No social media for under-16s. What could go wrong?
Plus: why the Left want Palantir out of the NHS – and why they're wrong
Deal or no deal? Donald Trump has announced the Iran war is over – again. A deal to end the war does seem to have been struck, and is due to be signed on Friday. But accounts vary as to the terms. Iranian state media claims that the US has accepted Iranian tolls on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz after 60 days. JD Vance says traffic will be toll-free long term, and that the US holds all the cards. Time will tell.
Here in the UK, the Government is in talks with the Trump administration about restoring access to the frontier AI model Fable, which was banned for non-US citizens at the weekend over national security concerns. But Keir Starmer also announced his own technology crackdown: a ban on social media for under-16s. As discussed on last week’s episode of The Capitalist (see below), it will also have the side-effect of age-gating the internet for the rest of us.
Below you’ll find all the latest pieces from CapX, plus what we’re reading from around the web.
Marc Sidwell
Editor, CapX
Today’s Takes
Fresh thinking from CapX
What have the Left got against Palantir?
Stephen Pollard
‘Given the huge and obvious benefits Palantir brings, you will doubtless wonder what lies behind this hatred of the company.’
Palantir’s software is cutting NHS waiting lists, putting more police on the beat and reducing crime. But instead of thanking our lucky stars that it exists, the data analytics firm has become the latest bogeyman for the Left. Why? Because Palantir is involved in Israel and, as such, is toxic to a mindset that increasingly dominates progressive politics. Read More
Labour fail the defence test
Eliot Wilson
‘To imagine Dan Jarvis’s arrival will make Rachel Reeves suddenly yield up billions of pounds is for the birds’
Amid all the political excitement around John Healey’s resignation, it is easy to miss that a new Defence Secretary changes nothing. Even if the Government doubled its planned increase in funding for our Armed Forces, it wouldn’t fill the funding gap between now and 2030. Labour have ducked the hard decisions needed to put the UK on a trajectory towards readiness for conflict. Read More
Stat of the Day
The CapX Reading List
The best of the web today
Labour's Brexit 'reset' is a mistake
Peter Lilley, The Spectator
‘Why are Peter Kyle and – to be fair – most of the political class unaware of the failure of Europe’s single market to live up to expectations?’
The Business and Trade Secretary has justified the Government’s proposed EU ‘reset’ by claiming that ‘the single market is where the magic happens’. Yet during our 28-year membership, British goods exports to the EU grew by less than 1% a year. Labour should have examined past performance before pursuing a bad deal based on blind faith. Read More
Hey, Starmer, leave those kids alone
Christopher Snowdon, The Critic
‘I, too, miss the days when 14-year-olds spent their summer holidays playing video games and their time after school drinking cider and setting off fireworks.’
We will continue to regress as a society until we learn to judge new legislation by its likely consequences rather than by the intentions of its advocates. The looming ban on under-16s having access to platforms ‘whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material’ has all the hallmarks of another government failure. Read More
A plan to fix Britain’s Energy Emergency
Will Hodson
The Capitalist
Keir Starmer is giving tech companies three months to activate on-device content scanning and age verification across all smartphones and tablets sold in Britain in the name of child safety. The proposal has drawn fierce criticism from privacy advocates. The messaging app Signal has already said it will not comply – will others follow?
And if you want more...
– Ed Conway: The tiny light that changed everything (Stuff Matters)
– Who is the king of political TikTok? (The Knox Index)
– Protectionism isn’t the answer to AI policy (Silicon Continent)
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