A few months ago, Facebook suspended my account and offered to restore it on one condition: a 3D scan of my face. I refused. But the experience got me noticing what else is happening around digital surveillance and control, and I found a pattern that had accelerated rapidly over the past six months, which most people haven’t had reason to notice yet.

This essay documents that pattern. It looks into age verification, digital ID, facial recognition, VPN restrictions, encrypted data backdoors, Palantir, and AI as the accelerant underneath all of it. I also explore why governments are building this infrastructure, why I think the child protection justification is genuine but insufficient, and what kinds of digital control I’d actually support. I end with what I’ve been doing about it personally, which turns out to look a lot like computing in the 1990s.

It is written for anyone who has noticed one or two of these pieces and wondered whether they connect to something larger.

In the middle of 2025, facing a career at a standstill and doors closed on all sides, I reached a place of despair and decided to reinvent myself and train as a cybersecurity professional. Over the following months, I completed two qualifications and was well into a third before a family health crisis and an honest conversation with a career counsellor brought me back to my senses.

This essay is my attempt to make sense of that detour. It is not a technical guide, though it contains practical advice. It is an honest account of what motivated a strategy consultant to pivot towards cybersecurity, why that pivot was ultimately misguided, and what I learned along the way that has genuinely stayed with me.

The 10 lessons I describe cover the cybersecurity threat landscape, human vulnerability, online privacy, backups, passwords, safe browsing, external standards, phishing, home network security and the growing role of AI. They are written for anyone who wants to adopt a cybersecurity mindset and implement some practical basics.

Over dinner with some young friends, the conversation turned to a question that has been nagging at me: who will mentor the next generation of professionals if their managers are all using AIs to do the work that junior staff once did?

This essay reflects on the mentors who shaped my career and the younger people I’ve had the privilege of mentoring in return. It explores the types of professional mentorship I received and the contexts where this took place. I also highlight why the consulting model that underpinned my career for decades depends on a two-way exchange between humans – something that AI cannot replicate.

I don’t have answers, but I’m convinced this is one of the more significant and underappreciated consequences of AI in the workplace. I believe it will affect all of us

I can’t stand AI writing anymore. I immediately skip over any blog post, LinkedIn post or Substack articles that appears to be written or illustrated by AI. My resolve is much greater if the post shouts, “Look at me. See how clever, wise, successful or virtuous I am.” I quickly skip past these. My strict reading filters no doubt produce false positives, but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take.

This type of AI writing is easy to recognise. There are so many clues. Once it’s seen, it can’t be unseen.

My view is that if I want to read deeply human insights, then I’m going to prioritise those written by humans without the assistance of AI. I’m going to accept the human flaws, knowing that I’ve read something entirely human-made. But if I’m after technical or academic knowledge, then I’ll use AI myself to extract and package that knowledge first-hand. This polarised approach works well for me.

This debate has recently arisen several times in conversations with friends following my most recent article on artificial intelligence (AI).

I do not believe that AIs can produce art. This assertion applies to all fields of art such as music, fiction, poetry, drawings and sculpture. I struggle to imagine over 180,000 people attending a 10-week exhibition of the art-like outputs of an AI, whereas they happily did that for a recent Banksy exhibition in Glasgow.

An AI’s algorithmic outputs might produce things that look or sound very good, perhaps even be awe-inspiring or life-changing, but this is not art.

There is a lot of hype and anxiety about artificial intelligence (AI) nowadays. Everyone seems to be discussing it. I’ve been playing around with Chat GPT and exploring how management consultants and charities are using AI. I’ve also realised how many AI tools are already in our lives.

This article contains my thoughts on AIs. It follows several discussions, internet research and lots of reflection. The topic of AI is controversial and polarising. Some people are anxious and fatalistic; others are optimistic. People’s viewpoints seem entrenched.

The article explains that we will all end up using AI. This technology is not going to solve all our problems but neither will it replace all humans. It will be more useful than a cataclysmic threat, although millions of people will lose their current livelihoods because of it. AIs will amplify both the good and bad in human nature.