“Such reactions [seeing only the enormous good or bad potential of a new technology] are amplified by what might be termed chronocentricity – the egotism that one’s own generation is posed on the very cusp of history. Today, we are repeatedly told that we are in the midst of a communications revolution. But the electric telegraph was, in many ways, far more disconcerting...”

Epilogue in Tom Standage The Victorian Internet

In my latest National Post column I say the first step toward an effective foreign policy is to abandon illusions about the effectiveness of “soft power” without something hard behind it.

In my latest National Post column I deplore Canada’s tendency to ignore national security threats including, most recently, an aggressive Russian submarine presence in the North Atlantic that menaces vital communications systems.