Category: Electricity

Has our dependence on the online world gone too far?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Disaster recovery, Electricity, Information Technology, Online Services, resilience, Risk

Having worked in IT for decades delivering systems for a range of clients, the Badger’s suspicious that rigour in AI development is lower than that demanded by his clients. Perhaps the Badger’s suspicion is unfounded, but one has to wonder when there’s regular news about AI agents escaping their creator’s clutches to do things they shouldn’t. AI might be catapulting us towards a very different future, but there’s a huge question mark over whether a) AI companies can be trusted to manage the risks associated with the technology effectively, and b) be held accountable for mistakes. ‘Trust us’ seems to be the refrain from these companies. Trust, however, must be earned and social media companies blew that over the last decade or so for many people. Albert Einstein’s quip ‘Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters’ comes to mind. When high-risk industries from aviation to banking are, for the public good, subject to regulation, independent oversight, and meaningful penalties, then it cannot be acceptable that AI companies should be treated differently, especially when Anthropic warns of existential risks without safeguards.

More people today are wondering about the wisdom of depending on, and trusting, the online world in the light of the following. Meta’s $25 billion fine for misleading users on privacy. The State Attorney-General commented that ‘For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them above the law’, a sentiment shared by many. A PHP flaw has taken websites offline across the internet. The scramble to patch has disrupted organisations and users alike, and it’s highlighted once more our dependence on the internet and online services in daily life. Microsoft has pulled out of the project building the UK’s largest AI data centre due to power connection difficulties, a reminder that AI data centres are power-hungry, will only come on stream when their power demands are sustainably met, and do little for the planet. AI-related stocks have been highly volatile recently as investors increasingly question whether the huge investments being made are sustainable and will deliver profit. AI is now clearly impacting employment – see here, for example. Finally, the UK government wants everyone to improve their personal preparedness for emergencies and digital disruption is an item central to their messaging. Being able to function without access to online services is a no-brainer.

Has our dependence on the online world gone too far? Yes? Having lived without the internet, online services, and AI through the UK 3-day week energy crisis of the 1970s, the Badger knows that life can and will go on without them. Perhaps it’s time for younger generations to realise this, because, as sure as eggs are eggs, there will be serious, highly disruptive, AI and cyber-driven emergencies in the future which they will need to cope with…

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…

Electricity – The lifeblood and Achilles heel of the modern world…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Disaster recovery, Electricity, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Risk, Technology

Risk, an unavoidable aspect of daily life, is the possibility of something bad happening. Every personal activity and decision we take involves some level of risk. Understanding this, and managing risk responsibly, builds self-confidence, resilience, independence, and fulfilment. Risk is inescapable for businesses and governments too. Most maintain risk registers and have plans to manage the consequences should they happen. The public version of the UK’s National Risk Register, for example, is here.  A few days ago, the Badger’s home experienced a power cut following heavy rain in the area. It was the first for many years and so it reminded the Badger of just how dependent we are in today’s world on electricity. It’s the lifeblood of the modern digital world, but also its Achilles heel. The Heathrow  shut down of March 2025,  the Iberian grid collapse of April 2025, and Russia’s relentless attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, all illustrate the chaos that can be unleashed when electricity supply is  seriously disrupted. 

The Badger’s power cut set him thinking. In an age of global belligerence, could an enemy bring societal chaos to the UK without using cyber techniques or nuclear weapons? Well, yes. Simply knockout a significant number of the nation’s electricity production sites. The country’s electricity supply is vulnerable due to many things, including outdated infrastructure, and so an unexpected coordinated attack using conventional weapons on the  top dozen or so non-nuclear generation and interconnector sites would cause havoc with our daily lives. If there was also a simultaneous attack on the undersea data cables connecting the UK to the world digitally then we would experience chaos like never before.

At this point it’s worth emphasising that this is the output of the Badger’s own musing. It is not derived from having any particular insight into the measures the nation uses to protect its critical national infrastructure. But if the Badger thinks this scenario is plausible, then our defence forces and our enemies will have too, and so hopefully something similar will already be on the country’s private version of the National Risk Register. But here’s the thing. As an individual, do you spend any time thinking about how you would function during a prolonged loss of electricity and online services? Probably not. Should you? Yes, because you’ll get a flavour of the likely impact of a nationwide blackout here. 

Is it prudent to have some appropriate fallback items and mechanisms ‘in the back of a cupboard’ to use if such a scenario occurred? Of course it is. When the Badger was a child, before the modern digital world existed, one of his father’s mantras was ‘Always have something to fall back on because you never know what calamity will unfold tomorrow’. These words seem even more relevant today when electricity is the lifeblood of a modern world that’s more dangerous than it’s been for decades.