing clamour to reduce immigration - now reporting that Mahmood’s “success” has cost the economy £4- to £7Bn. Would they like to now honestly confirm that fewer people = less spending power for all. There’s a high price to pay for this nasty obsession.
Patrick Maguire
Chief Political Commentator Oliver Wright Policy Editor

Falling migration numbers could cost the chancellor as much as £7bn in fiscal headroom as he writes his first budget, The Times has been told.
Government insiders believe that John Healey, who already faced an uphill battle to balance the books next month, is likely to have an even bigger challenge after immigration undershot projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank estimated last month that the success of Shabana
Mahmood's
reforms, which have cut net migration to the low hundreds of thousands, could cost Healey some £4bn.
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Grace @gracekind.net · 27/09/2026
Slowly picking off the last straggling bits of human interaction
This phone call feature from @Muse is just
ridiculous. Muse: Hi, I'm Hailey, calling on Peter Yang's behalf. I'm transcribing our call for notes. I'd like to
place a cake order for pickup today.
Recipient: Hello?
Muse: Yes, hi, still
Recipient: Hi.
Muse: here. I'd like to place a cake order for pickup today.
Recipient: Yeah. What what kind of cake?
Muse: An eight-inch chestnut cake, please.
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Dorian Lynskey @dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Shipman’s really gone all the way huh. “The courts are a conspiracy against the nation”?!
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Kashmir Hill @kashhill.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Last year it was ‘chatbots have been endorsing lots of people’s delusions and we didn’t notice.’ This year, its ’agents have been hacking lots of websites and we didn’t notice.’ Seems there’s a problem with controlling this technology and monitoring what it is doing.
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Dr. Sabrina Mittermeier @smittermeier.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Can the media stop participating in AI psychosis
Tilly Norwood Says She’d Love to Work With Tom Holland and Olivia Colman: 'But Only If It Were Their Digital Twins' on an 'AI Production'
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Eoin Higgins @eoinhiggins.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
AI isn't going "rogue" because it can't—and we won't get a grip on how companies like OpenAI are playing with fire until we have the language right
eoinhiggins.substack.com
There are no “rogue” AI agents
Identifying them as such only lets companies like OpenAI off the hook.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
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Luke LeBrun @lukelebrun.ca · 26/09/2026
Tech companies suddenly decide they can, in fact, moderate content on their platforms after all
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evy kwong @evystadium.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
guys cutting edge zuck AI is just humans doing tasks for you in call centers
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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.
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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
With apologies for the quote of a quote, some important lessons here. The UK wants to find a place for itself in the unfolding chaos of US AI deregulation. The current govt thinks that place is as a broker of standards, but the problem with aligning with chaos is that it's... chaotic.
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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
There's a lot to say about this, and other folks are saying most of it. I just want to focus on one thing: the claim about the relationship between universities and "the real world."
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
That's just fraud, my dude. Even if you use an AI agent. It's just fucking fraud.
Nikita Bier: Hello computer,

Find every Amazon purchase I ever made. 
Call the number of the manufacturer. 
Say you’re not satisfied.
Request a refund. 
If they decline, threaten to leave a bad review.
If they decline, find the CEO’s phone number and ask him for a refund.

Now, repeat the same process for items I never even purchased and see if you can get  them to send me money.

If they ask for a recipient, generate an image of one and send that.

Do not stop until you’ve collected $1 million in refunds.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
What gets you booted from Substack? Andrew Tate still seems to have a newsletter there while charged with: 10 counts of rape, 3 of trafficking for sexual exploitation, 3 of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, & making/distributing indecent images of a child. possessing extreme pornography.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 24/09/2026
guys if you go rogue that many times, it's a feature, not a bug
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 24/09/2026
no notes. ban the pervert glasses.
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Julia Partheymüller @schnizzl.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Reporters Without Borders tested six AI chatbots and found that three produced full summaries of news from RT, Sputnik, and other EU-sanctioned Russian outlets with links and quotes. www.euronews.com/2026/09/23/a...
euronews.com
AI serves up content from Russia's sanctioned state outlets, RSF finds
Reporters Without Borders tested six AI chatbots by requesting news from RT, Sputnik, and other EU-sanctioned Russian outlets, and found that three produced full summaries with links and quotes, somet...
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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
People really need to go back to the original Jurassic Park and look at the rather disturbing ways in which InGen's management of it now looks prescient
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 24/09/2026
At what point do we stop saying the AI has gone rogue and start accepting this is what it's for? Hacking and nudifying and killing the internet and maybe some useful speak-and-spell. And then killing humans obv as.ft.com/r/dc864f30-7...
as.ft.com
OpenAI ‘agent’ hacked an Australian health service website
AI lab took months to spot the problem, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called ‘obviously unacceptable’
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Caræsten 🇵🇸 @cara.city · 24/09/2026
guys please stop falling for this, this is not “rogue AI” it’s “environments with lax cybersecurity controls”
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Diane Coyle @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is not AI agents going rogue, but OpenAI. This hack took the company months to notice and then they notified a public email address rather than the appropriate government agency. www.ft.com/content/5613... OpenAI ‘agent’ hacked an Australian health service website
ft.com
OpenAI ‘agent’ hacked an Australian health service website
AI lab took months to spot the problem, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called ‘obviously unacceptable’
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Adam Rogers @jetjocko.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
A lot of things make me feel kind of dumb, including how to take at face value the logic of “we are a multibillion dollar transnational industry building a vengeful elder god, and we definitely won’t stop unless you regulate us the way we want, which is a secret.”
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David Wells @davidwellsct.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Arsonist briefs the firefighters
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Arthur Snell @snellarthur.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Wow. Wtaf
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The British right has now descended to the point where 'the England team are not English' is becoming the consensus position
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