By Andre Pienaar Landmark study finds next-generation nuclear could deliver up to 30 per cent of electricity and cut system costs by nearly a third across eight emerging economies — but the geopolitical race to supply these reactors is already underway. A major new report commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation has set out the most comprehensive evidence to date that nuclear energy — including small modular reactors (SMRs) — could fundamentally reshape the energy futures of the world’s fastest-growing economies. For national security strategists in Washington, London and allied capitals, its findings carry implications that extend well beyond the energy…

By Andre Pienaar The designation of individuals tied to Boko Haram, ISIL, and cyber-enabled fraud reveals the expanding reach of OFAC enforcement into West African terror networks and the Gulf financing corridors that sustain them. The United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned eight Nigerian nationals for alleged ties to Boko Haram, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and cybercrime operations, in a move that underscores Washington’s intensifying focus on the intersection of terrorism financing, digital fraud, and geopolitical leverage in West Africa. The designations, contained in a 3,000-page update to the Specially Designated…

By Staff Writer Two leading cybersecurity firms have joined forces to launch Collective Defence, a new platform to protect critical infrastructure. The new cybersecurity and national security company, called Collective Defence, has launched following the merger of ITC Secure and IronNet. The move follows growing global cyber threats from both state and non-state actors, criminal groups and individuals. Collective Defence will bring together advanced cybersecurity and AI capabilities to defend critical infrastructure against state-sponsored and hybrid threats, according to Arno Robbertse, the company’s CEO. Headquartered in Luxembourg, the company operates across the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore. Robbertse told…

By Staff Writer A new report reveals how Chinese surveillance technology, delegated censorship, and bandwidth discounts have made mobile operators central to Tehran’s infrastructure of oppression. When the British not for profit organisation ARTICLE 19 published “Tightening the Net: China’s Infrastructure of Oppression in Iran” this month, it confirmed what many in the security community have long suspected: Chinese technology firms have been the foundational architects of Iran’s digital repression apparatus. The report is the first comprehensive open source analysis of the China Iran nexus. It arrives as Iran endures its most severe information blackout since the Islamic Revolution to…

By Sean Rayment British soldiers are to be issued with new AI-capable radios, headsets and tablets featuring futuristic sensor data, the Ministry of Defence has announced. The contract, worth up to £86 million, has been awarded to UK-based company BlackTree Technologies. The radios, headsets and tablets will rapidly reduce the time it takes for soldiers to receive reconnaissance and intelligence data, boosting lethality and reducing friendly-fire incidents, according to the government. Known as the Dismounted Data System (DDS), the AI-capable equipment includes radios, headsets, display tablets, cables, batteries, pouches and antennas. The new equipment will provide precise information on surroundings…

By Andre Pienaar For the first time, cyberattacks rank as the most serious security risk across the G7. Russia is blending cyber and kinetic operations against European energy grids. The Munich Security Report 2026 maps a threat landscape in which the line between cybersecurity and energy security has effectively ceased to exist. The prominence that this year’s annual Munich Security Report gives to cybersecurity and energy security in its analysis is striking. According to the Munich Security Index 2026, the polling instrument embedded within the Munich Security Conference’s flagship annual report, cyberattacks by nation state adversaries are now ranked as…

By Sean Rayment The security of key military sites will be strengthened as Defence personnel are given stronger powers to defeat drones near bases as part of new measures being introduced in the Armed Forces Bill. The move comes as newly confirmed figures demonstrate the growing threat rogue drones are posing to Ministry of Defence sites across the UK. In 2025, there were 266 reported Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle incidents near Defence sites, up from 126 incidents reported in 2024. The legislation will give authorised personnel the power to take out drones deemed to be posing a threat to any Defence…

By Sean Rayment The al-Qaeda terrorist group is now 50 times larger than at the time of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, a United Nations monitoring group has claimed. The figures, drawn from data and intelligence gathered by spy agencies such as MI6, show that there are now 25,000 potential fighters dotted across the globe. At the time of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in September 2001, there were an estimated 500 terrorists. Details of the surge in al-Qaeda membership were revealed at a briefing at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) before…

By Andre Pienaar The attempted assassination of GRU’s operational commander raises urgent questions about institutional continuity, hybrid warfare networks, and the future of Russian covert operations worldwide. The shooting of Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev outside his Moscow apartment on the morning of 6 February 2026 is not merely the latest in a string of targeted killings of Russian military officials. It strikes at the operational nerve centre of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, and carries implications that extend far beyond the war in Ukraine. Alekseyev is not a figurehead. He is the officer who runs covert operations worldwide for the…

By Andre Pienaar A landmark Swedish counter intelligence study maps the largest open-source dataset of espionage convictions in Europe, exposing Russia’s aggression, the evolution of spy typologies, and the alarming silence from some Western capitals. In January 2026, Sweden’s Defence Research Agency (FOI) published what may be the most comprehensive empirical study of espionage in Europe to date. Commissioned by three of Sweden’s principal intelligence agencies, the Security Service (Säkerhetspolisen), the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA), and the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST), the report analyses 70 individuals convicted of espionage across 20 European countries between 2008 and 2024.…

Polish authorities have launched an investigation into whether Jeffrey Epstein acted as a spy for Russia amid suspicions he could have been paid for collecting compromising material on well-connected figures.Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, told a government meeting he was establishing a team to look into the numerous mentions of President Putin and other indications of Russian links in the Epstein files, as well as any impact on Poland.The US Department of Justice’s release of millions of documents related to Epstein has revealed the late financier and sex offender’s ties to many prominent people in politics, business and academia.There…

By Sean Rayment China is planning to build a giant space aircraft carrier capable of deploying unmanned fighter jets that could fire missiles from the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. Chinese state media has released a concept video of the futuristic Luanniao, described as the world’s largest warship, travelling through space above existing defensive systems. The communist state claimed the carrier could become operational within 20 to 30 years. However, experts were sceptical about the project, with some likening it to a stunt designed to inspire the Chinese public. Resembling a spacecraft from a Star Wars film, the Luanniao is…

By Sean Rayment The Kremlin has announced that Russia would be willing to store Iran’s enriched weapons-grade uranium in a bid to de-escalate tensions between Washington and Tehran. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said that an offer to process or store Iran’s uranium had been under discussion for some time. Asked whether Russia was discussing with Iran and the United States the possibility of taking Iranian enriched uranium, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “This topic has been on the agenda for a long time.” “Russia has been offering its services for quite a long time as a possible…

By Andre Pienaar UANI report reveals IRGC command and control structure behind Iran’s deadly crackdown on protesters As protests continue to engulf Iran and the European Union (EU) moves to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, a new report from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has exposed the shadowy command centre coordinating the regime’s brutal crackdown on its own citizens. The report, titled The Tharallah Headquarters unveiled: the hidden infrastructure blocking regime change in Iran, is authored by UANI Senior Advisor Saeid Golkar and Kasra Aarabi. Drawing on leaked internal IRGC documents obtained from inside Iran,…

By Andre Pienaar Executive order establishes secondary-sanctions-style mechanism targeting any country that sells petroleum to Cuba WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday declaring a national emergency with respect to Cuba. The order establishes an unprecedented tariff mechanism designed to sever the island’s access to foreign oil by penalising supplier nations with duties on their US-bound exports. The order, which took effect today, invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the National Emergencies Act (NEA) to authorise additional ad valorem tariffs against any country determined to “directly or indirectly” sell or provide oil to…

By Staff Writer The European Union has designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation, increasing pressure on the Islamic Republic over its violent suppression of nationwide protests. The decision was agreed unanimously by the EU’s 27 foreign ministers meeting in Brussels and was accompanied by new sanctions targeting senior Iranian officials and state-linked bodies accused of killings, mass arrests and online repression. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas said the listing reflected the scale of violence used by the authorities against their own population. “Any regime that kills thousands of its own…

By Sean Rayment US President Donald Trump has warned that a “massive armada” of US warships is “moving quickly” towards Iran. The US president threatened to launch a sustained attack against the Islamic regime if Tehran did not agree to a new deal banning nuclear weapons. Mr Trump said: “A massive armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. “Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing and able to rapidly fulfil its mission, with speed…

By Andre Pienaar Ukraine’s ministry of defence has unveiled a new secure data environment designed to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence systems capable of autonomously detecting and intercepting Russian unmanned aerial systems. The initiative, known as the Brave1 Dataroom, marks a significant escalation in Kyiv’s technological response to Moscow’s intensifying drone campaign. The platform operates within Ukraine’s government-backed Brave1 defence innovation cluster and uses software infrastructure provided by the US defence technology firm Palantir Technologies. It provides Ukrainian developers with access to structured visual and thermal datasets collected directly from frontline operations, allowing machine learning models to be trained…

By Andre Pienaar Analysis of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s warning on AI risks In a sweeping new essay published this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has issued what amounts to a strategic warning to national security establishments worldwide: artificial intelligence is approaching a threshold that will fundamentally alter the global balance of power, and the window for establishing effective safeguards is closing rapidly. “The Adolescence of Technology,” published in January 2026, frames the emergence of “powerful AI” as “the single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.” Unlike his previous essay “Machines of Loving Grace,”…

By Sean Rayment The US President has said Iran wanted to make a deal as an American “armada”, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers, arrived in the Middle East. Previous threats of a US strike were said to have been called off after Iran said it would no longer execute dissidents. President Donald Trump told the Axios news site on Monday that the “armada next to Iran” was bigger than the force sent to waters near Venezuela before the abduction of Nicolás Maduro. “They want to make a deal,” he said, referring to the Iranians. “I…

By Andre Pienaar The US Treasury Department has sanctioned a Hamas-linked non-profit network, including a key international front organisation and six Gaza-based charities, citing their role in financing and supporting Hamas’s military wing through sham humanitarian operations. US officials and national security analysts say the case exposes how terrorist organisations continue to exploit the global non-profit sector, including networks with ties to South Africa and the United Kingdom, to move money, raise funds, and expand political influence. According to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the sanctions target the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA) and six…

By Staff Writer More than 36,000 unarmed Iranian protesters calling for a change of government have in the Islamic state been shot dead by security forces, it has been alleged. The killings are believed to have taken place between January 08 and 09 according to Iran International, a London-based Persian-language news channel covering political developments and human rights issues in Iran. Details of the deaths have emerged at the same time as the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln accompanied by three warships arrived in the Middle East, bringing a renewed potential that President Donald Trump could opt to order…

By Staff Writer Once viewed as pariahs, cryptocurrencies have now seen their legitimacy and value widely recognised by the world’s largest institutions. Nowhere is this clearer than at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, the annual epicentre of institutional finance and power, where cryptocurrencies have taken centre stage. This is particularly true of the fast-growing $260 billion stablecoin market. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset. The most prominent of these are US dollar-backed stablecoins such as USDC, issued by Circle. In contrast to the outdated and unwieldy legacy international banking system, USDC…

By Sean Rayment Donald Trump ruled out using force to acquire Greenland as he called for immediate negotiations over his desire to purchase the island, which he described as a “big, beautiful piece of ice”. Addressing thousands of business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the US president said he was “seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States”. “People thought I would use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the US is asking for is a place…