Playing with fire

Last night’s massive Russian drone incursion into Poland shows how willing Putin has become to take ever-greater risks in relation to the collective West—risks that are difficult to make sense of from a rationalist perspective alone. While one or two drones might plausibly have lost navigation, the scale of the incursion points unmistakably to a deliberate attempt to test NATO’s resolve.

Much like the way our headlong AI expansion risks bringing about a misaligned technological singularity, there is something profoundly unsettling in how Russia seems to treat even the end of human civilization as an insufficient deterrent. The contrast to the veranda here in Kåltorp – on what looks to be the last dry day for a while – could hardly be sharper, with looming macro processes so remote from anything I can say or do.