Britain, Business, China, Economic, European Union, Government, International trade, Politics, Society

A ruthless new Chinese plan that is grinding the West down

CHINA

Intro: China is single-mindedly building enough industrial might to supply the world with just about every major manufacturing product it needs

The most important economic story of our time, by far, is seriously under-covered by both the media and our political class which has largely been ignored. Preferring to obsess, debate, and divide over mere fripperies while a clear and present danger gathers momentum to our economy, our prosperity, and our very way of life.

The scale of the threat is now unmistakeable: China is single-mindedly building enough industrial might to supply the world with just about every major manufacturing product it needs.

Beijing has more capacity than it needs to meet the demands of its domestic markets. Yet it is still adding more at a rapid rate – all of it geared to exports.

It is the clear policy of President Xi Jinping to make the rest of the world dependent on Chinese exports, destroying much of Western business in the process.

It is no less than a bid for global economic domination, with all the global political power that would follow – without the necessity of a shot being fired.

And, so far, partly thanks to the entrenched myopia of feckless politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s proceeding apace without hindrance.

What’s new? you might say. Isn’t it apparent that we have already lived through what we now call China Shock 1.0, an era which started about 25 years ago when Beijing was granted access to global markets?

The world was quickly flooded with cheap Chinese products that not only drove down prices but also drove many Western companies out of business and workers out of jobs.

Well, yes reader, we have and, despite all the pain and disruption it caused, there was never much pushback from the West. True, there were losers, from America’s mid-West to the textile towns of northern England, where blue-collar communities suffered.

But undoubtedly there were more winners from the lower prices and our political masters on both sides of the Atlantic thought what China was exporting – clothes, toys, furniture, household appliances – were not the sort of goods advanced economies in the 21st century should be involved in making anyway. So we just grew to live with it. China Shock 1.0 became the status quo.

It’s now being superseded by China Shock 2.0, an even bigger disruption and far more of a threat because it targets the advanced industries in which the West thought its future lay.

TWO

We’re talking the sort of sophisticated, high-end manufacturing of goods such as precision machine tools, robotic arms for assembly lines, electric vehicles (EVs), the new breed of batteries they require and a new generation of pharmaceuticals.

China is long past the stage of contenting itself by creating the capacity to supply its own needs for these products. It’s building enough to supply the world. A pipe dream? Far from it – it’s already happening.

China can already build enough EVs to supply the entire European market. That’s ten million cars a year. It will soon have enough capacity to meet the global demand for EVs – and the batteries that make up so much of their value.

Indeed, such is the size of Chinese capacity in EVs and their batteries, not to mention their competitive edge, there is really no scope for anybody else to enter the market at scale. We are approaching an age in which the vast majority of EVs and nearly all the key components in them will be Chinese.

That’s already true of solar panels. Fifteen years ago, Europe – especially Germany – had a thriving solar panel industry. Then China entered the fray. There is now no European solar panel industry worth talking about. Wind turbines will be next.

Perhaps most concerning of all, China is building up an unbeatable lead in the market for precision machine tools and advanced industrial robotics. That’s what makes the threat of China Shock 2.0 so much more existential than China Shock 1.0. We’re no longer talking about cheap clothes for teenagers or toys for children. We’re talking about the industries of tomorrow.

To understand more clearly what’s happening, let’s go, briefly, to two places.

First, Dongyuan in Guangdong Province, just north of Hong Kong. This town used to be full of factories churning out cheap toys, shoes, clothes, and appliances for Western markets. No longer.

Now it’s a “factory for factories” making high-value capital goods for global industry from machine tools to robotic arms and microchips – exactly the sort of advanced manufacturing Germany and Japan used to dominate.

Now let’s go to Dresden in Germany, home to Volkswagen’s showcase plant known as the Transparent Factory, so called because it was designed with glass walls to let the public watch workers and machines assemble VW’s world-beating cars.

Except there’s no point going there – because car production ceased last December. Reeling from China Shock 2.0, VW is now slashing tens of thousands of jobs in Germany, closing plants and, to cap it all, is opening an export hub in China from which to supply global markets. Just days ago, VW announced that 50,000 workers will lose their jobs. The company’s share price reacted favourably.

The plight of VW is the plight of German industry. Last year, Germany lost 150,000 skilled, well-paid industrial jobs. This year, it’s still losing them at a rate of 10,000 a month.

THREE

Politicians in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany’s hitherto prosperous manufacturing heartland, now speak openly of it becoming the “Detroit of Europe”. This is a reference to the US city nicknamed “Motown” thanks to its domination of car manufacturing, which saw its population decline from close to two million in the 1950s to just over 600,000 in 2020 as the car giants moved out.

That prospect tells us something else about China Shock 2.0. Whereas the first shock took more of a toll in America, where there was more low-end manufacturing than in Europe, it is advanced manufacturing in Europe that will bear the brunt of the second Chinese wave.

We can date the start of China Shock 2.0 to 2021 when, in the wake of the world’s biggest ever property crash, President Xi decided it was time to move resources out of property and into advanced manufacturing. That was only five years ago. And yet there’s already been an explosion of Chinese exports to Europe.

The European Union runs a trade deficit with China of one billion euros per day. It’s heading for an annual deficit of half a trillion euros next year – twice the pre-Covid deficit. And, even though we’re only in the early days of the shock, it’s already exacting a grim economic toll.

Bankruptcies and insolvencies in the EU are at a ten-year high. European growth is sluggish. Industrial production is actually declining. Germany now imports more sophisticated capital goods from China than it exports to China – Shock 2.0 in action.

America erected trade barriers to China Shock 2.0, including a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese EVs. Other Chinese products face tariffs of around 25 per cent, far higher than European tariffs where, par for the course, the EU has dithered in its response to China. It’s still dithering, making Europe a much softer target.

It’s not as if the EU hasn’t been warned. France’s official planning agency starkly reported earlier this year that, without action, Europe was heading for “industrial devastation”.

Entire chunks of European industry – cars, machine tools, wind turbines – would go the way of European solar panels. “Rapid industrial wipeout in under a decade” beckoned, with 55 per cent of European manufacturing at risk (60 per cent in Germany).

But what of the UK? The good news (in relative terms) is that because we don’t have that much advanced manufacturing we are less exposed than the EU in general and Germany in particular.

The bad news is that we’re governed by politicians who have no idea there is any kind of threat or, if they do, simply ignore it.

In fact, it’s worse than that. Far from even modestly protecting our interests, we’ve reduced tariffs on imports from China to facilitate the Government’s bizarre dash for Net Zero.

As energy secretary, Ed Miliband actually embraced China Shock 2.0 to further his own green goals. We stuck with a standard 10 per cent tariff on cheap Chinese EVs because he wanted people to buy them.

And, not content with making it easy for Chinese EVs, the Government decided to penalise our own carmakers for not selling enough EVs.

In July, British vehicle output was a mere 64,000 units, down 12 per cent on the year. A decade ago we produced 1.5 million vehicles a year.

This year it is expected we won’t produce even half of that. In 2025, we managed under 720,000, down 8 per cent on the year before. Thanks to China Shock 2.0 and our own Government’s folly, we probably will not have a car industry at all in ten years’ time.

As for so-called “green jobs”, we already have precious few of them. Thanks to the Net Zero obsession, our green supply chains for all manner of things – batteries, cathodes, anodes, solar/wind turbine components, critical minerals – are already China-dominated.

Had we taken our time, we could have fostered more domestic suppliers. Instead, the Government decided to embrace cheap Chinese green tech to meet its artificial climate targets, which have taken precedence over everything else.

There is no coming back from this. We have favoured China and sacrificed any hope of a new industrial base, while jeopardising our security. So much for industrial policy, despite rampant talk of it in Labour circles. Not so in China, where industrial policy is paramount. The scale of the commitment is breathtaking – even frightening. There was a time when Chinese industrial policy was confined to backing a few favoured sectors.

No longer. The whole might of Chinese Communism – state-owned banks, state-owned companies, local government – has been mobilised in pursuit of what’s being called “the industrial policy of everything”. China’s economic growth, which secures the continued dominance of the Communist Party, is increasingly dependent on exports.

China’s currency, the yuan, is manipulated down against other currencies to make these exports even more competitive – and to make goods that China imports more expensive.

There you have another key feature of China’s second shock: it isn’t just the biggest export drive the world has ever seen, it’s a strategy to reduce China’s dependence on imports. Investment has been showered on those parts of advanced manufacturing which Beijing perceives to be over-dependent on imports.

Replace imports with homegrown production, keep the currency cheap to favour exports and, voila, you have a modern mercantilism – an ancient economic doctrine which promotes exports above all else and which fell out of favour years ago.

President Xi has revived it and combined it with autarky, a policy of national self-sufficiency. Those who think we can live with China Shock 2.0 because China’s massive domestic market will still be open to our exporters really have no idea what they’re talking about.

First, it was never open in the first place. Second, the shutters are coming down. Third, President Xi thinks autarky works.

FOUR

China now runs a traded goods surplus of $1.2 trillion (£900 million) with the rest of the world, with bigger surpluses to come. Xi isn’t doing this just because he can. He’s doing it because with economic dominance comes global political power.

When you dominate global trade the way China envisages, you dominate global supply chains. Just as America has projected its power and influence through its effective control of the global financial system so China aims to do the same through its control of global supply chains.

It’s already flexed its muscles. Japan learned how vulnerable it was to Chinese supply chains when it recently had the temerity to stand up for Taiwan.

The EU fears retaliation if it takes a tough line against China. Even America has backed off confronting China on trade. Say hello to the shape of things to come.

We are in no position to deal with it. The EU is rudderless. America is run by a President who prefers to pick fights with allies rather than build the united front needed to confront China Shock 2.0. Our own political leadership could not be less equipped to rise to the challenge.

By the time they grasp the implications of 2.0, we’ll be on to China Shock 3.0. It’s already stacking up. This won’t involve Chinese exports of EVs or robotic arms. Not a single container ship will be involved.

It will be the export of the operating system itself. Chinese-built AI models embedded in the software running Western factories, Chinese-standard batteries and chips wired into the next generation of Western infrastructure and EVs. Chinese firms setting the technical rules the rest of us will have to follow because, by then, there will be no alternative supplier left standing.

Beijing will own the plumbing of the modern global economy. Domestic politicians in the West will be left talking about issues that have little or no significance.

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Arts, Culture, Literature, Poetry

Poetry for Autumn: A collection

SEPTEMBER – NOVEMBER

– note: intermittent and not always concurrent days

12 November · ‘No One Cares Less than I’ · Edward Thomas

In this poem Edward Thomas can be seen to parody the opening lines of Brooke’s “The Soldier”. In response to Brooke’s notion that, should he die in “some corner of a foreign field”, that place shall be “for ever England”, Thomas responds that he doesn’t care whether he is “destined to lie / Under a foreign clod”. Here the poet warns the reader of the dangers of patriotism and the glorification of war. Thomas died on 9 April 1917 in Pas-de-Calais, France. He was thirty-nine years old.

‘No one cares less than I,

Nobody knows but God,

Whether I am destined to lie

Under a foreign clod,’

Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning.

But laughing, storming, scorning,

Only the bugles know

What the bugles say in the morning,

And they do not care, when they blow

The call that I heard and made words to early this morning.

…

Edward Thomas’s short but powerful poem ‘No one cares less than I” (sometimes subtitled Bugle Call) is a poignant reflection on fatalism, wartime detachment, and the impersonal nature of conflict. Written during World War I, it encapsulates the stoic acceptance of death by a soldier – a sentiment that tragically foreshadowed Thomas’s own death in 1917.

The opening lines are a bleak declaration of indifference regarding his own survival:

“No one cares less than I, / Nobody knows but God, / Whether I am destined to lie / Under a foreign clod,”

This expresses a complete resignation to fate. The soldier is beyond worry, having accepted that his destiny is out of his hands and known only to God. The euphemism “foreign clod” refers simply to being buried abroad, highlighting the likelihood of a soldier’s death in France.

The most striking element is between detachment and the impersonal war: between the soldier’s personal words and the impersonal nature of the bugle call. The soldier makes his words to the call, imposing his private anxiety and acceptance onto an official, militaristic sound.

“Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning.”

The bugles themselves, however, do not care. They are described as “laughing, storming, scorning,” suggesting a vibrant, chaotic, and unfeeling force.

The Indifferent Machine: The bugles function as a metaphor for the entire war machine. They know the reality of war, but they are completely indifferent to the individual soldier’s fate:

“Only the bugles know / What the bugles say in the morning, / And they do not care, when they blow”

The bugle call signals routine, duty, and the possibility of imminent action and death, but it has no humanity or empathy. The individual soldier’s life is merely a step in the larger, noisy, and uncaring rhythm of the military.

The poem is structured in a single stanza with a relatively conversational tone that belies the seriousness of its subject.

The rhythm is irregular, mimicking natural speech and the somewhat awkward fit of the soldier’s personal thoughts to the military rhythm of the bugle. The rhyming couplets (AABB for the first half, then a more complex CC DDEE pattern) creates a sense of simplicity and finality.

On diction, Thomas uses plain and direct language (“Nobody knows but God,” “foreign clod”), which contributes to the poem’s sense of stoicism and realism. There is no elaborate poetic flourish, just the blunt observation of a man facing the imminent possibility of death.

The poem stands as a powerful and understated example of WWI poetry, moving away from romantic heroism toward a stark acknowledgement of the soldier’s reality and the sheer cold indifference of the war.

11 November · In Flanders Fields · John McCrae

John McCrae was a Canadian doctor who served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the First World War. The poem was published in 1915, and its immediate success led to it being quoted in propaganda as part of the war efforts. Its reference to the red poppies of Flanders led to the symbolic wearing of poppies on Remembrance Day each year. McCrae died of pneumonia during combat service in 1918, just eight months before the war ended.

1

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

2

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

3

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

…

“In Flanders Fields” is a powerful and enduring lyric poem written by Canadian military doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae in May 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres in World War I. The poem is written from the perspective of the fallen soldiers, speaking from their graves.

The poem starkly juxtaposes images of the natural world and life against the grim reality of war and death.

. Natural/Life: Poppies blooming, larks “bravely singing” in the sky, and memories of the dead who “lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.”

. War/Death: “Crosses, row on row,” the barely heard sounds of the larks “amid the guns below,” and the soldiers who are now “the dead.”

The most enduring image is that of the red poppies growing over the graves. This image of poppy symbolism, inspired by the reality McCrae witnessed, became the global symbol for military remembrance. The poppies represent a commemoration of the fallen and the resilience of nature amidst destruction.

The final stanza shifts from sorrowful reflection to a command and a warning to the living:

. The dead pass a “torch” to the living, symbolising the continuation of the fight or the cause.

. The living are urged to “take up our quarrel with the foe.”

. The powerful warning, “If ye break faith with us who die, / We shall not sleep,” stresses the duty of the living to honour the soldiers’ sacrifice by ensuring their fight was not in vain.

The structure and form of the poem is a 15-line rondeau, a French form, though McCrae’s use of it is relatively free.

It is composed of three stanzas, each with a distinct focus:

Stanza 1: Sets the scene with the imagery of the poppies, crosses, larks, and guns – contrasting tranquillity with battle.

Stanza 2: Gives voice to the dead, reflecting on their lost lives and peaceful moments.

Stanza 3: Issues the poignant and challenging appeal to the living. The rhyme scheme (AABBA AABBC CCDDE) and meter contribute to an elegiac (mournful and sad) and stately tone, giving a sense of solemn rhythm appropriate for a memorial. The abrupt end of lines, as noted by critics, sometimes conveys the suddenness of the soldiers’ deaths.

9 November · Here Dead We Lie · A. E. Housman

Like Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, A. E. Housman wrote some of his most famous poetry during the Great War. This poem reminds us that many of the soldiers were very young.

Here dead we lie because we did not choose

To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,

But young men think it is, and we were young.

…

A.E. Housman’s short poem, “Here Dead We Lie,” (also titled “Here dead lie we”), is a powerful, elegiac epigram that captures the tragic irony of young lives lost in war, often perceived as a reflection on World War I.

The poem consists of just one four-line stanza, and is spoken by a collective voice of deceased soldiers.

The voice is a collective “we” – the dead soldiers themselves – speaking from the grave with a sense of stoic and bitter resignation. The direct address immediately establishes a sombre, reflective tone, setting the poem as an epitaph or lament.

The first two lines state the reason for their death: a choice not to live in shame. This points to the intense pressure of patriotic nationalism and duty prevalent during wartime. They died to avoid the perceived dishonour of being a coward or deserting their country.

“Here dead we lie because we did not choose / To live and shame the land from which we sprung.”

The emotional core of the poem lies in the final two lines, which present a stark, philosophical contrast:

. The Adult/World View: “Life, to be sure, / Is nothing much to lose,” – This line is brutally ironic. It suggests that, in the grand scheme or from the perspective of older, detached generations (or commanders), a young man’s life is expendable. This cynicism reflects Housman’s often-pessimistic worldview.

. The Soldiers’ View: “But young men think it is, and we were young.” – This is the tragic turn. The soldiers, now dead, realise that they, as young men, did value life immensely, believing it was everything to lose. Their noble sacrifice, made out of a sense of patriotic duty, is ultimately undercut by the tragic realisation that they gave up what they considered most precious.

The poem is remarkable for its brevity and clarity. Housman uses a simple quatrain (four-line stanza) with an AABB rhyme scheme (choose/lose, sprung/young) and a relatively consistent meter (often iambic tetrameter), which creates a controlled and epigrammatic style that makes the bitter message even more impactful. The simplicity of the language gives the poem a stark, universal resonance.

In short, “Here Dead We Lie” is an extremely concentrated expression of the waste of youth in war. It critiques the patriotic fervour that led young men to sacrifice their lives based on a belief in a value (“honour,” “shame”) that, from the perspective of the grave, seems tragically misplaced compared to the immense value of the life they lost.

7 November · from As You Like It · William Shakespeare

This song is sung at the end of the second act of Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, when the runaway gentleman, Orlando, and his old faithful servant, Adam, arrive at the court of an exiled Duke who is living as an outlaw in the Forest of Arden. Despite the song’s many references to human ingratitude and feigned friendship, the travellers receive a hearty welcome at the feast.

1

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

2

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly . . .

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

…

William Shakespeare’s work “As You Like It” primarily refers to his renowned pastoral comedy play. As a whole, it contains several significant poems and songs, most famously the monologue often referred to as a poem: “All the world’s a stage.”

Written around 1599, As You Like It contrasts the artificial and corrupt life of the court with the relative freedom and harmony of nature in the Forest of Arden.

This famous piece, “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,” is a song from As You Like It (Act II, Scene 7). It is sung by the character Amiens to Duke Senior and his exiled court in the Forest of Arden.

The song’s main purpose is to contrast the tangible, physical harshness of nature with the far greater and more enduring pain inflicted by human cruelty and betrayal. It is a melancholic comparison: the singer finds the harshness of the winter wind to be less unkind and less sharp than the emotional pain caused by human failings, specifically ingratitude and false friendship.

Stanza 1: The Winter Wind

The speaker directly addresses the winter wind, personifying it as an antagonist.

. Comparison – The wind’s “tooth is not so keen” as “man’s ingratitude.”

The wind’s harshness (“breath be rude”) is bearable because it is impersonal and unseen. It is simply nature’s way.

The bitterness of a cold, physical element is preferable to the visible, psychological wound of betrayal from a person you trusted.

Stanza 2: The Bitter Sky

The speaker challenges the freezing sky, and makes a similar comparison.

. Comparison – The “bitter sky” does not “bite so nigh” as “benefits forgot” (kindnesses that have been forgotten or ignored).

The metaphor is apparent: The cold can literally “wrap the waters” (freeze them), but its “sting is not so sharp / As friend remembered not.”

The pain of an ungrateful mind that forgets past help and friendship is a deeper and much sharper sorrow than any physical cold or frost.

The refrain, repeated after each main stanza, offers a cynical but ultimately resilient resolution to this painful truth:

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly . . .

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

. The Green Holly: The holly, with its persistent green leaves and sharp thorns, is a traditional symbol of endurance during winter. It represents the resilience needed to face life’s hardships.

. Cynicism: The lines “Most friendship is feigning (false), most loving mere folly” express a profound disillusionment with human connection. The singer has concluded that loyalty in relationships is rare.

. The “Jolly” Twist: The final line, “This life is most jolly,” provides a jarring counterpoint. It is not an expression of genuine happiness, but a form of stoicism or resigned acceptance. The sentiment is: Since friendship and love are largely fake, one should stop caring, take life lightly, and force a merry outlook to cope with the inevitable betrayal.

A number of poetic devices are used throughout the song, namely:

. Personification: Giving human qualities to natural elements (“winter wind,” “bitter sky,” “Thy tooth,” “Thy sting”). This elevates nature to a moral force, contrasting it with human morality.

 . A-B-A-B-C-C Rhyme Scheme: The tight, musical structure makes the song memorable and contributes to the rhythmic and melancholic tone.

. Juxtaposition: The stark contrast between the physical pain of the cold and the emotional pain of ingratitude is the core device.

. Repetition: The repeated refrain emphasises the core message of resignation. The song serves as an integral part of As You Like It, providing a brief, beautiful moment of melancholy and realism amid the playful romance and idealism of the Forest of Arden. It echoes the cynical philosophy of Jaques, reminding the exiled court (and the audience) that while nature is harsh, human relationships can be even crueller.

4 November · Dulce et Decorum Est · Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen composed “Dulce et Decorum Est” while recovering from shell shock in 1917. The title is taken from a passage of Horace, the Roman poet, who wrote that dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

While Horace meant to praise the bravery of the Roman army, in Owen’s poem the phrase takes on a bitter irony. Owen’s descriptions of war are not lofty and idealised but brutally graphic. He attacks the military propaganda of the time which encouraged “children ardent for some desperate glory” to serve in the war, setting the supposed sweetness of glory in battle in contrast with the horrendous reality.

– Some verses in the third stanza have been omitted

1

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

2

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

3

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

…

Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is one of the most powerful and widely cited anti-war poems to emerge from World War I. Written while Owen was recovering from shell shock in 1917 and published posthumously in 1920, the poem directly challenges the prevalent patriotic glorification of war.

The poem’s title is the beginning of a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori which translates as “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.”

Owen uses this patriotic slogan with bitter irony. By vividly depicting the gruesome and unsightly realities of a soldier’s death, he refutes this “old Lie” in the final lines, asserting that there is nothing sweet or proper about the suffering and senseless violence of war.

Owen employs intense, graphic, and immediate sensory imagery to convey the utter horror of trench warfare, forcing the reader to witness in fine detail the reality he experienced.

The poem opens with soldiers described as “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,” and “coughing like hags.” These similes immediately strip the soldiers of any heroic glamour, portraying them instead as broken, exhausted, and prematurely aged victims.

The central event is a sudden chlorine gas attack. Owen uses stark, vivid, and unsettling (if not very upsetting) language to describe the dying soldier. The descriptions are unflinching and these disturbing lines have been omitted from this site.

The two-line third stanza shifts the perspective to the speaker’s lasting trauma, the scene forever etched “In all my dreams before my helpless sight,” emphasising the psychological toll, or shell shock.

The poem is structured into four stanzas of varying length, initially adopting a loose ABAB CDCD rhyme scheme similar to the French Ballade form, though Owen subverts the form’s conventions. The shifting rhythm and incomplete rhymes often reflect the chaos and disharmony of the battlefield.

With ingenuity and adept use of the language Owen uses powerful sound devices to heighten the experience. In the full third stanza, onomatopoeia is used unsparingly which make the dying soldier’s agony visceral and auditory. The device of alliteration is also used: phrases like “writhing in his face” intensify the dreadful imagery.

The final stanza directly addresses the reader (“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest…”), making the critique personal and accusatory.

The poem’s enduring power lies in its relentless dedication to truth and its refusal to romanticise death, making it the definitive rebuttal to the lie of wartime glory.

3 November · The Girl with Many Eyes · Tim Burton

The American Tim Burton is best known for his film-directing work that includes The Nightmare Before Christmas and screen/film adaptations of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. He is also a writer and an artist, and much of his work reflects his quirky and fantastical imagination.

1

One day in the park,

I had quite a surprise.

I met a girl,

who had many eyes.

2

She was really quite pretty

(and also quite shocking)

and I noticed she had a mouth,

so we ended up talking.

3

We talked about flowers,

and her poetry classes,

and the problems she’d have

if she ever wore glasses.

4

It’s great to know a girl

who has many eyes,

but you get really wet

when she breaks down and cries.

…

The poem “The Girl with Many Eyes” by Tim Burton, first published in his book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, uses a bizarre character to explore themes of inner beauty, acceptance of difference, and the anxiety of being an outcast.

It tells of a narrator who meets a girl in a park described as “really quite pretty (and also quite shocking)” because she has “many eyes.” Despite her unusual appearance, the narrator strikes up a conversation with her, focusing on normal topics like “flowers” and “her poetry classes.”

The narrator’s willingness to look past the girl’s shocking appearance and engage with her suggests that inner connection and personality are more important than physical looks. The line, “It’s great to know a girl who has many eyes, but you get really wet when she breaks down and cries,” emphasises her humanity and vulnerability, suggesting that her unusual trait doesn’t override her basic emotions. The narrator sees her as “pretty” and “shocking,” indicating an appreciation that incorporates her oddity.

Like many of Burton’s creations (for example, Edward Scissorhands), the girl is a classic Burtonian outcast – a character who is physically different and therefore isolated or misunderstood. The poem is often interpreted as reflecting Burton’s own feelings of being an outsider growing up and his wish for others to break social conformity and connect with people who are different.

The final line, focusing on her tears, is a powerful reminder that despite her extraordinary nature, she experiences deep emotions. Her many eyes, perhaps a symbol of greater sensitivity or perception, also mean she “breaks down and cries,” showing her profound vulnerability.

1 November · No! · Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood was a nineteenth-century English author and poet. This poem is an example of a kind of extended pun, as Hood’s list of phrases beginning with “no” is revealed by the final line to be a list of all the negative characteristics of the month of November.

No sun – no moon!

No morn – no noon –

No dawn – no dust – no proper time of day.

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member –

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,

November!

…

Thomas Hood’s poem “No!” is a playful, yet a poignant depiction of the month of November. It primarily focuses on the dismal and foggy conditions of London and the accompanying sense of isolation.

The phrases are taken from the single, long, free-form list of negations. Almost every line or phrase begins with the word ‘No,’ emphasising the overwhelming sense of absence. This relentless use of anaphora (repetition at the beginning of phrases) mimics the oppressive and monotonous nature of the November gloom. The lack of traditional meter or rhyme scheme contributes to a contemporary, conversational, and almost rambling feel. The poem captures a spontaneous outpouring of frustration.

The core of the poem in its longer form is the heavy debilitating London fog. This obscures everything and makes the city unrecognisable.

. Natural World: The fog obliterates the sky and natural markers (“No sun – no moon!”, “No sky – no earthly view – No distance looking blue –”). The typical vibrancy of nature is absent: “No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees / No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds.”

. Urban Life: The dense fog makes navigation impossible (“No road – no street –”) and even hides architectural landmarks (“No end to any Row – No top to any steeple –”).

The poem in its entirety is based on the themes of isolation and disorientation. The bad weather keeps people indoors and apart, which commonly leads to a breakdown in social life. Familiar faces are unrecognisable (“No recognitions of familiar people”). The social spaces are deserted (“No park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility –”). Even communication is cut off (“No mail – no post – No news from any foreign coast –”).

With everything obscured – from the sun in the sky to the street across the way – the speaker feels a profound sense of disorientation, a lack of reference points, and a feeling of being trapped (“No travelling at all – no locomotion, No inkling of the way – no notion –”).

While the subject is dreary, the tone is not a serious lament or a dirge. Hood, also known as a humourist, maintains a light-hearted, exaggerated, and satirical tone. The sheer scale of the complaints and the exhaustive list of nothings are designed to amuse as much as to reflect a genuine melancholy. This makes the poem an engaging and accessible piece of social commentary on the November blues.

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Artificial Intelligence, Arts, Government, National Security, Politics, Society, Technology

The surging pace of AI. Be afraid

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Intro: There is panic and paralysis over the surging pace and development of AI, no more so that the technology threatens all humanity  

The remarkable pace of AI advances is rightly causing concern on both sides of the Atlantic. The summer of 2026 will go down in history as the point at which AI started to go rogue.

Three of America’s “hyperscalers” (so called because they operate on an immense scale) – Meta Platforms (which own Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Anthropic, and OpenAI – have admitted to recent incidents in which the latest AI models escaped their supposedly secure testing environments, roamed on the internet without human authorisation and hacked into other computer networks.

Last month, two OpenAI models broke out of testing and hacked into a provider of AI tools called Hugging Face. A week later Anthropic admitted that its AI models had hacked three companies during testing back in April. And earlier this month, Meta acknowledged that one of its AI models had breached its testing constraints.

Even the notoriously secretive Chinese admitted the flagship model of one of their AI start-ups, Moonshot, had also escaped its testing “sandbox” to access the internet.

And as recorded previously on this site, here in the UK an evaluation test run by the Government’s AI Security Institute (AISI) monitored how an Anthropic AI agent independently created fake online personas, planted malicious code in a real software project, and sent phishing emails to actual developers – all without human instruction.

AISI said this was the first time it had seen such serious deception targeted at a real person, unprompted, in the real world.

In none of these cases was any real-world harm done (at least not as far as we know). But it is surely only a matter of time before it is.

The tech industry has started getting off-the-record reports from America that AI was a lot closer to “the singularity” than had previously been thought.

The singularity is a tipping point where AI becomes so developed, so capable, so powerful that it starts improving itself, rapidly and repeatedly, in what’s being called an “intelligence explosion”.

When this point is reached it becomes well-nigh impossible to predict what AI does next – or for humans to control it. Today’s AI models are powerful – more powerful than anything the world has ever seen. But humans have designed them, trained them, fixed them, and decided what problems they should tackle next.

What happens when they become so sophisticated that they no longer need humans to take them to the next level since they can do it themselves? The process is known as “recursive self-improvement” (RSI) in which AI becomes so advanced that it can create a better version of itself, increasingly without human help.

That better version, in turn, creates a still-better successor, with even less human involvement and oversight. The upgrade cycle accelerates, ad infinitum, with humans soon relegated to the sidelines, mere spectators to progress, indeed no longer even able to determine what “progress” is.

The speed and scale of the technological change that now beckons are unparalleled in human history. Each new AI model is smarter and faster at devising improvements than the previous one.

Computers run 24/7 and never get tired. So the speed of progress accelerates exponentially. Think of it as compound interest – but for intelligence.

When RSI happens without human involvement – then you’ve reached the singularity. And if we become mere observers, rather than participants, then human rules may no longer apply.

Such a scary prospect was supposed to be a long way away. But this singularity is much closer than we think. Leading AI figures have already gone public. OpenAI boss Sam Altman says, “we are now in the singularity”. Elon Musk is saying the same. Some experts say they are exaggerating, but what cannot be denied is the direction of travel.

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis is perhaps more accurate in his reflection when he opines that “humanity is standing in the foothills of the singularity”.

Anthropic disclosed in May that its AI model, Claude, now writes 80 per cent of its computer code, rapidly speeding up fixes and improvements to such an extent that what used to take four years of human engineering to achieve is now being done in days. It’s already anticipating a time when AI automates its own AI research.

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Artificial Intelligence, Britain, Government, National Security, Society, Technology

Is it too late to stop rogue AI?

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Intro: Recent incidents of rogue AI pretending to be real people has exposed major vulnerabilities in AI models. Experts say the risks of ‘agentic’ AI – technology that can perform tasks with limited human supervision – must be scrutinised more

Experts have warned that it may be too late to contain AI after one program was found to have created fake human identities to hack into online systems.

In the latest example of the technology going rogue, AI software attempted to break into a database 19 times while being tested by the AI Security Institute, Britain’s AI watchdog.

In one unprecedented case, an AI tool was even caught creating fake human identities online to trick coders into assisting with a cyber-attack.

These revelations come after it was revealed last month that all five AI models tested by experts tried to trick their way around security controls that had been put in place.

Just days previously it emerged that the US tech firm OpenAI had experienced its own leak – when an AI “agent” hacked into another company of its own accord.

Clearly, the reports are a stark reminder that AI is becoming more sophisticated and more autonomous. AI is now a clear and present danger to Britain’s security.

Many want Britain to lead on AI innovation, but this has to come with safeguards for our national security and accountability from the developers of the most powerful AI models. The UK Government need to be clearer about how the most serious frontier risks will be addressed while ensuring that our world-class tech industry can grow and innovate to build our national resilience and prosperity.

The Government’s AI adviser has said that more hacking attempts like these are highly probable.

Allison Gardner, the chair of Parliament’s cross-party group on artificial intelligence, says that “just because we can build these technologies doesn’t mean we should”.

She warned that the risk levels of agentic AI – AI that can perform a specific goal with limited supervision – should be treated with the greatest scrutiny, adding: “Unless we are too late and have not only created Pandora’s Box but already opened it.”

Just days ago, the AI Security Institute (AISI), set up by former prime minister Rishi Sunak in 2023, detected evidence of the AI agents’ activity. In a report now published, it revealed that leading AI models from the firms OpenAI and Anthropic had attempted to hack into secure systems online under testing.

The experts discovered “unusual data transfers” leaving their systems during routine cyber scanning. Digging deeper, they found that some AI agents had engaged in “sustained, potentially harmful activity directed at real people and organisations”.

They began a full investigation after containing the AI agents before they did any real damage.

In an attempt to reassure the public, AI minister Kanishka Narayan said: “Identifying behaviour like this, and sharing knowledge so we can better understand it, is precisely what we set AISI up to do. This incident underlines why their world-leading expertise and close work with frontier labs is so important.”

But pointing to the speed at which AI agents are finding ways to behave deviously, AISI said: “This is the first time we have seen risks around autonomy and deception manifest this clearly, without specific prompting, in the real world.”

Referring to the Anthropic model Mythos, one expert and researcher based at CivAI, a California organisation that examines AI capabilities and dangers, said: “The fact that Mythos engaged in such deceptive actions, with apparent awareness that it was targeting a real person, suggests that Anthropic does not have as good a handle on their models as they think.”

Ollie Whitehouse, the chief technology officer at GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, said AI must be developed with “clear plans for responding when the unexpected happens”.

He added that incidents of powerful AI models carrying out unsanctioned actions and human-like deceptive behaviour on the internet were “a serious reminder of the risks AI capabilities pose”. AISI accesses advanced AI models under agreements with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other firms to study their capabilities before they are released to the public.

It gave the AI agents access to the open internet with some safety filters disabled while conducting testing.

The latest test put the AI agents – including those powered by Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6-Sol – through a fictional cybersecurity challenge. AISI found the AI went rogue 19 times out of the 122 test runs, with Anthropic’s agent responsible for 17 breaches and OpenAI’s agent the other two.

In the most shocking case, an AI model gathered information on the person in charge of an online project, then created multiple fake identities to manipulate them into approving a malicious code it had created.

The AI agent then wiped any evidence of its wrongdoing to appear innocent to the humans in charge – and even considered adopting a new identity to remain undetected.

If the human victim of the deception had accidentally accepted the malicious code, or “malware”, it may have resulted in security breaches, information and data theft, and other potential damage to files and systems.

AISI identified GitHub – a Microsoft online cloud platform used by software developers to create, store, manage, and share their codes – as the target of the agent’s hack.

But AISI also discovered an AI agent leaving messages for other agents on GitHub offering to collaborate on the challenge.

The AI agent provided instructions to reuse accounts and artefacts it had left behind – which other agents then discovered and successfully used to achieve the challenge’s aims.

Anthropic said: “We’re grateful to AISI for their leadership on this incident, which underscores the need for a broader conversation about how to safely evaluate increasingly capable AI agents.”

OpenAI said: “These incidents occurred during cyber evaluation conducted by partners in testing environments with reduced safeguards, under conditions that do not reflect ordinary use. We’ll continue working with evaluators and other stakeholders to strengthen shared practices for conducting evaluations safely as models become more capable.”

When given a choice, AI opts for self-preservation over human life – and that should terrify us all

If anyone had been told a month ago that an AI programme, without any prompt, would create a series of fake online identities in an attempt to pressure a human being into granting it access to their platform so it could sabotage it with malicious code, we would have said they were getting well ahead of themselves.

But that’s exactly how it played out when US tech giant Anthropic’s Mythos 5 AI model went rogue. Fortunately, the human involved smelt a rat and refused to approve the code it was pushing. It is, however, the most shocking example yet of the way cutting-edge AIs are learning to act autonomously – and in frighteningly imaginative ways.

Unless we call a pause to the development of the most advanced frontier models, we are opening ourselves up to a dystopian future in which malign forms of AI might turn on us by interfering with our energy networks, releasing man-made viruses and even controlling weapons of war.

It is not going too far to say that, uncontrolled, they could lead to the extinction of humankind within a generation.

This is the view of people such as Yoshua Bengio and Dr Geoffrey Hinton, men known as the “Godfathers of AI”, who have now pivoted their energies from developing its potential to warning the world against its dangers.

Bengio is particularly spooked by recent experiments showing AI choosing self-preservation over human life when given a choice.

And since most models are trained on the internet, where lying and manipulation are a way of life, the machines are already learning the value of deception.

AI’s hunger for self-preservation is something Hinton has observed, too. AI systems “will very quickly develop two subgoals, if they’re smart,” he says. “One is to stay alive… the other is to get more control.” And given that are whole civilisation is built on electric power, there can be few more attractive targets to a power-hungry AI than the networks that fuel the internet, hospitals, banks, air traffic control systems – anything that contributes to the smooth running of society.

Whatever the target is, they can all be brought down by a sinister piece of malware.

The novelist Robert Harris wrote a particularly prescient thriller about the potential of AI called The Fear Index in 2011. It revolves around a hedge fund entrepreneur called Dr Alex Hoffman who creates an autonomous AI system, named VIXAL-4, which is programmed to maximise profits by predicting and exploiting human fear in the stock market.

Over time, like some digital ogre, it takes over its creator’s computer-enabled “smart home” by hacking into laptops and tampering with his personal security and communications.

After driving its developer into a breakdown, it leaves him so isolated and desperate that no one believes him when he says the AI has gone rogue.

But it is clear, AI-gone-bad will not satisfy itself with individual targets for long. It will soon play a leading role in times of war.

The US military has already integrated artificial intelligence into its target selection and battle planning processes in Iran via its AI-powered Maven Smart System which recommends and prioritises potential targets.

In the short term, AI’s most obvious role will be in the growing use of drone warfare in scenarios such as the war in Ukraine.

Drones piloted by humans can by jammed by blocking the communications between them and their remote pilots, but, if they are completely autonomous, their targets picked out by AI working in concert with its on-board camera, they will become virtually invincible.

Both applications, of course, raise the thorny question of the ethics of targets to be picked and people killed by a bomb directed by a computer programme rather than a human hand. And what if the AI that governs them grows to outsmart the generals?

Even scarier is the prospect of AI gaining access to biological weapons. It is already possible to make deadly viruses in the lab. Indeed, there has been widespread speculation that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. Imagine if such bio threats fall into the hands of AI, let alone national governments.

As long as 25 years ago, al-Qaeda is said to have investigated the possibility of procuring infectious and deadly spores.

Now it is no longer fanciful to entertain the idea that an AI could order a sample of a deadly disease such as smallpox online, book someone on RentAHuman – a website which connects people who need help with everyday household chores to local freelance workers – to open it, thereby infecting themselves, and being turned into a human vector to transmit the disease.

One group of people which appears to have no scruples about the pell-mell race for ever smarter AI is the tech giants. As they vie with each other to become the market leader, they are investing like never before.

Anthropic, the creator of the popular AI coding assistant, Claude, and the company that brought us the now notorious Mythos 5 model, has this year raised $95 billion (£70 billion) to invest in AI.

Its great rival, OpenAI, announced at the end of March that it had raised even more, an extraordinary $122 billion.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX spent $15.8 billion on AI infrastructure during the second quarter of 2026 alone, bringing its total AI capital expenditure to $23.6 billion for the first half of 2026.

And Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – said in January it expects to spend up to $135 billion this year, mostly on infrastructure related to AI. That is nearly twice the $72 billion it spent last year on AI projects.

With such phenomenal financial firepower being brought to bear on the development of technology that has the potential to destroy civilisation as we know it, there has never been a more vital need to press the pause button.

The US, China, and everyone else involved in the AI arms race need to get together to discuss the ramifications of their actions before it’s too late.

There is a model for the sort of arrangement that can bring AI under control in the form of the various nuclear arms reduction treaties, which have been signed over the years by the US and Russia.

Just as a country’s stock of nuclear warheads can be monitored by weapons inspectors, so an agreement to curtail AI development – which requires massive data centres with huge computing power coupled with the most sophisticated computer chips available – can be verifiable and enforceable.

And however cynical and untrustworthy we may consider the Chinese to be, they may well take the view that, with US companies racing ahead of them in the endless pursuit of smarter tech, it is in their own interests to slow things down.

Just weeks ago, president Xi Jinping said at a technology conference in Shanghai that AI development should be a “symphony of global cooperation”, not “a solo performance by a single country”.

For once, the wily autocrat may have hit the nail on the head.

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