Friday 7 August 2026 For generations, human beings have comforted themselves with the belief that intelligence alone guarantees supremacy. The most intelligent creature dominates its environment — or so the argument has run since Aristotle. Artificial intelligence challenges that assumption in a way unlike any previous technological innovation. The issue is no longer merely whether machines will become more intelligent than their creators. It is whether humanity possesses qua

Friday 7 August 2026 There is a question every foreigner who spends any length of time in Ukraine eventually asks. If Ukrainians and Russians are, as the Kremlin insists, “one people”, why have they fought each other with such determination? Why has Russia expended such extraordinary military, economic and political capital in attempting not merely to conquer Ukraine but to erase her? Why have Ukrainian civilians endured years of missile attacks, occupation and deprivation ra

Thursday 6 August 2026 The Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, whose work reshaped how humanity understands the hidden motives of the mind, once observed that “people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility and most people are frightened of responsibility.” This deceptively simple aphorism, drawn from the psychological architecture he spent a lifetime excavating, offers a striking lens through which to consider the war in Ukraine — a conflict tha

Thursday 6 August 2026 The question of whether Chinese artificial intelligence has surpassed that of the West is frequently posed in absolute terms, as though technological progress were a sporting contest in which one side inevitably emerges victorious. Such framing is tempting because it simplifies an immensely complicated landscape. It is also misleading. Artificial intelligence is not a single technology but an network of semiconductor design, cloud computing, algorithms,

Wednesday 5 August 2026 War has an inexorable tendency to erase the distinction between front and rear. What begins as a contest between armies gradually envelops factories, railways, ports, energy infrastructure and eventually entire societies. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated this brutal dynamic with exceptional clarity. Having endured years of relentless missile and drone attacks upon her own cities, Ukraine is now acquiring the technological capaci