sam

Geotectonics + emerging tech + China. Ian Dunross disciple. Care deeply about Britain’s place in the world. Great Man Theory maximalist.

[sam @discoplomacy]

Looks like I will be in DC VERY briefly from the 24th to 27th September.

Want to talk geopolitics, emerging tech, China, or anything else? I would also love to hear what you’re working on.

Won’t have huge amount of time but DM and we can try and make it work!

[sam @discoplomacy]

Let’s goooo

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Michael Mann is premiering a new 4K MIAMI VICE: DIRECTOR’S FINAL CUT at Beyond Fest.

The 2006 theatrical cut was 132 minutes, while Mann later released an unrated alternate cut that ran roughly 140 minutes and altered 26 scenes, including the opening and the placement of “In the Air Tonight.” Mann even described that version as an alternate cut rather than his definitive version. Now, 20 years later, he’s revisiting it again.

[☀️AliquisNovus☀️ @PalmyrPar]

I think the one thing that’s aged the most about the Obama era is the blinding high of early to mid 2010s celebrity worship. You just can’t imagine anyone giving a single fuck about this sort of thing nowadays.

[sam @discoplomacy]

@LOS_Fisher @FT Great shout

[nxthompson @nxthompson]

A remarkable piece from @shustry on Taiwan, where confidence in America is so shaken the country may preemptively surrender to China rather than risk all-out war. https://t.co/Tw77LlH8vq

[sam @discoplomacy]

SCMP reports Moonshot is pondering a dual listing in Shanghai and HK. “Moonshot’s exploration of dual listings may stem from the weaker market performance of AI stocks in Hong Kong, and because too many firms had applied to list in the city, the sources said.”

https://t.co/s8IQr5BYN3

[DeepSeek @deepseek_ai]

🧠 Asymmetric architecture. More intelligence, less cost.

🔹 552B-parameter MoE.
🔹 New Causal Encoder–Decoder architecture: just 8B active parameters for input, 16B for output.
🔹 New pre-training methods + larger-scale RL post-training deliver benchmark results ahead of flagship models, including DeepSeek-V4-Pro.

2/6

[Herbie Bradley @herbiebradley]

memetic resilience is one of the most valuable traits in a world where the information ecosystem moves so fast

[sam @discoplomacy]

@jameswharton @ForcesNews V cool, love this

[sam @discoplomacy]

Dimon is not a man to be underestimated (a point I’ve said many times)

[sam @discoplomacy]

Britain is now on its ninth Prime Minister and eleventh Chancellor of Dimon’s tenure.

He has seen Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer in No10, and Brown, Darling, Osborne, Hammond, Javid, Sunak, Zahawi, Kwarteng, Hunt and Reeves in No11.

[Alex Wickham @alexwickham]

New: Andy Burnham dropped in on a meeting between JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon and top No10 business adviser Varun Chandra today

Dimon was also in to see John Healey

The meetings come amid industry efforts to persuade the government not to raise taxes on banks at the budget

[sam @discoplomacy]

@kmei_ Can a man not have hobbies!

[sam @discoplomacy]

OpenAI have put me on the naughty step

[sam @discoplomacy]

@xavicfu I never really got into LCD Soundsystem. Best tracks to start?

[sam @discoplomacy]

Lots of people know this 2007 album from its two standout tracks ‘The Girls’ and ‘Acceptable In The 80s’, both excellent.

But I reckon folks would also enjoy the rest of the songs.

‘Colours’ is v v good, sort of track you can sling into a set an hour before midnight. If you enjoy The Dare’s TikTok viral track ‘Girls’ from a couple of years ago you will probably enjoy this too. V electro sleaze. Also quality fan vid on YouTube which is nearly 20 years old and feels v Old Internet: https://t.co/72y3rtKP3N

‘Love Souvenir’ was way ahead of its time. Feels like something you could have seen emerging in 2015 Majestic Casual era, or as the backing production to a v relaxed Frank Ocean track. Exceptional track: https://t.co/MjPfNzHU7l

[sam @discoplomacy]

By the by, interesting to think of Sulla’s march on Rome. Completely defied inter-societal and elite norms to the point that Marius and others couldn’t even comprehend he would do it, so taboo and unprecedented it would be. Many died as a result of this oversight.

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

Exactly what I was saying yesterday, these vague alarmist public statements will be used as to push through (probably bad) AI policy.

[李幺傻 @liyaosha]

蒙古国总统，100公斤，卧推20下，这简直太牛逼了！

[sam @discoplomacy]

This is my rough intuition. Would be able to link a donor to one of the guys running a firm like this so the pair could have a direct and useful conversation on this stuff. Re highest leverage I personally think it is a v strong use of funds AND would be keen to see if this could become a useful model going forward (again, not an expert - above is all gut feeling!)

[sam @discoplomacy]

Lots of EA/AI safety money sloshing about, more to arrive soon. Some of that will be focused on biorisk. Great! However, consider this:

>ebola ripping through DRC at the moment
>healthcare workers being attacked by rebel groups
>healthcare workers not getting their salaries paid
>they have decided to go on strike
>they are letting families of the dead touch the deceased, which is spreading Ebola further
>“there is no approved vaccine” for current strain, so other forms of intervention are critical.

So a modest and equally urgent proposal: fund one of the several Western Private Security Companies (PSC) on the ground in the DRC for other business to specifically deliver funding to frontline healthcare workers trying to stop Ebola spreading.

If this sounds like something you 🫵 have power to fund, hit my DM asap and let’s see if I can connect you to someone on the other side.

[sam @discoplomacy]

My intuition is that spending some of the billions of $$$ floating around the AI safety/security on hardening BSL-3/4 labs across Africa would be a very good spend indeed. Reports I’m reading note electricity cutting, lack of staff, general sloppiness (despite best intentions.)

[sam @discoplomacy]

Lots of EA/AI safety money sloshing about, more to arrive soon. Some of that will be focused on biorisk. Great! However, consider this:

>ebola ripping through DRC at the moment
>healthcare workers being attacked by rebel groups
>healthcare workers not getting their salaries paid
>they have decided to go on strike
>they are letting families of the dead touch the deceased, which is spreading Ebola further
>“there is no approved vaccine” for current strain, so other forms of intervention are critical.

So a modest and equally urgent proposal: fund one of the several Western Private Security Companies (PSC) on the ground in the DRC for other business to specifically deliver funding to frontline healthcare workers trying to stop Ebola spreading.

If this sounds like something you 🫵 have power to fund, hit my DM asap and let’s see if I can connect you to someone on the other side.

[sam @discoplomacy]

I think this is why ‘extinction’ is actually the wrong measurement for me. You can cause a global-level amount of suffering, despair and collapse without driving humans to extinction. I don’t find it a useful framing.

[roon @tszzl]

human extinction is not easy. none of the "respectable" ai risk factors people normally mention in the RSP / preparedness reports would get even close i think, like nuclear or pandemics. it has to be the grey goo. the parallel family of self-replicators