Anglofuturism

• Scientists are leaving academia in droves—so James Phillips and Laura Ryan want to build Lovelace Labs | Part 1 of 2

  James W. Phillips and Laura Ryan are former neuroscientists who’ve written a proposal to save British science by basically blowing up the university system. Or at least building an alternative to it. Their diagnosis? The best scientists they know have all quit academia—not because they failed, but because they succeeded and realised the game is rigged. The incentive structure rewards safe, incremental research that gets published quickly rather than ambitious, years-long projects that might actually change the world. Frederick Sanger won two Nobel Prizes while publishing three papers in 20 years. Today he’d never get tenure.Their solution is Lovelace Labs—a network of institutions modelled on Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and the Cambridge LMB, where scientists would be core-funded for 15 years, assessed internally by colleagues who understand their work, and freed from the tyranny of grant applications and citation metrics. Where engineers work alongside theorists, where 30-year-olds run labs instead of spending a decade as research assistants, and where the founding director gets told by Number 10: “Here’s your money, we’re not going to mess around.”Tom and Calum discuss with James and Laura:* Why the smartest scientists quit: Laura’s smartest friend from her Cambridge PhD—someone who always wanted to be a scientist—left because the system is fundamentally unfair. James’s entire cohort of rising stars, the people doing work featured in the New York Times, have all left academic research except one,* The replication crisis stems from broken incentives: Foundational Alzheimer’s research papers were fraudulent for 25 years because everyone benefits from piggybacking on existing results rather than exposing problems. Brain imaging studies lacked statistical power but it took 20 years for that to become common knowledge,* Leo Szilard’s 1948 prophecy: He wrote a satirical story about a wealthy man who wanted to slow down science, so he invented peer review—pulling scientists out of labs into administration and forcing everyone to work on ideas that three peers would approve, killing all unusual fresh shoots,* Peter Higgs couldn’t survive today: He published sparingly over 20 years, doing deep work that eventually won a Nobel Prize. Today’s system demands papers every six months with positive results—negative data is considered “time wasted” even if it’s exemplary science,* China has overtaken us on neuroscience: Nine of the top 10 institutions in leading journals are now Chinese (it was two five years ago). Their packages to recruit talent: “Come over, we’ll give you your own lab, strong core facilities, hire whoever you want.” The UK’s pitch: “But we have Oxford!”,* The Number 10 science establishment blocked honors: During the pandemic, two researchers (Bonner and Kataraman) created the rapid testing program with modeling that proved crucial. The science establishment blocked their honors and gave them instead to senior people who’d been blocking the rapid testing program,* Alan Kay was 30 at Xerox PARC: When James asked him about top-down direction, Kay revealed he was the oldest person there at 30. In the UK, these people would still be postdocs working as research assistants. Demis, Dario, Sam Altman—all in their 30s when founding DeepMind, Anthropic, OpenAI,* Max Perutz’s recipe for great science: “No politics, no committees, no reports, no referees, no interviews—just gifted, highly motivated people picked by a few people of good judgment.” The Cambridge LMB followed this and produced Nobel Prize after Nobel Prize,* The UK over-indexes on universities: We rely more heavily on the university department model than almost any other advanced science nation. Germany has Max Planck and Fraunhofer. America has DOE labs and tech company research. We have... more universities in Midlands towns acting as jobs programs,* Westminster ejects the misfits: James was part of the Cummings misfits experiment. As soon as key supporters left Number 10, the team began leaving. The Vaccines Task Force was crushed, the data science unit repeatedly attacked. Two of Labour’s three great appointments—Matt Clifford and Poppy Gustafsson—have already left. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anglofuturism.co/subscribe

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• John Fingleton's Nuclear Revolution, Sacred Cows, and Why Shabana Mahmood is All Talk

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.anglofuturism.coTom and Calum dissect John Fingleton’s damning nuclear regulatory review, play Sacred Cow with the greenbelt and Zone 1 council housing, and explain why Shabana Mahmood’s “tough on immigration” reforms are actually quite soft. Plus: nuclear policy specialist Robert Boswall drops by fresh from the pub to explain why the ONR reports to the Department for Work and Pensions, and why Birmingham City FC’s new chimney-adorned stadium might be the most important piece of architecture in Britain.Tom and Calum discuss:* The Fingleton nuclear report: Santa came down the chimney with a huge sack of regulation-cutting proposals—£700 million fish discos, eight different regulators for defence projects, and the revelation that civil servants defer to regulators who defer back to civil servants in an endless loop of inaction,* Robert Boswall’s pub celebration: Fresh from carousing over the nuclear report, nuclear policy specialist Robert Boswall explains why tolerability of risk matters, why the ONR bizarrely reports to the Department for Work and Pensions, and why his favourite regulation to abolish is “regulatory justification”—a random EU inheritance that costs millions and achieves nothing,* Sacred Cow carnage: Calum slaughters the greenbelt (”most of it is disused petrol stations”), executes Zone 1 council housing without hesitation, but spares Christmas and national parks. Tom meanwhile shows his kindness towards farm animals,* Shabana Mahmood’s immigration mirage: Blue Labour are delighted by her “tough” reforms—20-year wait for asylum seekers!—but there are carve-outs everywhere (jewellery confiscation exempt if “sentimental”), new safe and legal routes opened up, and asylum seekers can choose the 10-year track instead. Chris Bayliss in The Critic calls it out as vibes over substance,* Elite defectors and vibe shifts: Tom argues that Westminster consensus on immigration is cracking and elite opinion is shifting against mass migration. Calum counters that this means nothing if Reform sweeps in on northern Red Wall seats while London dinner parties stay the same,* Birmingham City FC’s chimney stadium: Thomas Heatherwick’s design with 12 enormous brick chimneys evoking Birmingham’s industrial past. Tom loves it as history finding echo in architecture. Calum worries it’s pastiche—until Tom destroys him with facts and logic about Houses of Parliament crenellations.

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• "Why Did Millennials Choose Palestine Over Rent?" — Shiv Malik on Building Britain's First New City in 50 Years (Part 2)

  In the second part of this conversation, Shiv Malik goes deeper on why millennials never organised around housing despite it being the defining material issue of their generation. His book tour for Jilted Generation in 2010 drew audiences full of chest-beating boomers—but almost no millennials showed up. Was it that they saw housing as a personal failure rather than a systemic one? That complaining about rent wasn’t intellectual enough for degree-educated people who’d read theory? Or has social media created weak bonds and the illusion of political action through likes?In the second half of this two-part conversation, Shiv, Tom, and Calum discuss:* Why millennials never protested housing: Shiv’s book tour drew boomers who either self-flagellated or accused him of wanting them dead, but almost no millennials—possibly because rent isn’t intellectual enough for degree-educated people who prefer causes with “great bodies of theory,”* The cavalry isn’t coming: a major decision-maker told Shiv that building a city “is not the kind of thing we could do in 21st century Britain” and asked where his generation’s protests were—because politicians would act if young people actually demanded housing,* The social contract, not cities: Shiv doesn’t only care about cities—he cares about restoring the promise that if you work hard you can buy a house and raise a family. The city is just the only vehicle that might get past all the NIMBYs,* Development corporations as tools: the Olympics legislation took nine months and had spades in the ground within 18 months. HS2 failed because it had to negotiate bat tunnels with every parish along the route,* The aesthetics problem: how do you bring back decoration without being slavish to the past? Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Art Deco represent the last moment of both futurism and ornamentation before the brutalists threw out decoration entirely,* Manufacturing charm: Richard de Haan transformed Folkestone by renting to creative businesses at peppercorn rates. But can you manufacture what 220-year-old London pubs have imbued into their fabric, or does it just happen? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anglofuturism.co/subscribe

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• Britain's First New City in 50 Years: Shiv Malik on Building a Million-Person City East of Cambridge (Part 1)

  Shiv Malik is the would-be founder of Britain’s first new city in over 50 years. He and Joe Reeve from LFG have identified 45,000 acres east of Cambridge for a million-person city, complete with cross-laminated timber skyscrapers, trams, proper sewerage, and enough infrastructure that NIMBYs might actually be won over by three new hospitals and 300 schools appearing on their doorstep.In the first of this two-part conversation, Shiv, Tom, and Calum discuss:* The vision: a pedestrianised city centre with wooden skyscrapers reaching 60 storeys, trams running through it, and sewerage done right for once—plus all the ideas that can never be retrofitted into Victorian streets,* Why Milton Keynes is Britain’s secret productivity miracle: it’s the most productive place outside a few London boroughs, and if everyone lived as richly as Milton Keynes residents, we’d be 50% richer as a country—not because of roundabouts, but because recently-built infrastructure is simply more efficient than Victorian stairs,* The stakeholder nightmare: West Suffolk Council met Shiv for 90 minutes, Lord Vestey owns a third of the land, 8,000 current residents need convincing, and the development corporation model that built Milton Keynes in six weeks of public consultation is now viewed as dangerously autocratic,* Why NIMBYs have a point: the houses are terrible, there’s never infrastructure with new developments, Section 106 bargaining is an irrational barter system, and people are right to oppose ugly pylons and Barratt Homes extensions that crater village life without delivering train stations or hospitals,* The intergenerational thesis: Britain created a new leisure class that never existed in human history—retirees with incomes equal to workers but derived from capital, not labour—and they have time to dominate local politics while exhausted workers can’t fill out planning responses at 9:30pm,* The Boriswave outrage: Shiv gets told to “go home” online and understands why people are angry. He agrees with Shabana Mahmood that immigration policy has been a total failure—but why haven’t we built a reservoir in 30 years, and why doesn’t Haverhill have a train station? Immigration didn’t cause those failures,* The cavalry isn’t coming: Baroness Claire Fox asked Shiv if his book was “just a giant whinge,” and she was right—millennials and Gen Z protest about Palestine but don’t organise around material circumstances like housing, which is why Joe Reeve’s “we are the cavalry” moment convinced Shiv to dust off his old city plans,* The economics: community land trusts for housing, special economic zone tax breaks like Canary Wharf for commercial land, 80 acres in the city centre for ACDC (Albion City Development Corporation) to capture uplift, and the precedent of the Docklands Development Corporation proving this model works,* Phase one goals: convince Housing Secretary Steve Rayner to greenlight the development corporation, raise £200 million for master planning and site surveys, get spades in the ground by the end of this Parliament, and prove to Lord Vestey that selling up (or investing) beats getting CPO’d. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anglofuturism.co/subscribe

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• Britain's Shadow Empire? How Crown Dependencies Move $3 Trillion and Support a Million UK Jobs

  James Kingston works in the digital asset industry and is the author of Profitable Peripherals: Maximising the potential of British CDOTs. He came aboard the KC3 to explain why the Cayman Islands, Jersey, and Britain’s 17 overseas territories aren’t tax havens draining the exchequer—they’re innovation labs pumping foreign capital into British banks and employing British lawyers to service Chinese deals.James, Tom, and Calum on:* Why the narrative that CDOTs are a “shadow empire for British finance” draining tax revenue is measurably wrong—Jersey alone supports a million UK jobs annually through £1.4 trillion of intermediated capital, and 68% of deposits in Jersey banks flow back to Britain despite only 29% coming from the UK,* The comparative advantage problem: 70% of the world’s hedge funds are domiciled in the Cayman Islands ($2.7 trillion, more than the US), and 66% of British Virgin Islands assets concern Greater China deals—meaning British lawyers in London tax revenue from Shenzhen transactions they’d never otherwise access,* Why these jurisdictions succeeded where hundreds of other offshore centres failed: international investors trust the common law system and know that if something goes wrong, they can ultimately rely on London—but if Britain ever seized the money (as one MP proposed to fund the NHS), the entire edifice would collapse overnight,* The innovation case: Jersey passed data trust laws, the Isle of Man is releasing Data Asset Foundation legislation, and the Cayman Islands created legal structures for DAOs—Britain should partner with CDOTs as regulatory sandboxes for tech rather than just finance, creating British jobs in data stewardship and AI development,* Why the “finance curse” criticism—that Britain’s best minds waste their lives writing tax-efficient contracts rather than founding energy startups—is the most compelling argument against CDOTs, but also why abandoning comparative advantage in pinstripes would be economically illiterate,* The security question: can Britain actually defend these territories in a multipolar world, or should we follow Philip Cunliffe’s argument that claiming places you can’t defend is a fiction? James says giving things up willy-nilly (looking at you, Chagos) isn’t the answer—economic activity strengthens claims, like the East India Company did,* The vassalisation problem: Britain spent decades being completely open to the world, but CDOTs are really nodes in a US financial imperium—British tech stacks run on American platforms, and conflating US interests with British interests means we’ve forgotten to ask what independent leverage looks like,* James’s 50-year vision: British spaceships launched from Ascension Island, Jersey-domiciled mining outfits in the Oort Cloud, interstellar cargo ships flagged with the Isle of Man, and Britain remaining in the top tier of nations with trillion-dollar companies built here rather than accepting managed decline as a “normal European country.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anglofuturism.co/subscribe

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