A new threat intelligence report from the AI company Anthropic has revealed that a Russian team scraped Ukrainian combat videos to train an autonomous “kamikaze” drone to choose its own targets and destroy them.

Anthropic’s report was published on Sept. 10, two days before CEO and co-founder of the company, Dario Amodei, published an essay arguing that humanity must urgently “slow the pace” of AI development.

Read more:
Cyber attacks? Bioterrorism? To ‘Pace the Frontier’ of AI effectively, we must improve our anticipatory thinking

The report is a 154-page account of the attempted misuse of Claude AI models for “malicious activity” between December 2025 and August 2026. It covers seven areas: cyber operations, influence operations, surveillance, scams and fraud, biological misuse, conventional weapons development and distillation.
One case, tracked as GTG-27005, describes a small, likely freelance team in Russia that used Claude’s coding tool to help build software for a swarm of autonomous first-person-view (FPV) “kamikaze” drones — the cheap, camera-guided munitions that have become one of the defining weapons of the war.

Read more:
Ukraine’s drone strikes are having an impact on Russia — but Russian leaders remain committed to war

This should worry anyone who has ever filmed, shared or trusted footage from the war in Ukraine — one of the most visually documented conflicts in history.

It seems that any visual footage — even that created by journalists, soldiers, civilians and researchers to update the outside world and hold nations accountable — can now feed back into a conflict as raw material for weapons development and deployment on the battlefield.

Autonomous drone, can target a person

Anthropic’s report states the company’s threat intelligence teams have “investigated and disrupted multiple threat actors” who used Claude models to develop software for either weapons design and development or for intelligence-gathering and procurement for weapons programs.

The report documents six cases: three in China, two in Russia and one in Yemen.

The “likely freelance Russia-based” developers in case GTG-27005 called their project “DronDoc” or “Serafim.” They began work in May 2026 and routed their traffic through commercial servers to get around Anthropic’s location-based restrictions.

The software they built could enable a drone to pick its own targets, including targets in the category “person,” and issue the command to detonate — without a human confirming the strike first. That detail made headlines and it deserved the publicity.

However, one line in the report has received far less attention: the developers trained their targeting software on scraped Ukrainian combat footage, sorted into “enemy” and “friendly,” and tested it against a simulated target location in the region of the Donetsk oblast.

Scraped Ukrainian combat footage

The report does not specify where the footage came from. It could have come from Telegram channels used by military personnel, official and unofficial drone strike compilation accounts, open-source intelligence (OSINT) archives or open databases assembled by journalists and researchers. At this time, we simply don’t know which is the likely source.

The Centre for Information Resilience’s Eyes on Russia Map, for example, has verified and mapped more than 30,000 individual incidents using footage from volunteers, soldiers and civilians.

Drone footage and the aftermath of missile strikes are verified and geolocated by researchers who hope that they’ll be used as evidence for journalistic endeavours, war crimes investigations or simply to show the reality of the conflict in an era when generative AI can skew the narrative.

Those producing this footage are, for the most part, trying to make the war more visible and those responsible more accountable for their actions.

Documented for evidence, used for conflict

What this case shows is that footage built for one purpose can be repackaged for a very different one without changing at all. A clip filmed to document a strike and one that is scraped to teach a weapon what a human target looks like are, frame for frame, the same file.

Nothing about the image itself signals what use it will be put to. What determines that is who can access it and what they choose to do with it.

Ukraine’s own drone video system, OCHI, has amassed well over two million hours of footage since 2022, making it the largest publicly known collection of live-fire combat video globally.

A dataset of that scale is a gold mine for machine learning. However, this is not unusual when it comes to modern, digital warfare. A company in the United States, Enabled Intelligence, states that they recently packaged more than half a million hours of Ukrainian drone footage into a commercial dataset which was sold for military AI training.

Indeed, this kind of extraction is becoming routine and openly discussed. GTG-27005 demonstrates that it isn’t confined to declared, sanctioned users.

A reverse-engineered vision system

Read more:
Ukraine’s drone strikes are having an impact on Russia — but Russian leaders remain committed to war

This isn’t an isolated case, either. The same report describes a separate incident, tracked as GTG-20006, and connected by Anthropic to the Russian state-linked group publicly known as Midnight Blizzard.

In that case, operators stole a software kit for a military drone’s vision system and spent days using Claude to reverse-engineer it — recovering the design, components and details of an unreleased product.

Two separate groups within the same period went after the same kind of target: the system that allows a drone to recognize what it sees. Is this the beginning of a pattern — one where a drone’s ability to visually identify a target is becoming just as valuable as its engine or explosive payload?

Who else is watching?

None of this is an argument against documenting conflict. Far from it. Those visuals remain one of the few tools that ordinary people have to hold power accountable during moments of strife.

However, it is a reason to take seriously that those producing this record — journalists, soldiers, civilians volunteer researchers — are part of a supply chain whose subsequent uses they cannot predict and never agreed to.

Most conversations about the ethics of war footage have focused on who should watch it and how. This case suggests that we also need to ask who else is watching and what are they going to do with it.

John R. Heckman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/russian-team-misused-claude-ai-to-train-a-killer-drone-on-scraped-ukrainian-war-footage/

A rare Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) on Kangaroo Island has been confirmed to have died from highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu. The sea lion had recently been attacked by a shark, weakening it. Testing revealed the cause of death was the virus. Another dead sea lion is being investigated.

The first confirmed H5N1 death recorded for this species in Australia marks a significant and worrying moment for Australian wildlife. These sea lions are the rarest pinniped to breed on our coasts. They’re considered endangered, as their population is under 12,000. This species of sea lion breeds slowly, meaning even a limited outbreak of bird flu could be very bad news for breeding colonies.

The strain of bird flu now circulating in Australia and New Zealand has evolved to infect some mammal species as well as birds. Since 2021, it has decimated some seals and sea lion species overseas, especially in South America.

The virus is even capable of infecting and killing dolphins.

But how does the virus pass between these animals? How do seals and dolphins actually get the infection?

There’s much we don’t know. But here’s what we do.

Bird (and mammal) flu?

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu (avian influenza) was first detected in 1996. Highly pathogenic means it is capable of causing severe disease.

In 2020, the virus mutated into a new, more deadly variant capable of infecting more species. It is no longer just a threat to birds.

Since 2021, this strain has caused mass die-offs in pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, walruses and so on). In Argentina, more than 17,000 southern elephant seal pups died. After the virus reached Australia’s Heard Island, drone surveys identified more than 13,000 dead pups from the same species.

Some pinnipeds were able to catch older bird flu strains. But these mainly affected their respiratory tracts. The newer highly pathogenic H5N1 strain can also invade the brain and nervous system of mammals.

Sea lions have been found with encephalitis, brain inflammation and other neurological signs before death.

In Florida, a bottlenose dolphin infected with H5N1 was found to have the highest concentration of virus in its brain.

How do pinnipeds catch the virus?

The way the virus gets into pinnipeds is likely from birds. When sick seabirds infected with the virus die on the islands used by sea lions for breeding, the virus can jump across to the mammal. This can be through direct contact, scavenging carcasses or exposure to contaminated sand, rocks, water, faeces or mucus. Sick birds can and do sneeze and cough, spreading viral particles.

Direct transmission from mammal to mammal is suspected, though not yet conclusively proven in most wild marine mammal die-off events.

But the fact so many elephant seal pups died rapidly suggests the virus is able to spread between them. Transmission between elephant seals is suspected to have occurred in Argentina. It’s highly likely that the virus can spread faster in dense seal and sea lion colonies.

Pinnipeds, too, can sneeze and cough, which would help spread the virus. One researcher testing transmission reportedly had a seal sneeze in their face. They then contracted severe conjunctivitis in the eye. The bird flu virus was detected.

But what about whales and dolphins?

So far, so logical. But how can dolphins and other cetaceans contract the virus?

After a dolphin washed up dead near Goolwa, South Australia, it tested positive for H5N1 – the first case in Australia.

How did it happen? SA chief veterinary officer Dr Skye Fruean told the ABC it was likely the dolphin had “eaten a bird or interacted closely with a wild bird”.

This is possible, but we don’t know for sure. What we do know is that this H5N1 strain has been found in a range of dolphin species around the world.

So far, there’s little evidence of large whales being infected with bird flu. A juvenile dead whale washed ashore at Victor Harbour was found not to have the virus.

How long can the virus survive in the environment?

Viruses can survive outside a host, though typically not for long.

The H5N1 influenza virus generally survives longest in cool, moist conditions. It can remain infectious for days and sometimes weeks in water, depending on temperature, salinity and sunlight.

In hot, dry environments, survival is much shorter.

Carcasses can act as temporary reservoirs of the virus while tissues remain fresh.

This is one reason why beaches and breeding colonies can be transmission hotspots during an outbreak.

What can we do?

There’s no real way to stop the spread of H5N1 now that it’s here. But there are many ways we can reduce its impact.

Removing carcasses safely is crucial, as it removes these viral reservoirs and stops it getting into Australia’s many scavenging animals.

Investing in better monitoring and detection is essential if we are to slow the spread by helping us to target affected populations.

We must ramp up protection for endangered species, reduce human pressures such as disturbance of seal colonies and plan to help depleted populations recover.

Ultimately, the death of this sea lion shows us that the burden of bird flu will reach far beyond birds. This strain of the virus is a wide-ranging threat able to affect entire ecosystems. We must do what we can to protect them.

Bill Bateman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/bird-flu-has-claimed-its-first-australian-sea-lion-and-dolphin-how-does-the-virus-get-into-these-animals/

Donald Trump is a Republican and self-avowed nationalist. That, apparently, is true in an Irish sense, too – even if those terms have very different meanings across the Atlantic.

On Sept. 12, 2026, while seated next to taoiseach, the Irish title for prime minister, Micheál Martin, the U.S. president stated that he would “love to see” Ireland unified and that it is “going to happen eventually,” so it “may as well happen now.”

The next day he called reunification “a cool thing” but noted, “No matter what you say or how you say it, there’s no good answer.”

While such comments may have been welcomed by some supporters of unification both in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland – or “republicans” and “nationalists” in Irish political parlance – Trump’s comments were generally denounced by all parties, including the taoiseach.

The comments likewise set off a firestorm among Northern Irish unionists, who wish the region to remain part of the United Kingdom, as well as British conservatives and Trump allies such as Nigel Farage, who likewise insist that Northern Ireland should always remain part of the United Kingdom.

As an expert in Irish-American history, I view Trump’s comments as a break from recent precedent.

Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – which politically resolved the rumbling civil war known as the Troubles and achieved cooperation between the North, the Republic, and the U.K. – U.S. presidents have formally adopted a policy of neutrality when it comes to the question of Irish unification. Instead, Trump’s intervention hearkens back to an earlier age in which American presidents were often more opinionated on the issue of Irish nationalism.

Irish blood in the White House

Ireland first became a colony of Britain in the 12th century and regularly faced discriminatory polices, such as 17th- and 18th-century penal laws, which prevented Catholics and, to a lesser degree, Presbyterians from entering the upper tier of the socioeconomic strata, which led to widespread anti-English sentiment on much of the island.

Irish nationalism, which called for independence from Great Britain, became popular during the late 18th century, around the same time American colonists defeated the British after declaring an independent United States. Many Irish had already emigrated to the American colonies, but immigration would increase dramatically during the 19th century as Ireland faced famine and disease.

Irish, and especially Irish-American, nationalists tended to look at America as a model and possibly an ally in obtaining independence. As such, they often promoted their agenda to U.S. presidents.

Andrew Jackson, whose parents emigrated from Carrickfergus, County Antrim now in Northern Ireland, was the first president of Irish ancestry. In 1833, he pronounced to the Charitable Irish Society in Boston, “I have always been proud of my ancestry, and of being descended from the noble race.”

In an 1842 letter to Thomas Mooney, an advocate of Irish independence in New York, Jackson wrote: “That the Irish blood which flows in my veins will never cease, but with my life alone, to beat in unison with those who have at heart the very security of Irish liberty.”

However, Jackson’s words, while likely sincere, never resulted in a tangible policy or action to assist Ireland.

Support for an Irish revolution?

The Irish revolutionaries the Fenians, also known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the United States, appealed to a succession of U.S. presidents for assistance without success. Formed in the late 1850s and popularized after the American Civil War, Fenians had hoped that Andrew Johnson, and later Ulysses S. Grant, would support an Irish revolution.

Hoping to benefit from American-Anglo tensions during the Civil War, in which the British unofficially supported the Confederacy, the Fenian Bernard Killian claimed that Johnson and his secretary of state, William Seward, had privately assured him that they supported a Fenian invasion of Canada, then a colony of Great Britain.

The Fenians hoped that a successful invasion might lead to a war between the U.S. and U.K., which would result in a free Ireland. But both Johnson and Seward publicly refuted Killian’s claim. But their need for Irish votes in the upcoming 1866 midterm election might explain their private support.

Regardless of the conflicting versions of the conversation, when the short-lived invasion took place in 1866, Johnson had many of the Fenians arrested for violating neutrality laws.

Most 19th-century Irish Americans supported the Democratic Party because the Republican Party was widely seen as anti-Catholic and xenophobic.

However, Grant, a Republican, became president in 1869 with the support of many Irish Americans, especially Fenians who had fought for the Union in the Civil War.

They hoped that his frustration with the English during the war would lead to his support of independence in Ireland. Once again, they found a president unwilling to assist their conquest of Canada or even their filibustering excursions into Central America and Cuba, where rogue groups hoped to annex territories to become part of the U.S.

Distancing, then embracing Republicans

President Woodrow Wilson hoped that the mass slaughter of World War I would lead to dramatic reform that would prevent future atrocities. In his Fourteen Points, Wilson exclaimed, “It’s the principle of justice to all peoples of all nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another whether they be strong or weak.”

Unfortunately, Irish nationalists such as John Devoy, excited at the prospect of British decolonization, soon discovered that Wilson’s vision of self-determination was far less universal than he had implied.

Supporting their wartime British ally, Wilson and the U.S. declined to support the Irish nationalists during the Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1921. In 1922, the Anglo-Irish Treaty created the Irish Free State – now the Republic – and partitioned it from Northern Ireland, which remained part of the United Kingdom. After a brief civil war in Ireland between pro-treaty and anti-treaty forces, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge established relations with the Free State government in Dublin, infuriating the anti-treaty Irish Republican Army.

John F. Kennedy, the president most associated with his Irish ancestry and the first sitting president to visit Ireland in 1963, mostly avoided the question of unification as president – although he was quite outspoken in favor as a senator. But he did note to the Irish parliament, “No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States.”

During the Cold War, U.S. presidents were reticent to support Irish unification in order not to upset their British allies. But after the Cold War, President Bill Clinton invited Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein – widely seen as the political arm of the IRA – to visit the White House, despite the protests of British Prime Minister John Major.

Eventually, Clinton would become an important part of the process that led to the Good Friday Agreement, partially due to his avowed neutrality on the question of unification. Presidents since have continued to adopt a policy of neutrality.

Toward reunification? Perhaps not

Trump, who has been compared to Andrew Jackson for his lack of conventional diplomacy, perhaps unsurprisingly has now agreed with Jackson that Irish independence would be good for the Irish people.

Although unlikely familiar with this history, he has perhaps unintentionally sided with past presidents as well as the people who live on the island. In a recent European Union poll, 63% of people in Northern Ireland said they would vote for unification, while 59% of the people in the Republic would support it.

Still, 29% of the Northern Irish and 22% of the Republic oppose it. And given the vocal opposition of the British government, unification is not likely to happen soon, no matter what the U.S. president wants.

Bryan McGovern does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/trumps-thumbs-up-to-irish-reunification-breaks-with-precedent-but-evokes-earlier-age-of-white-house-support/

One Nation this week promised to tighten visa rules and cut immigration to “net negative” for three years, in a suite of policies it said would help reduce pressure on housing and essential services. It also vowed to further restrict the ability of migrants to bring family members to Australia.

One Nation says it will preserve the existing Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme and the working holiday maker program.

Instead, the proposal focuses primarily on reducing the number of international students (on visa subclass 500), temporary graduate visa holders (on visa subclass 485) and family members of migrants.

For international education, the proposed cuts are substantial. One Nation wants to reduce the international student population from almost 590,000 now to 350,000. This represents a reduction of about 240,000 over three years.

It also proposes to cut the temporary graduate visa population from about 270,000 now to 40,000. This represents a reduction of about 230,000, or 85%, over three years.

This, combined with various other cuts and restrictions, would aim to reduce the number of temporary migrants in Australia by more than 760,000 over three years.

So, what would this mean for Australia’s labour market and economy?

Temporary graduate visa holders supply labour

One Nation’s plan to reduce the temporary graduate visa population by about 230,000 would leave the proposed population at less than one-sixth of its current size.

Census data from 2021 show that 88% of temporary graduate visa holders participated in the labour force. These graduates are already embedded across the Australian economy and are not only employed in professional occupations.

This Census data from 2021 show:

• 23.2% worked in professional occupations, including business, human resources and marketing, IT, engineering and science
• 10.9% worked in food and hospitality
• 6% worked in retail
• 14.8% worked as health professionals, carers and aides.

These workers form part of the everyday labour supply on which businesses and essential services depend.

The temporary graduate visa is not simply a pathway for retaining future professionals who have finished studying in Australia.

It also provides workers for restaurants and food businesses, hotels, retail, transport, cleaning, health and aged care and other services.

An 85% reduction would substantially shrink the pool from which employers can recruit.

Indeed, business groups have already flagged concerns with One Nation’s proposal. The Business Council of Australia has said it was

concerned that One Nation’s proposal to cut migration by more than 750,000 people risks holding back economic growth and worsening Australia’s skills shortages.

The Australian Industry Group has said the plan

risks severe economic self harm at a time when we are already bedevilled by significant labour and skills shortages.

Removing such a large group would reduce the supply of workers available to businesses at a time when recruitment remains difficult in many parts of the economy.

The pressure could be particularly acute in regional Australia.

Jobs and Skills Australia’s March 2026 data put the national vacancy fill rate (the percentage of job vacancies that are filled) at 68.2%. Regional employers recorded a fill rate 4.6 percentage points lower than metropolitan employers.

For labour-intensive industries such as hospitality, food services and care, a smaller pool of available workers could make it harder to hire.

It could mean employers have to pay more for labour or reduce business operating hours. They may face higher labour costs or have to put prices up. Some businesses may even be at risk of closing down.

International students are in the labour market too

International students are also an important part of the labour market.

ABS Census data show that 63.6% of student visa holders were employed. International students can work up to 48 hours per fortnight while they are studying.

Food and beverage services was the largest industry of employment, accounting for 23% of employed student visa holders. Other major areas included retail, cleaning, residential care and social assistance.

International students do not simply supply labour. They also spend money on accommodation, food, retail, transport and tourism. This creates jobs for Australians.

Employment prospects are also a significant part of how international students decide where to study.

Research has found graduate employment prospects ranked second among the factors international students considered when choosing a study destination, after quality of education.

A substantial reduction in post-study work opportunities could therefore make Australia less attractive in an increasingly competitive international education market.

In other words, the economic implications of One Nation’s proposal extend beyond the labour market. International education is Australia’s largest services export, generating almost A$55 billion in export income in 2025.

Its contribution extends well beyond universities. This sector also supports economic activity and employment in accommodation, hospitality, retail, tourism, transport and other services. It contributes to Australia’s future skilled workforce and builds longer-term connections with other countries.

International students’ fees also help subsidise the domestic higher education system, support university research and infrastructure.

The question raised by One Nation’s proposal is therefore broader than how many migrants Australia should admit.

It is also about how Australia’s economy functions when a large and diverse group of international students and graduates contributes both demand and labour.

Reducing these populations may reduce migration numbers, but could also weaken demand for Australian goods and services. It would shrink the number of workers available for employers to hire and could deepen labour shortages.

Ly Tran has received funding from the Australian Research Council, DFAT and the Department of Education for research on international students, international education and student mobilities.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/how-would-one-nations-immigration-plan-affect-the-labour-market-and-economy/

Australia is in the middle of a data centre construction boom. Driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and growing demand for digital services, global technology companies are expected to invest up to A$150 billion in Australian data centres by 2030.

The scale of the investment is hard to ignore. However, a more important question is whether Australia will benefit from higher productivity and economic growth, or simply from a brief construction boom.

Data centres can create jobs, strengthen digital infrastructure and support AI development. But they can also put pressure on housing, electricity networks and skilled labour.

Data centres have existed for decades. But something has changed, and this essential infrastructure is now at the centre of a major policy debate.

This article is part of The Conversation’s series on data centres – what they are, why we need them, and why they’re suddenly so controversial.

Why is Australia a favoured location?

Data centres are packed with computers that store, process and move digital information, the backbone of cloud computing. In theory, they can be built anywhere, so why does big tech have Australia in its sights?

Australia offers several advantages for global technology firms. It is politically stable, has strong institutions, and sits close to the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region.

The direct economic benefits are significant. Construction projects create work for engineers, electricians and builders. They also increase demand for materials, electricity infrastructure and specialised equipment.

Yet the boost to economic growth may be smaller than the headline investment figures suggest.

A large share of the spending goes towards imported goods, rather than production in Australia: servers, processors, chips and networking equipment. That means much of the money leaves Australia and does not reach the local economy.

The hidden costs of the boom

Every major investment boom comes with trade-offs. One of the biggest risks is competition for construction labour. Data centres require many of the same workers needed to build houses, roads and renewable energy infrastructure.

Australia already faces shortages of up to 72,000 electricians, engineers and skilled trades. There are media reports that electricians with just two years’ experience are being offered salaries of $200,000 a year to work on data centres.

If data centres hire more of these workers, labour costs could rise across the economy. Housing projects may become more expensive, infrastructure projects could face delays and renewable energy developments may struggle to secure workers.

This matters because housing affordability remains one of Australia’s biggest economic challenges.

Power, water and land are also under pressure

As more data centres are built, demand for electricity and water will increase. If supply doesn’t keep pace, prices could rise for households and businesses.

Land use is another challenge. Some sites allocated for data centres might otherwise have been used for housing, logistics facilities or other productive purposes.

These costs do not necessarily outweigh the benefits. But they form part of the economic trade-offs policymakers need to consider.

The inflation risk

The Reserve Bank of Australia has raised concerns about capacity pressures in the Australian economy and noted data centres could contribute to inflation in several ways.

First, stronger competition for skilled workers may push wages higher in construction and related industries.

Second, increased demand for construction materials could drive up project costs across and increase prices in the economy.

Third, a large inflow of investment can add to demand at a time when policymakers are trying to keep inflation under control. These factors could make it harder for the Reserve Bank to bring down inflation, which is well above the 2-3% target band.

A surge in copper

Data centres also use large quantities of copper for cables, power systems and cooling equipment. As data centres are built around the world, demand for copper is expected to grow. S&P Global forecasts that total global copper demand will surge by around 50%, climbing from 28 million metric tonnes in 2025 to 42 million metric tonnes by 2040.

Higher copper prices will benefit Australia’s miners. Indeed, BHP, the world’s largest copper producer, said last month copper contributed more than half of its earnings for the first time, overtaking iron ore, as the price of copper surged almost 50% in the year.

But there is also a downside. More expensive copper raises costs for domestic construction projects, electricity networks and renewable energy developments.

This highlights a broader theme of the data centre boom: the same economic trend can create gains for some industries while imposing costs on others.

Who captures the value?

Perhaps the most important question is who captures the value data centres create.

Owning the buildings does not necessarily mean owning the technology. Many data centres are operated by multinational companies that also control the software, intellectual property and AI systems running inside them.

If Australia hosts the infrastructure but develops few local AI-related capabilities, much of the long-term value may flow overseas. As assistant minister for the digital economy, Andrew Charlton said recently:

Simply building data centres in Australia does not necessarily mean that Australia captures the economics of AI. We can supply the land. We can supply the electricity. We can host the machines. And still find that much of the value […] flows offshore.

The biggest gains are likely to come from building domestic expertise in AI, software development and digital services.

How do we maximise the benefits?

The key policy question is how to maximise the benefits of data centres while minimising the costs.

This means expanding the supply of skilled workers, electricity infrastructure and industrial land so that construction does not crowd out housing, renewable energy and other important investments.

Training more electricians, engineers and technical specialists will be part of the solution. But training takes time. In the short term, carefully targeted migration policies may help ease labour shortages in critical occupations.

Australia’s data centre boom brings investment, jobs and the promise of a sophisticated digital economy, but it also creates new pressures on housing, energy and skilled workers.

The real challenge for policymakers is ensuring Australia captures enough of the value these investments create.

If governments strike the right balance with their policies, the current boom could boost productivity and strengthen Australia’s position in the global digital economy. However, if they do not, Australia may find that the benefits of the construction boom are fewer than the investment figures suggest.

Jak Kakhkharov does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/australias-data-centre-build-out-carries-risks-for-the-economy-and-inflation/

Certain taxonomic debates resurface time and again.

When does a pond become a lake, or a sea an ocean? When does a cup become a bowl? And when does a dialect become a language?

Similar debates rage on in the food forums, including the age-old question: what’s the difference between pasta and noodles? Can you really compare ramen with spaghetti, or penne with pad thai?

At first glance, “noodles versus pasta” might seem like a frivolous variant of the East–West power struggle. But it turns out a lot of people have a lot to say on the matter.

When foods defy categorisation

As food around the world globalises, the link between authentic and fusion food continues to blur.

In many contemporary recipes, “pasta” and “noodles” can be used interchangeably. This fluidity has allowed for the emergence of a kind of third-culture cuisine.

The language we use can also blur these lines. For example, “vermicelli” (which translates to “little worms” in Italian) was originally the name given to a certain shape of pasta made from durum flour and water (and sometimes eggs). But it’s now also used to refer to noodles made from rice flour, or “glass” mung bean flour noodles – both of which feature in various Asian dishes.

And let’s not forget other cultures that have their own types of noodles, such as Germany’s EU-protected Swabian spätzle.

Marco Polo: the myth, the man, the misinterpreted

Perhaps it’s a matter of origin stories – a simple case of which one came first?

Physical evidence for noodles can be traced back traced to ancient China, as far back as 4,000 years ago.

Pasta came much later, with a flurry of myths surrounding its origins. Arguably the most famous of these is that Marco Polo came across noodles in China and brought it back to Italy as pasta in the late 13th century.

This confusion partly arose from a misinterpretation of his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, in which he references a tree that produces a starchy food akin to pasta. Historians now think this was the sago palm, and that he mentioned it because it reminded him of pasta, which already existed back in Italy.

The myth is also attributable to a 1929 American marketing campaign in a trade magazine called The Macaroni Journal. It claimed one of Marco Polo’s sailors named Spaghetti obtained dough from China and turned it into pasta by cutting it into thin ribbons and boiling it in seawater.

This entire story is false. The first use of the word spaghetti was only recorded in the 19th century.

Instead, it’s likely Mediterranean trade routes from North Africa introduced itriya – the Arabic word for dried dough strips made from semolina – to Sicily in the mid-12th century, after which the Sicilians began to produce and export pasta.

Durum against the world

Even within Italy, the way pasta is classified has been contested.

In 1967, the Italian government passed a “purity law” that required pasta – including pasta imported from other countries – to contain only hard durum wheat. Durum wheat, which can be milled into semolina, yields a firmer dough that’s perfect for al dente pasta.

But these strict import restrictions were loosened following a 1988 legal battle, in which the European Court of Justice ruled Italy could not block the import of mixed-wheat pasta legally produced elsewhere.

Still, the Italians retained their commitment to using durum domestically. While fresh Italian pasta can now be made from bread wheat, all dry commercial pasta must still be made from durum.

Why do we care about labelling our food?

On one hand, it can be fun and amusing to engage in friendly debates like “is a hot dog a sandwich?”. Well, if you subscribe to the “cube rule” in the tweet below, you could even argue it’s a taco.

These taxonomic topics can get serious, though, like in 1893 when the US Supreme court ruled tomatoes to be a vegetable – and therefore subject to tariffs. Australia’s own tariff classification system agrees.

These debates can also influence our understanding of culture, identity and belonging — including which cultures command higher status and economic value.

In Australia, influential food awards are more likely to bestow accolades upon Italian cuisine, compared to Asian.

This feeds into a greater food hierarchy that allows restaurants with certain cuisines to charge higher prices than others.

Even with the introduction of Michelin-recognised ramen shops and hawker stalls in Australia, people are all too ready to drop $35 on a bowl of handmade Italian pasta, while still expecting cheap hand-pulled Chinese noodles.

Which cuisines reign supreme?

Perceptions are changing, however. High-end Chinese food in particular is having a moment, with restaurateur “Big” Sam Young awarded Gourmet Traveller’s 2026 Restaurant Personality of the Year.

Both pasta and noodles require artistry and skill. Ingredients are expensive for everyone, and restaurants nationwide are going through tough times. Both should be equally deserving of our dollars and recognition.

Be it pasta or noodle, the alchemy of flour and water produces something undeniably delicious.

Dianne Ma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/is-pasta-a-type-of-noodle-the-surprisingly-serious-debate-over-two-beloved-carbs/

Hot flushes and night sweats – collectively called vasomotor symptoms – are among the most common and disruptive symptoms of menopause. They affect almost 40% of women in the lead up to menopause, known as perimenopause.

Until 2024, treatment options were largely limited to hormone replacement therapy (HRT). HRT is very effective for many women. But some can’t take it because they experience significant side effects or have certain health conditions.

Veoza (fezolinetant) is a drug approved specifically for menopausal vasomotor symptoms. Unlike HRT, it doesn’t replace naturally declining hormones. Instead, it blocks signals in the bran’s temperature-control system, which becomes overactive during menopause.

How does it work?

Estrogen is involved in temperature regulation, generally acting to lower body temperature.

During perimenopause, declining estrogen levels triggers the activation of a group of brain cells in the hypothalamus known as KNDy (pronounced candy) cells.

When activated, these cells release a signalling molecule called neurokinin B. This over-stimulates the brain’s temperature regulation system, triggering hot flushes and night sweats.

Veoza blocks the neurokinin 3 receptor (NK3) which means neurokinin B cannot bind to it. This prevents neurokinin B from delivering its signal and quietens the overactive temperature-control pathway.

How is it used in Australia?

Veoza was approved for use in Australia in March 2024 as a 45mg tablet daily.

It’s not subsidised through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), meaning women pay A$75–80 per month for prescriptions.

There is currently no maximum treatment duration.

What can and can’t it do?

Hot flushes and night sweats don’t just impact temperature – they can affect sleep, mood and daytime function. So while Veoza specifically treats vasomotor symptoms, there may be benefits for other symptoms.

But menopause is much more than just hot flushes and night sweats. Because Veoza doesn’t replace hormones such as estrogen, it doesn’t treat most mood symptoms, vaginal dryness, reduced bone density or other consequences of estrogen deficiency.

HRT remains the preferred treatment when women have these broader symptoms. HRT replaces the estrogen (and typically progesterone) lost during menopause, improving a wide range of menopausal symptoms, while also helping to maintain bone health.

Whether Veoza can be used in combination with HRT may depend on the individual and should be discussed with your doctor. Most clinical evidence today has evaluated Veoza as an alternative to, rather than in combination with HRT.

Read more:
What are the most common symptoms of menopause? And which can hormone therapy treat?

Why choose a non-hormonal option?

Veoza takes a non-hormonal approach, offering a valuable alternative for women who are unable to take HRT due to side effects or have certain hormone-sensitive cancers.

A large survey conducted across Europe, UK, US and Japan found that, of the women who had vasomotor symptoms, one in ten couldn’t take HRT, highlighting the need for alternative treatments.

Veoza may also be an attractive option for women whose main concern is vasomotor symptoms.

How effective is Veoza?

Veoza is effective for many women but it doesn’t stop symptoms completely.

The safety and efficacy of Veoza has been tested in three studies involving more than 3,000 women experiencing moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms.

In two large clinical trials, three months of treatment reduced symptoms from about 10–12 moderate-to-severe hot flushes or night sweats each day to about 4–5 in women taking Veoza. This compared with 6–7 in women taking placebo (an inactive pill).

Another trial found Veoza also reduced sleep disturbances and improved quality of life in women considered not suitable for HRT.

However, one trial conducted in East Asia found the lower 30mg dose was safe and well tolerated, but no more effective than placebo.

Overall, Veoza appears to provide meaningful, though not complete, relief.

What are the side effects and other risks?

The most commonly reported side effects include headache, nausea, abdominal pain and insomnia.

Rare cases of liver injury have also been reported. Australian and international regulators now recommend liver function testing before treatment and regular monitoring during the first nine months of therapy.

Veoza may also interact with other medications, which may either affect how those medications work, or how Veoza works. This includes the antidepressant fluvoxamine.

Veoza doesn’t prevent pregnancy, so women who are still fertile may still require contraception.

Read more:
Perimenopause usually begins in your 40s. How do you know if it has started?

What’s next for these medications?

Clinical trials have now demonstrated Veoza effectively reduces hot flushes out to one year.

But researchers are continuing to monitor how well the drug works in real-world scenarios, including effectiveness beyond one year, long-term safety, rare side effects and effectiveness in women with complex medical conditions who are often excluded from clinical trials.

Newer, safer drugs are also emerging, including Lynkuet (elinzanetant). This targets both NK1 and NK3 and was approved in September 2025 to treat vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause.

Clinical trials in more than 1,500 women showed Lynkuet reduced vasomotor symptoms, sleep and quality of life, including in women who couldn’t take HRT. Lynkuet also seems to have a better liver safety profile compared to Veoza.

It may also be used in future in other populations, where medications are needed to target the neurokinin system.

Up to 80% of men undergoing androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer report hot flashes. Clinical trials are underway to assess the benefit of Veoza for hot flashes associated with prostate cancer.

Robyn Brown receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Leigh Walker receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australian Research Council (ARC), CASS Foundation and Brain Behaviour Research Foundation (BBRF).

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/how-does-the-menopause-drug-veoza-work-and-how-is-it-different-to-hormone-therapy/

When you think of viruses, you probably think of flu-like symptoms and quarantines. Humankind has suffered from viral diseases ranging from smallpox to COVID-19, hantavirus and Ebola since the dawn of recorded history.

However, all living organisms that are susceptible to viral infections, not just humans. In fact, the greatest number and most diverse collection of viruses are those that infect bacteria.

Amazingly, some bacteria have transformed these infectious invaders into gene transfer agents (GTAs) that help them exchange genetic material among themselves.

This process is a type of horizontal gene transfer that allows genetic information to be shared among related bacteria rather than being restricted to inheritance by the offspring of a parent cell.

Because GTAs can empower bacteria to acquire new traits and spread disease-related genes, studying them may help unlock important applications in human health and biotechnology, including those that combat the spread of antibiotic resistance.

A recent study in Nature Microbiology, for example, pinpointed a cluster of genes that trigger bacteria to release GTA particles that can spread antibiotic-resistance genes.

Descendants of ancient viruses

In 2000, we isolated GTA genes from the bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus and analyzed the proteins that these genes instruct the cells to make. We discovered that the proteins were very similar in structure to those found in a class of viruses known as “tailed phages.”

This was the first evidence that a gene-transfer agent bears more than just a passing resemblance to a virus. Subsequent studies showed that others are also derived from ancient viruses.

Since then, GTA genes have been discovered in a wide variety of bacteria, including the infectious agents responsible for cat-scratch fever and typhus, and abundant marine organisms.

New, advantageous traits

A small, random sample of genes from the bacterium are packaged into a geometric-shaped protein structure that forms the head of a gene-transfer agent, while other proteins form a tube-like tail.

The image below shows the appearance of the R. capsulatus gene-transfer agent in an electron microscope (on the left) and with its cryogenic-electron tomographic structure, displayed using the ChimeraX visualization program (on the right).

After release of the GTAs from the bacterium, flexible proteins that decorate the GTA bind to and anchor the GTA to the surface of a target cell.

Then, the genetic material contained within the head of the GTA is transferred through the tail and into the target cell, with help from bacterial proteins located in the cell membrane.

Inside the target cell, other proteins bind the incoming DNA and insert it into the cell’s genome. Since genes provide the blueprint for all of the cell’s biological activities, this process may allow the bacterium to acquire new, advantageous traits.

Altruistic sacrifice

The bacterium must weigh the benefits of shuffling genetic information against the cost. To release the gene-transfer agents, the original cell bursts and dies.

Most cells in a population survive because only a small subset of cells are allowed to turn on the genes required to produce gene-transfer agents. These cells act altruistically, sacrificing themselves to spread their genetic material — to facilitate new combinations of genes that could help target cells adapt and survive in a changing environment.

There are a few conditions under which a GTA-producing bacterial cell deems it worthwhile to make this sacrifice. One is when it runs out of nutrients, particularly amino acids, which are needed to make proteins. In this case, new combinations of genes could enable the cell to acquire previously inaccessible nutrients.

Another is when the cell senses a chemical signal given off by neighbouring cells, alerting it to many related target cells nearby. In this scenario, the cell recognizes that its own death could benefit a high number of its relatives.

Sharing antibiotic-resistant genes

While researchers have made great strides in understanding how GTAs work, there is still more we need to discover in order to leverage horizontal gene-transfer processes for real-world applications.

For example, one of the first laboratory demonstrations of a GTA was in the bacterium R. capsulatus and involved the transfer of genetic material that allows bacteria to resist being killed by antibiotics.

Scientists have since uncovered many instances in which GTAs enable the sharing of antibiotic-resistance genes and are now delving into the details of this process, revealing strategies to block this exchange and help combat the spread of antibiotic resistance.

New ways to treat infectious disease

As mentioned earlier, a recent study in Nature Microbiology identified a cluster of genes that, when deleted, prevented bacteria from rupturing and releasing GTA particles that can spread antibiotic-resistance genes.

The spontaneous death of a GTA-producing cell also provides a source of inspiration for new ways to kill harmful bacteria and potentially treat infectious diseases. In order to exploit this, however, we will need to understand how cell populations control which members are capable of producing GTAs and are therefore destined for death, and how to ramp up the proportion of these cells.

Once we understand gene transfer agents fully, there are likely to be many other potential applications of this knowledge.

John Thomas Beatty receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Andrew S. Lang receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/how-bacteria-hijack-viruses-to-shuffle-their-own-dna/

It takes a lot to knock football out of the headlines in Pittsburgh. But reports of measles cases, exposure alerts and calls for residents to double-check their vaccination status have dominated local news since August 2026.

My office at Allegheny College, where I am an epidemiologist, is within a few steps of a classroom dedicated to Dr. Thomas Francis. Dr. Francis also coordinated the entire polio vaccine field trial, which included 1.8 million children, and deemed the polio vaccine “safe, effective, potent.”

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As of Sept. 14, 2026, the Pennsylvania Department of Health has confirmed 693 measles cases across 38 of the state’s 67 counties this year, including 133 hospitalizations and three deaths among unvaccinated residents. That compares with 16 cases statewide in all of 2025.

Allegheny County reported its first case tied to the current outbreak in August, when the county health department warned of a potential exposure at UPMC Children’s Hospital’s emergency department. Two confirmed cases were diagnosed on Aug. 27, 2026, but the patients left the county afterward.

Pittsburgh is where Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. Children throughout the Pittsburgh area, including my father, lined up to participate in the Salk vaccine trials in 1954.

That history offers a useful lens for understanding today’s measles outbreak: what’s driving it, how it spreads, and what residents in the Pittsburgh area need to know.

Measles, explained

Measles is one of the oldest and most contagious diseases. In fact, measles was around when the Egyptian pyramids were being built. Archaeological evidence shows the measles virus in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley in 3000 B.C.E.

Measles is an acute respiratory virus. If an unvaccinated individual who has never had measles is exposed to the measles virus, they will likely become sick. Measles easily spreads through the air. Infected individuals are contagious 3-5 days before symptoms occur, a transmission mechanism known as asymptomatic spread. Viral particles remain active and infectious for up to two hours after a person with measles leaves a room.

Symptoms of measles include a fever as high as 105 degrees Fahrenheit, cough, runny nose, conjunctivitis and Koplik spots, which are small white or bluish-white spots that appear on the inside of the cheeks before the measles rash breaks out on the skin. These spots are the defining diagnostic feature of measles. Measles also results in a rash, known as a “bucket of paint rash” because it looks like someone spilled a bucket of red paint over the head of the sick person.

The rash is not contagious. This disease spreads when someone breathes in the virus.

Before there was a vaccine for measles, upward of 3 million people – mostly children – were infected in the U.S. each year, 48,000 were hospitalized, and as many as 500 died.

Measles was eliminated in the United States through vaccination in 2000, meaning person-to-person spread of the disease was disrupted. However, due to declining vaccination rates, measles is once again spreading throughout Pennsylvania, resulting in approximately four times as many measles cases in 2026 within the state as in the previous 30 years combined.

Measles vaccination rates need to be above 95% to prevent the disease from spreading. The current outbreak has affected a majority of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, an indicator that even small declines in vaccination coverage result in large outbreaks.

The MMR vaccine is covered at no cost by most private insurance plans and is available free of charge to Medicaid-insured, uninsured or underinsured children at any of Pennsylvania’s 59 state health centers. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children receive two doses by ages 4 to 6 to ensure protection against measles.

Allegheny County’s kindergarten MMR vaccination rate was 91.8% for the 2025-26 school year – below the 95% threshold needed to stop measles from spreading and part of a decline the county health department has tracked for more than a decade.

If you’re exposed to measles

If you are vaccinated or have had measles, there is little risk – about 3% – that you will develop measles if exposed to the virus. There is no need to quarantine, but even vaccinated people should watch for symptoms of disease.

For people who are unvaccinated, including infants, the risk of developing a measles infection after exposure is approximately 90%. Unvaccinated individuals need to quarantine. Local health departments require them to stay away from others for 21 days to prevent the asymptomatic spread of disease.

If an individual in quarantine becomes ill, they will begin a minimum 14-day isolation.

Measles is a serious disease. Approximately 20% of people who get it will develop pneumonia; many will require hospitalization, and a few will die. Each measles case costs our healthcare system approximately US$43,000, according to a Johns Hopkins systematic review of outbreaks in 18 states.

The measles virus also has the ability to suppress one’s immune system. This means that after a bout of measles, survivors can be left more vulnerable to other infections they were previously protected against, sometimes for months or even years afterward.

In order to prevent measles from spreading in our communities, at least 95% of the population must be vaccinated. The MMR vaccine was designed to prevent an individual from developing measles. But there is an added bonus: When the majority of a population is vaccinated, there are community-wide effects, mainly that community transmission of measles will begin to decline.

Pittsburgh helped end one vaccine-preventable epidemic 70 years ago. The current measles outbreak could be a test of whether the local history still means something for vaccination rates today.

Rebecca Smullin Dawson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/pittsburghs-kindergartners-fall-below-the-measles-safety-threshold-testing-the-citys-vaccine-legacy/

The Scottish historian William Dalrymple recently argued that Big Tech has become the 21st-century equivalent of Britain’s famous East India Company.

It’s a comparison less fanciful than it might sound. At its height in the early 19th century, the East India Company controlled territory, collected taxes and fielded an army larger than Britain’s.

Today’s technology corporations may not have private armies or formally delegated sovereignty, but they control digital territories on which markets, communication and increasingly artificial intelligence depend.

There, they decide who may enter, what can be seen and the rules by which people and businesses participate.

Dalrymple asks what history can teach us about bringing such corporations under control. My recent research starts one step earlier: what is it about the corporate form itself that allows such power to accumulate and endure?

The legal machinery hiding in plain sight

Debate about Big Tech or corporate overreach usually begins after power has already accumulated.

Competition law addresses monopoly. Privacy law responds to surveillance and data extraction. Platform regulation tackles gatekeeping. All are necessary, but they mostly overlook the branch of law that creates the institutions they seek to regulate: corporate law.

Within corporate law, the significance of incorporation is often minimised.

Incorporation does something remarkable: it creates an artificial person. Like a human being, this legal creation can own property and enter into contracts. As with Theseus’s ship, its identity can endure even when every constituent part has been replaced.

In a business corporation, capital contributed by investors becomes its property. Investors receive shares, but don’t own its underlying assets. Shareholders can sell their shares and leave, while the corporate fund can keep growing for as long as the corporation exists.

Notably, a corporation can itself own capital – capital owning capital – as well as other corporations.

Subsidiaries can sit within wider corporate groups, allowing capital and control to expand while assets and liabilities remain legally partitioned. The result is an institutional structure capable of accumulating resources and pursuing objectives across generations.

Incorporation alone, of course, does not explain big tech’s dominance. Data, network effects, intellectual property, finance, technological design and political choices all play a part.

But the corporate form acts as a multiplier, allowing these advantages to accumulate and persist over time. Its distinctive superpower is not simply the accumulation of existing capital.

It can identify resources such as data, turn them into new forms of capital, and use that capital recursively to create still more value.

History (sometimes) repeats

The East India Company was chartered in 1600, acquiring permanent capital in 1657.

This attached investor capital to an enduring corporate person, allowing wealth to accumulate. By 1701 its governor, Josiah Child, could describe the company as a “Fund of Wealth”.

Its later territorial and governmental powers were delegated by the state, but its corporate structure allowed them to accumulate within a single continuing institution.

During America’s Gilded Age, corporations amassed capital and brought railways and other essential infrastructure under their control. American legal scholar Herbert Hovenkamp wrote that corporate law had “unleashed a power it could no longer control”.

The antitrust law that emerged in response sat outside the corporate law that had enabled these companies to grow.

Big Tech has again demonstrated the power of the corporate form. A dominant platform is not merely a participant in a market. It may own the marketplace, compete against businesses using it and write the rules for everyone involved.

Its power is not formally sovereign, as the East India Company’s became, but is produced through ownership, contracts, code, network effects and state acquiescence.

Like the East India Company, Big Tech corporations have used the corporate form to create new types of capital. For Big Tech, it is data. For the East India Company, colonisation turned India itself – its land, labour, revenues and trade – into capital.

Where corporate law can help

Competition, privacy and AI regulation remain indispensable responses to corporate overreach. But regulation need not wait until that power manifests as misconduct.

If incorporation law helps create and maintain these institutions, it can also place conditions on how they operate.

Legal scholar and former US Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan has argued for structural separation: a dominant platform should not both operate essential infrastructure and compete on it.

Separation must address ownership as well as conduct. Moving the competing business into a subsidiary would not solve the conflict if the same corporate group controlled both.

Law could also make platform corporations that control essential digital infrastructure subject to public-governance duties.

These could include non-discriminatory access, transparent rule-making and protection against the commercial use of data obtained from dependent businesses.

They could also give people whose livelihoods depend on a platform some representation in how it is governed.

Such obligations should follow access to a market, not merely the jurisdiction in which a company chooses to incorporate.

Corporations can create enormous value at scale. The corporation is one of humanity’s great social inventions.

For that reason, regulatory interventions should use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. The challenge is to distinguish productive growth from the concentration of infrastructure, commercial activity and accumulated capital within the same artificial person.

Dalrymple’s history and the first Gilded Age demonstrate that states can curb extraordinarily powerful corporations.

But incorporation law points to something more fundamental: corporations are privately initiated but state-constituted institutions.

They are artificial persons we create. If incorporation law helped unleash their power, it can also reshape them to serve more than the gilded few.

Susan Watson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/incorporation-law-gave-big-tech-state-like-power-can-it-now-help-rein-it-in/

Editor’s note: This piece is adapted from Carry Your Heart: Indigenous Helping Wisdom and the Science of Psychological Flexibility by Louis Busch, released on Sept. 15, 2026. Copyright © 2026 Louis Busch. Published by Simon & Schuster Canada, a division of Simon & Schuster. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

BOMGIIZHIK (Isaac Murdoch)

At Nimkii Aazhibikoong, a culture camp deep in the woods on the north shore of Lake Huron, we find Isaac Murdoch, also known as Bomgiizhik of the Great Lakes by the many learners who listen to his stories and teachings each night. Isaac is a Fish Clan member of Serpent River First Nation, a gifted artist, musician, storyteller, environmentalist, activist and ceremonial conductor, but these words don’t really capture the entity that is Isaac Murdoch.

He is a force of nature who is constantly in some act of relationship-building and creative design, whether it be chopping wood for the new lodge he is building for a youth retreat or painting a mural on the pavement of Wall Street in New York City in protest of extractive industries. Nimkii Aazhibikoong is a testament to Isaac’s vision, as he is one of the founders of the camp that offers language immersion, land-based living and learning programs, storytelling and Ceremony.

As we sit by the fire, sipping strong percolated coffee, I am struck by the amount of knowledge that Isaac’s head holds. He is a fountain of information on art, music, history, the Ojibwe language, ancient pictographs, politics and bushcraft. He also carries what seems like an infinite number of stories, which have been passed down to him through the oral tradition. Most striking of all, however, are Isaac’s insights into the human condition, into the nature of suffering, and about the path of the good life.

Isaac’s own life is an incredible story on the capacity of human beings to heal after immense hardship. Isaac grew up in the bush with his family, living off the land until he and his siblings were apprehended by Indian agents and forced onto the reserve. Isaac’s mother died shortly after her children were taken from her. Like many First Nations Peoples on Turtle Island, Isaac has lost many family members to violence, overdose and suicide.

Isaac is open about his experience as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and shares his story to encourage men with similar experiences to seek help. And in what I can only imagine is the most painful experience a human being can have on this earth, Isaac tragically lost two children in an accident.

By any measure, Isaac should be a broken and bitter man. But the opposite is true. He glows and seems to peer into your soul with a sort of kindness that makes you feel instantly among family in his company. His laugh is contagious, and his message is consistently one of kindness and connection. I was very motivated to learn whatever I could from Isaac and honoured to be able to spend time hearing some of his teachings.

I tell Isaac about the learning journey I am on and my hopes of bringing Indigenous helping wisdom and the science of psychological flexibility together in a way that each may benefit from the other. Isaac reflects on the word acceptance and shares, “There is an inherent part of us that accepts the difficult situations we encounter in this life, but our minds like to fight back and construct all sorts of explanations as a way to escape having to face the pain of a difficult experience like loss, betrayal or failure.”

Isaac repeats the word daapnaan, which he describes as the Ojibwe version of “it is what it is.” He says daapnaan speaks to accepting something, letting the situation be as it is, whether it is an outcome, a feeling, or a dream, even if it is extremely painful. Isaac says our experience here on earth is a process of spiritual training, and that all the experiences we have, especially the difficult and chaotic ones, are like a higher learning curriculum for our spirit and for the future.

Isaac insists that pain and suffering have always been crucial in Indigenous healing philosophies, reflecting a deep understanding that mental health and spiritual health are tightly intertwined. He says that at the core of the struggle, especially in cases as extreme as suicide, it isn’t just a mental health problem, but a disconnection from one’s spirit, the essence that binds us to our true selves and the universe.

“Since the time of our Creation Story,” Isaac continues, “pain and suffering have been seen as gifts in Ceremony,” offering a pathway to healing through acknowledging and embracing our innermost struggles and reconnecting with spirit. Isaac points to fasting and offerings that occur within the ceremonies of some nations on Turtle Island. The experience of pain is offered to the Spirits, Isaac says, in order to facilitate healing in ourselves, our families and our communities. In Ceremony, suffering is viewed as a privilege and an opportunity.

Growing up, the old ones would say, “Oh, you received a blessing!” when you got hurt, Isaac shares. He recalls being puzzled at his grandparents saying, “Hey, that’s a blessing!” when he burned his finger in the fire once. “That’s what they’d say when you burned yourself or got cut! You got a blessing!” Isaac says with an expression of disbelief at his own words. Now he realizes this was a powerful teaching about the nature of suffering. “Offering your pain as a trade for healing is a great honour,” Isaac says. This willingness to feel something unpleasant does something important to one’s view on the meaning of pain.

Hearing Isaac’s teaching, I recall the third day of fasting during my first Sun Dance. I was feeling particularly miserable and sorry for myself. One of the other dancers had just quit. I was tired, hungry, thirsty, and starting to think quitting might not be such a bad idea, when an old man came up to me and said, “Thank you for your sacrifice; your ancestors are proud of you.” Of course I started ugly crying.

Just that short sentence changed my perspective in that moment drastically. Suddenly all the relationships I had been building with my pain were flipped on their heads. Where once there was only “bad, hurt, tired, sad, ouch, stop, quit, escape,” there was also now “gratitude, opportunity, ancestors, pride, belonging.” I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: More things can be accomplished in a four-day ceremony on the land than can be accomplished in a year of psychotherapy. This was certainly one of those experiences for me.

Speak to your mind. “Our mind is its own entity,” Isaac says. “It’s hardwired in a certain way, and whether it is due to our traumas or some hereditary thing passed down to us, we can become prone to evaluating the things around us as constant crises, and we can ascribe stories to ourselves to explain these crises. Why does this keep happening to me? I’m so stupid, I deserve this.” I ask Isaac about his perspective on the tendency of our mind to work against us when things get difficult. Why kick us when we are down?

Isaac shares that Medicine People would sometimes work on someone struggling with an emotional, spiritual, or mental experience by laying that person down, offering tobacco, and speaking directly to the person’s mind. The Medicine Person would ask the mind to be kind to that person, would give gratitude for all that it was doing to protect the person, but would petition the mind to allow the individual to continue to live their life in a good way.

If I think about someone wise speaking to my troubled mind, it is my dad. I can picture him sitting there, calm, steady, and unhurried (probably smoking a cigar). Maybe he’d put his hand on my forehead and just sit silently for a while. He is both a man of few words and a powerful orator. Every time I’ve seen him get up to speak, be it a celebration, a conference, or a funeral, I am always awestruck by how easily he has the unflinching attention of the room.

In that space, sitting with my mind, I think he would probably pray, and if he spoke to my mind, he might say something like “Hey, Mind, I see you’re bringing warnings and worries. That’s your job. We’ll take those with us and take the next step,” or maybe “Mind, you can be worried, but you don’t have to fix anything right now.”

I think about how those words would land, and how different they would be from the usual way I talk to my mind. Who would you choose to speak to your mind? What would they say if they were right there with you?

Louis Busch has previously received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), including a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and a SSHRC Impact Award.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/a-cree-psychotherapist-reflects-on-relationship-belonging-and-the-illusion-of-a-fixed-self/

A Canadian non-profit performance rights organization is suing Suno, an American genAI music creation platform, over streaming AI outputs that allegedly replicate songs without consent or compensation.

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) lawsuit cites 150 Suno songs that it says are identical or nearly identical to the works of Canadian artists including Joni Mitchell, The Weeknd, The Tragically Hip and others.

SOCAN wants the AI company to comply with copyright law and for artists to have a say in how their works are used (or not).

The statement of claim, which seeks $20,000 per work and $10,000,000 for infringement, joins a series of recent lawsuits against Suno.

These include a US$500-million joint copyright lawsuit originally launched by major labels of Warner, Sony and Universal (Warner has since signed a licensing deal with Suno) and a class-action lawsuit from Jason Isbell and other musicians. There are also music publisher and record label lawsuits.

SOCAN’s lawsuit raises questions about the place of Canadian artists in a music industry increasingly shaped by American tech companies.

Musician livelihoods at risk

A wide range of issues pertaining to AI technology and musicmaking are putting musician livelihoods at risk.

“It definitely feels like an existential struggle for artists today against AI,” rapper Cadence Weapon told The Canadian Press. The artist says 129 of his songs have been found in datasets to train AI music generators.

We conducted a survey this past summer with 267 working musicians in Canada. The survey was sent to 1,025 musicians (Polaris-longlisted artists between 2006-25 who have appeared on the Earshot charts seven or more times with Gold records; some were added for geographic representation).

We asked 26 questions about their music-making and relationships to aspects of the music industry, including companies like Spotify, Live Nation and Suno.

Read more:
Artists’ Spotify criticisms point to larger ways musicians lose with streaming — here’s 3 changes to help in Canada

Musician responses

We found that 87 per cent of respondents view AI technology in music creation negatively.

One respondent said they are “personally and professionally offended by the existence and use of genAI tools for artistic practices” and that the AI tech tools encourage the theft of copyrighted works.

Another said AI tools are compromising musicians’ ability to make money from music. One artist said they avoid AI “like the plague.”

The majority of survey responses indicate a clear line between creativity and the type of music production encouraged by a platform like Suno.

These artist responses challenge the way Suno is marketed to users. A recent post by the company said that Suno is “grateful to build tools that let everyone experience the joy of making music.”

The survey also found many Canadian musicians feel forced into using particular tools or platforms, or forced to work with large companies that dominate within a particular sector of the music industry.

In one survey response to a question asking about an artist’s relationship to ticketing company Ticketmaster and concert promoter Live Nation, the respondent said they are in “a relationship, but forced into it.”

Proliferating AI-generated content

AI music is becoming a battleground over the future of tech, culture and community.

In January 2026, Billboard magazine reported on a media consumption survey that found the vast majority of music consumers in the United States are uninterested in engaging with AI-generated songs as well. Another U.S.-based survey documented increased discomfort with GenAI in music, especially among younger listeners.

Part of this growing distaste for AI music comes from increased exposure. A recent example of this unwelcome intrusion happened when one of the authors of this story was listening to YouTube Music and was algorithmically recommended an AI song, which had a similar sound to the country-folk artist that was originally selected.

The YouTuber whose profile is listed as posting this song is Lee Vybrony, who uses AI avatars of sexualized women to generate videos for a range of AI-generated songs and whose profile has more than 32,000 subscribers.

One of Vybrony’s songs, “Both Sides of Us,” seems to rip off Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.”

Trade, sovereignty concerns

For Canadian musicians, artists and other creators the stakes are raised by the current trade war with the U.S.

During the latest skirmish over tariffs, U.S. negotiators demanded Canada drop requirements for streamers like Netflix to promote Canadian content.

But Canadian cultural production should not be sacrificed. If anything, the hostility toward our sovereignty and protecting our culture should be a call to strengthen these laws and support Canadian artists.

Artist input into copyright

In addition to efforts by SOCAN and others to stop the exploitation and mining of artistic works, a broader range of solutions are needed if we are to ensure artist livelihoods are protected and celebrated. It’s important that artists influence policymaking, particularly copyright law.

Read more:
Should global media giants shape our cultural and media policy? Lessons from satellite radio

AI-generated music needs to be labelled on streaming platforms. Listeners should be empowered to filter it out if they choose. Ideally, users should have to opt-in to AI-generated music.

The Online Streaming Act should be expanded to require a certain percentage of Canadian content be heard, viewed and promoted across online and streaming platforms, just as Canadian content regulations have done for broadcast radio.

Tighter regulation, more competition

We also need to advocate for digital tools and platforms that are built and regulated in Canada, as well as more competition in the music industries.

In the U.S., a jury recently decided Live Nation and Ticketmaster have operated as a monopoly and overcharged fans. Recently, the Consumers Council of Canada filed an application to sue Live Nation in Canada around similar concerns.

And as we’ve documented, consolidation in the Canadian music industry by non-Canadian companies has only tightened: Universal, Warner and Sony have a triopoly in the recording and publishing market; SiriusXM has a monopoly in satellite radio and Google/YouTube, Spotify, Apple and Amazon have an oligopoly of the streaming music market.

“Now old friends are acting strange,” Mitchell wrote back in 1967, after she had relocated to the U.S. from Canada a couple of years prior.

“Well something’s lost,” Mitchell laments, “but something’s gained.” Through strategic opposition to tech platforms and music monopolies, we could gain a music industry that allows Canadian music to flourish.

Brian Fauteux, Brianne Selman, and Andrew deWaard receive funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

Andrew deWaard receives funding from SSHRC.

Brianne Selman receives funding from SSHRC.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/ai-music-lawsuits-raise-questions-about-american-companies-and-canadian-arts/

As the world’s largest country that spans eleven time zones and shares land borders with fourteen countries, Russia’s geography has always posed a difficult problem for government: how to maintain economic activity, infrastructure and basic services across an enormous territory with a highly uneven population.

More than four and a half years of war against Ukraine, sanctions and disrupted international connections have made that challenge considerably harder.

One place where the response to these mounting pressures is becoming visible is Russia’s national spatial policy.

In my newly published research with Anton Gorodnichev, we compare Russia’s 2019 and 2024 spatial development strategies and trace a substantial change in how the state approaches territorial planning. These strategies render Russia’s political choices visible: which places are expected to grow, which should be supported, and for what purpose.

In 2019, national spatial policy centred on 41 large urban agglomerations, expected to drive economic growth nationwide. Five years later, the new strategy identified 2,160 “support settlements” spread across the country, with a task of retaining population, providing essential services and maintaining territorial continuity. The challenge of governing a vast and uneven territory did not disappear. What changed was the government’s idea of what spatial policy should achieve.

When big cities were the answer

Russia’s 2019 strategy belonged to an era when concentrating people and economic activity in large, well-connected cities was widely seen as a route to national prosperity. This was hardly a uniquely Russian idea: international organisations and urban economists had long promoted large metropolitan regions as engines of productivity and innovation, and Russia’s own turn toward agglomerations explicitly drew on European spatial policy, economic geography and the recommendations of international development institutions.

An urban agglomeration is essentially a large city and surrounding settlements linked through jobs, transport and services. The 2019 strategy identified 41 of them and expected them to concentrate investment, technology and population.

But the model assumed a particular set of conditions: available investment, access to international markets, and relatively free movement of capital, technology and people. The 2019 strategy still imagined development in those terms – competitiveness, international integration, connection to global economic networks. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many of those assumptions became much harder to sustain.

From growth to territorial stability

After the Russo-Ukrainian war escalated into a full-scale conflict, international sanctions intensified, foreign investment declined, trade and logistics were disrupted, economic links shifted away from Europe, and security and technological self-reliance became more prominent policy concerns. These pressures overlapped with longer-running problems, including demographic decline and large regional inequalities.

In this altered context, a previously peripheral idea – support settlements – became the organising principle of Russia’s 2024 Spatial Development Strategy. Instead of concentrating primarily on a few dozen large growth centres, the latest strategy seeks much broader territorial coverage. Its 2,160 support settlements are highly heterogeneous: most provide services to surrounding territories, while others have border security, scientific or strategic infrastructure functions.

The strategy is also more explicit than the previous one about where the government sees vulnerability. Its expanded category of “geostrategic territories” covers Kaliningrad, the Far East, the North Caucasus and the Arctic, and municipalities bordering countries Russia designates as unfriendly – in practice, mostly European Union member states. Together with the reorientation of trade and logistics corridors toward Asian markets, this reverses the prospects of regions whose development case had been shaped by their proximity to Europe. Places once presented as gateways are now treated as edges.

What ‘support settlements’ are meant to support

The Russian term opornyi punkt, translated here as “support settlement”, has no direct equivalent in international planning. Outside planning the term is used in military and policing contexts for a position that holds a line or anchors control over a district: a point that secures presence and basic functioning across a wider area.

That helps explain the 2024 strategy. Support settlements are meant to hold population and essential services in place across a far wider network than the agglomeration model covered. This has a practical rationale: it can preserve access to schools, healthcare and infrastructure where economic growth is weak. It also keeps the state present in parts of the country from which, on purely economic criteria, it would have been retreating.

For residents this cuts both ways. Keeping a school, a clinic and a road open in a small town is a real gain, and one that a policy built around a few dozen large cities never promised. But maintaining basic services is not the same as creating jobs, raising incomes or expanding opportunities for social mobility. More than 1,500 support settlements already have persistently low living standards. The new approach therefore risks making ‘not getting worse’ an acceptable measure of success for many peripheral places.

More broadly, the Russian case shows that policy models often appear universal because the conditions behind them are taken for granted.

Agglomeration-led development spread during an era of expanding trade, mobile capital and confidence in metropolitan growth. When those conditions weaken, even deeply embedded planning ideas can lose their force. Russia is no longer asking only where growth can be generated, but what needs to be kept functioning when growth itself becomes harder to count on.

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Sofia Borushkina ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/how-war-and-sanctions-are-reshaping-how-russia-governs-its-vast-territory/

Every year since the first Wimbledon Championship in 1877, a male player with a one-handed backhand has featured in the singles semi-finals of a grand slam. That 149 year streak ended at this year’s US Open when Stefanos Tsitsipas, the last remaining single-hander in the draw, exited the tournament in the round of 16.

This is a watershed moment for tennis, as it marks a break with the origins of the sport and the culmination of a five decades-long trend towards hitting the backhand with two hands on the racket. The popularity of the two-handed backhand has surpassed the single-hander to such an extent that the latter is now on the verge of extinction in elite tennis.

But does this matter? After all, sports evolve and athletes, coaches and sports scientists continually refine technique to achieve superior outcomes. Dick Fosbury revolutionised the high jump with the Fosbury flop in 1968. This development in high jump biomechanics unlocked new athletic feats and the straddle technique, previously dominant, became redundant. Perhaps the single-hander has, similarly, fallen victim to a superior technique.

Why the one-handed backhand matters

The one-handed backhand is arguably the most elegant shot in tennis. To execute it, the non-dominant hand pulls the racket back to coil the player’s hips and shoulders. As the ball enters the player’s hitting zone, the non-dominant hand releases and the racket whips through the ball while the other arm provides a counterbalance by extending in the opposite direction.

Its most skilled exponents, such as Roger Federer, Justine Henin and Stan Wawrinka, can produce explosive power in a balletic feat of flow, balance and timing.

The beauty of the one-hander is, in part, due to its superfluity. In tennis, aesthetics is incidental – shots are struck to win a point, not to beautify it. The pleasing aesthetics of the one-handed backhand is a delightful coincidence in which efficiency meets beauty.

However, one-handed backhands will soon be absent from the biggest tennis arenas. Why is this shot on the verge of extinction?

For a time in the early 2000’s, Roger Federer enjoyed exclusive dominance over men’s tennis. However, Rafael Nadal, a left-hander who was capable of generating more topspin than any player the game had ever seen, found a hole in Federer’s game – the shoulder-high backhand.

Nadal pioneered a heavy topspin forehand that would bounce above Federer’s shoulder, forcing him either to retreat behind the baseline or to hit the ball in the weak shoulder-high position. Nadal would pound Federer’s backhand until this elicited an error or a short ball that could be attacked. Shoulder-high backhands are not only technically difficult for a one-hander, but also energy sapping.

The development of the two-handed backhand on the run, best exemplified by Novak Djokovic, also meant that the advantage which single-handers had hitting wide balls no longer obtained. Two-handers could hit with an open stance when stretched, and this enabled them to generate more power on the run and to recover for the next shot more quickly.

The inherent limitations of the one-handed backhand were more easily exploited as strings, rackets and courts allowed players to follow Nadal’s template.

The development of polyester strings allowed players to generate unprecedented amounts of topspin. Racket heads grew larger and were designed to facilitate vertical swing-paths for the creation of topspin. Court surfaces were slowed, allowing topspin to have an even higher-bouncing effect.

As well as arguably the most elegant shot, the single handed backhand is one of the most difficult shots in tennis. Typically, the absence of the second hand on the racket requires the player to demonstrate more strength and better timing. So, the two-hander provides quicker rewards for young players and coaches as backhand competency can be gained more readily.

The rise of the two-hander might be thought the natural evolution of the sport. However, there is nothing inevitable about the demise of the single-hander – the development of the sport is in the hands of tennis authorities. Players respond to the conditions in which they are required to compete.

Tennis has been allowed to develop in a direction hostile to the single-handed backhand, much as it has been allowed to develop in a direction that is hostile to serve and volleying. The strategic contrast has been lost between the serve-and-volleyer, who rushes the net to take the ball before the bounce, and the baseliner, who stays at the baseline to play after the bounce. This contrast lay at the heart of many of the most compelling tennis rivalries – Björn Borg and John McEnroe, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. By contrast, leading players now are simply different shades of baseliner.

These two developments are not unrelated, as the single-handed backhand was the shot of choice for the best serve and volleyers such as Rod Laver, Sampras and Pat Rafter. The single-hander allowed for greater variety of spin and angles, and it was conducive to hitting while moving forward towards the net.

Federer has expressed hope that this is not the end for the single-hander. But we can do more than hope – the conditions of elite tennis can be reshaped in ways that are more amenable to the one-handed backhand. Here are my suggestions:

1. Polyester strings should be prohibited;
2. The maximum racket head size should be limited to 95 square inches to encourage slower vertical racket head speeds thereby limiting the production of topspin; and
3. Greater variety in court surfaces should be introduced, with an emphasis on the introduction of faster, lower bouncing surfaces.

Tennis authorities guide the evolution of the sport. The recent trend has been towards technical and tactical homogeneity. The sport is losing the contrasts that underpinned its compelling rivalries and stunning spectacles. Tennis needs to embrace again the beauty in diversity. With the demise of the single-hander, something skilful and beautiful is being lost.

John William Devine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/the-demise-of-the-single-handed-backhand-is-a-watershed-moment-for-tennis/

Some people describe it as a ticking timebomb. Others learn to live with information they can neither see nor feel, but cannot forget. This is what it can mean to be diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm: a swelling in the body’s main artery that becomes more likely to rupture as it grows, despite causing no symptoms.

For most people with a small aneurysm, surgery is not the safest option. Regular scans are used to track its growth. This avoids an operation they may not need, but can leave them living with uncertainty for years.

An abdominal aortic aneurysm, or AAA, develops in the section of the aorta that runs through the abdomen. Most cause no noticeable symptoms. In England, men are invited for a screening ultrasound in the year they turn 65. Aneurysms can also be found during tests for another condition.

The risk depends partly on the aneurysm’s size and growth rate. Smaller AAAs are usually managed through active surveillance, alongside measures to reduce cardiovascular risk. A review of four clinical trials found no survival advantage to operating early on small, symptom-free aneurysms. Repair itself carries risks including heart attack, stroke and kidney damage.

Our research suggests that the emotional effect of surveillance can be underestimated.

Living between normality and danger

We reviewed 14 studies involving 150 people with AAA. Most were men; participants were aged from 53 to 88. The studies explored their experiences of diagnosis, surveillance, surgery and recovery.

They provide detailed accounts of what people went through, although they cannot show how common each response is among all patients. Similar concerns recurred across different groups and care settings.

Uncertainty ran through many participants’ accounts. Some described the aneurysm as a “ticking timebomb”. They felt caught between the normality of having no symptoms and the knowledge that their condition might become more serious.

Some became highly alert to bodily sensations, wondering whether an ordinary ache might signal danger. Clear safety advice is important here. Most AAAs remain symptomless, but sudden, severe abdominal or back pain, difficulty breathing, pale or grey skin, or loss of consciousness can signal a rupture and require an immediate 999 call.

Regular scans could reassure people when an aneurysm was stable. For some, that relief faded as the next appointment approached. Life became organised around scan dates, with each check reviving old fears.

Questions left unanswered

Participants in several studies said the information they received did not prepare them for daily life with AAA. Explanations often centred on aneurysm measurements and the risks or thresholds for surgery. People still had questions about what they could safely do, how the condition might change and how much control they had over their health.

Medical jargon and apparently conflicting advice added to the confusion. Some people felt unable to take part confidently in decisions because they did not fully understand the options.

Physical activity was a particular source of concern. Some participants limited exercise because they feared exertion could cause a rupture. Others thought exercise might shrink the aneurysm. Research suggests that exercise training is generally safe for people with AAA, although advice should reflect the aneurysm and the person’s wider health. Exercise may support cardiovascular health, although it has not been shown to make an aneurysm smaller.

Smoking also caused confusion. Some participants doubted that quitting would help once an aneurysm had formed, while others used cigarettes to cope with anxiety. Smoking is a major risk factor for AAA, and NHS guidance recommends stopping to help prevent an aneurysm from growing. People may need practical help to quit, alongside a clear explanation of how smoking can affect the aneurysm.

A different uncertainty after surgery

When an aneurysm reaches the point at which repair is considered, patients face another set of decisions. Repair may involve open abdominal surgery or endovascular aneurysm repair, known as EVAR, which places a stent graft inside the artery through blood vessels in the groin. Recovery and follow-up differ between the procedures.

Participants often saw surgery as a source of hope and fear. It offered a way to reduce the danger they had been carrying, but required them to confront the risks of a major procedure and place considerable trust in their clinical team.

Afterwards, some described fatigue, changes in appetite, emotional ups and downs and a slower return to normal activities than expected. Several felt poorly prepared for recovery or unsure whom to contact after leaving hospital.

Recovery brought a different kind of uncertainty. The aneurysm had been repaired, but the body did not always seem to be healing on schedule. Ordinary tiredness or a twinge of pain could prompt fears that something had gone wrong. After weighing the risks of surgery for months or years, some found it disorienting that nobody had prepared them for what the following weeks might feel like.

Support between scans

Our findings point to practical improvements. At diagnosis, people need a plain-English explanation of their aneurysm’s size, why surveillance is recommended and which symptoms require emergency help. They also need tailored advice about physical activity and reducing their cardiovascular risk.

Before surgery, patients need balanced information about their options and enough time to ask questions. After discharge, realistic guidance about recovery and a clear contact for concerns may reduce avoidable distress. NHS England has produced a decision-support tool for people considering AAA treatment. It is most useful when a clinician helps each patient apply the information to their circumstances.

The studies included relatively few women, so they may not capture every experience of living with AAA. Even so, the findings show why clinical care should include psychological and practical support alongside measurement of the aneurysm.

For many people, the hardest part of AAA is living with a condition they cannot usually feel but can never entirely forget. Helping them understand it and participate in decisions, with a clear route to support when needed, could make surveillance or recovery easier to live with.

Ukachukwu Abaraogu is co-Lead of Cochrane Heart, Stroke and Circulation, Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, and Senior Collaborator within the Global Burden of Disease Programme

Chris Seenan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/15/abdominal-aortic-aneurysms-can-cause-years-of-anxiety-even-without-symptoms/