UK Column News - 25th February 2026

Good afternoon. It's Wednesday, the 25th of February, 2026, just after 1 o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host Mike Robinson, joining me by video link today, our Charles Mallett and Vanessa Bailey.

The leader in the program, Charles, is going to be reporting on the war between the US Department of War and ontropic over AI enabled weapons, Vanessa is going to be bringing us up to date with the regime change efforts in Iran.

And I'm going to be covering the latest digital ID news, but we're going to begin today with Ukraine, because tasks is reporting that the foreign office, the foreign intelligence service in Russia is saying that that London and Paris are considering equipping Ukraine with nuclear weapons.

They are reporting an assessment by Russia's agency SVR that Paris and London are actively working to provide Kiev with a nuclear bomb. I'm prescribing these are tactical nukes, but we can talk to Charles about that in a second.

It is believed that Ukraine should be supplied with a wonder of AFA is the quote at present according to the information available to the Russian SVR London and Paris are actively working over the issue of providing Kiev with a weapon of this kind as well as with the means of delivery.

This involves a covert transfer of relevant European made components equipment technologies to Ukraine as an option, the French small size TN 75 warhead from the M51 submarine launch ballistic missile is being considered.

And they also said that Berlin has prudently refused to take part in this dangerous venture.

They're saying that the British and French plot is a gross violation of international law first of the non proliferation treaty and carries the risk of destroying global non proliferation systems so on.

So anyway, this is what the Russian intelligence agencies are saying. So if we just put that back on screen or just show you what Maria Zachary Zachary over saying basically any steps taken to assist Kiev and acquiring military nuclear capabilities will be interpreted by us as an attempt to pose a direct and critical threat to our nation security.

So the issue here at Charles is that Zachary over is absolutely mentioning non proliferation and talking about there being an effort a discussion within Russia and non proliferation in April.

And it does seem to me a bit unlikely that Britain and France are really considering doing this.

If they are, it is an insane thing to do, but nonetheless, in the meantime, this kind of rhetoric and pushing this kind of information out for Russian intelligence to find is going to put pressure on Russia to consider, you know, further moving away from their position on non proliferation.

Wood, I mean, I think it does a whole host of things and as you say, whether or not it is true, but of course, having just listened to Donald Trump talking about Iran and Iran not acquiring any nuclear capability at all costs.

And then this is tossed in as though it might be perfectly normal, but also the other thing is it's a massive distraction from what the United Kingdom and France might already be up to in Ukraine without actually declaring it.

So the idea that this would be a step beyond is the case, but actually it does sort of obscure the rather nefarious goings on that have been happening, but frankly since 2022.

Yeah, so I mean, she's also talking about the, you know, the anti-Russian rhetoric that's continuing to come out of the United Kingdom and the EU.

And this just never ends.

Charles, so, you know, what are the Russians supposed to think?

Well, I think they're put in a very difficult position, but I mean, they have been in a difficult position since the late 80s early 90s on exactly this subject, but of course, the thing I think the difference now is the way in which the messaging is joined up, some of which I'll be commenting on and sort of exemplifying a little bit later.

But, but it's, you know, it is absolutely sort of kicking of the whole it's nest forcing Russia into a position to which they they have to respond in the same way that they said they were doing back in February 2022.

Indeed. Well, in the meantime, then amongst all the statements from the UK and the EU to mark the anniversary of the Ukraine war, starting the UK, the UK is announced what they're describing as a new landmark sanctions package.

The cutting off critical oil revenues, they say, and further degrading the Kremlin's Kremlin's ability to wage its illegal war, their words.

So they're saying nearly 300 news sanctions, including oil exports, key suppliers of military equipment, and so on.

It's claiming that Russian oil revenues are neither lost since 2020 as the sanctions bite.

And this news comes as NKF vet Cooper is there announcing a new support for Ukraine, Ukrainian resilience as they describe it.

So they're talking about military humanitarian reconstruction support, including 20 million pounds of new funding for emergency energy support, 5.7 million to provide humanitarian assistance to frontline communities.

Medical mentoring is highly describe it and also helicopter training, so not quite f-16s, but nonetheless.

And then Starbar is going to lead a coalition of the willing call today as foreign secretary as Cooper is in Kiev.

And then the UK is security in Ukraine.

And they're basically saying that they're going to continue to support Ukraine is going to make Britain and Europe safer, stronger and more secure as a result.

Well, we can buy that if we like, but let's just bring a vet on saying today I'm shining a light on Russia's disgraceful attempts to erase Ukrainian identity in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.

Vanessa, let me just get a comment from you on that because it seems to me that what Russia was intending to do with the special military operation was in fact to reinforce the Russian identity in the Donbass, not a raise Ukrainian identity anywhere else.

Yeah, absolutely. They were always very clear about that and really basically what worries me about this Iran, sorry, this nuclear rhetoric.

So it's fine for a Zionist genocidal regime to have nuclear weapons and it's fine for a Nazi regime in Ukraine to have weapons which speaks very loudly as to the ideology of members of our own governmental class.

Whichever side of the divide there on absolutely. Well, look, let's let's move on then to Iran and of course the military build up continues.

There's some rhetoric during the Ryan's Vanessa that perhaps Trump is having second thoughts about actual military action. What are your thoughts on that?

I don't think so. I think what they're doing at the moment is trying to buy time through the negotiation track Iran may also be trying to buy time to formalize sorry to to fully set up its air defense systems.

And also to reinforce its borders, which is related to what I'm going to talk about now, but I just wanted to show two sections from Trump's congressional speech yesterday.

First of all, here he talks about the assassination of General Kasim Soleimani back in 2020.

And we took out Soleimani. I did that during my first term at a huge impact. He was the father of the roadside.

And just over the last couple of months with the protests, they've killed at least it looks like 32,000 protests, 32,000 protests.

I mean, first of all, I just want to remind everyone that it was not only General Kasim Soleimani who was killed by Trump's assassination, there he takes credit for it.

As he has recently taken credit for putting Jolani and the Al-Qaeda forces in power in Syria, but it was also General Mohandas who was leading the popular mobilization forces in Iraq who was killed with Soleimani, both of whom were fighting genuinely fighting ISIS on the ground in Syria and Iraq.

And Kasim Soleimani was responsible for the training of the national defense forces for the Syrian Christians in Syria to be able to defend themselves against ISIS and the Takht Ferry forces.

So that's just a reminder of who Trump actually killed in that assassination.

And then he goes on, he also forces using the exaggerated numbers on those killed in the recent Mossad CIA, MI6, engineered riots in Iran.

And then he goes on to talk about the latest threat from Iran.

But this is some terrible people. They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.

After midnight hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program in a particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue.

So we really are in weapons of mass destruction territory now with Iran, and it's very clear to me that there is going to be no backing off from this, whether that's Israeli Netanyahu pressure on Trump, or Trump simply has as part of his agenda to fully destabilize Iran.

And as I'm going to point out, I don't think it's any longer going to be simply a kinetic war. I think we're now entering the territory of really a full blown hybrid war.

Let's just have a look at this map, which shows very clearly the Kurdish areas, so the areas in Turkey, in Syria, in Iraq on the border with Iran and even inside Iran.

And now what is interesting, that entire conglomeration of Kurdish population is between 30 to 40 million, according to conservative estimates.

Of course, the separatist factions within those populations are very much backed by Washington and Israel against Iran, so that gives an indication of how big this threat is.

And recently, on UK column, I published an article, which talks also about tradition, intelligence has been radicalizing children in the Syrian ISIS prisons for the long war against Iran, because Trump basically gave the green light to Jordan, to retake the North East pushing the Kurds out into the far northeast corner, and releasing ISIS fighters up to 15 to 20,000 from the prisons,

which then become a threat in Iraq, and also potentially on the border with Iran. Then we have, this is effectively the release of an Israeli documentary talking about the training of Kurdish separatist rocks is in Iran, so within Iran itself and on the borders of Iran, specializing in protest training and resistance training.

That's the Israeli terminology to Iranian security forces. And then very recently in the last few days, Iranian Kurdish factions have formed an alliance, which is apparently has as its mission to topple the Tehran government.

So it's an alliance of five members of various political groups within the Iranian Kurdish areas known as the political forces or the alliance, sorry, of political forces of Iranian Kurdistan.

At the moment, we have video circulating on social media that I've been able to, if we can just put that up on screen, that I've been able to confirm that IRGC and Iranian military are heading to the border between Iran and Iraq, obviously building up defense against the potential of an attack from Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan.

And even from within Iran itself. So clearly for me, this is part of a hybrid war. There is no chance that the US and Israel are going to be able to cross borders into Iran. They would be eliminated, but what they appear to be doing is grouping their proxy forces together.

And then in addition to that, apparently according to a son Safanajad, who's an Iranian analyst that I've been speaking to quite often in the last few weeks, he's saying that the Iranian forces are now erecting a security wall on that border.

So they seem to be well aware of the threat. And then let's have a look at something that a son said on X the other day.

I think about three days ago, which I totally agree with. So what he's saying is what if the US attack on Iran coincides with peaceful protesters in inverted commas, taking it to the street to show their support for regime change in Iran.

After all, the mainstream told you that armed insurgents and western parts of Iran were mere peaceful protesters. Why wouldn't they do it again? And of course, we now know they are being trained by Israel.

So that seems to be the job now quietly distributed among a network of armed groups on Iran's periphery, the PJA K, PAK, the so-called national Kurdistan army, the MEK terrorist group, the Balosh Liberation Army in the South, and the merger of terror groups in South East Iran with Josh Al-Adal.

Each has its own baggage, its own ideology, its own patrons, but together they form something bigger, a patchwork of proxy forces that can bleed the Islamic Republic when it's dealing with a US bombing campaign without a single foreign soldier crossing the border. So exactly as I said.

And then if we move to Netanyahu and his recent address at the start of a government meeting in the Knesset, he talks basically about alliances in the region, and he says in the vision I see before me, we will create an entire system essentially a hexagon of alliances around or within the Middle East, he goes on to say in the same speech.

And access of nations to challenge the radical axes is he calls them both the radical Shia axis, which of course is predominantly the resistance axis itself, and the emerging radical Sunni axis to which of course he's referring ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria, although of course they were instruments of Zionist power in the region as well as working on behalf of the US and the British.

And then in addition to this, US forces have rather unexpectedly fully withdrawn from inside Syria, if we have a quick look at the map.

You'll see that in the northeast they fully withdrawn and taken their forces into the Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan region under the Kurdistan regional government there, which again reinforces my idea or my speculation that they are planning a multiple prompt.

Proxy attack against Iran with US support within the Kurdistan region in Iraq, and then from the Al-Tanif base on the border with Iraq and Jordan, they've effectively withdrawn to Jordan.

What does this do? This leaves a vacuum inside Syria, which has potential also if we look at the next map, for as I mentioned there in the section on the Jordan Iraqi border for ISIS to move.

Where the Al-Tanif base was, where they were recruiting, arming and training all manner of terrorist factions, but including ISIS, to be able to traverse Iraq and reach the Iranian border.

You then have the same in the northeast that ISIS might potentially cross Iraq, if it can of course there is resistance forces in Iraq towards the Iranian border.

You have the threat there from Kurdistan factions, both inside Iran and on the border with Iran and Iraq, from the top there in Azerbaijan, Britain and, sorry, well yes, Britain, the US and Israel have been building up their influence, their surveillance capability and military presence in Azerbaijan, which is on the northern border of Iran.

Going round again to Turkmenistan, many of the terrorists that are actually in Syria came from Turkmenistan, so again I consider that to be a threat, and you also have another Kurdish area.

There also from Pakistan, you have terrorists from the Balochistan area that may join with the Baloch Freedom fighters, as they're called in the south of Iran, and also I would say we can't discount India.

Prime Minister Modi is in Israel today, they've agreed on an 8.6 billion defense agreement, and Israel is providing India with defense technology, and India is the first to receive it.

It's never actually been given either to the US or to the UK or to any other country in the Zionist block, but it's being given to India.

So basically this is how I perceive the war is going to proceed against Iran.

Thank you for that Vanessa, I'm sure we'll talk more and extra on that. Charles, let's come over to you then, and of course if we've got war fronts in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Iran, also increasingly the rhetoric about the Arctic continues to build.

It does indeed, and it's all part of one bigger picture, and of course, as you pointed out, and indeed Brian spoke about on Monday, we have just passed the, what's going to describe to the fourth anniversary of the Russian intervention into Ukraine, so as you can imagine, the messaging machine went absolutely crazy, and the chief of defense staff was no exception retweeting this from the Ministry of Defense saying that Putin thought he could wipe Ukraine off the map in a minute.

The map in a matter of days, and it basically confirming Ministry of Defense does still stand with Ukraine.

We will listen to what the chief of the defense staff said yesterday as he read off a script.

As chief of the defense staff, I know that Ukraine's defense is Britain's security.

I've seen firsthand the bravery, ingenuity and courage of Ukrainians, civilians and military alike.

Ukraine and its people continue to stand strong with the support of their allies.

They continue to stand strong and make sacrifices daily to protect their home.

Just this month at NATO, the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, and at the Munich Security Conference, we showed our Western Alliance, and our support for Ukraine is as strong as ever.

As the war enters its fifth year, our resolve will not falter.

We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. We will continue to put them in the strongest possible position for peace.

He's never going to enter an operational theatre. There's absolutely no need for him to be wearing combats.

This is a propaganda exercise, and it confirms his status as a political agent in what is increasingly to be regarded as a media organization.

Now, this does go hand in hand with the press release about further support for Ukraine and the same old thing, essentially money.

But the critical detail here, which, of course, we did point out at the time, it was part of the additional support, and Mike just referred to the coalition of the willing, but not able.

And we're following the landmark declaration in January of the UK's intent to deploy British troops to Ukraine once peace is secured.

Of course, we had the spectacle of Boris Johnson on Monday, talking to Laura Coonsberg about his particular theories on where and when British troops should be deployed.

But what we'll do now is just go a little bit further back to the Munich Security Conference, and listen to what Kirsta Palmer said about other deployments.

I can announce today that the UK will deploy our carrier strike group to the North Atlantic and the high North this year, led by HMS Prince of Wales, operating alongside the US, Canada and other NATO allies, in a powerful show of our commitment to Euro Atlantic security.

So again, same old story, but slightly different area that we're referring to here. And of course, it's worth pointing out the carrier strike group he refers to is the only one.

It's not a carrier strike group. It is the carrier strike strike group, which gives us a significant indication of exactly what capability is with regard to the high North or the Arctic region.

Described as keeping the UK safe, but safe from what exactly never really articulated, particularly.

But of course, this is part of a more joined up process. Here we've got nor rather North American aerospace defense command, convening exercise Arctic edge.

So they're all at it. Now they are keen to point out with all the rhetoric around Greenland earlier on this year and the end of last year.

They specify that all training activities in Greenland are conducted in full coordination with the Kingdom of Denmark.

And they go on to say that they're improving readiness, demonstrating capabilities, enhancing interoperability among multinational interagency and joint force partners in the Arctic.

So it also sounds very cooperative, but is that really the case is that what we should be taking away from it.

And I think the question is worth asking. We look now at the joint expeditionary force, which have been up and running for a number of years, but of course, most notable if you can't see the image is that it does not involve any North American nations.

It is comprised of Europeans. Of course, they, as you would expect, do stand with Ukraine.

Their promotional video shows lots of warfighting capabilities up in the Arctic region.

And I think the question to be asked here is, is there actually going to be the potential for some degree of friction as we have more organizations, more coactive, more groups, apparently entering the fray or at least posing to do exactly that.

As to how the J-E-F stands with regard to NATO, this diagram is supposed to clear it up for you.

I would say it doesn't help enormously. If you can't see it, it's a rather confusing sort of Chris Cross diagram, sort of to replicate a Venn diagram suggesting that NATO J-F integration and mutual advantage is of course going to be where they coalesce where they find a shared aim and a shared identity.

Now, as for NATO itself, of course, they have also just launched a press piece about what they're describing as Arctic security.

And this is under the banner of Arctic Century, something that's being stood up this month, February 20, 2026.

And it reflects the Allies' collective understanding that NATO must do even more as an alliance to ensure security in the Arctic and the high North.

It's a further strength than its ability to operate in the region. Now, what exactly is one meant to take from that, they of course describe the backstory.

They've been actively increasing their presence by establishing new structures throughout the high North and that they're enhancing the alliance's situational awareness and the ability to operate in the region.

Now, as I say, we're now looking at not just NATO, but also the joint expeditionary force, the coalition of the willing and the board of peace to name a few organizations that are all wanting in effect to take ownership of the delivery of strength, sorry, peace through strength.

This is one absolutely gigantic propaganda exercise and just to illustrate that, I'll pick out a piece from the BBC yesterday in which they said that Russian soldiers tell the BBC that they saw fellow troops executed on commanders orders as though this would only ever happen in Russia and absolutely nowhere else.

So we only have to go to the National Arboretum, the National Memorial Arboretum to look at the shot at dawn memorial which commemorates 309 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were shot for desertion cowardice striking senior officer and so forth during the First World War.

So these things do happen in places outside of Russia, if indeed they do happen in Russia.

But of course, the propaganda is the central thrust to this. Mike, I'd be interested in your comment on where you see this going in particular, sort of alongside the push for deployment of troops into Ukraine.

Well, I'm fascinated. I mean, I knew anyway, but just as you express it in the way that you have the joint expedition force, of course, is UK and Europe working together. This is the embryonic European defense union.

If you like, the United States has no part to play in it. And of course, this fits in with the whole narrative from the US from the Trump administration going back to the pre-election days, where they were presenting this idea that UK and Europe needs to be looked at.

And Europe needs to be looking after Russia while they're busy looking in other directions. Obviously, they're now looking at Iran. They're still looking at Latin America and so on.

So they're busy and they want Europe to continue with this with this effort against Russia. But you know, it's it if they're serious about opposing Russia militarily.

They've got either continue with the proxy war in Ukraine, or they have to ramp it up because they don't actually have the the men or material to actually prosecute a proper kinetic war.

So in the meantime, we're just have to we just have to suck up the propaganda and the hybrid attack on us as much as on anybody else.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly it. You know, all this rhetoric, particularly whether the United Kingdom is concerned is absolutely not reinforced by any suggestion that we do actually have the capability to be able to meet the what's being described as a 30% increase in threats from Russian naval vessels in UK waters and all that kind of thing.

And of course, they don't miss any opportunities to talk about the equipment that's being used from both Russia and China. So this is a sort of catch or propaganda net.

Indeed, okay, we need to move on. So let's say that we do need your ongoing support. So if you possibly can support us have a look at the front page of the website. There's a button there to press, which will give you the information that you need.

Thank you very much to everybody that is continuing to support us. It's absolutely appreciated.

If you can't support us financially, then please do share anything that we publish on the UK column website, because that helps us defeat the censorship that we're going to be talking about again, a little bit later in the program.

Now, if you didn't see the video that went out in the one o'clock slot yesterday from rather them to abstain, please do watch it. Now, this was a presentation was given at a UK column event in Telford in 2015.

It's just as relevant now as it was then nothing has changed. And what we're what we aim to do in this presentation was to put all the various grooming gangs stories in context in the context of the overall child abuse picture in this country, because Epstein is only part of it.

grooming gangs are only part of it. This is something which is systemic and systematic in the UK. And hopefully that video will help people understand that a little bit better.

Now, tonight, Jeremy is talking about revising established history. This is going to be quite a controversial conversation.

Do join us for that at 7 p.m. And at 9 p.m. Carl is taking a look at Starmer's recent visit to China. So join him at 9 for that.

Tomorrow 1 p.m. There's an interview with three ladies on the question of keeping children safe and what's being taught in libraries or via libraries. Anyway, that's Kathy Mudge and two colleagues joined Diane for that interview at 1 p.m. tomorrow. And there is a

article on the UK column website that goes alongside that entitled Queer Fest at extra library Devon County Council's child safety test. So quite a lot of content for you to have a look out there. Please do and please

particularly share it if you possibly can. That would be fantastic. Now, let's move on to the issue of digital identity.

Because UK immigration enforcement is planning a third trial of live official recognition at Holyhead Port in North Wales. This is a ferry port.

This follows the two previous trials that Charles reported on last year.

And in those previous trials at home office claims that those resulted in seven and a half thousand faces scanned with no incorrect alerts and one arrest mid.

There you go. Anyway, travelers arriving in the UK from Ireland are going to be scanned and compared against a database of offenders and people of interest.

And that's beginning this week. No, this is apparently because the UK intelligence services are reporting that individuals are using the common travel area.

This is the vastly pre European Union agreement between Britain and Ireland about traveling between those two countries.

So they're using the common travel area to come into Britain without the normal checks. But because as I've reported on this program many times, if you're traveling from Britain to Ireland, you're required to show your passport, a Dublin port.

But if you are traveling from Ireland to Britain or from Belfast, this from Dublin or from Belfast to Can Ryan, for example, or Belfast to Liverpool, there are no passport controls in those ports.

So coming into the UK, there are currently no passport controls, but they're going to use official recognition instead.

So gulf that UK then has released a report on the legal mandate for live official recognition at ports. And they're saying that the use of live official recognition technology can enhance the home offices intelligence capability by comparing this embarking passengers against a watch list of individuals subject to extant or deportation orders or people who are wanted on warrant in relation to an immigration related criminal offense.

And it's clear now that this is going to be ruled out nationally. The question is, has the Starmer regime done enough to radicalize people over the immigration issue that this panopticon that they're trying to build is going to be welcomed by everyone will see and totally would be talking that talking about that and extra as well.

Because it's going to be regulated. Well, late last year, Starmer announced a consultation on the legal framework for live official recognition use and that consultation closed on the 12th of this month.

And Professor William Webster, who's the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner has published a response. And he said that the new framework should be principles based rather than technology led and should focus on purpose proportionality necessity and harm rather than specific technologies.

And that's all going to make sure that it's future proof and he said that it's scope could be extent beyond law enforcement agencies law enforcement agency sorry to include all public and private organizations conducting surveillance for law enforcement or for public safety purposes.

And my question that would be does that include the likes of volunteer because that's not clear at this point that he said that the framework should have a codified restrictive approach making specified activities and offense unless strict criteria are met, murdering the investigatory powers act 2016 because that is a spectacular piece of legislation isn't it.

And then he said that high risk deployments should require pre authorization by an independent regulator. And he described a new statutory independent regulatory body, which could be created created merging the existing forensic science regulator and biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner roles.

So in other words, he's telling for a job and he said that this body should have robust powers of audit inspection and compliance enforcement that it should report directly to parliament and should cooperate as a single point of contact for industry and the public. So in other words, like the MHRA the role would be that of an enabler and lobby organization rather than a regulator in the strict sense.

And then finally, he said that meaningful public engagement and force at a foresight function to anticipate emerging technologies must be embedded in the regulator from the outset, well, we'll see.

But the question is where will all the data go and the answer is into the database, of course, but will it be safe there because absolutely not yet another potential data breach has taken place this time for one billion, yes, one billion digital ID records.

And now these are believed to be to contain highly sensitive personal information from at least 26 countries and totally about a terabyte of data.

The UK doesn't seem to have been affected by it. The United States, South America, most of the EU, China and Australia were. The data is believed to have been on a database from by ID Merit, whose little video clip you saw on screen there.

And this is a global identity verification company and no one knows how long the database was accessible to just about anyone that wanted to come and have a look at it.

It was supposedly secured after the company was informed informed of the issue by security researchers and those researchers noted that the company has not issued any kind of detailed public statement or confirmed specifics of the incident.

In fact, the company itself appears to be claiming that this is all fake news and nothing to see there, of course, it is not.

But then finally, just very quickly, the office for digital identities attributes has published the results of a survey of digital ID providers and basically the upshot of this is that they are very, very keen to see international interoperability and Britain leading the role leading the way on international interoperability on this.

Because that will put them in a very good position as far as the digital ID market goes, so Britain to be driving this.

Charles, let's head back to you then and the question of ethics and war and really this is about AIS most.

It is and ethics is very closely related to what you've just been talking about in many ways, which I'll sort of come to.

I've start with what Donald Trump was saying during parts of this is state of union address and in particular trying to boast about and sort of gone as a port for military or war like activities and he's there.

This is all been sort of retweeted by the rapid response element of the department of war.

They began by reiterating the point that they've got the warrior dividend essentially attacks free payment to those serving in the armed forces of 1776 dollars.

And then we've got at the bottom of that in small text, which I've highlighted piece through strength, of course the message to be spat out every possible opportunity to reinforce what we're all supposed to believe.

We've then got the midnight hammer the operation in Iran as choreographed by Tom Cruise in the top gun Maverick film.

And then we have the Medal of Honor going to Eric Solver for operation absolute resolve by some strange quirk.

E Solver is of course an anagram of resolve. So quite what that potentially I wouldn't know.

But the thing that unites all of these is really the question of necessity and of course Trump is there talking about all of them, but without making it at all clear that any of these military operations weren't any way necessary.

And that takes us to a former employee of Anthropic and he's Mrenank Sharma, the head of a team into safeguarding research.

And he's just left, he's put a letter of resignation, where else on X in it, he says that he continuously finds himself reckoning with our situation, meaning that of Anthropic in the in the AI world.

The world is in peril and not just from AI or bio weapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment.

We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences.

Now he then goes into some poetry and whatnot. So it seems rather oblique, but what he's actually referring to is what Anthropic has been tasked to do by the department for war.

And turns out he's not the only one at Anthropic that may be developing a conscience and we have here from the hill, the Pentagon threatens to cancel Anthropic contract by Friday, if the company doesn't lift safeguard.

So just to get a flavor of what this is about, from the hill, defense actually peat Hegsith met with Anthropic CEO on Tuesday, the Pentagon, amid a dispute over the AI firms usage policy, which bars its model Claude from being used for this.

Being used for mass surveillance or to develop weapons that can be used without human oversight.

Now this has become something I think that hasn't had nearly enough scrutiny at all over the years. It's a very interesting marker in the sand that Anthropic has created here or potentially will create depends whether they're going to stand their ground or not.

We're going to any further detail about that because obviously we don't know exactly what is going to happen, but what we should do is then look at this side of the Atlantic and to desit, which of course has Anthropic as a partner in what's being described as the incorporation of top British AI expertise to help spark the renewal of public services and bolster national security.

So what sort of consequence is this going to precipitate with the relationship with Anthropic here described as specialists developing cutting edge AI solutions, which will run offline to support national security and defense teams to make vital decisions while safeguarding sensitive data.

We just think back to what Mike's literally just been talking about how can they possibly say that that that can be safeguarded in the first place, but this should be said alongside the start contrast with clear view AI's position, which I reported on back in 2023 on their line on the war in Ukraine, which essentially to say that they were going to pick a side and they were going to utilize their technology or at least offer it up for targeting purposes.

Here seen different ways to our technology could be used to help and then they had a bit up on their website, citing a time magazine article about Ukraine's secret weapon, basically as they their live facial recognition technology was used in order to bring about the death of particular individuals.

There won't be a reference to this in the show notes because they've subsequently removed it from their website.

So these are images that I captured at the time and just to close off, I just want to finish with a look at the review from the Ministry of Defense into the regulatory system governing uncrewed and autonomous systems in defense.

Of course, I reported on the red dragon error environment technology suicide drone that the Americans have basically produced and are going to use.

And just to make the point that the Ministry of Defense here behave very much like the MHRA, which is to act as an enabler and be concerned much more with the speed and the provision of service as to whether it's actually right or not.

So one of the questions asked in the consultation is is this fit to enable you to achieve the aims of your organization and then several other questions in between.

And they they then ask what can be done to enable the government to make your make the investment in autonomy to be realized faster.

And frankly, this is all that they seem to to care about ethics absolutely cast to the wind. So so we return to the situation with anthropic in the States and see what this what this does actually tease out of the woodwork and what the result of that particular situation will be.

Indeed, and we'll see we'll see what direction open AI goes as well and see because all the big AI companies are going to have to make this decision at some point for us.

So let's come back to you then and move back to the Middle East and the question of what Israel is doing.

Yeah, interesting, the question of conscience very quickly and we should discuss that in extra that there is a potential that the crew of the USS Jen Gerald Ford are actually pushing back against their 300 days at sea and the potential of being targeted in a war against Iran.

And they are potentially sabotaging the mission.

And that's something we should definitely discuss in an extra because perhaps conscience is now coming to the four among many of the military and some of these surveillance and AI organizations just on the side.

So, of course, Israel in addition to building up the proxy forces as part of the hybrid war against Iran, of course, it's threatening the Lebanese resistance. It's basically passed messages through various diplomats and politicians in Lebanon saying if has but are should respond in any way if the US and Israel enter a war with Iran.

It would hit multiple targets more than 1,200 targets in Lebanon, including including the only civilian airport, which of course would of course be a humanitarian war crime with multiple civilian flights coming in on and departing on a daily basis.

And then basically in the last three days, they've carried out an extensive attack on the eastern border in Lebanon in the Bakar area if we can just have the slide up on screen.

The death toll from the Israeli strike comes to now 10 people killed, including the leadership of Haspelar over 30 injured the majority of civilians.

At the same time, they've also carried out drone strikes against Lebanese army positions in the south because the Lebanese army dead to actually establish a new border post in southern Lebanese territory without coordination with Israel.

So have them forbid they do that and act as if Lebanon is a sovereign country. So Israel carried out strikes.

And finally, I want to actually bring everyone's attention to this story, which I think broke the heart of everyone here in Lebanon.

You either die with your family around you or you die alone.

This is a gentleman who is I think 62 year old father and grandfather. He went with his wife to visit his family in southern Lebanon. He received a call from an Israeli number saying you have a choice.

You can die with your entire family and his wife's family or you can leave them and die alone. He made the choice.

He left his family. He got into his car and he was assassinated. So just for people to understand the sheer psychopathy that is being generated against the Lebanese people on an almost daily basis.

Thanks Vanessa for that report. Now plenty to talk about an extra today. It seems now let's come back to the UK and online safety on Monday this week.

Then off-com announced that they have find the porn company. It five seven nine LLC 1.35 million pounds for not having age verification checks in place plus 50,000 pounds for not responding to an information request from off-com.

I under the online safety act any site that allows pornographic material must use how it's what they describe as we've described it many times highly effective age assurance to prevent children from getting access to that type of content.

Now within days of that coming into force in July 2025 they off-com launched investigations into lots of adult sites including eight five seven nine LLC.

So now the thing is that they have had this fine put in place for filling to comply with the age verification requirements.

They go on to say that of course I find increases by one hundred by sorry by one thousand pounds per day if this company doesn't pay up.

But the question I wanted answered was how would they actually collect this money bearing a mind that eight five seven nine LLC is not a UK company. So I asked them and this was their response.

If a provider fails to pay a fine off-com is entitled to seek recovery of those penalties where appropriate.

If a private provider fails to comply with the requirement to implement age assurance we can also seek a court order for business disruption measures such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform or requiring internet service providers to block a site in the UK.

So in other words it's all smoking mirrors they are grabbing headlines by issuing these fines then they're not in a position to actually do anything.

So when they post a press release describing how they how they've actually received any money from such a fine then maybe we can take them seriously.

The main time discord has apologized for its age assurance mess up.

When it announced a volunteer funded identity provider persona might collect data from users as part of an experiment related to discord's age assurance roll out.

And they've also said that they're delaying the global age verification roll out.

Now they said the way this landed many of you walked away thinking we are requiring fish scans and ID uploads from everyone just to use discord that's not what's happening but the fact that so many people believe it is.

It tells us we failed at our most basic job clearly explaining what we're doing and why that's on us. This is typical marketing nonsense.

But they also attempted to reassure everyone about the fairly big data breach the day suffered at the end of last year which we reported at the time.

To be clear it went on to say we do not do not use the vendor who caused the data breach last year for age assurance in fact we no longer work with them at all and we've taken lessons from that incident seriously.

Really well back in the UK then the information commissioner has find reddit 14.47 million pounds after deciding that reddit had failed to use children's personal information lawfully.

They cited serious failures in age assurance under UK data protection law and they said that the reddit failed to comply with any robust age assurance mechanism and therefore did not have a lawful basis for processing the personal information of children under the age of 13 and they said that it failed to carry out a data protection impact assessment to assess and mitigate risks to children before January 2025.

But if anyone thinks well no problem I'll just move to Russia to avoid all this nonsense well no actually because as Russian news website WWW one reports customers have been using the max messenger app to verify their age when purchasing goods from shops that are that need to be age verified of being over 18 and that's not happened more than a million times so that number continues to grow daily they report.

And they report the state secretary deputy minister of industry saying to explaining this to reporters this works at 18 of Russia's largest retailers and more than 70,000 stores so the same kind of problem of age assurance digital ID online safety these types of issues as active in those countries as they are in ours so.

So right Charles let's move on then back to the issue of politics in the UK.

And we'll return to the significant amount of attention that's being garnered by Rupert Lowe's announcement that restore Britain will become a sort of a formal entity and I think the question to be asked is what sort of Britain are they aiming to restore because Rupert Lowe certainly at a closer inspection is not quite who he purports to be and we've got the announcement now that all are mini hand is going to be the spokesman or spokesperson for violence.

It's not just against women and girls but specifically all are found at the pink ladies a national network dedicated to protecting women from migrant crime so actually it's not just violence against women and girls there's definitely an angle here but we'll just take a quick look before we come to that who she is this is her on linked in and interesting to note that during the height of the.

Tyranny she was working as a transformation program director for the national health service and she went on or has gone on to become immersed in transformation with digital business services for HSBC and now works for Deloitte as a program manager so she is absolutely a corporate wallet but there is not very much the image that restore Britain is trying to put forward.

We'll just look at the pink ladies on Twitter saying very specifically that they want to protect British women I think there's a fairly strong undercurrent there in terms of messaging and this has been identified by the byline times which written an article saying or describing the pink ladies is laundering anti migrant views into the mainstream which.

I'll go on and sort of qualify to a certain extent but a lot of that revolves around the misuse of statistics that have been generated by a so called think tank for migration or at least to create the impression that migration is responsible for particular issues especially concerning violence towards women and girls now to get a better sense of the opportunism and indeed.

The fact that this lady in particular is happy to hop from supporter to supporter here she is with Jacob Brissmog apparently who was flavor of the week at that point at lo and behold she is from Epping posting on Twitter a photograph of the so called line of Epping who received much publicity during the protests last summer another tweet with the caption we are all Epping now no accident this is a.

This is if you can't see it a photograph of the union flag flying above the flag of Israel on the same stick and apparently that is for her the symbol of Epping just in case that wasn't clear enough she's then tweeted that Britain does not stand with Gaza British people do not support terrorists apparently the two are synonymous at true British Patriots stand for peace freedom justice and respect that's apparently what we thought.

To world wars to protect so that's the sort of person that she seems to be and then we mustn't forget that she did stand as a candidate for reform UK so so far restore in much the same way that reform have with all their Tory party.

Crosses of the line forgive me I can't remember the word but defectors that's the one.

Restore looking similar and at the individual and indeed collective level they're now transmitting a message that is suggestive of jingoistic opportunism without any substance by means of a clear or credible message and I think this is just something.

But people need to be aware of is exactly who are these people and what is it they are using in order to garner support and of course migration is absolutely at the heart of this and so I just finish by reminding you that that absolutely has been manipulated both ways and of course we have the labor together Brit card proposal effectively from the other end of the apparent spectrum last year.

Thank you Charles okay let's move on then to we can't let the program end without mentioning Peter Mendelssohn of course because there's everyone knows on Monday the med police arrested Mendelssohn on suspicion of misconduct in public office so Mendelssohn joins Andrew in being suspected of improperly passing UK government information to abstain.

Following it was all in the in the emails and the various other document releases Mendelssohn is supposed to have forwarded Epstein a memo written to Gordon Brian at the prime minister at the time that was appearing to confirm the timing of EU bail out before it was publicly announced.

Mendelssohn's lawyers argued that the rest is the rest was prompted by a baseless suggestion that he was about to flee the country and that in fact he had agreed the lawyer said that he had agreed to attend a voluntary interview next month.

He was released on bail and well we'll see what happens on that in the meantime then the telegraph has reported the expanding fallout from the Epstein situation which is now.

Gathering Ryan the Rothschild Empire in this case it's Ariana the Rothschild CEO of the family owned Edmund Rothschild Swiss private bank so the telegraph here saying that the Epstein releases are showing that she.

Corresponded dozens of times with Epstein and arranged multiple meetings over around five years right up until his death and this has caused significant reputational damage because the disc the disclosures contradicted they say an earlier characterization by the bank that she met Epstein only as part of her normal professional duties now she's still claiming that her relationship came about.

Purely because of his Epstein standing as a significant global businessman but the files showed that she negotiated a twenty five million dollar contract consulting contract with Epstein in 2015 and her name appears over four thousand four hundred times in the document release.

So far I'm sure if as that the analysis of that goes on there's every opportunity for that number to rise but well it's been a bit embarrassing and they've had to write to all their customers and beg for their customers to stick around some of their customers aren't very happy about the bad publicity that this brings Charles let's end then with subsidies to farmers.

Indeed as Julian Rose has always said subsidy creates slaves and that is absolutely I would say the correct way to look at it however when Emma Reynolds the environments actually spoke to the NFU yesterday she was very much trying to sell the line that the government.

Were supporting farmers that food security and national security are inextricably linked there shouldn't be a choice between producing food or recovering or saving nature she also perpetuated the absolute lie that the government has increased the threshold for agricultural property relief from one million pounds to turn a half million pounds because of course it was zero nothing had actually changed so that is a that is absolutely a propaganda offering.

She produced the curious statistic that 65% food security is where we are in the United Kingdom how she accounts for that enormous jump was not made quite clear just as an illustration of the sincerity of what she was saying in so far as her position that the government are going to support farmers she said that the environmental land management offerings were going to be produced later that day yesterday which indeed they were.

And I've just pulled out of that funding for farmers growers and land managers and in particular the item the line item farming equipment and technology fund which has thrown at it a grand total of 50 million pounds available to farmers growers foresters and their contractors now there are over 200 and 9000 holdings in England alone so the question that might be asked is 50 million pounds is that it and just as a frame of reference.

I'd remind you that the garden bridge project in London which achieved absolutely nothing somebody drew some stuff and then made a model and that cost 53 million quid and yet farmers are being apparently sweetened with a 50 million pound offering to go to all of them so that's the state that the state of the the disdain with which government treats the farmers that it says.

That it respects and wants to support now just to wind up a vaguely related to agricultural rural matters i'm going to share short video which i think encapsulates very many of the things that we see going on in the background in the united kingdom in 2026 this is how you deal with the flood apparently.

Thankfully she survived to tell the tale so I hope that brings a smile.

Yeah well I'm not sure which was worse the fact that she didn't want to get out of her car or the fact that the fabric needed felt she needed some kind of floating it for the nation it but anyway we can talk about that in extra as well look we got to leave it there for today say I want to say thank you very much to Vanessa and Charles for joining me today and for everybody that's been watching stick around for the news extra in a couple of minutes if you're UK column members stay on the live stream.

Otherwise consider joining us and then you can join us for news extra each time we do a news program don't forget Carl and Jerome tonight and also the interview was done tomorrow and we'll be back 1pm as usual for more news on Monday Friday see you then bye.