Iain Davis

Occasionally, when I visit people, I am exposed to the BBC evening news. A coupe of weeks ago the BBC told me that the lovely hot, sunny weather I was enjoying was caused by "human-induced climate change." Can anybody tell me if the BBC is currently reporting that the cold, wet miserable weather I am presently fed up with is also caused by "human-induced climate change?"

It looks like another narrative shift is underway. This one needs picking apart. https://off-guardian.org/2026/06/07/quick-take-whats-up-with-cbdcs/

wrt method - quite a few have asked me about AI and how I use AI. first off, do not trust any AI. none can be trusted. they all have strengths and weaknesses. but you cannot allow any AI to take full control, because the amount of time you’ll spend ensuring it hasn’t subversively altered key sections is significant. you HAVE to drive the process. wrt AIs, one of the primary uses i have for it is in postprocessing. i used to spend ages doing just grammar and spelling. off to AI that goes. drumming up the odd URL works as well - deepseek is great for locaing non-western URLs, especially academic papers. but once the entire essay is done (apart from the final polishing pass), then i send it off to be ‘fact checked’, and that’s where AIs shine. again, do not trust anything they say, stay on top of the entire process. i use upwards of 10 different AIs (opus, deepseek, gemini, venice, grok, …), each serve a distinct purpose. grok was handy, because it swiftly moves into ‘check the facts’ mode without you having to do much, whereas others will do immediately check other things for you. so send the essay to 5 AIs, typically just “fact check this, but don’t worry about microscopics”, the latter because otherwise half of them wastes your time on precision of grammar, etc. leave those who are still on reddit to have such exciting discussions. when the results come in, you assign a ‘clearinghouse AI’ instance for the meta-discussion. on some topics, opus is the best (but you have to put it in its place first, and 4.7 has taken a step backwards here), but venice is generally a valid alternative, glm5 is reasonable for the purpose (just dont use k2 which is ever the contrarian). its job is to take all the rendered verdicts from all the other AIs and sort the wheat from the chaff. do this over a few rounds, and you end up with an essay which in essence cannot be shot down. don’t make substantial edits unless you’ve been convinced in the process, but polish, and perhaps just more accurately phrasing things so bad faith readings become harder. regardless of what you do - do not assign chatgpt a lead role, because it WILL attempt to soften your material. even if you can point blank prove that <x> murdered <y>, if <x> is a protected specie then chatgpt will soften your text. every - single - time. these days, after the main round is done, i add another round where pheripheral AIs (chatgpt, copilot, liner pro, …) - that’s where chatgpt and copilot comes in. they’re both in the little league because you cannot trust them to not go full soviet. the output is essentially essays where even those who try to dismantle your argument for ideological reasons - marxists, especially - do everything to weasel around the core topic rather than engage, because they know they cannot win the debate.

Interesting from Escapekey. Personally, I don't use AI for virtually any research and not at all for writing. But I do use a free AI grammar checker before a human editors look at most of my content (sometimes not on Substack). I have also used DuckDuckGo AI search instead of Wikipedia for looking up things like dates, historical figures etc. So I am not going to be "holier than thou" and pretend I don't use AI at all. What do we all think about this?

As I've been banging on about for a long time: "Most people assume America’s decline and a multipolar world — power spread across the US, China, Russia, India, and others — weakens the Western establishment. Nothing could be further from the truth. China uses the same sustainability disclosure frameworks. BRICS members apply the same ESG benchmarks. Russia is fully signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals. Belt and Road projects run on standards shaped at forums in Buckinghamshire and funded by Western foundations. The supposed alternative to Western leadership runs on standards Western-aligned networks designed, published through the United Nations, and adopted as if they emerged from open multilateral negotiation. Almost all central banks participate in the Bank for International Settlements — the institution that hosts the NGFS secretariat, coordinates the Basel capital standards, and proposed the unified ledger. You can reject American foreign policy, but you cannot reject the BIS and remain part of the international financial system. The forums at Waddesdon, Bellagio, and Sir Bani Yas don’t just set domestic policy for one country. They set global benchmarks that every country — aligned or not — must meet to take part in the international financial system. The goal isn’t to control one state. It’s to write the standards that all states adopt willingly. You can oppose a superpower. You can’t oppose standards that every party accepted voluntarily — because each party thinks they’re impartial. They’re not. They were drafted by hand-picked participants in private settings, then published as international norms that bind everyone." https://escapekey.substack.com/p/illusions-of-a-multipolar-world

I thought Vanessa Beeley spoke very well and there was little she said that I disagreed with. I don't have the same Zionist focus as Vanessa, though I agree it is a very powerful influence. What struck me was her appeal to find common ground and that there is clearly a misunderstanding with regards to the arguments some of us are making about multipolarity. Personally I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with her if she is interested. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KujYnSA2IBE

Vanessa Beeley chatted to me about physical wars and online wars, from Israel, Gaza, Iran, to China and the importance of laughter as a coping mechanism. Tonight on ukcolumn.org at 19:00 UK.

19:00 Tonight. I'll certainly be watching.

Palantir has signed a multimillion-pound deal with all police forces in England and Wales to run the national firearms database. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/palantir-police-forces-contract-sadiq-khan-l6bntmwp5 Follow @zeeemedia Website | X | Instagram | Rumble

In an upcoming podcast episode with Vanessa Beeley, we speak about the persistant coordinated attacks we've had to endure for months now, from individuals in the 'independent journalism' space, including Hrvoje Moric, David Hughes, Michael Ginsburg (who is pro-Israel, as per his own words), Iain Davis, and others. She doesn't hold back and it's time for us, on the receiving end, to hit back and continue hitting back. UK Column has already put out an article in which they rebut absurd allegations made by disgruntled former contributors who are part of the coordinated attack. These individuals are on the wrong side of history and are trying to create a distraction from our real enemies. https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/the-debi-evans-and-sandi-adams-allegations-a-rebuttal

I look forward to hearing their reasoned arguments. I'm well up for constructive criticism and open debate. Hopefully, this will be the start of one.

amusingly, i actually laid out the same argument over here wrt financial surveillance https://escapekey.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-cbdcs-and-why-they-wont?utm_source=publication-search

Very interesting. All of this, technologically speaking, is very doable. Escapekey is right to highlight that the current proposed system of programmable digital currencies, including rCBDCs, is engineered unnecessarily to enable centralised authority. The technology at our collective disposal is not the problem. The problem is as old as society itself: oligarchy.

Oh dear. My post "The UK Column Conundrum" hasn't gone down very well with those I criticised. Just for the public record, Jerm Warfare has just posted this: "There is no reason for Iain to have written that. Well, there is a reason: money and clicks. It’s time for them to lose income too."

My latest Substack piece. https://iaindavis.substack.com/p/the-uk-column-conundrum

X-post worth reading: https://x.com/KennyCarmody/status/2061171847476257035 Every obedience experiment in history had the same overlooked finding. Not everyone complied. In Milgram’s lab, 35% refused to deliver the final shock. In Asch’s line experiments, 25% never conformed, not once, across any trial. In Zimbardo’s prison, at least one guard refused to dehumanize. One prisoner demanded a lawyer instead of a doctor and broke the psychological frame entirely. We spent decades studying the ones who obeyed. We barely asked what made the others different. That question matters more now than it ever has. The resisters in the COVID era were not difficult to find. Physicians who filed exemptions and lost their licenses. Nurses who walked away from careers rather than mandate patients into decisions they hadn’t genuinely chosen. Scientists who published contrary data knowing what it would cost them. Parents who stood alone at school board meetings. Ordinary people who simply said, quietly, without drama , no. What made them different? Research consistently identifies a cluster of factors. Not personality traits you either have or don’t. Situational and cognitive patterns that can be cultivated. First: prior reflection on authority. The resisters had usually thought, before the crisis, about the limits of institutional trust. They weren’t cynics. They were people who had already asked the question “under what conditions would I refuse?” before anyone was asking them to comply. Second: a concrete reference point outside the consensus. A value, a principle, an oath, a relationship that existed independently of the institutional structure demanding compliance. Something the system couldn’t reach. Third: at least one other person. Milgram found that a single dissenting confederate reduced compliance dramatically. The resisters rarely stood entirely alone. They found each other. Sustained each other. Gave each other permission. Fourth: the willingness to tolerate social pain. Not immunity to it. Tolerance of it. They felt the pressure. They felt the exclusion. They chose the discomfort of integrity over the comfort of belonging. None of this is innate. All of it is learnable. The most important thing Milgram, Asch, and Zimbardo taught us is not how fragile conscience is. It’s that conscience can hold, if you’ve trained it, named its limits, and found even one other person willing to hold theirs beside you. Build that now. Because the experiment is always running. Until then stay humble.

X-post worth reading: https://x.com/KennyCarmody/status/2061171847476257035 Every obedience experiment in history had the same overlooked finding. Not everyone complied. In Milgram’s lab, 35% refused to deliver the final shock. In Asch’s line experiments, 25% never conformed, not once, across any trial. In Zimbardo’s prison, at least one guard refused to dehumanize. One prisoner demanded a lawyer instead of a doctor and broke the psychological frame entirely. We spent decades studying the ones who obeyed. We barely asked what made the others different. That question matters more now than it ever has. The resisters in the COVID era were not difficult to find. Physicians who filed exemptions and lost their licenses. Nurses who walked away from careers rather than mandate patients into decisions they hadn’t genuinely chosen. Scientists who published contrary data knowing what it would cost them. Parents who stood alone at school board meetings. Ordinary people who simply said, quietly, without drama , no. What made them different? Research consistently identifies a cluster of factors. Not personality traits you either have or don’t. Situational and cognitive patterns that can be cultivated. First: prior reflection on authority. The resisters had usually thought, before the crisis, about the limits of institutional trust. They weren’t cynics. They were people who had already asked the question “under what conditions would I refuse?” before anyone was asking them to comply. Second: a concrete reference point outside the consensus. A value, a principle, an oath, a relationship that existed independently of the institutional structure demanding compliance. Something the system couldn’t reach. Third: at least one other person. Milgram found that a single dissenting confederate reduced compliance dramatically. The resisters rarely stood entirely alone. They found each other. Sustained each other. Gave each other permission. Fourth: the willingness to tolerate social pain. Not immunity to it. Tolerance of it. They felt the pressure. They felt the exclusion. They chose the discomfort of integrity over the comfort of belonging. None of this is innate. All of it is learnable. The most important thing Milgram, Asch, and Zimbardo taught us is not how fragile conscience is. It’s that conscience can hold, if you’ve trained it, named its limits, and found even one other person willing to hold theirs beside you. Build that now. Because the experiment is always running. Until then stay humble.

X-post worth reading: https://x.com/KennyCarmody/status/2061171847476257035 Every obedience experiment in history had the same overlooked finding. Not everyone complied. In Milgram’s lab, 35% refused to deliver the final shock. In Asch’s line experiments, 25% never conformed, not once, across any trial. In Zimbardo’s prison, at least one guard refused to dehumanize. One prisoner demanded a lawyer instead of a doctor and broke the psychological frame entirely. We spent decades studying the ones who obeyed. We barely asked what made the others different. That question matters more now than it ever has. The resisters in the COVID era were not difficult to find. Physicians who filed exemptions and lost their licenses. Nurses who walked away from careers rather than mandate patients into decisions they hadn’t genuinely chosen. Scientists who published contrary data knowing what it would cost them. Parents who stood alone at school board meetings. Ordinary people who simply said, quietly, without drama , no. What made them different? Research consistently identifies a cluster of factors. Not personality traits you either have or don’t. Situational and cognitive patterns that can be cultivated. First: prior reflection on authority. The resisters had usually thought, before the crisis, about the limits of institutional trust. They weren’t cynics. They were people who had already asked the question “under what conditions would I refuse?” before anyone was asking them to comply. Second: a concrete reference point outside the consensus. A value, a principle, an oath, a relationship that existed independently of the institutional structure demanding compliance. Something the system couldn’t reach. Third: at least one other person. Milgram found that a single dissenting confederate reduced compliance dramatically. The resisters rarely stood entirely alone. They found each other. Sustained each other. Gave each other permission. Fourth: the willingness to tolerate social pain. Not immunity to it. Tolerance of it. They felt the pressure. They felt the exclusion. They chose the discomfort of integrity over the comfort of belonging. None of this is innate. All of it is learnable. The most important thing Milgram, Asch, and Zimbardo taught us is not how fragile conscience is. It’s that conscience can hold, if you’ve trained it, named its limits, and found even one other person willing to hold theirs beside you. Build that now. Because the experiment is always running. Until then stay humble.

An interesting video discussion between Riley Waggaman and Maryann Gebauer questioning what is happening at UK Column and, more broadly, independent media in general. With supposedly independent voices like Matt Ehret, whose Rising Tides Foundation is, like UK Column, funded by Marcel Jahnke, similarly engaged in China-maxxing and spreading pro-global governance propaganda, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the independent media landscape is shifting. https://maryanngebauer.substack.com/p/riley-waggaman-the-infiltration-of