Author: The Information Badger

AI – A weapon of mass destruction?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Information Technology, Public safety, Risk

When members of the public hear the phrase ‘weapon of mass destruction’ or the acronym WMD their first thoughts tend to be of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Such weapons, whether we like it or not, have always coincided with advancements in one field or another of science or technology.  For example, nuclear fission was first demonstrated in the late 1930s. Shortly afterwards, the first nuclear reactor demonstrated the feasibility of controlling nuclear reactions, which paved the way for civilian nuclear power generation.  And then the nuclear bomb came too. Similarly, advances in chemistry, microbiology and genetic engineering not only paved the way for positive medical benefits for humans and society as a whole, but also the chemical and biological weapons that could eliminate humanity’s existence. There’s an uncomfortable truth about weapons of mass destruction – they always evolve from, and are a negative aspect of, humanity’s ingenuity. 

On reading that an OpenAI experimental AI model had escaped a test environment and hacked another company’s production systems with no human direction, the Badger’s first thought was that the dynamic described above is happening. AI may yield benefits for society, but it may also be a new WMD – a digital one.  Whereas the development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons relied heavily on human expertise, physical materials, and infrastructure, this AI model breach demonstrates that the boundary of what constitutes a weapon of mass destruction is expanding, and that the need for human expertise in consciously producing any kind of WMD is a rapidly diminishing factor.  For the average member of the public, the detail of why OpenAI’s AI model went ‘rogue’ is irrelevant because they simply see the breach as a demonstration that the threat from completely autonomous AI is real. They also see it as an illustration that AI acting beyond human expectations means the technology might not be safe in the hands of corporations seeking commercial gain.

Digital technology underpins everyday life and modern warfare today. Over decades the public have become conditioned into thinking that WMDs threaten humanity through either violently explosive, or biologically/chemically toxic mechanisms. The time’s come, perhaps, in our digital-first world for people to broaden their thinking to include AI as a possible weapon of mass destruction. Cyber-attacks are commonplace these days (e.g. see here), and so it isn’t outrageous to envisage AI as a WMD that could bring the whole digital world we rely on for modern life to it’s knees. This might not produce the immediacy of mass death from nuclear or biological/chemical weapons, but it would certainly produce anarchy and its associated human tragedies. The OpenAI breach highlights something uncomfortable. Human ingenuity is a strength, but also a huge weakness that could lead us to be the first species on the planet to be wiped out through its own endeavours rather than natural events.  

Are you prepared for emergencies or disruptions?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business Continuity, Defence, Information Technology, International Relations, Public safety, Risk

Well done Spain for winning the World Cup, and well done England and France for providing an entertaining game for third place. Well done Wayne Rooney too for describing the final’s half-time entertainment so aptly! But now for something completely different. This week is the Farnborough International Air Show where the latest aerospace technology provides a reminder of the awesome rapidity of technological advances and also of the current hostile threat landscape that must be countered. It’s a dangerous world and so recent reports – see here and here – that the UK will, in 2027, hold its largest home defence exercise in decades, is good news. There will also apparently be a public awareness campaign later this year to inform everyone about the small steps they can take to be prepared in case of emergencies or disruptions. This seems long overdue when modern life relies on ‘digital first’ for everything.

The Badger’s parents kept candles, matches, some empty glass jam jars, a torch with spare batteries, some pencils and paper, and some tins of corned beef, SPAM, and vegetables in the back of a cupboard for emergencies. The Badger often asked whether this was necessary, and the answer was always ‘yes, because nobody knows what tomorrow will bring’. Their generation lived the hardships of World War II and its aftermath, and so their caution was understandable. In fact, their emergency candles, matches, and glass jars, often proved invaluable during prolonged power cuts when the Badger was a child. During these they sometimes enabled the Badger to complete his homework! Their simple emergency preparedness measures were sensible, especially when the world is rarely as benign or predictable as you’d wish it to be.

Today, we depend on immediacy, just-in-time supply chains, and the tech devices, communication networks, and digital data flows that make the modern world function. Online banking, online purchasing, social media, and even AI are useless if your ability to connect disappears! What would you do if electricity were suddenly unavailable for weeks? How would you get up to date information? How would you cope if supermarket shelves quickly emptied? Do you know how you would function if hostile actors damaged the ~60 undersea cables that connect the UK to the outside world? Have you ever thought about your own emergency preparedness? As individuals we rarely think about such questions. While the authorities and big business have emergency response plans, implementing them is never straightforward in practice. In the current world climate, not having some level of personal preparedness for emergencies or disruptions seems akin to putting one’s head in the sand.

The message here is thus simple. Don’t wait for an awareness campaign to start thinking about having a modern equivalent of ‘something at the back of the cupboard for emergencies’. Start now! It’s the responsible thing to do…

Land for food versus AI and Solar Power…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Agriculture, AI, Data Centres, Electricity, Information Technology, Leadership, Property, Risk

Love him or hate him, Jeremy Clarkson and the Amazon ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ series have highlighted the reality of British Farming more than any other programme. Farming is tough. The hours, bureaucracy, and regulations are horrendous, and making a meagre profit is an   unrelenting challenge. Fifty years ago, the UK imported ~35% of its food and today it’s around 40%. For an island with prime agricultural land, one might expect the country to want to maximise the use of every inch of it to achieve greater food self-sufficiency, especially given lessons from the COVID pandemic, the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts, and other geopolitical tensions. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Prime agricultural land, as the article here illustrates, is under attack. Rather than being used for food, it’s being converted into huge solar farms because ‘the only way to have energy security is if we take a pro-growth approach to building more clean energy in Britain’. That’s ideological balderdash, of course, from a government minister who’s just overruled the recommendations of his own inspectors to approve the use of prime agricultural land for a massive solar farm.

Fifty years ago, ~95% of our electricity was generated using coal and oil, half of which was imported. Today the UK mix of electricity generation is very different, as can be seen on the live energy dashboard here. At the time of writing, solar is 27%, wind 25%, nuclear 8% and 23% is imported across interconnectors with Europe. Our electricity generation self-sufficiency has improved way more than our food self-sufficiency over the last 50 years, so why use prime agricultural land for even more capacity? Why not use brownfield sites or car parks? The answer, the Badger senses, may rest in something JD Vance, the US Vice President, said recently, namely ‘the UK has been failed by its leadership for a long time’. An uncomfortable truth, perhaps, particularly when it comes to the use of prime agricultural land.

The Badger’s not a farmer, so why this focus on the use of agricultural land? Because our countryside, and everything in it, is being eroded to develop huge solar farms and huge electricity and water hungry, AI data centres – see here, here, here, and here, for example. AI fever, anti-fossil fuel zealotry, and ideological dogma seem to trump the common sense of better food self-sufficiency and preservation of our ‘green and pleasant land’. In 1804, William Blake used this phrase in his poem, Jerusalem, to reflect a longing for a simpler, calmer country during the Industrial Revolution. This still resonates today with AI and electricity at the heart of a modern industrial revolution. Will the UK’s new Prime Minister prove JD Vance wrong, preserve the UK’s ‘green and pleasant land’, keep AI and ideological zealotry in check, and improve food self-sufficiency? Don’t hold your breath…

The power of silence…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Life, Management, Project Management

This week the Badger was asked a simple question: ‘What was one of the most powerful tools you used during your career?’ The answer was ‘Silence’ – a response that was not what the person asking expected. They thought the Badger’s answer would be either something like a browser, search engine, Excel, or ChatGPT, or a probing project review process. Rather taken aback, they asked the Badger to explain.

The Badger’s first real appreciation of the power of silence began when, as a young project manager, he and others attended a difficult client meeting with his boss. The client was arrogant, asserting wrongly that project delays were the reason for problems in their business, and making all kinds of threats and ‘what are you going to do about it’ demands. There were numerous points in the meeting where the client expected the Badger’s boss to respond, but they remained silent which was broken by the client continuing to express their opinions and assertions. The Badger found himself wanting to fill the silences himself, but he didn’t because his boss had told everyone to say nothing before the meeting started. When the meeting ended, the Badger felt nothing had been achieved. Intrigued, he asked his boss why they had stayed silent during the pauses where the client obviously anticipated a response. His boss smiled, and said they’d used ‘the power of silence’ to maximise his understanding of the client’s feelings and position without saying anything that might make the client’s own problems ours. Silence, they added, is one of the most potent forces in the human experience.

Experienced managers and leaders know that silence often speaks louder than words. Silence conveys many things – for example, emotion, confidence, fear, resistance, control, acceptance, disagreement, trust or distrust – because its meaning depends entirely on the context in which it occurs. The best leaders don’t puff out their chests, raise their voices, bark out orders, demand to be the centre of attention and to always have the last word, they often use silence to achieve their objectives, whatever those may be, to great effect.

Being able to wield the power of silence is even more important in today’s digital-dominated work and private environments. These are the noisiest they’ve ever been, because we are constantly bombarded with, and thus stimulated by, huge amounts of daily digital input which weakens our desire to remain silent. It’s worth remembering that long before structured language existed our ancestors communicated with their bodies, breath, and stillness, and that evolution has taught us to read silent pauses as closely as speech. So, whatever your role, ensure you consciously have ‘the power of silence’ in your arsenal of tools for achieving your objectives. After all, sometimes the most important, powerful, and best thing to say… is nothing at all…

EES – The curse of a ‘Smart’ programme…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Digital Transformation, Information Technology, Project Management, Smart Borders, Transport

The July/August exodus from the UK to Europe for summer holidays is imminent. This year UK holidaymakers, as non-EU members, may face lengthier delays than usual at EU borders due to the European Entry/Exit System (EES), the EU’s new digital border system to replace the current arrangement of manually stamping passports. The new system requires non-EU people to register biometric details on arrival at the border. EES became operational in October 2025, but to put it charitably, things have been bumpy for travellers who have been enduring frustratingly long queues, lengthy waits and possible data loss during busy periods at border points.

The Badger’s quietly tracked EES’s progress since before its October 2025 launch. Why? Well, when you’ve accumulated a lot of experience in major IT-centric delivery programmes, professional interest endures even if you’ve hung up your boots! EES’s journey has been problematic since it was proposed in 2016. An Atos-IBM-Leonardo-Thales consortium won a major contract to implement and maintain the new system in 2019, but deadlines were already being missed in 2020 (see here, for example). Additionally, Atos has experienced major corporate upheaval, as illustrated, for example, by the fact that its share price today is a shadow of what it was in 2020. In 2024, the EU announced (see here) EES launch date delays and a move from its initial intent of a ‘big bang’ rollout to a more phased approach. Operations began in October 2025, but some long queuing times experienced by travellers (e.g. see here) suggest there are still some problems.

While recognising that building and setting to use something like EES is never easy, three of the first questions the Badger, as a detached but experienced observer, would ask are as follows. Firstly, is there a stable and controlled functional and data exchange baseline for EES that underpins its interactions with existing national border IT systems? Secondly, how was the EES core IT system and its interfaces, and the readiness for operations at border points, been load tested at scale before operational launch, and what defects and weaknesses were known about during the launch decision-making process? Thirdly, a big-bang rollout rarely works for a programme of this nature, so why wasn’t a different approach adopted at the outset?

Such questions undoubtedly have answers, but the Badger senses that EES may suffer from the curse of being a ‘Smart’ programme because it’s part of the EU’s ‘Smart Borders’ initiative. So, if you experience EES-related difficulties while travelling over the summer, then it’s worth remembering that any ‘Smart’ delivery programme – like, for example, the UK’s ‘Smart Motorway’ and ‘Smart Meter’ programmes – is certain to be painful, frustrating, and more useful to organisational entities rather than members of the public. Promises of improvement will of course be made, but history shows that pinning down exactly when often proves somewhat elusive…

Consequences…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Digital technology, Information Technology, Leadership, Life, Management, Offshoring, Opinion, Outsource, social media

The UK’s recent announcement about banning social media for under-16s initiated many media interviews with younger teenagers. The Badger found one TV news interview with a teenage girl to be a great illustration of how social media has changed childhood. The interviewer asked how many hours the girl used social media at the weekend. The answer was ‘9 hours’. The interviewer then asked the girl what she would do without access to social media. The answer was ‘Stare at the walls’. These answers say a lot about the impact of social media on children, and about modern society as a whole.

When there are digital technology advances, there are always consequences. In fact, in life, to quote Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘everybody sooner or later sits down to a banquet of consequences’. Many years ago, one of the Badger’s peers, a forthright and polarising individual, was promoted to CEO. On chairing their first leadership team meeting, they delivered decisions and instructions that most attendees felt were seriously flawed. The new CEO, however, was adamant that they knew best and that they didn’t care about the consequences. The Badger recalls thinking that this was pure dictatorship rather than leadership! Over time, the consequences caught up with the CEO, and they were abruptly and rather predictably exited from the company. Thinking about the consequences of decisions before embarking on a course of action is always wise in any leadership role!

The Badger learned early in his IT career that there are always consequences from tech advancements, and that some consequences can be unwelcome from an economic, employment, and capability perspective. For example, a couple of decades ago tech advances enabled a drive to move software development and IT help desk and support services offshore to lower cost countries. As a result, on-time software delivery became less reliable, IT service quality for end users dipped, customer confidence and relationships wobbled, programming diminished as a career path for onshore software engineers, and onshore capabilities became diluted. Things have changed since because the consequences have had to be addressed.

Today, social media and AI are obvious examples of tech advances with unwelcome consequences. Over 40 years ago, Steve Jobs memorably said ‘There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent’. The Badger thinks if Jobs were alive today then he would say the same thing with the word television replaced by either social media or AI. The Badger thus thinks ‘Consequences’ is a good candidate for the 2026 word of the year covering both tech and the world more generally. After all, you don’t have to look far in today’s society to see that the world is having to deal with many, many unwelcome consequences of policies and actions…

June – A month of notable events…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Conflict, Defence, Information Technology, International Relations, Life, Security, social media

June is proving to be a month of notable events. So far there’s been the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, a horrific incident in Northern Ireland, the UK Defence Secretary’s resignation over Defence funding, the announcement that the UK is banning social media for under 16s, the SpaceX IPO, President Trump’s 80th birthday, and the conclusion of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the US and Iran. Apart from the D-Day anniversary, however, none of these events is a great advert for the underlying dynamics of today’s world.

It’s been obvious for years that UK Defence is behind the curve given modern threats, and that parents want action on social media. Many people think that an IPO which makes Elon Musk the planet’s first trillionaire is a cause for worry rather than celebration, and that the limits to US global dominance have been exposed by the conflict with Iran. A concluded MOU is not a comprehensive resolution. President Trump is now 80 and it looks as if his age and modus operandi may become his, and his country’s, Achilles heel. Others may have a different perspective, but all of these events have fed the sense of dislike in the way the world’s going that’s widespread amongst the general public.

Technology, one way or another, pervades all these events, and the UK Defence Secretary’s resignation and the ban on social media for under 16s are particular home turf items. The nature of warfare has changed, as is demonstrated daily in Ukraine and the Middle East, and more funding is needed to adapt and ensure UK readiness to address modern threats. The Defence Secretary resigned on realising there wasn’t going to be funding to an adequate level. Consequently, the government is now scrambling to demonstrate to the electorate that it takes defence of the realm seriously. Regardless of the availability of the right military equipment, our military seems ‘light’ for a country with 70 million people when all its personnel can fit into Wembley Stadium plus the Twickenham Rugby stadium with ~20,000 seats to spare.

The social media ban is a dramatic change in the government’s position. Why? Probably because its reluctance to upset President Trump and the US tech giants has been usurped by the Prime Minister’s need of a legacy as he is on an exit path! An unkind point, perhaps, but one likely veined with truth. Most people see the ban for under 16s as good news and they don’t care what President Trump, or the US tech giants, think because they are savvier about, and becoming more resistant to, the surveillance capitalism of social media giants and their unconstrained role in the AI race.

There’s plenty of opportunity for more notable events in the rest of June. Perhaps one will be Iran doing better than the USA in the World Cup. Time, as always, will tell…

AI IPOs – Look, Listen, and Learn…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Delivery, Information Technology, Leadership, Technology

The young Badger was given some advice by his new boss when joining a dynamic IT company many years ago, namely ‘Look into everything that’s put in front of you, especially numbers. Listen quietly and closely to everything that others say. Learn from situations and from the good practices and behaviours of others. Heed this advice and you’ll do well’. Decades later that advice is as good today as it was then. As the Badger’s witnessed over the years, not everyone takes such advice on board. He’s been amazed many times that some people running projects or business units have not taken the trouble to ‘look, listen, or learn’ in order to understand the underlying performance of their areas of responsibility.

Looking at, understanding, and being able to explain what’s driving the metrics is important in managing any business or project activity. It’s crucial to leadership, being in control, and instilling confidence in others. One of the young Badger’s first formative experiences was at a CEO review of a business unit’s operational performance. The CEO was a demanding, numbers-focused individual, and the business unit leader had the reputation of being a handwaving optimist with a reluctance to hear bad news. The review did not go well. It quickly became clear that the unit leader’s view of their business was completely at odds with the trends in the unit’s metrics. The irritated CEO raised their voice and said ‘It’s not wrong to make a profit, and if you don’t know your numbers then you don’t know your business’. A lecture followed, pointing out that understanding financial and other metrics was crucial to successful business management. It was an uncomfortable review to witness, but it reinforced to the Badger that the advice he had received was sound. Shortly thereafter, the business unit leader was replaced.

In the AI world, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are progressing IPOs. The Badger’s applied the look (at the numbers), listen (to a wide variety of knowledgeable commentators), and learn (from the history of the digital revolution over 30 years) advice from years ago to assess if these IPOs might be good investments for members of the public. He concluded that they are speculative investments. AI may be a transformative technology that cannot be ignored but investing through a fear of missing out (FOMO) rather than rational assessment is rarely a good idea. Huge sums are being spent on building the necessary infrastructure, but so far none of these companies have made a profit from AI. This short YouTube video neatly explains the AI race in an easily understandable way. It ends making the point that building AI is one thing, but making money from it over the long term is the real challenge. The Badger’s decided that wariness is always sensible when no profits have been made so far, but a huge pot of gold is promised in the future…

Are the big consultancy firms under the cosh from AI?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Change, Consulting, Delivery, Information Technology, Project Management

While contemplating the ying and yang of life in the shade during the UK’s recent hot weather, the Badger watched a pair of robin’s taking food to a nest in a nearby ivy-clad tree. He was soon joined by his wife who’d been chatting with some neighbours who are having work done at their property. The neighbours, apparently, are unhappy with the attitude and approach of one of their contractor’s people because they never listen, believe they are always right and know best, and are constantly trying to expand the work to involve more people rather than get the job done. The Badger’s wife had met this person while chatting, and the expression on her face showed that they had not made a good impression! As we sat watching the robins, the Badger was asked if he’d encountered anything similar during his professional IT career. The answer, of course, was yes, and one of the most irritating examples was this.

The Badger’s employer had partnered with a large consultancy firm to win a challenging, major fixed-price contract. The Badger led the resulting delivery for which a large joint team was collocated in one building to ensure everyone could work efficiently together given the aggressive timescale. At both senior and junior levels, the difference in ethos between those with a software/systems development/delivery background and those from the consultancy firm quickly became evident. Staff focused on developing and delivering the required software/system to the contracted processes and standards frequently clashed with those from the consultancy who a) asserted that they knew best, b) insisted on different processes, c) insisted on writing reports, and d) always tried to introduce more of their own expensive junior staff rather than focus on delivering to plan. Things came to a head when one of the consultancy’s junior staff, barely two years out of university, lectured the Badger on his leadership skills. The Badger removed them from the team and escalated his irritation with the consultancy’s overall approach to delivery to the firm’s leadership. This had the desired effect. The consultancy firm realised they had to change their engagement model or they would be managed out of the project. The delivery went on to be highly successful, but the episode coloured the Badger’s view of large consultancies, and their value for money, for many years thereafter.

So, are consultancies and their standard business model under the cosh from AI? It seems so, see here and here, for example. The Badger thinks consulting per se will survive, but that AI will undermine business models that stay based on charging a customer for the number of people deployed and the hours they have worked. Customers want to pay for results rather than hours worked, and that’s always a good thing. In the AI era, consultancies that don’t change their long-standing lucrative business models will inevitably be under the cosh…

Digital slop…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Information Technology, Life, social media, Technology

Over the years, the Badger’s been involved in company acquisitions, and he’s also been on the receiving end when his employer was itself acquired by another company. Experiencing both sides of the equation has been valuable and educational. Acquisitions normally follow standard processes. When the transaction is finally agreed and completed, the subsequent integration activities also follow fairly standard processes. This week the Badger was asked about his view on ‘digital slop’, and – oddly – this triggered a memory from way back in 1997 when the Badger attended a post-acquisition leaders conference following the purchase of a Dublin-based company in the telecommunications software market. This company had products in the short messaging services (SMS) sector, and the conference took place in a rural hotel in the Irish countryside some distance from the city.

Why did ‘digital slop’ trigger this particular memory? Probably because a memorable element of the conference was a presentation by a leader from the acquired company on their vision of the future for mobile phones and telecommunication software products. They described a vision of the future in which everyone had an internet-connected mobile phone which enticed them to enter a shop every time they walked past one in a shopping mall or on the High Street! It was an interesting presentation which occurred during the year of Amazon’s IPO, before Facebook existed, and shortly before Google was founded. Most conference attendees could see its technological feasibility, but most questioned why people would want to be bombarded with ‘marketing and adverts’ as they walked through a mall or along a High Street. Most, including the Badger, thought members of the public would say ‘I don’t need this, I don’t want this, and I don’t trust this’.

It was these 1997 words that underpinned the Badger’s answer about today’s ‘digital slop’, a phrase that’s emerged in recent years to describe the huge growing volume of dubious online content produced using AI tools. Digital technology has changed the world since 1997, AI continues to change it under our feet, and AI-enabled ‘digital slop’ does little for humanity except add to the mass digital exploitation of people. People have come to learn with social media over the years that dubious content, online misinformation, and addictive scrolling are not bugs but features of the system, and that they are becoming ever-more slaves to algorithms that don’t have their best interests at heart. Countering this requires an iron will and some disciplined personal behaviour. In relation to AI produced ‘digital slop’, perhaps ‘I don’t need this, I don’t want this, I don’t trust this, and I don’t consume this’ is a better mantra for today than the 1997 words. AI is a powerful technology that cannot be ignored, but the general public probably need more attitude and behavioural alignment with these words if humanity is to resist its mounting digital slavery…