Robin Brown

Researching the historical sociology of statecraft; mainly about public diplomacies, cultural relations/diplomacy.

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

Ignore the title but interesting on the persistence of armed opposition in Afghanistan and suggests that regional powers may start providing support.

[War on the Rocks @WarOnTheRocks]

Afghanistan’s armed opposition now has more than a dozen groups. It holds no districts. https://t.co/uxCRM7xylo

[Alicia Kearns MP @aliciakearns]

Iranian state cut-outs like HispanTV have no place in the UK spreading hate and undermining our country.

I’ve reported HispanTV to the Met Police and the Government who must act, enforce the laws in place to protect our national security, and shut these operations down.

https://t.co/sBeJCeLstl

[9DASHLINE @9DashLine]

Why a remote Philippine island chain near Taiwan is drawing China’s attention https://t.co/NpsSTsqArA

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

Interesting - diaspora policy in an era of autocracy https://t.co/LeOTwuFNvA

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

New report on Chinese influence in Europe https://t.co/c2zOKJE6eB Focuses on indicators for FDI, trade and public diplomacy eg presence of Confucius Institutes

[France Diplomacy 🇫🇷🇪🇺 @francediplo_EN]

#Iran - Closure of the French Language Centre

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

@JoeLitobarski My point is that 'the human' is operating in a broader social and technical context so equating human and control is not justified by consideration of real cases.

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

If you've ever looked at the literature on accidents in complex sociotechnical systems this isn't quite as reassuring at these folks hope.

After all the humans at Chernobyl were 'in charge' and conducting a safety test.

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

“HUMANZS LAUNCHED THE JOB”

Ok, I don’t like the spelling here, but the gist of this Mozilla cybersecurity researcher rings true.

The six new incidents aren’t about the second coming of Skynet, they are just more signs of OpenAI’s negligence.

Anyone who tells you otherwise has a narrative to sell.

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

US reported to have used 70 Patriots and 20 THAADs against one Iranian attack on a base in Jordan. Iran using missiles with manoeuvring warheads.

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

https://t.co/TO2R1s1gkr

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

🔗 Read more: https://t.co/SEKi87buDK

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

https://t.co/Mje3ZeBGUR

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

https://t.co/KoEIeiRquj

[Marc Owen Jones @marcowenjones]

1/2 Anthropic's latest report on detecting misuse of AI contains this case of an anti-Muslim Brotherhood campaign by the UAE. It includes a sockpuppet network of 300 accounts. But they also produced smears against UN-special rapporteurs which had criticised UAE conduct in Sudan

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

https://t.co/1SILg0iyym

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

Evidence of ambition but what emerges is another matter https://t.co/owqNFFq3I9

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

Just great. AI agents are basically Adolf Eichmann https://t.co/rPmFrhjfqy

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

https://t.co/U36cFyk9UZ

[Robin Brown @rcmb]

Randall Collins on the future: AI will produce mass unemployment that will further depress the birth rate. Shrinking the population will help with global warming but will also cause a global depression. https://t.co/EWSK7RqtgM

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

Hedgie🤗