The Room Already Knew
Three tasks, four options, four minutes. A room of mortgage brokers sorted their own work into human, machine, AI and combination and got all three right. The question almost nobody is asking, and the free tool that answers it.
On 10 December, You Have to Say It Out Loud
From 10 December 2026, Australian organisations must publish in their privacy policy what their automated systems decide about people. Most can’t produce that list, and the obligation isn’t about AI.
Security by Antiquity: Why the Oldest Thing in Your Building Might Be the Safest
Older technology is sometimes safer from attack, not because it is stronger but because nobody is looking at it. Ireland is keeping its radio beacons alive, Australia quietly kept 200 navaids at 124 airports, and San Francisco is paying 212 million dollars to leave floppy disks behind. Underneath the jokes sits a question most boards have never been asked: you bought capability, but did you ever buy resilience?
When Trust Breaks Down in Organisations, It’s Never the Trust That Broke
AUSTRAC found the same names across unrelated loan files. When trust breaks down in organisations it’s never the trust that broke. It’s the layer nobody checks.
Nobody Argued About the Shark Drones
New South Wales now flies shark drones over around seventy beaches, every day of the year. The money arrived within days of swimmers being killed, and nobody argued, because the reason was too good to argue with. That’s how permanent observation actually shows up. The hard part of drones was never the flying, and the ripple effects land somewhere most leaders aren’t looking.
I Was Wrong About the Middle
A permit clerk in Washington DC decided last month that part of the public footpath now belongs to a commercial robot fleet. Nobody voted on it. No board paper was written. No strategy session preceded it. A clerk, doing a job, processed a form, and the street changed. I want to sit on that clerk […]
