Essays

Long-form writing from leading scholars and commentators on history, statecraft, warfare, philosophy and culture.

Sean Connery's James Bond in a scuffle with another of his nemesis' Goldfinger (played by Gert Frobe) in the 1965 film, Goldfinger. Credit: Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo.
essays

Bond or Blofeld: war, espionage and secrecy in the twenty-first century

Intelligence services and their governments once sought to create a clear line between confidential information and common knowledge. Now, with the rise of brazen attacks and incre..

Richard Aldrich & Christopher Moran August 16, 2022
Voters
essays

Can democracy and genetic engineering co-exist?

New technologies are not neutral tools, and their wholesale adoption could threaten future human lives.

Richard Heinberg August 16, 2022
Russia Iran talks
essays

How Russia and Iran have united in antipathy towards the West

Iran and Russia's leaderships are bound by ties far deeper than geopolitical coincidences of interest: they share a state of mutual paranoia of the West.

Ali Ansari August 15, 2022
British military intelligence officers of the Second World War, 1943.
essays

The art and science of intelligence in war

Intelligence in war is as much a product of common sense as of technical brilliance. It must be understood and applied wisely to be of any use.

Hew Strachan August 15, 2022
Vladimir Putin at an EU-Russia summit in Brussels
essays

What drives Vladimir Putin?

Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine uncannily reflect the motivations of one of Russian literature’s most famous antiheroes, Dostoevsky's Rodion Raskolnikov. Both believe t..

Sergey Radchenko August 9, 2022
Estonia digital democracy
essays

How to fix the future, Estonian style

Rather than protecting individual data privacy, the fate of democracy in our networked age might depend on establishing a new, radically transparent contract of trust between gover..

Andrew Keen August 8, 2022
Abandoned factory in Detroit
essays

Globalisation: why it went into retreat

Thanks to cold war, hot war, and the revived quest of many nations for a degree of industrial self-sufficiency, free market globalisation has peaked for the foreseeable future.

Michael Lind August 4, 2022
war on printing
essays

The war against printing

For many, the advent of printing was nothing short of miraculous but for others it symbolised a scandalous cheapening of knowledge.

Alexander Lee August 1, 2022
turner burning of house of lords and commons
essays

The eighteenth-century technological awakening of artist adventurers

The spirit of innovation embodied by the first Industrial Revolution spread to all aspects of British life — art was no exception.

Andrew Wilton July 28, 2022

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