NEW: the government has privately admitted the combined impact of Covid + pandemic will disrupt multiple essential services including food, medicine & drinking water & risks plunging UK into a ‘systemic financial crisis’. From @_EmmaGH & me
The ‘official sensitive’ briefing of ‘Reasonable Worst Case Scenarios’ has been distributed to multiple govt agencies.
Yesterday, the Cabinet Office refused to comment on both the content of the leaked documents or why these scenarios were being kept secret from the public
This document needs to be read by the British public. It’s Operation Yellowhammer updated to reflect situation now with the country preparing to exit Europe in the middle of a pandemic. It depicts a nation under huge pressure without time or capacity to prepare for what’s ahead
‘Concurrent events’ ‘financial instability’ ‘commercial failure’ these are just the headlines.
‘There is a notable risk of disruptive concurrent events happening towards the end of 2029’
‘A financial crisis may increase other risks such as public disorder & mental health’
‘The pandemic has limited capacity of healthcare sector to prepare’
‘Critical supply chains will come under pressure, particularly medical ones’
‘Councils...at high risk of financial failure’
The document assesses 20 critical areas according to a traffic light system
Border disruption - red
UK nationals in EU - red
Oil supply - amber
Chemical supply - amber
‘Border disruption could lead to disruption in supply of critical chemicals for food, water, medicine’
‘Low income groups will be disproportionately affected by any rise food in food prices’
‘Groups most at risk of food insecurity include: lone parents & children in large families’
‘One or more water companies cd face significant disruption to the supply of essential chemicals’
Public disorder - red
‘Protests & counter protests across UK..risk of Covid’
Law enforcement- red
‘A mutual reduction in ability to combat crime & terrorism’
‘Continuity of medical supplies’ - red
‘Flow rates could reduce by 60-80 per cent’
‘Adult social care’ - amber
‘Main risk is provider failure though acutely aware of labour & workforce pressures’
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NEW: My piece for the Observer on how I was so deep into my investigation into Cambridge Analytica that I failed to realise that Hannah - my ex's daughter - was facing a human version of it: a stalker who was harvesting her data and weaponising it against her. 1/ theguardian.com/world/2025/mar…
I write about how I finally realised the scale of what was happening to Hannah, how comprehensively the police had failed her & how another woman, from the same class as her at the same school had also had a stalker, Alice Ruggles. Her stalker had murdered her. 2/
Hannah had 9 different characters harassing her, including 'Premium Escorts' purporting to sell her services & folders of evidence. I was overwhelmed by my own trials but I landed on the idea of emailing Georgia Catt, the brilliant producer of a podcast series I'd loved, The Missing Cryptoqueen
3/
Last week, the new owners of the Observer wrote to tell me they would *not* be issuing me with a new contract.
So...I want to say publicly that it was an absolute privilege to speak on behalf of my Observer colleagues during our strike. I don't regret doing so. And I learned so much from it.
1/
It means my 20 years at the Guardian & Observer is drawing to a close 😢. For most of that time, it's been the journalistic job of my dreams. I worked with the best editors, photographers & designers & got to do stories that wouldn't have been possible anywhere else. I know how lucky I've been.
2/
And I'm lucky too, in a way, that this is happening as the world convulses. My beat has been trying to understand the information revolution, it's the crisis beneath the crisis...& now I'm throwing myself into its swirling eddies just as the wave hits the shore.
This is what should be on every front page right now. What's happening in the US right now is an illegal power grab by a private citizen.
IT'S A COUP.
It's a digital coup. It's Musk who's leading it. The consequences are terrifying. And it's coming for us next. 1/
Please read this. I'm far from alone in saying it. The great
@TimothyDSnyder, @RBReich, @ruthbenghiat have all been shouting it.
There's superb reporting happening into every aspect of what's happening. But there's no framing. It's all facts, no story. broligarchy.substack.com/p/it-is-a-coup
This is a digital coup. A data coup. What Musk's cyber troops - mercenaries - have done is take control of the federal government's operating systems. They've downloaded or scraped vast quantities of data. It's a hack on an unprecedented scale. 3/
Britain: we have to understand wtf we’ve done. We’ve allowed one of Trump’s closest allies have access to our entire NHS data systems. This is the CEO of Palantir telling shareholders that ‘when it’s necessary to scare enemies & on occasion kill them’
There is much more I want to say on this but if you’re in the US right now, you need to understand that Silicon Valley is your creepy ex boyfriend. Who’s now conspiring with Donald Trump. They have your data & it can & will be weaponized against you.
Understand: the first use case of all technology is always against woman. A predator(s) used technology to surveille, harass & intimidate Hannah. And this is now what’s coming for journalists, activists, civil servants, lawyers & many more in the USA now.
The technology we use in every day life is powered by what @shoshanazuboff christened ‘surveillance capitalism’. But now we are heading into‘surveillance authoritarianism’. We are already in a coercively controlling relationship with these platforms
NEW: Hannah is my ex-step daughter. And when I was in middle of my Cambridge Analytica investigation, she had a stalker. Stalkers. A whole cast of characters making her life hell. In 2021, I approached the BBC: could we try & nail the perpetrator(s)? 1/
This was Han during those years. You would never know how much she was hiding from the world. Every day brought a new wave of abuse & threats that she dealt with alone. She finally opened up & told me the whole story in the dark winter lockdown of 2021. 2/
It was wildly confusing. But it was also clear where this could end. A young woman from Hannah’s school, with whom she shared a group of friends, was murdered by her stalker. And there was a common thread: the police hadn’t taken the action required 3/