The Ten Principles for Working With AI

AI has shifted from a tool we pick up to an environment we work inside. This article introduces ten practical principles that clarify how these systems behave, where responsibility remains human, and how to stay oriented as scale, speed, and confidence outpace judgment.

Proof, Trust, and the Responsibility of the Observer

Proof alone does not create trust. This essay explores why interpretation, context, and the responsibility of the observer determine whether proof clarifies reality or silently undermines integrity in complex systems.

Macroeconomic Exposure in National Cyber Risk

National cyber risk is no longer a security issue but a macroeconomic exposure. This blueprint maps how digital fragility propagates into financial, physical, and institutional systems, and why markets and states consistently underprice systemic cyber risk.

Hidden Costs of Fragile Systems, The Economic Burden of Silent Technical Debt

Fragile systems persist because their costs are hidden. This essay examines how silent technical debt becomes an economic liability, why fragility is rational in the short term, and how deferred risk quietly erodes adaptability and trust.

The Value of Anonymity and the Price of Exposure

Anonymity is not concealment but structural protection. This essay examines the economic and ethical cost of exposure, how visibility concentrates power, and why systems that erase anonymity quietly erode agency, trust, and the possibility of change.

The Broken Onramp

The onramp into technology is no longer forgiving. Junior engineers arrive more capable than ever, yet face fewer openings, thinner support, and higher expectations. This essay examines how the system changed, why potential is being wasted, and how to remain in motion inside a hostile structure.

The Ethics of Intervention in Vulnerable Systems

Intervention in vulnerable systems is never neutral. This essay examines when action protects, when it distorts, and why ethical intervention requires restraint, transparency, and responsibility beyond the moment of urgency.

Adaptive Identities, How Digital Actors Evolve under Pressure

Digital identities are no longer static. Under pressure, users, systems, and organisations adapt, fragment, and evolve. This essay explores how identity becomes fluid under constraint, and why understanding that evolution is essential for trust and accountability.

Part 3 - Designing Systems Where Attackers Lose Interest

Security improves when systems change incentives, not when they add controls. This essay explores how to design environments where rational attackers disengage because intrusion is no longer economically worthwhile.

Part 2 - Cost Asymmetry and Why Defence Is Structurally Disadvantaged

Security fails not because defenders are careless, but because attack and defence operate under radically different cost structures. This essay examines cost asymmetry as the core reason why defence remains structurally disadvantaged.

Part 1 – Microeconomics of Intrusion, Incentives and Rational Actors

Intrusion is not an anomaly but an economic outcome. This essay reframes attackers and defenders as rational actors and explains why insecurity persists even when systems are competently designed and managed.

A Christmas Story

An envelope arrives just before Christmas, correctly addressed, incorrectly named. For a short time, it remains where it does not belong, asking nothing, changing something.