Mobile World Congress 2026 kicked off this week, and walking the halls on the first day, it was clear that a pattern had quickly emerged. Satellite connectivity is no longer being marketed as a niche solution for remote villages or maritime users. It is being embedded into the core architecture
Thirty-seven years. That’s how long Ali Khamenei held the Islamic Republic together, through sanctions, proxy wars, nuclear brinkmanship, and wave after wave of popular uprising. He survived an assassination attempt that cost him the use of his right arm. He survived Saddam. He survived the Green Movement, the Mahsa
After months of research and development, I'm excited to announce that SwarmWatch is now live. This interactive tool tracks the explosive growth of mega-constellations and provides real-time visibility into one of the most significant transformations happening in space today. Why SwarmWatch Matters When I began researching mega-constellations for
Blue Origin just filed plans for a 5,408-satellite constellation. Not a consumer broadband play. Not a Starlink clone. Something different: an enterprise-grade, multi-orbit data backbone designed to move up to six terabits per second across the planet. They’re calling it TeraWave, and it tells us something important about
Superiority. That's the word that jumped out when Trump signed his latest space executive order on 18th December 2025. Not leadership. Not cooperation. Superiority. Language matters in policy documents, and this one doesn't hide what it is: a declaration that cislunar space, from very low orbit
Software used to wait for you. You opened an application, clicked buttons, filled in forms, and told it exactly what to do. That era is ending. A new class of AI systems doesn't wait for instructions mid-task. It takes a goal, breaks it into steps, picks up tools,
On the morning of 28 January 1986, ice hung from the launch tower at Cape Canaveral. Engineers knew the temperature was unusually low, colder than anything the Space Shuttle programme had experienced before. They also knew that parts of the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters behaved unpredictably in the cold.
When the President of the United States says America “needs” Greenland for defence, he’s not making a real estate pitch. He’s signalling that Arctic access is now a strategic entitlement question, not a diplomatic one. A day after the Venezuela operation, Trump pivoted back to Greenland. Denmark’s
The United States just abducted a head of state, and the weapon that made it possible wasn’t a carrier group, it was a tariff schedule. Over the weekend, the Trump administration launched a military operation inside Venezuela, captured Nicolás Maduro, and transferred him to New York to face charges.
America’s 2025 National Security Strategy A British view from the alliance front line When the United States publishes a fresh National Security Strategy, Europeans tend to check the headlines, confirm that the transatlantic link still looks solid, and move on with their day. This one is different. The 2025
The United Kingdom has maintained a continuous at-sea deterrent (CASD) since 1969, code-named Operation Relentless, meaning at least one nuclear-armed submarine is always on patrol, hidden in the world's oceans.
On a clear night, a speck of paint from a decommissioned satellite can still be hurtling towards the next generation of Earth-orbiting technology at more than 10 kilometres per second. With over 11,000 active satellites currently circling Earth and more than 1.2 million pieces of space debris larger
Thought Leader
The sky has changed, but our security playbooks have not. Satellites now underpin navigation, finance, logistics, media, and military operations. They are no longer rare, government-only assets. They are cloud-connected, software-defined, and commercially operated at scale. Yet much of cybersecurity still treats space as exotic and separate, a future problem
The first sign was not a missile launch, but a picture. At 06:42 Taipei time, a high‑resolution satellite image surfaced on a public imagery feed: a line of grey hulls pushing east from the Chinese coast, wakes cutting clean V‑shapes through the strait. Amateur analysts on X
Nuclear
Once, nuclear war haunted films, protests, and public imagination. Today, the fear has faded—but the threat hasn’t. This piece explores how we lost our nuclear anxiety, why that might be dangerous, and what we stand to forget if we stop paying attention.
Swarm Book
Orbits of Power: From Sputnik to Starlink © Jay Allen 2025 “It wasn’t the beep that scared them. It was the orbit.” On 4 October 1957, a polished metal sphere the size of a beach ball lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It weighed just 83 kilograms and
Swarm Book
The Sky is Full © Jay Allen 2025 Above Ukraine, the Future Arrived Early In the opening days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the war appeared to follow a familiar script. Tanks breached borders. Missiles rained on cities. Airstrikes lit the skies over Kyiv. Yet high
Musings
On June 20th, 2025, the European Commission quietly released a draft regulation that is one of the most geopolitically consequential documents of the year. Titled the EU Space Act, it mandates new cybersecurity, resilience, and environmental standards for all space systems operating within the Union. On the surface, it appears
Security
The UK’s announcement that it will procure F-35A Lightning II jets and formally commit to NATO’s nuclear sharing mission marks a subtle but significant shift in its approach to deterrence, escalation, and alliance solidarity. After years of strategic ambiguity and a doctrine that placed Trident as the singular
Musings
@jayallen.pro [Bluesky] | LinkedIn As the United Kingdom enters a new era of strategic competition, marked by the resurgence of great power rivalry, the weaponisation of space and cyberspace, and the erosion of arms control norms, questions about how the UK manages escalation and deterrence are becoming more urgent. The
AI
I’d just finished watching Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb when the idea for this blog struck me. Kubrick’s absurd, satirical take on Cold War nuclear brinkmanship felt eerily relevant, not because we’re on the edge of nuclear war, but
AI
Organisations face an unprecedented challenge in the rapidly evolving digital landscape: balancing artificial intelligence’s (AI) transformative potential with the fundamental need to secure identity and access management (IAM) systems. As we integrate AI more deeply into our security infrastructure, we must confront the remarkable opportunities and the sobering risks
AI
In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, enterprises face a critical challenge: how to harness the transformative power of artificial intelligence while effectively managing its inherent risks. Recent events have shown us that this balance isn’t just theoretical; it’s a practical necessity that can make or break organisations.
AI
Remember Moore’s Law? It’s the famous observation that the number of transistors on computer chips doubles about every two years, leading to exponential growth in computing power. Now, as we witness the breakneck pace of AI development, many wonder: Is a similar pattern happening with artificial intelligence? The