Joshua Good

Documentary Producer/ Director

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

This💯

[Al Carns @AlistairCarns]

A few things happening at once that people should connect.

Russia is now linked to the arson attacks on the Prime Minister's house and car last year. Shocker.

And we all saw what happened the moment that story broke. Our feeds flooded with a different story about who the men were and why they did it.

That's the operation. The arson is one half. The disinformation campaign is the other.

Flood the zone, muddy the water, get the country shouting at itself instead of asking who is behind it.

And at the same time, a chunk of the accounts pushing Scottish independence on X went dark the night Israel hit Iran's nuclear sites.

Ask yourself why. Why would hostile states be interested in sowing division across the country?

This is exactly what I mean when I say defence is the thread underneath everything now.

Again, it isn't tanks on a border. It's an arson attack on the PM's front door and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns in the replies. It's the argument about breaking up our country being run out of Tehran.

This is why resilience matters. And it's bigger than just factchecking a tweet. It's energy we can rely on. Industry we actually own. Institutions that are rock solid. Communities that don't split and fracture the moment someone pushes them. A country that is built to take a punch.

That's the job now.

[Mark Urban @MarkUrban01]

I'm not sure many people have processed the importance of Britain's defence spending crisis. What should have been a waypoint on a journey of revival has instead become another one in the arc of decline 👇

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

@AlistairCarns Spot on.

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

@AlistairCarns is absolutely dead right…

[Al Carns @AlistairCarns]

The next war won't be won by armies, navies or air forces alone.

It'll be won by the country whose 19 year olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.

Industry. Society. Economy. That's the fight now.

We're not ready. And we're not being honest about what getting ready will cost.

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

It's not just the exploitation of a tragedy.

JD Vance's picture of Britain - where migrants have led to a crime surge - is the opposite of the truth.

https://t.co/y5El5FUj7v

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

Elon Musk has today updated the formula that decides if you see this tweet.

Each tweet is scored.

S=Σ (probability of reaction × value of reaction)

A like = 0.5 points.
A reply = 13.5.
A full argument? 75+

That’s why outrage travels faster than facts. https://t.co/yc50CjyZPY

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

Farage may struggle to close this down, especially when so many questions remain. Who else in Reform has received a 'personal gift' from crypto kings?

My column on the link: https://t.co/maRks88jMO

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

@jonsac This is fantastic. Thank you.

[Jonathan Sacerdoti @jonsac]

Is anti-Jewish hatred really that bad?
Aren’t you just exaggerating?

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

@FraserNelson Agreed but that cost reduction has been at the expensive of dairy farmers who now make almost no money, causing many to go bust. Not great for our much talked about national resilience.

[Paul Mason @paulmasonnews]

https://t.co/fChKDYeLXm

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

@Nigel_Farage Ignoring international law is the reason the world is in this mess.

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

An excellent article reminding us that the @RoyalNavy is still a potent force, even in an age of increased scrutiny and unfair criticism.

[Sir Humphrey @pinstripedline]

A great article reminding us that the RN keeps a watchful eye on the Russians causing mischief.
https://t.co/Lik4mfBlcf

[Nicholas Drummond @nicholadrummond]

You and David Cameron share much of the blame for the sorry state of Britain’s armed forces today. You cut the defence budget by a third. You delayed renewal by a decade. And the question posed in your tweet shows that you had no idea what you were doing. Worse still, the money you thought you were saving was a drop in the ocean compared to the billions the Conservatives Party was later forced to spend to offset Covid. Your political legacy is a country unable to deter or counter the threats it now faces. This is what you will be remembered for, as well as for almost losing Scotland, and for the Brexit vote, which has undoubtedly given us a worse deal than the one we had before, including making it more difficult and expensive to buy military hardware from our European neighbours.

[Faisal Islam @faisalislam]

NEW

Cambridge-headquartered tech giant Arm Holdings announces it will manufacture its own AI chips - a significant change after 3 decades of success getting its chip designs in 350 billion devices worldwide - IPhones, cars, data centres etc… partnerships announced with most of the worlds tech giants including OpenAI and Meta. The chips will be specialised for AI use, especially the deployment of “agents”.

CEO Rene Haas tells BBC: "This marks the next phase of Arm’s journey - building on our roots in Cambridge, and the strength of our teams across the UK and around the world…” which puts Arm and the UK at the centre of global AI transformation.

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

@SpencerGuard @PoloSandovalCNN @CNN Disagree. Possibly in the short term China will struggle to find other sources of cheap energy. But in the long term countries will gravitate to China’s sphere of influence as trust in America as the world’s policeman ebbs away. A tragedy for the democratic west.

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

An X algorithm decided that you should see this tweet and be shown this video.

Here's how it works...

[Sir Humphrey @pinstripedline]

A really good read on the practical challenges of getting an escort to sea quickly fully stored and equipped for high intensity operations. A challenge all navoes face.
https://t.co/R9yoOeO8aa

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

Bang on the money as ever

[Sir Humphrey @pinstripedline]

It’s been a frustrating week to follow Defence Twitter and the flood of posts about UK defence preparedness. I intentionally no longer blog on current Defence events, because I recognise that I don’t have the context or credibility to comment with authority on modern events.

This week we’ve seen many people attack the UK for its response to events in the Gulf. There have been contrasts made with other national responses, demands for equipment to be sent and a view that the nation is in decline because our perceived speed of response does not match our perception of others.

21st century conflict is not a computer game. It is complex, difficult and challenging. We see a fraction of what is going on, and do so at instant speed, and thus expect an instant response. But we lack the strategic patience to accept things take time and rushing to ‘do something’ can be far worse than taking the time to do the right thing properly.

The responses required are complex, they call for a range of sensors, weapon systems and people to meet a threat that remains unclear. Unless you are inside the MOD planning this response, you will not know the totality of what is going on. Lack of seeing immediate visible action on social media does not mean things are not happening where they need to happen.

There is a wider balance to be struck understanding the impact of decisions will ripple out for more than the immediate future. A ship deployed in haste to the Med may miss maintenance designed to allow it to deploy elsewhere where its capabilities are of more long-term value. There may be far better, and far less visible ways of countering threats than ‘sending a gunboat’ no matter when you decide to send it.

We are making false comparisons – saying that Greece is deploying ships quickly to Cyprus, ignoring that this is their local neighbourhood. That France is deploying a carrier group – ignoring that this means her mission to provide assurance for security in NATO’s ‘High North’ has been ended early, and that it is pure chance she was in the right continent and not in long term refit, or far from home in the Indo-Pacific. We already have a permanent ‘aircraft carrier’ in the region called RAF Akrotiri, so our need to deploy a carrier group is minimal.

Operations are fast moving, complex and threats change. No matter how fast you want to move, logistics and the tyranny of distance will always have a way of slowing you down. No nation can have everything everywhere at once – there are swathes of the world where the US military presence is now gapped, and in turn the maintenance, repair and replenishment needed to return the force to peacetime readiness will be long and extensive. Don’t assume that every other nation is somehow able to do everything while the UK is twiddling its thumbs and doing nothing.

Military operations are about more than games of military “top trumps”. They require calm analysis of the threat, a clear understanding of how to mitigate it and in turn deployment of the right capabilities to address the problem at hand, not the problem the public imagine needs solving based on breathless social media commentary.

The world is in a complex and challenging situation at the moment – this calls for calm measured analysis and a balanced response, not leaping to conclusions. There are two sides to every story – many people want to feel angry, they want to see the worst in this scenario and they want to believe that the UK has let the side down. I am under no illusion that I can change their minds. But I would ask people to realise this isn’t the one-sided situation that social media is making it out to be – that plenty has been going on, is going on and will go on, but it won’t be telegraphed to your Twitter feeds for very good reasons.

As I said at the start, I’m not an expert in this space. I don’t speak with authority or specialist insight. All I know is what I am seeing on the news, but I do know that this is more complex and nuanced than we realise. Please bear this in mind when looking at the worlds.

My thoughts go out to all those in the military who are ‘playing 3D chess’ and doing what is necessary to keep those in harms way safe. Thank you.

[Joshua Good @JoshGoodFilm]

@paulmasonnews Excellent piece