Online disinformation & weaponisation of AI across borders. 🇺🇳 (#UNGA Sept 2025).

The year-to-date trade balance was $1.04tn as of October, China’s customs data showed, setting a new record and threatening to increase tensions with partners such as the EU ft.trib.al/ZiF00Po

Left New York on Saturday. Arrived in Singapore on Monday. Where did Sunday go ?!?

You can also compound demerits - so it depends on what it is you’re accumulating while you remain in the game, versus making a fresh start elsewhere.

Pressuring for tourists in the US. Just add it to the price if you must but don’t put the customer in this situation. Apple Pay or touch-pay was not meant to be interrupted with a maths quiz in the workflow …

Best cabbies in the world, and this is one of the many reasons why. 👏👏

Our company spent $86,000 hiring consultants to eliminate timezone confusion.

Their recommendation:

Standardize every company meeting to UTC.

"One company. One clock."

I pointed out that employees still live in different countries.

They said I was resisting digital transformation.

So our first global all-hands was scheduled for 9:00 AM UTC.

London: 10 AM.

New York: 5 AM.

San Francisco: 2 AM.

Singapore: 5 PM.

The London team joined normally.

The New York team joined from their beds.

Nobody from California showed up except one engineer who was already awake because his newborn wouldn't sleep.

The CEO was furious.

"Why isn't everyone attending?"

I explained that it was 2 AM in San Francisco.

He said the calendar clearly said 9 AM.

I explained that UTC doesn't change when the sun comes up.

The consultants called an emergency meeting.

They said the problem wasn't time zones.

It was employee resistance to global alignment.

Their proposed solution was a mandatory training program on UTC awareness.

$24,000.

I suggested rotating meeting times so the same region didn't always get screwed.

They called that approach "operationally complex."

Then I scheduled our next consultation at 9:00 AM UTC.

The lead consultant declined.

He lives in San Francisco.

His response:

"Unfortunately, 2 AM falls outside our team's standard working hours."

I forwarded it to the CEO.

We now rotate meeting times.

The consultants submitted their final report recommending "regionally adaptive scheduling."

They billed us another $12,000.

We paid $98,000 to discover that the Earth rotates.

Try a full day of panel “discussions” where the moderators are staff members from the event organisers, throwing softball questions to sponsors who read out corporate talking points, one monologue at a time.

"A good man without strength is hoping that evil has mercy."

— Sun Tzu

When I posted about meeting the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, the PM's correct name I posted in Japanese was incorrectly machine-translated in English, causing widespread confusion overseas. A platform that provides unreliable translations of names needs a fundamental review!

“2022 was the year of 3 PMs in the UK”.

With just 1 day to go before the 2016 presidential election, the NYT’s election forecast gives Hillary Clinton an 84% chance of beating Donald Trump (16%)

Some political ideas age better than others.

When I proposed a new model of national service in the 2024 election, it quickly became the butt of jokes. Now France and Germany are taking steps towards it, and in Sweden places are highly prized by teenagers and employers alike.

What I’d seen as prime minister – the constant probing by our enemies, which didn’t distinguish between civilian and military – had convinced me we would soon need some kind of resilience corps. The cyberattacks on European supermarkets, with fridges remotely set to 50C so the food spoils, show this is our new reality. Defence spending won’t stop that. Responsibility for our security can’t just be subcontracted to the military.

In a world in which the government feels obliged to tell us to stockpile tinned goods, our culture needs to change. It will take more than well-stocked cupboards to meet this moment.

A new, universal national service scheme should offer people options. A few might join a small, selective military cadre. Others could serve with search and rescue, St John Ambulance or Meals on Wheels, or train in cybersecurity.

It would make us more resilient and more cohesive, give the almost one million young people not in education, employment or training a sense of purpose, and remind us all that citizenship brings responsibilities as well as rights.

My @thetimes column today 👇 thetimes.com/comment/column…

Georgetown’s School of #ForeignService is the oldest school of international affairs in the United States, established in 1919 in the aftermath of World War One.

It used the name “Foreign Service” in its title several years before the U.S. Foreign Service itself was created in ar with students there this week.

I know the American political system is facing extreme challenges, but there are genuine reasons to be hopeful about the American electorate.

The willingness of a majority to elect someone from a small minority is a remarkable democratic strength -

a hopeful sign that we can live by principles rather than tribalism.
6/6

Better customer service than British Airways

Fact for the weekend

42% of all the prime ministers we have had since the end of the First World War will be standing by the Cenotaph this Sunday

Balance of power in the United States 🇺🇸

🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (1980)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (1981)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (1982)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (1983)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (1984)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (1985)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (1986)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (1987)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (1988)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (1989)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (1990)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (1991)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (1992)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (1993)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (1994)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (1995)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (1996)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (1997)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (1998)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (1999)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (2000)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (2001)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (2002)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2003)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2004)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2005)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2006)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (2007)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔴 President (2008)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2009)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2010)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2011)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2012)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2013)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2014)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (2015)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔵 President (2016)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2017)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2018)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2019)
🔵 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2020)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2021)
🔵 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2022)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2023)
🔴 House | 🔵 Senate | 🔵 President (2024)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2025)
🔴 House | 🔴 Senate | 🔴 President (2026)

Efficient logistics, seamless digital public services and fewer layers of corruption allow manufacturing plants in Vietnam to pay workers twice as much as their Bangladeshi counterparts while earning higher profits, said Lutfey Siddiqi.

More below

Just spotted this poster at the train station and looked it up:

In 2020, Washington DC required a single, clear “Employee Rights” poster to be prominently displayed in the workplace.

It lists core worker rights in large-font bullet points - minimum wage, timely pay, sick ion, anti-retaliation etc. - plus contact numbers and a QR code for complaints.

#makeitsalient #reminder #labour #labor

Economic diplomacy = negotiating national interests through trade, investment, and market deals.