Thrilled that this paper with Where the Tweets have no name & Abeba Birhane has been accepted for publication with Cell Press. Our hope is to shift the discourse in ML ethics & responsible AI towards an acknowledgement that ethical & epistemic fail points are inextricable. Stay tuned for full text!

It is nothing new in the history of science that junk-scientific methods peddle themselves as having more watertight epistemological bases than the accepted normal science of the times.

The methods are “extra-scientific” in falling beyond the purview of admissible forms of empirical enquiry. But they brand themselves as “extra-scientific” in the sense of being “more scientific than science itself!”

Folks, I'm back briefly to self promote. Please take a look at my new paper in International Studies Quarterly on Kenneth Waltz's antiwar politics, ideas about democracy, and policy interventions. 1/11 doi.org/10.1093/isq/sq…

Neil Renic Johanna Rodehau-Noack and I are thrilled to announce the publication of our forum in International Studies Perspectives on 🚨"Dead-Ends, Disasters, Delays? Reflecting on Research Failure in International Studies and Ways to Avoid It" 🚨 Check it out here 👉doi.org/10.1093/isp/ek… Short 🧵 1/6

Anyone interested in a one-year postdoc position for our ‘Mistranslating Deceit’ project (mis-translating-deceit.com)? We need someone with experience of media audience analysis and knowledge of Polish, Serbian or Arabic. Please share widely. Details are at: vacancies.lboro.ac.uk/jobdesc/REQ240…

Several weeks ago German media (WDR, NDR, SZ) received a leak of internal files from the biggest Russian disinformation contractor, Social Design Agency, often referred to as Doppelganger. "Western security officials" confirmed authenticity. First story by Florian Flade et al

This looks like the mother of all supply chain attacks wsj.com/world/middle-e…

🔺️ Close-up view of Motorola Advisor Gold Pager, reasonable scenario, targeted sabotage ▪︎Infiltrated Hezbollah's supply chain ▪︎planted explosives inside the device

All indications point to a supply chain attack rather than a malware attack against existing devices. There appears to be no subsequent fire as one might expect from a Lithium Battery overheating. It is much more likely that there were explosive inside the devices.

Always carry phone in back pocket

The exploding Hezbollah pagers situation is an incredibly impressive supply chain attack by Israel (most likely). I am sure more details will come, but there are already some educated guesses to be made that narrow it down. 🧵1/n

If all these things were added to off the shelf pagers, it would have taken a lot of time. They’d have to produce solid clones in advance & swap a large shipment out in transit to not introduce a noticeable delay. Considering the scale, I suspect this is NOT how it was done 🧵6/n

More likely is they had cooperation/control of the actual factory building these and introduced custom internals built from the ground up. I guess we will just have to wait. There will be plenty of info to come. 🧵7/n

Hard to see how something like the pager operation can achieve clear strategic/signalling aims. Like so many elaborate and sensational covert action ops it seems like the most salient effect will be to just intensify uncertainty for all actors across the board.