ICYMI: Rory Cormac offers a sobering recommendation to counter foreign influence at universities - fund them properly. He also calls out the persistent myth that academia and policy circles remain inherently disjointed. Read more via the below link:

I used to have big office windows that I’d open wide wide wide.

Replaced by these on a tiny latch cos I guess we can’t be trusted not to throw ourselves out?!

A timely reminder:

Scale of influence ops ≠ impact and actual influence

Quality haul from Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.s … now where to begin??

Spot on (or rather scab off) from Dr. Dan Lomas

Excellent piece from Rory Cormac! spectator.co.uk/article/how-to…

The British Academy does great work… now gimme that small research grant or I’ll have to go ask some oligarch instead!

(joking, obvs… I’d go to the Chinese)

This Sunday Times story about Anthony Blunt is either a huge revelation or a damp squib. Hard to tell which (eg, tweet below). But a good read either way.
#anthonybluntspy

The lack of smoking gun is reasonable- I know how hard this is - but couldn’t the Russians just have selectively passed Blunt’s stuff onto the Nazis without Blunt knowing?

thetimes.co.uk/article/392db8…

👏👏👏👏👏👏 THIS 👇👇👇

might get in trouble for this last line.... cathartic though

anyone else feel seen?!😬

'how to stop China spying on our universities?'

FUND THEM PROPERLY

me in The Spectator

spectator.co.uk/article/how-to…

This time yesterday I had a stupid idea:

apply for a research fellowship with a hard deadline next week. 24 hours later I now have a fully costed draft.

Huge shout out to the Nottingham research support team! Absolute heroes for making this work!

And to think Soviet disinformation specialists went to all the trouble of planting a story in a foreign newspaper.

Great work by Yusuf Ali Ozkan and King's Centre for the Study of Intelligence (KCSI). What a useful resource 👇

So sad. Andrew Defty is the world’s leading expert on U.K. parliamentary oversight of intelligence (a hugely important topic). His work on U.K. covert propaganda is genuinely pioneering and a huge influence on my own research. Outrageous to be in this position.

Handwritten lists on old scraps of paper, wine, and tears. Simple

It turns out WHSmith missed out on a lucrative - secret - deal with the government to sell books covertly commissioned by the foreign office way back in 1953. Too parochial, apparently.

But now they have a monopoly on railway stations? conspiracy? we deserve answers!! 🫠🫠🫠

enjoying how one of the foreign office officials liaising with covertly controlled book publishers was called...

... Miss Bookless!

I agree that Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP should read my book!

(thanks for the shoutout)