Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 13/08/2026It is utterly tedious pedantry made in bad faith. The linked story presents a wide range of data, describing the nuances. The quote in my post picks out the issue of robberies, which tends to be less scrutinised than homicides, and presents a completely accurate piece of data on this. 230
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 10/08/2026Why does every interaction on this website involve this sort of tedious pedantry? 540
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 10/08/2026A new phase in US coercion of Canada. 'if the new tariffs come into force on August 19th, Canada will be the first country ever to be subjected to tariffs under Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a law passed in 1930" www.economist.com/the-americas...economist.comDonald Trump’s bullying of Canada is endlessCanadians are starting to turn against Mark Carney’s pragmatic response 915752
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 10/08/2026A big debate a couple of weeks ago, sparked by Musk, on whether US or European cities are safer. My colleagues look carefully at the data. "Personal robberies with a use of force happen about as often in both regions, even if London and Paris do especially badly." www.economist.com/graphic-deta...economist.comIs Europe safer than America?A novel dataset provides some surprising answers 69725
Reposted by Shashank JoshiOliver Morton, Eater of Sun @eaterofsun.bsky.social · 27/07/2026File under "Really quite disturbing" If the preliminary data for the past few weeks are confirmed, we are now very close to a new world record, and seeing an alarming rate of change climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_dai... 09242
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 22/07/2026I do not think they spend much of their day thinking about James Woolsey. 130
Reposted by Shashank JoshiIan Kearns @ianpkearns.bsky.social · 21/07/2026If you want to get close to what the war in #Ukraine is really like, worth listening to this fascinating conversation between @shashj.bsky.social and Jack Watling of @rusi.bsky.social War in Ukraine: has the tide really turned? www.economist.com/insider/insi...economist.comWar in Ukraine: has the tide really turned? | The Economist InsiderThe war in Ukraine is in flux. The country's deep strikes inside Russia have drawn a lot of attention. But Ukraine is also improving recruitment while pioneering new tactics that could eventually brea... 0372
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 21/07/2026For @economist.com subscribers: I spoke to Jack Watling on the latest episode of Inside Defence. We talked about Ukraine, what people misunderstand about drone warfare and the vital role played on the modern battlefield by the ancient art of digging. www.economist.com/insider/insi...economist.comWar in Ukraine: has the tide really turned? | The Economist InsiderThe war in Ukraine is in flux. The country's deep strikes inside Russia have drawn a lot of attention. But Ukraine is also improving recruitment while pioneering new tactics that could eventually brea... 4585
Reposted by Shashank JoshiPeter Sloman @pjsloman.bsky.social · 20/07/2026Fair play to John Healey, who managed to time his 5.5-week break from government to coincide exactly with the World Cup 141467233
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026These are general-purpose models. The same model is disproving conjectures, finding vulnerabilities in software at superhuman scale and writing poems about my cat in rhyming couplets. It's the same thing, trained with the same compute. 121
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026What do you mean “the issue”? Is there solely one issue in defence policy? 100
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026I don’t think knee-jerk scepticism of new technology is the job description of a journalist. I’ve reported extensively on strengths and limitations of generative AI - my job - and I believe the strengths are extraordinary. That’s an evidence based view. 280
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026Just read the response. Seems sensible me. It does not come out against the proposed policy, as far as I can see. Just suggests a number of caveats. 110
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026I challenge you to tell me anything in it that is inaccurate. 101
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026For the 'just a stochastic parrot' brigade. 'A mathematician has cracked an 87-year-old conundrum with the help of AI and announced the solution unceremoniously in a tweet. The finding is the most difficult mathematical problem yet solved by AI, say experts.' www.newscientist.com/article/2580...newscientist.comAI's solution to 87-year-old riddle takes mathematicians by surprise | New ScientistMathematicians have been trying to prove the Jacobian conjecture for nearly a century, but now the Claude Fable 5 AI has apparently found a counterexample that disproves it 127413
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 19/07/2026Not true on both counts. Testosterone potentially linked to wide range of symptoms. And warfare not just about technical ability, very far from it. 010
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 17/07/2026I wouldn’t normally respond to such boorish & ignorant messages, but I will state here that I spoke to three endocrinologists for this story, as well as a clinical psychologist who has published peer-reviewed work in The Lancet & other journals on symptoms associated with special-forces personnel. 120
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 17/07/2026static.klipy.comPeter Griffin's First Time Skydiving?ALT: Peter Griffin's First Time Skydiving? 070
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 17/07/2026You can and must separate it, because a policy does not become bad because the motivations for it may be misguided or bad. 470
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 17/07/2026A farewell to Fable. I got it to make a Guess-Who inspired game which gives you a series of clues to guess the purged PLA or American general. Admittedly niche. shashj1.github.io/guess-hu/ 1452
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 17/07/2026I wrote on Hegseth's plan to screen all troops over 30 for low testosterone. It is unusual—I don't think any other military does it—but it is not crazy. Universal screening is not recommended in the general population, but military personnel are distinctive. www.economist.com/united-state...economist.comPete Hegseth’s testosterone-screening plan is unusual, not crazySoldiers seem to be at particular risk of hypogonadism 16305
Reposted by Shashank JoshiJames Cameron @jjjcameron.bsky.social · 08/07/2026Maybe NATO should just not have summits for 2027 and 2028. Low-key constructive work to transfer more responsibility to Europe can continue without giving Trump a platform to beat up on allies and undermine deterrence further. 611213
Reposted by Shashank JoshiAlexander Martin @alexmartin.bsky.social · 08/07/2026Britain’s cyber agency laid out plans on Tuesday for what it called “a national scale, sovereign defense capability” that would use agentic AI systems to discover and fix cybersecurity weaknesses across government networks and critical national infrastructure.therecord.mediaBritain plans to build autonomous AI 'Cyber Shield' to defend nationThe capability, called Cyber Shield, is designed to counter a threat the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said could see attackers “move at machine speed and greater scale, reducing opportunities... 3185
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 07/07/2026I think the code should be available on my GitHub but I’ll share. Prompt in Claude code was about as simple as it gets, with only one follow-up to add the War and Peace passages. 030
Reposted by Shashank JoshiCarnegie Russia Eurasia @carnegierussia.bsky.social · 06/07/2026On July 9, join us online for an important conversation with Senior Fellow @michaelkofman.bsky.social on Russia's military power after Ukraine, moderated by The Economist's @shashj.bsky.social. RSVP here: carnegieendowment.org/events/2026/... 0264
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 07/07/2026Another Fable experiment. An interactive visualisation of Charles Joseph Minard's famous 'Carte figurative' showing Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812, with some Tolstoy mixed in. shashj1.github.io/minard-1812/ 3525
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 03/07/2026"entirely unstable, often incorrect" - anyone who has used the most modern and capable versions of the technology knows this is false, and based on a total lack of familiarity with the newest models. The evidence is right there in the first post. 110
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 03/07/2026I think that is the point: this technology is very good at helping take people through complex topics in different ways, rather than simply compiling long things to read. The website above is one example of that. Of course, I don't think anyone would argue that it supplants good teachers entirely. 130
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 03/07/2026A crying shame that a history teacher can't see the enormous pedagogical potential of the technology. A loss for your students. 220
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 02/07/2026I updated this so it now has three chapters: how neural networks work, how tokens work, and how transformers work. Fable even trained a small transformer language model. superb-stardust-8ced44.netlify.app 1411
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 02/07/2026 true, but if I remember correctly it covers and explains overfitting later, right? 100
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 02/07/2026I asked Fable to produce an interactive tool that explains simply how neural networks work, taking users through the history of the technology at the same time. Pretty magical, in my view. jazzy-duckanoo-9271fa.netlify.app 912719
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 01/07/2026Curious if you could point me to where they said that about Mythos, as opposed to the mostly factual claims here. www.anthropic.com/research/myt...anthropic.comAssessing Claude Mythos Preview’s cybersecurity capabilitiesClaude Mythos Preview is a new general-purpose language model that is strikingly capable at computer security tasks. This post provides technical details for researchers and practitioners who want to ... 000
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 01/07/2026I wrote this week on the whiplash of American AI policy: the unpredictable zig-zag of restrictions, where AI governance might be headed in this administration, and the broader implications of locking down and restricting cutting-edge models. www.economist.com/business/202...economist.comDonald Trump’s AI regime is opaque, unpredictable—and unsustainableThe administration now controls who gets access to the best models 3425
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 30/06/2026Congratulations on the incredible work you and your colleagues have done. 1120
Reposted by Shashank JoshiOliver Morton, Eater of Sun @eaterofsun.bsky.social · 27/06/2026My round up of @economist.com's heatwave coverage (gift link) www.economist.com/europe/2026/...economist.comEurope can’t stand the heatOliver Morton, our planetary affairs editor, on why the continent is warming faster than any other—and adapting too slowly 910932
Reposted by Shashank JoshiJon B. Wolfsthal @jonatomic.bsky.social · 25/06/2026My latest on where the MOU and talks with Iran leave the US. It is not pretty. The bottom line is Iran has every incentive to drag out the talks and is getting paid without having to do anything on the nuclear issue. open.substack.com/pub/thinking...open.substack.comIran Can Do This All DayThoughts about strategic and nuclear challenges over the next few months 44611
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 24/06/2026"... even AI models marketed as having conservative views, including Elon Musk’s Grok, offered by his company SpaceX, cited left-leaning arguments more often, on average." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i... 13718
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 23/06/2026Today I interviewed German army chief Lt-Gen Christian Freuding. We talked about German rearmament, the future of the Lithuania bridge & debates over the timeline of the Russian threat. @economist.com subscribers can tune in to Inside Defence in an hour. www.economist.com/insider/insi...economist.comIs Germany war-ready? | The Economist InsiderGermany’s army chief has his work cut out. Lieutenant General Christian Freuding has been charged with overseeing the rearmament of the country’s land forces—part of a once-in-a-generation mission whi... 27910
Shashank Joshi @shashj.bsky.social · 22/06/2026If we step back, is the argument that there are no such things as RMAs or that we just aren’t in one now? I do think - if we accept they are a thing - then it’s very hard to know in the moment whether one is underway. 160