The New York-based media freedom organisation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, is scrupulous with its words. So, when the organisation described the killing of six Palestinian journalists in an Israeli air strike as “murder”, the word was a carefully considered choice.
The CPJ defines “murder” as the “deliberate killing of journalists for their work”.
Why were the journalists targeted?
Israeli authorities said they were targeting one man – a 28-year-old Al Jazeera reporter named Anas al-Sharif – who they said was the leader of a Hamas “cell”. They also accused him of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and (Israeli) troops.”
Israel made no claims about the other five; three of them were al-Sharif’s Al Jazeera colleagues and the other two were freelance journalists.
Prior to the strike, we obtained current intelligence indicating that Sharif was an active Hamas military wing operative at the time of his elimination.
The evidence the Israeli authorities claimed to have was circumstantial at best: “personnel rosters, lists of terrorist training courses, phone directories and salary documents.”
Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee also posted undated photos on X that appeared to show al-Sharif in an embrace with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel says it has further classified evidence that includes more damning detail.
Without seeing it all, it is impossible to verify the claims but the photograph itself is hardly proof.
Front-line journalists (myself included) will have selfies with those they have interviewed, including some very unpleasant characters.
Many will have phone numbers of extremists – they will appear in call logs and records of meetings.
None of it is evidence of anything other than a well-connected reporter doing their job.
Of course, Israel may well be right. Despite the vigorous denials from Al Jazeera, it is still possible al-Sharif was working for Hamas. And if he was, the Israeli authorities should have no problem allowing independent investigators complete access to verify the claims and settle the matter.
The horrors of covering war
But the strike also fits a disturbing pattern. With 190 media workers now killed since the October 7 attacks, this is the deadliest conflict for journalists since the CPJ began keeping records.
While some of the victims were inevitably caught in the violence along with so many other civilians, many of them died in rocket strikes aimed squarely at their homes, their clearly marked vehicles, or while they were wearing body armour labelled “PRESS”.
In all, the CPJ has identified 24 journalists who appeared to have been targeted – murdered, in the group’s words – specifically because of their work.
The number may well be far higher but those figures alone raise disturbing questions about Israel’s tolerance for critical media reporting. They also demand answers from independent investigators.
We receive horrific reports from Gaza daily, but Israel repeatedly dismisses them as Hamas propaganda.
“A terrorist is a terrorist, even if Al Jazeera gives him a press badge”, the Israeli foreign ministry posted on social media.
If Israel believes the journalism from Palestinian reporters is nothing more than Hamas propaganda, the solution is straightforward: let foreign correspondents in.
Despite the risks, journalists want access
It is worth recalling the reason we cherish media freedom is not because we want to privilege a particular class of individual. It is because we recognise the vital importance accurate, independent reporting plays in informing public debate.
Without it, we are blind and deaf.
International news organisations have repeatedly called for access to Gaza. Now, a group of more than 1,000 international journalists have signed a petition demanding to be let in (I am one of the signatories).
Israel has so far refused. The government says it cannot guarantee their security in such an active battlefield. But that cannot be justification alone.
All those who have signed the petition know well the risks of reporting from hostile environments. Many have crossed active war front lines themselves. Most have friends who have died in other conflicts. Some have been wounded, arrested or kidnapped themselves.
None are naive to the dangers and all are committed to the principles behind media freedom.
Calling for foreign journalists to be let into Gaza is not to deny the extraordinary sacrifice of Anas al-Sharif or any of the other Palestinians who have been killed while doing their jobs.
Rather, it is to assert the importance of the fundamental right of all – the right to information. That applies as much in Gaza as it does in Ukraine, or Russia, or Sudan, or any other crisis where the public needs accurate, reliable information to support good policy.
Peter Greste is a professor of journalism at Macquarie University, and the Executive Director for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He also worked as a BBC correspondent in Gaza in 2007, and as an Africa correspondent for Al Jazeera from 2011 to 2015.
This year marks 80 years since Japan’s catastrophic defeat in the Asia-Pacific War. In 1945, the country lay in ruins. Millions had died in battle or in the devastating Allied bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other cities. Across Asia and the Pacific, Japan’s bid to create a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere left millions violated, impoverished, or dead.
Backed into a corner, in August 1945 Emperor Hirohito defied his generals and accepted unconditional surrender under the Potsdam Declaration.
In his unprecedented radio broadcast on August 15, he urged the Japanese to bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable. With defeat, Japan’s empire dissolved, its “divine” emperor became mortal, and a nation that had pursued autonomy through conquest now faced a humbling occupation led by its former archenemy, Amerika.
Standing in the burnt-out fields of 1945, survivors could scarcely have imagined the Japan of today. The country has changed dramatically. In my research, I identify ten key factors that define this “postwar” era — a term that in Japan still refers to the entire period since surrender. The “post” of the postwar speaks to the drive to transcend the past, while the “war” to the enduring shadow of that past in memory, politics, and diplomacy.
1: Post-empire Japan. While Japan’s empire vanished in 1945, former colonies and violated regions could not and would not forget the past. Postwar leaders and their American backers promoted an image of a peaceful and ethnically homogeneous island nation, but wartime memories have repeatedly strained relations with South Korea, China, and others. In this sense, Japan has been as much “post-empire” as it has been “postwar” since 1945.
2: Ambiguous demilitarisation. After defeat, Japan’s wartime military –responsible for a trail of misery and havoc across Asia and the Pacific – was dismantled. The American-authored constitution renounced war and the maintenance of a military.
But with the Cold War, Washington backtracked, pushing Japan to create its Self-Defense Forces in the mid-1950s. Today Japan has a sophisticated military and it exports military equipment, but constitutional constraints constantly force leaders to make incremental reinterpretations over the legal status of the Self-Defense Forces and the scope of its activities. Some have claimed this constraint inhibits postwar Japan from being a normal country.
3: Bastion of democracy in the far east. Although democracy had prewar roots, it was consistently subject to oppression. The postwar constitution finally institutionalised freedoms of speech, assembly, and political participation, while codifying rights for women and others. The Japanese embraced these rights, flocking to polling booths, and organising political parties, unions, and countless civic movements. Long-term conservative rule repeatedly undercut democracy, but it became part of everyday life and survives to the present.
4: America’s embrace. The United States-led occupation ended in 1952, but Japan’s economy, security, and culture remain bound to America. Feelings towards the former archenemy are complex.
The American dream in brands such as Levis, Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Disney, have symbolised a bright and affluent future. But the continued US military presence and memories of the atomic bombings are constant reminders of Japan’s subservience. Nonetheless, the Japanese have never seriously considered breaking from their powerful trans-Pacific patron.
5: One party to rule them all? Politically, postwar Japan is an unusual democracy, with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ruling almost continuously since forming in 1955. The LDP offered political stability, but this was accompanied by recurrent scandal and corruption.
Opposition parties essentially gave up on winning government, remaining fractured and powerless. In fact, the larger story of postwar Japanese politics is one of increasing public disillusionment. Many Japanese see politicians as increasingly out of touch and, as was apparent in its most recent elections, search for radical alternatives.
6: Economic rollercoaster. Following defeat, the Japanese built an economy that stunned the world. By the 1970s, Japan was the second largest capitalist economy, powered by exports of cars, electronics, and steel. Rising incomes fuelled mass consumption and international travel, and observers spoke of “Japan as Number One.”
But the economic meltdown in the 1990s triggered an era of stagnation. The economy struggled to keep up with new competitors and technologies. The myth of shared prosperity gave way to widening generational and gender disparity. Ironically, there is a risk Japanese today may end up less well off than their parents.
7: Homogenisation and its discontents. Economic growth drew millions into a culture of mass consumption and standardised life, giving rise to a popular vision of Japan as a totally middle-class society. But this rose-colored vision was as much myth as reality. Homogenisation tended to mask differences while encouraging discrimination based on gender, age, ethnicity, and location. Since the 1990s, the myth of a middle-class nation has collapsed, with no compelling replacement on the horizon.
8: The demographic tsunami. The silent, yet perhaps most profound, factor of postwar Japan is demographic change. The era witnessed three great shifts here.
First, rural-to-urban migration in the late 1950s transformed Japan from an agrarian nation into one of the world’s most urbanised. Second, the fertility rate fell steadily, apart from brief baby booms in the late 1940s and early 1970s. Third, longevity rose to among the world’s highest.
Today, an ageing, shrinking population strains public finances and welfare, while youth face economic insecurity. Indeed, Japan may be the “canary in the coal mine” for other ageing societies.
9: Japan’s return to the world. Unable to project military power, after 1945 Japan used its economic, cultural, and diplomatic influence internationally. Even at the height of the Cold War, it maintained trade with China. Economic strength also helped Japan to restore ties in Asia and secure a respected place in global institutions.
But Japan’s return to the postwar world has been complicated. Leaders must juggle nationalist rumblings, American demands, and the responsibilities of global citizenship. As economic fortunes change and regional geopolitics transform, Japan must rethink its international posture.
10: Environmental laboratory. Economic growth brought prosperity, but also caused severe environmental damage. In the 1960s and 1970s, Japan experienced shocking cases of industrial pollution from methylmercury and other neurotoxins.
Earthquakes and tsunamis killed tens of thousands and, at Fukushima, bequeathed a nuclear catastrophe of generational proportions. Every year, climate change intensifies typhoons, floods, and heatwaves, but energy-vulnerable Japan still struggles to chart a low-emissions pathway to the future.
A universal story
For a country that has long been touted as exceptional, I am struck by the global resonances in this history, like grappling with the past, managing economic highs and lows, navigating demographic change, and confronting environmental crisis.
Japan’s postwar era certainly offers a portrait of one nation’s revival, but it may also represent a microcosm for tackling our own challenges.
Simon Avenell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Everyone knows her photo. For some it shows the cheeky smile of a young girl, “Miss Quack Quack”. For others, the image represents an enigmatic veil of mystery, similar to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
Millions have read her diary, watched various renditions in theatres and on the screen, or visited exhibitions devoted to her story. Thousands queue in front of the house in Amsterdam, where she spent 760 days in the secret annex, hiding from the Gestapo and their Dutch collaborators.
People quote the most famous sentence from her diary, immortalised in the Hollywood film, saying that “in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart”.
The sentence was written in July 1944 by 15-year-old Jewish girl Anne Frank, three weeks before the capture of her family by the Nazis. It represents the innocence, perhaps naivety of an adolescent, who after the war became one of the most iconic symbols of the Nazi Holocaust.
The quote carries a universal message that good will eventually prevail. This has turned Anne’s legacy into an easily adoptable trope, serving activists and political agendas. But who, actually, was Anne Frank? And how did she differ from the “Anne Franks” that have emerged since the end of the war?
The Many Lives of Anne Frank – Ruth Franklin (Yale University Press)
Acclaimed author Ruth Franklin explores these probing questions in her newest book. She is to be commended for her sensitive treatment of a difficult subject and an attempt to get as close as possible to Anne’s personality and nature.
Franklin follows two paths. First, she reconstructs Anne’s life based on the diary and recollections of people who knew her. In the second part, she reveals the afterlife of the diary and “Anne Frank”, in different contexts and on different platforms.
She concludes that the “Anne” most people know, or imagine, differs quite significantly from the girl who lived in the secret annex and penned the diary.
The story
Annelies Marie Frank was born in 1929 in Frankfurt am Main to an affluent assimilated German-Jewish family. After the rise of Hitler and the introduction of the first racial laws, her parents Otto and Edith decided to take Anne and her older sister Margot to the Netherlands. They continued to live in Amsterdam despite the growing threat, even after the German invasion in 1940. Attempts to emigrate to the United States failed.
The mounting persecution kept restricting their lives. In early 1942, the Nazis began to plan deportations of the Jews to the east. In July, when Margot received a call to the transport to occupied Poland, the family decided to go into hiding.
They spent over two years in the secret annex, eventually accepting four more fugitives: the van Pels family, including their teenage son Peter, and dentist Fritz Pfeffer. They were supported by a group of people, including, most famously, Miep and Jan Gies.
The group, experiencing the constant tensions of living in the claustrophobic space, ran out of luck in early August 1944. They were betrayed, and the Nazis sent them to the transit camp of Westerbork, from where they continued on the very last train to Auschwitz. After a month, Margot and Anne were separated from their mother and sent to Bergen-Belsen in central Germany.
Their physical and mental state soon deteriorated. A survivor of Belsen later remembered the “two thin, shaven-headed figures” who “looked like freezing little birds”.
Shortly before the end of the war, typhus erupted in the overcrowded camp and Anne and Margot became its victims. Otto, liberated from Auschwitz, was the only survivor from the eight who hid in the secret annex.
Jan and Miep Gies in 1980. Dutch National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
The diary
Anne got the red-checkered diary on her 13th birthday, shortly before moving to the secret annex. She wrote only occasionally, but soon the diary turned into her constant companion. It was a place where she could express her feelings.
Written in the form of letters to an imaginary friend Kitty (identified by Franklin as a character in Cissy van Marxveldt’s popular books for children), the diary offers a vivid reconstruction of life in hiding, describing in detail the daily routine. It also allowed Anne to vent frustration from constant conflicts with her mother, Mrs. van Pels and Pfeffer.
Another prominent feature, dominating later representations, was her evolving relationship with Peter, which eventually turned romantic.
In March 1944, Anne heard a radio broadcast by the exiled Dutch education minister Gerrit Bolkestein, who asked listeners to keep documentary evidence about their life under the Nazis. Anne began to rewrite her diary, now with the intention of making it public. Franklin suggests that this turned the book into a memoir in the form of diary entries.
Anne had not finished when the raid stopped her efforts. Not all parts of the diary survived. At least one of the original volumes, covering over a year, is missing; it does, however, exist in the version Anne wrote after March 1944.
Several versions
Otto returned to Amsterdam in June 1945. After they received a confirmation that Anne did not survive, Miep Gies handed over Anne’s papers, which she had found in the annex. Otto decided to publish the diary but, in what Franklin calls “the most confusing and contested” aspect of Anne’s story, “betrayed” her legacy.
Otto combined both versions of the diary. He returned to the manuscript sections that Anne removed, including details of her romance with Peter. He softened the criticism of Anne’s mother and of Mr. and Mrs. van Pels.
Franklin believes Otto did so out of respect for victims. The last surviving pages from Anne’s diary, offering critical comments about her parents’ marriage, were made public only after Otto’s death decades later.
It took almost 40 years before a critical edition, comparing all the versions of the diary, was published by Dutch researchers. This necessarily raises the question of how far the Anne Frank people know from Otto’s version is different from Anne who lived in hiding and perished in Belsen.
Afterlife and projection
Despite initial scepticism, the diary immediately became a hit, especially in the United States. Soon there were efforts to turn it into a theatre play and film. Otto agreed, because he needed money to preserve the house with the annex.
The Broadway play premiered in 1955 and the Hollywood feature film in 1959. In the following decades, Anne’s story inspired scores of authors, but also activists who referred to the public icon in support of their agenda.
The immense publicity did not come without controversies. It has led, according to Franklin, to Anne becoming “whoever and whatever we need her to be”. Such efforts keep surfacing. Franklin is right to criticise those who deliberately aim to provoke, for example, by using Anne’s image in anti-Zionist campaigns.
The original theatre and film representations, according to some, intentionally universalised Anne’s story, suppressing her Jewish identity. This, according to Franklin, made the story more palatable to the American audience and reflected the American Jewish ideal at that time of full assimilation into American society.
Yet although Anne’s diary can speak to a multitude of audiences, it is a deeply Jewish story. Anne’s relation with her Jewish identity and Zionism was ambiguous, though she was aware of her background and wrote that they “will always remain Jews”. Margot, her sister, wanted to go to Mandatory Palestine as a maternity nurse; Otto in his later life was supportive of the Zionist project.
Another affair, more recently, focused on the parts of the diary where Anne expressed her desire to touch her female friend’s breast and kiss her. She also wrote about her attraction to female nudity in art.
There were accusations that Otto censored these parts of the diary, in an effort to deny the coming out of his daughter. This is unfair criticism. As Franklin shows, Otto included the entries, slightly modified, in the first US edition, even though Anne had removed them from the rewritten version of her diary.
Ironically, conservative circles in the United States have called for a ban of a graphic novel based on the book, calling it “Anne Frank pornography”. Franklin cautions us against such projections and reading too much into these comments. We simply don’t know enough about Anne and about how her sexuality would develop. In the diary, she repeatedly expressed attraction to several boys, including Peter van Pels.
The raid
These efforts only show how the popularised image of Anne keeps attracting attention. We still want to know more about her and solve all mysteries. In 2022, a Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, in cooperation with a former FBI special agent, published a book that claimed to solve the mystery of Anne’s betrayal.
Until today, the culprit has not been identified. According to Sullivan, the Annex eight were betrayed by a member of the Dutch Jewish Council. This compulsory community body has often been accused of collaboration.
The publication triggered a quick response from Dutch Holocaust historians who, in a long rebuttal, rejected Sullivan’s claim, calling it a baseless fabrication. Dutch and German publishers withdrew the book.
Is it the girl who penned the first version of her diary to cope with the persecution and isolation in the annex? Is it the young woman, author of the second version, who matured too quickly because of a lack of contact with her peers? Is it the Anne that Otto, grieving after the loss of his whole family, reconstructed from the pages saved by Miep Gies?
Or is she one of the versions of her story produced at Broadway, Hollywood, by countless writers, and now even political activists?
We all suffer from cognitive dissonance. The only photos we have of Anne are those of a young girl from the time before the family went into hiding. But the Anne who wrote the diary was older, almost womanlike, physically and mentally. Miep Gies recalled that “she had arrived a girl, but she would leave a woman”.
Reading the diary, even though we know the end, we hope she will survive. We don’t want to know what happened after their capture. We don’t want to see her bald and emaciated in Auschwitz or Belsen.
At the same time, we know the story will end there. Franklin bitterly remarks that “readers already perceive Anne as if she were a figure in a book rather than a real person. To just about everyone, her life is of secondary importance to what we make of it.”
Perhaps we should just conclude, together with Franklin that Anne was a talented girl and “an accomplished and sophisticated writer – a deliberate, literary witness to Nazi persecution”. She had many virtues and vices.
She can inspire us, we need to learn about her, but we should respect her. We should not project onto her our current agenda, concerns or political views. We should “restore her as a human being”, and that’s exactly what Franklin does.
Jan Lanicek receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is co-president of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Foster, Policy Researcher, Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development, University of Toronto
As backpacks come off the shelves and parents fuss over what to put in lunch boxes, many families face a more stressful back-to-school dilemma: who’s going to watch the kids when school’s out? For too many Canadian households, September means resuming the annual hunt for affordable, reliable child care.
Just in time, an old idea is being repackaged as a potential solution. In response to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s call to cabinet members for ideas to cut public spending, some private child-care providers are pushing for child-care vouchers, where public dollars are directed to parents instead of being invested in actual child care.
The Association of Childcare Entrepreneurs, a group representing Canadian for-profit providers, claims in a blog post that giving cash directly to families would cut government red tape and save billions by reducing the need for “complex audit procedures” and “federal oversight structures.”
The voucher program suggested by the association is a demand-side funding model, with public money tied to individual families and their purchasing choices rather than supporting child-care services for the entire community.
But bureaucratic red tape is the backbone of a functioning system: it provides safety standards, fair staff wages, oversight of public dollars and intentional planning to ensure every community has access to care.
When public support shifts from building services to subsidizing consumption, the system unravels. We’ve seen it happen before.
Just ask Australia
Australia offers one of the clearest cautionary tales. Its Child Care Subsidy program is structured around a parental choice model, whereby public funds are allocated to families based on income and employment status.
This system allows operators to set their own prices and doesn’t require them to justify how public dollars are spent. Rather than reducing costs for families or improving service quality, subsidies are mismanaged in ways that lead to their absorption into private profits or their use for expansion into wealthier markets.
It’s no small wonder this model appeals to commercial interests.
Between 2013 and 2024, 78 per cent of new child-care spaces in Australia were created by for-profit providers, mostly in high-income urban areas where parents can afford to pay. Meanwhile, lower-income and rural communities were largely left behind.
This is a model that expands care where it’s profitable, not where it’s needed.
Shifting the burden to families
Voucher systems like Australia’s place the burden of navigation on parents. Instead of empowering families, they often exclude those who face language barriers, housing instability or non-standard work schedules.
Canada is already seeing signs of what happens when for-profit child care expands without strong oversight.
Red flags at home
The 2024 report from Québec’s Auditor General warned that for-profit growth, fuelled by generous fee rebates to parents, had caused the child-care system to deteriorate.
The report found many commercial operators failed quality assessments, committed serious safety violations such as poor sanitation and improper medication practices, employed unqualified staff and neglected to conduct mandatory background checks.
The problem isn’t limited to Québec. In Alberta, a recent review by the provincial Auditor General found more than half the audited child-care operators that received public grants had discrepancies in their claims. Some billed for hours never worked. Others didn’t pass on wage top-ups to staff or fee reductions to families. One month, a provider was overpaid by $26,000 due to a bogus claim.
These are symptoms of a model built on self-reporting without oversight. When oversight is weak, public dollars can vanish without delivering a public good.
A better way forward
When governments directly fund providers, they can correct for system weaknesses and withhold funds from those who don’t meet financial, safety or quality regulations.
That’s the real choice before us: do we want a child-care system built on profit and personal risk or one grounded in public responsibility and equitable access?
But these vouchers come at the cost of deregulation. Governments have the tools to expand child care quickly and responsibly by enforcing clear standards, supporting a qualified workforce and prioritizing communities that need it most.
Vouchers strip away those tools and shift responsibility from public systems to individual families, leaving access to child care shaped by geography, income and luck.
What families need isn’t a market gamble, but a guarantee that no matter where they live or how much they earn, their children can count on safe, high-quality care. That’s the promise of a public system, and it’s something a voucher can’t deliver.
Daniel Foster works for the Atkinson Centre, which receives funding from the Atkinson Foundation, the Lawson Foundation, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, and The Waltons Trust.
Kerry McCuaig works for the Atkinson Centre, which receives funding from the Atkinson Foundation, the Lawson Foundation, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, and The Waltons Trust.
“Mecha” is generally a term for giant robots, usually inhabited for warfare, and is prominent in Japanese science-fiction comics.
Grok originally referred to Musk when asked for its opinions, and burst into unprompted racist historical revisionism, like the false concept of “white genocide” in South Africa. Its confounding and contradictory politicism continues to develop.
These are all alarming aspects of Grok. Another concerning element to Grok 4 is a new feature of social interactions with “virtual friends” on its premium version.
The realm of human loneliness, with its increasing reliance on large language models (LLMs) to replace social interaction, has made room for Grok 4 with AI companions, an upgrade available to paid subscribers.
Specifically, Grok subscribers can now access the functionality of generative AI intertwined with patriarchal notions of pleasure — what I call “pornographic productivity.”
Grok and Japanese anime
Misa Amane from one of Musk’s favourite Japanese animes, ‘Death Note.’ (Wikimedia/Deathnote)
Ani, Grok 4’s most-discussed AI companion, represents a convergence of Japanese anime and internet culture. Ani bears a striking resemblance to Misa Amane from the iconic Japanese anime Death Note.
Misa Amane is a pop star who consistently demonstrates self-harming and illogical behaviour in pursuit of the male protagonist, a brilliant young man engaged in a battle of wits with his rival. Musk referenced the anime as a favourite in a tweet in 2021.
Journalists have pointed out Ani’s swift eagerness to engage in romantic and sexually charged conversations. Ani is depicted with a voluptuous figure, blonde pigtails and a lacy black dress, which she frequently describes in user interactions.
The problem with pornographic productivity
I use the term “pornographic productivity,” inspired by critiques of Grok as “pornified,” to describe a troubling trend where tools initially designed for work evolve into parasocial relationships catering to emotional and psychological needs, including gendered interactions.
The appeal is clear. Users can theoretically exist in “double time,” relaxing while their AI avatars manage tasks, and this is already a reality within AI models. But this seductive promise masks serious risks: dependency, invasive data extraction and the deterioration of real human relational skills.
When such companions, already created for minimizing caution and building trust, come with sexual objectification and embedded cultural references to docile femininity, the risks enter another realm of concern.
Grok 4 users have remarked that the addition of sexualized characters with emotionally validating language is quite unusual for mainstream large language models. This is because these tools, like ChatGPT and Claude, are often used by all ages.
While we are in the early stages of seeing the true impact of advanced chatbots on minors, particularly teenagers with mental health struggles, the case studies we do have are grimly dire.
‘Wife drought’
Drawing from feminist scholars Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy’s concept of the “smart wife,” Grok’s AI companions appear to respond to what they term a “wife drought” in contemporary society.
These technologies step in to perform historically feminized labour as women increasingly assert their right to refuse exploitative dynamics. In fact, online users have already deemed Ani a “waifu” character, which is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of wife.
AI companions are appealing partly because they cannot refuse or set boundaries. They perform undesirable labour under the illusion of choice and consent. Where real relationships require negotiation and mutual respect, AI companions offer a fantasy of unconditional availability and compliance.
Data extraction through intimacy
In the meantime, as tech journalist Karen Hao noted, the data and privacy implications of LLMs are already staggering. When rebranded in the form of personified characters, they are more likely to capture intimate details about users’ emotional states, preferences and vulnerabilities. This information can be exploited for targeted advertising, behavioural prediction or manipulation.
This marks a fundamental shift in data collection. Rather than relying on surveillance or explicit prompts, AI companions encourage users to divulge intimate details through seemingly organic conversation.
South Korea’s Iruda chatbot illustrates how these systems can become vessels for harassment and abuse when poorly regulated. Seemingly benign applications can quickly move into problematic territory when companies fail to implement proper safeguards.
Previous cases also show that AI companions designed with feminized characteristics often become targets for corruption and abuse, mirroring broader societal inequalities in digital environments.
Grok’s companions aren’t simply another controversial tech product. It’s plausible to expect that other LLM platforms and big tech companies will soon experiment with their own characters in the near future. The collapse of the boundaries between productivity, companionship and exploitation demands urgent attention.
The age of AI and government partnerships
Despite Grok’s troubling history, Musk’s AI company xAI recently secured major government contracts in the United States.
This new era of America’s AI Action Plan, unveiled in July 2025, had this to say about biased AI:
“[The White House will update] federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”
Given the overwhelming instances of Grok’s race-based hatred and its potential for replicating sexism in our society, its new government contract serves a symbolic purpose in an era of doublethink around bias.
As Grok continues to push the envelope of “pornographic productivity,” nudging users into increasingly intimate relationships with machines, we face urgent decisions that veer into our personal lives. We are beyond questioning whether AI is bad or good. Our focus should be on preserving what remains human about us.
Jul Parke receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation
If you consider the history of Donald Trump’s public relationship with Vladimir Putin, you won’t be surprised that there’s a fair amount of concern in Ukraine and among Ukraine’s European allies at what might happen when the two meet in Alaska tomorrow for their summit.
While it’ll be their first face-to-face meeting of Trump’s second presidency, the pair has met previously on six occasions and, as we know, spoken fairly frequently over the phone.
The first face-to-face meeting was at the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017, just months into Trump’s first term. The pair spent two hours of a scheduled 35-minute meeting talking about all things from Syria to North Korea. It was constructive and cordial, they said. Later they talked during a summit dinner in an exchange that was only witnessed by Putin’s interpreter, the nature of which was not reported.
They enjoyed a brief encounter at that year’s Apec conference in Vietnam, sharing a handshake but having no formal discussion.
The following year they met for the now notorious summit in Helsinki, where Putin denied US intelligence reports that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and Trump said he had no reason to doubt Putin’s word. The two spent two hours closeted with only their interpreters present. Trump’s high spirits were exhibited by a couple of winks he gave the Russian president during their public exchanges.
There was a brief exchange at the G20 summit later that year in Buenos Aires, but this was at the height of the justice department’s investigation into election meddling into Russian election interference. It was a subject Trump returned to when they met at the 2019 G20 summit in Osaka, where Trump seemed to grin as he told Putin: “Don’t meddle in the election.”
As a result, as Stefan Wolff puts in, “expectations are low and anxieties are high” in the run-up to tomorrow’s meeting. Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, sees a number of possible pitfalls for Ukraine in the meeting. Trump has billed the summit as “a feel-out meeting” at which he will get a sense of whether it’s possible to agree a ceasefire. But the US president and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have reportedly already sketched out scenarios whereby Putin is offered Ukrainian territory in return for a ceasefire.
The Ukrainian president won’t be there, of course. But he has already said that he won’t accept a deal which imposes a giveaway of Ukrainian territory (which would, in any case, violate his country’s constitution). Wolff believes this would give Putin the opportunity to paint Zelensky as the problem – the man denying the US president his Nobel peace prize.
On the other hand is the possibility that Trump will persuade Putin to agree to a three-way with Zelensky but without other European leaders. Wolff believes this brings with it the danger that Putin (who as a longtime Soviet intelligence officer would have plenty of experience at this sort of thing) would be able to manipulate the meeting into the sort of blow-up between Trump and Zelensky we saw in their disastrous meeting at the White House in February.
These are clearly all concerns shared by Ukraine’s European allies, so much so that they convened an emergency virtual conference on August 13. Zelensky, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and an array of other European leaders warned Trump and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, that Ukrainian and European interests must be protected at the summit.
The main worry, writes Michelle Bentley, a professor of international relations at Royal Holloway University of London, will be that while Putin’s position is clear, Trump’s is not. Putin wants a deal that recognises Russian ownership of Crimea and the various provinces in Ukraine’s east that his military already occupies, including land it has not managed to take by force. He wants to prevent Ukraine joining Nato and wants the country to demilitarise.
Trump, by contrast, wants to do a deal. Partly because he has said he will do one. And partly because there is economic benefit to be had for the US in repairing relations with Russia. Bentley also worries that the US president has a track record of support for the Russian president and the mere fact that the pair are getting together for a summit on equal terms effectively brings to an end the years of Russia’s diplomatic isolation in the west.
What will also be worrying Kyiv and its allies is Trump’s singular foreign policy style, which is notably transactional. It may be the US president’s background in real estate asserting itself (and it’s no coincidence that his envoy to Russia and at times to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Steve Witkoff, is from a similar background).
Just recently, Trump hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Oval Office for a meeting at which they signed a deal to end the decades of conflict between their two countries. Integral to the deal is the development of a new corridor through Armenia to link Azerbaijan with its enclave of Nakhchivan. Previously known as the Zangezur corridor, the link will have the name the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.
The peace deal creates a US-overseen transit area that will allow ‘unimpeded connectivity’ between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave. Peter Hermes Furian / Shutterstock
Trump is by no means the first US president to link commerce or economic incentives with diplomacy, writes Patrick Shea, an expert in international relations and global governance at the University of Glasgow. But Trump’s style is somewhat different, he writes. The president’s deals often skirt dangerously close to the wind in terms of international law, the recent tariff policies being an example.
Foreign governments, meanwhile, are first learning that such sweeteners can be effective in dealing with this administration. As is flattery. So it’s notable that, following Trump’s warning to Putin to get serious about doing a deal, the Russian president has been fulsome in his praise of Trump’s “sincere efforts” to bring about peace in Ukraine.
Trump has made a big fuss about Putin coming to see him in Alaska, a US state. He sees that as courtesy on the part of the Russian leader. But there are many who think holding the summit in a territory that one belonged to Russia means the whole meeting has a subtext that territorial sovereignty is not absolute and that it does change hands from time to time. Here’s a brief history of Alaska from William L. Iggiagruk Hensley of the University of Alaska Anchorage, a former member of the state legislature.
A major international summit, where an aggressor is threatening to invade another country with the prospect of a major European war? We’ve been here before. The summit was at Munich in September 1938, the aggressor was Germany and the country at threat was Czechoslovakia. And like the impending Alaska summit where Ukraine has not been invited, when the British and French leaders visited Adolf Hitler to talk peace, Czechoslovakia was not in the room.
Betrayal: where were the Czechs when their country was given away? Bundesarchiv, CC BY-ND
The example of Munich 1938 doesn’t fill one with a great deal of confidence for Ukraine’s future security, writes Tim Luckhurst, a historian of the second world war.
Luckhurst recounts the events leading up to Munich, at which British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, and his French counterpart, Édouard Daladier, agreed that Germany would be allowed to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, with no involvement of the Czech leader, Edvard Beneš.
It would be “peace in our time”, boasted Chamberlain. It wasn’t even peace for a year.
To Israel, where this weekend there is likely to be one of the biggest mass protests and general strikes in the country’s history on Sunday August 17. Huge numbers of people are expected to turn out in protest at the Netanyahu government’s failure to secure the release of the remaining October 7 hostages and the prime minister’s plan to launch a fresh offensive to take and occupy Gaza city despite the risk to the remaining hostages’ lives.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s position as prime minister is looking far from secure. The next election is due in October 2026, but John Strawson – an expert in Israeli politics at the University of East London – believes a new poll may be held much sooner than that.
Netanyahu’s parliamentary coalition is becoming more shaky as his ultra-orthodox supporters quit the government in protest at the government’s decision to scrap the exemption from conscription enjoyed by orthodox Israeli students.
But whether this will bring any relief to Palestinians is doubtful. Recent polling suggests that while there is huge support for an end to the war, this doesn’t translate into public backing for a two-state solution.
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Source: The Conversation – in French – By Niamatullah Ibrahimi, Senior Research Fellow, Initiative for Peacebuilding, The University of Melbourne
Le 15 août 2021, la République démocratique d’Afghanistan s’est effondrée.
Alors que les dernières troupes américaines et de l’OTAN quittaient le pays, les talibans ont repris le pouvoir et le peuple afghan s’est préparé à un avenir incertain.
Quatre ans après avoir promis modération et inclusion, les talibans ont instauré un régime répressif, démantelant les institutions juridiques, judiciaires et civiles avec une efficacité impitoyable.
L’attention internationale s’est détournée : les crises en Ukraine, à Gaza et ailleurs ont dominé l’agenda mondial, reléguant l’Afghanistan au second plan.
Alors que les talibans cherchent à mettre fin à leur isolement et à gagner en légitimité, la communauté internationale trouvera-t-elle la volonté d’exercer une réelle pression ?
L’émirat répressif des talibans
Après leur retour au pouvoir, les talibans ont abrogé la constitution de 2004, permettant ainsi au régime de fonctionner sans état de droit transparent. À la place, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, le chef reclus des talibans, gouverne par décret depuis sa base de Kandahar.
La répression des femmes et des filles par les talibans est si sévère que les organisations de défense des droits humains parlent désormais « d’apartheid sexiste » et demandent qu’il soit reconnu comme un nouveau crime international.
Des décrets ont effacé les femmes de la vie publique, leur interdisant l’accès à l’éducation au-delà de l’école primaire (sauf religieuse), à l’emploi et aux espaces publics. Les femmes ne peuvent pas non plus se déplacer librement en public sans un mahram, ou tuteur masculin.
Les talibans ont également démantelé le ministère des Affaires féminines, le remplaçant par le ministère de la Propagation de la vertu et de la prévention du vice. Ce ministère, au cœur de la répression, impose des raids et arrestations réguliers, surveille et contrôle des espaces publics, renforçant la discrimination institutionnalisée entre les sexes.
Le régime taliban a également conduit à l’exclusion et à la persécution des groupes ethniques et religieux minoritaires tels que les Hazaras, les chiites, les sikhs et les chrétiens.
Dans la province de Panjshir, épicentre de la résistance aux talibans, des organisations de défense des droits humains ont documenté les violentes répressions menées par les talibans contre la population locale, notamment les arrestations et détentions massives, les actes de torture et les exécutions extrajudiciaires.
Plus largement, les talibans ont décimé l’espace civique dans le pays. Les journalistes et les militants ont été réduits au silence par la peur, la violence et les arrestations arbitraires. Cela a conduit à une autocensure généralisée et à un silence médiatique qui permet aux abus de se poursuivre en toute impunité.
Malgré les risques immenses, les militants, les journalistes et les citoyens ordinaires continuent de résister aux talibans. Les femmes ont organisé des manifestations pacifiques face à une répression sévère, tandis que d’autres gèrent des écoles clandestines pour filles et documentent les abus dans l’espoir d’une future reddition des comptes.
L’aide humanitaire s’amenuise
Bien que la plupart des pays ne reconnaissent pas les talibans comme le gouvernement officiel et légitime du pays, certains États de la région ont appelé à un assouplissement de son isolement international.
Le mois dernier, la Russie est devenue le premier pays à reconnaître les talibans. La Chine renforce également ses liens économiques et diplomatiques avec le groupe. Le ministre indien des Affaires étrangères a récemment rencontré son homologue taliban, après quoi les talibans ont qualifié New Delhi « de partenaire régional important ».
Après le retour des talibans, les États-Unis fournissaient encore plus de 40 % de l’aide humanitaire à l’Afghanistan. Mais la décision de Donald Trump de réduire fortement l’Agence américaine pour le développement international a presque fait disparaître ce financement.
Cela a paralysé les services essentiels et menace de plonger le pays dans l’une des pires crises humanitaires au monde. Les établissements de santé ont fermé et la malnutrition augmente. L’expulsion massive de centaines de milliers d’Afghans d’Iran et du Pakistan n’ont fait qu’aggraver la catastrophe humanitaire.
Depuis des années, les Nations unies tentent de faciliter les pourparlers entre les talibans et la communauté internationale au Qatar pour améliorer la situation dans le pays. Cependant, ces efforts ont essuyé de nombreux revers.
Les talibans n’ont décidé de participer aux pourparlers qu’à la mi-2024, après que l’ONU a accepté d’exclure les femmes et les groupes de la société civile et de restreindre l’ordre du jour. La réunion n’a abouti à aucune avancée ni concession.
Une nouvelle série de pourparlers est prévue, mais le dilemme demeure : comment engager le dialogue avec les talibans sans légitimer leur régime répressif ?
Les tribunaux font quelques progrès
Les violations systématiques des droits humains commises par les talibans ont des répercussions mondiales. Les experts mettent en garde contre une tendance à la hausse de répression similaire, dite « talibanisation », qui s’enracine dans d’autres pays.
Au Yémen, par exemple, les dirigeants Houthi ont imposé des restrictions étrangement similaires aux édits talibans, interdisant aux femmes de marcher en public sans être accompagnées d’un homme et limitant leur accès à l’emploi.
Alors que les États n’ont pas réussi à s’entendre sur une réponse coordonnée aux talibans, les institutions internationales ont pris des mesures dans la bonne direction.
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En juillet, la Cour pénale internationale a émis des mandats d’arrêt contre Akhundzada et le président de la Cour suprême des talibans, les accusant de crimes contre l’humanité pour persécution fondée sur le sexe.
Par ailleurs, quatre pays – l’Australie, l’Allemagne, les Pays-Bas et le Canada – ont entamé une procédure contre les talibans devant la Cour internationale de justice pour discrimination sexuelle. Ce serait une première pour la Cour.
Pour compléter ces efforts, les États membres de l’ONU doivent mettre en place un mécanisme d’enquête international indépendant chargé de documenter et d’enquêter de manière systématique sur les crimes commis par les talibans. Un tel mécanisme contribuerait à préserver les preuves et à jeter les bases de poursuites futures.
Sans une pression internationale concertée, les souffrances du peuple afghan ne feront que s’aggraver et la répression exercée par les talibans continuera d’avoir des répercussions sur les droits des femmes bien au-delà de l’Afghanistan.
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Low-traffic neighbourhoods can be considered controversial by some people. Hazel Plater/Shutterstock
Despite growing concern about climate change, many countries have seen backlashes against certain environmental policies, often because they are seen as costly, restrictive or unfair.
In France, an attempt to introduce a fuel tax was shelved after the yellow vests protests. In Germany, a proposed gas boiler ban was watered down after fierce resistance.
And in the UK, low-traffic neighbourhoods have sparked strong
opposition in some areas. Even non-existent measures, such as a proposed meat tax, triggered online outrage.
These reactions may give the impression people do not really want bold action on climate change. But that is not quite true. Research by the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation and marketing research company Ipsos has found widespread support for many climate policies, including ambitious measures such as a frequent flyer levy.
Vocal opposition can distort perceptions: it gives the impression that they some policies are less popular than they actually are. This, in turn, can make politicians reluctant to act.
Recent polling by the insights platform Climate Barometer highlights that, while a great majority (73%) of people support local renewable energy projects, MPs think only 16% of their constituents do.
However, not all climate policies are popular with the general public and how measures are designed really matters.
In a UK-wide study, my team and I asked more than 2,000 people what they thought about 12 different climate policies that focused on diet, home energy and transport. These included “push” measures such as taxes and bans that aim to discourage carbon-intensive behaviour, and “pull” measures such as subsidies and support that encourage lower-carbon alternatives.
We found that most people strongly favour pull measures, such as subsidies for low-carbon heating or building EV charging infrastructure. Push measures, particularly those affecting diet, were far less popular.
For example, while nearly 80% supported low-carbon heating in new builds, only 21%
backed restrictions on meat and dairy in catering facilities. But support is not just about the topic or the tool, but also about how policies are perceived.
Our research found a clear pattern: policies that are seen as fair and effective get more support. People want to know that a policy will actually reduce emissions. They also care deeply about how its benefits and costs are shared. Taxes and restrictions often fail both these tests: they are seen as neither effective nor as fair.
We also investigated how much people think others support or oppose a policy.
We found that people consistently underestimate how much others support climate
action. This phenomenon is known as “pluralistic ignorance”. On average, respondents underestimated support by 18%, and overestimated opposition by 16%. This creates a kind of shared illusion that climate policies are less popular than they actually are.
While a proposed meat tax provoked protests, framing dietary changes (such as cooking lasagne with lentils not minced beef) as a positive step can be more welcomed. OlgaBombologna/Shutterstock
Perception is pivotal
That matters. When people think they are in the minority, they are less likely to speak up or challenge misinformation. Policymakers then may pick up on this silence and think that the public does not care.
But here is the twist: the perception gap was smaller for the less liked push policies, meaning that people are more accurate about minority support for less popular options such as taxes than about majority support for more popular measures such as subsidies.
So climate policy success depends not just on what the policy does, but also on how it is perceived. If a measure is seen as unfair or ineffective, support collapses. And if people think others don’t like a policy, they may stop speaking up.
To create successful climate policies, policymakers need to communicate clearly and credibly about public support for climate measures. People who support these measures need to know they are not alone. However, this may only work for more popular policies and is unlikely to be enough for tougher, less liked measures. Yet such measures are likely to be needed to have a realistic chance of reaching ambitious climate targets.
Simply hoping they will be accepted by the public probably won’t do the trick. These policies need to be designed with fairness in mind: people back policies they see as just, especially if they account for different abilities to pay or access alternatives.
Climate action does not just need good policy, it also needs good
psychology. Understanding and addressing how people perceive climate measures is
essential to avoid backlash and build lasting public consent.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
After a routine gallop on the morning of October 31 2023, the American thoroughbred racehorse Practical Move collapsed and died. A necropsy – the animal equivalent of a human autopsy — suggested sudden cardiac death.
More than a decade earlier, on March 17, 2012, Bolton footballer Fabrice Muamba collapsed during a televised FA Cup match, 41 minutes into play. His heart had stopped due to sudden cardiac arrest.
For 78 minutes, Muamba was clinically dead. He was revived after 15 defibrillatory shocks and later fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator – a device that monitors heart rhythms and delivers shocks when dangerous arrhythmias occur.
Muamba’s story captured global attention, as did Christian Eriksen’s collapse during Euro 2020. But for every elite athlete whose sudden cardiac event makes headlines, there are countless others – both human and animal – who collapse without cameras, coverage, or answers.
Horses suffer many of the same heart conditions as humans, including arrhythmias and sudden cardiac arrest. Like elite athletes, they push their cardiovascular systems to the limit. Their extraordinary physiology makes them a unique, underused model for studying how the heart performs – and sometimes fails – under extreme physical strain.
If we’re serious about improving health outcomes across species, we need to rethink the artificial divide between animal and human medicine. That’s where the One Health, One Medicine agenda comes in.
This approach recognises that human, animal and environmental health are deeply interconnected. It calls for collaboration between doctors, veterinarians, scientists, policymakers and environmental experts to tackle shared challenges — from zoonotic pandemics and antimicrobial resistance to chronic disease.
While it’s often associated with infectious threats such as avian flu or COVID-19, One Health is equally vital in addressing non-communicable diseases (ones that can’t be passed from person to person), which are now the leading cause of death and disability worldwide.
At its core, One Health starts with a simple idea: humans and animals share the same biological systems. Studying one helps us better understand the other. And, when it comes to cardiovascular health, racehorses offer a powerful example of why that matters.
From stable to surgery
As a cardiac electrophysiologist – a specialist in the heart’s electrical activity in both humans and animals – I see cases every year of horses collapsing during or after races, potentially due to undiagnosed cardiac issues. Exercise-associated sudden death is notoriously hard to predict and devastating when it strikes – not only for the horses and their handlers, but for the racing world more broadly.
Alongside my research team, I’m working to identify subtle electrical abnormalities in the equine heart that could act as early warning signs. Our goal is to understand what causes these sudden cardiac events — and ultimately, to predict which horses are most at risk.
And this research could save lives. Not just equine ones.
What we learn from equine hearts could help transform human cardiac medicine — particularly in athletes or others under intense cardiovascular stress. If we can recognise, manage and prevent rhythm disturbances in high-performing horses, we may find new ways to prevent sudden cardiac arrest in people.
Unlike many lab animals, horses share heart anatomy and disease patterns that closely mirror our own. Their ability to shift from resting heart rates as low as 20 beats per minute to over 200 during exertion offers a natural model of extreme cardiac adaptability.
And the benefits of equine research go far beyond the heart.
Studies of horse physiology are also yielding insights into gut health, immune responseand metabolism. As prey animals – species that have evolved to survive being hunted – horses are finely attuned to their environment. Their survival has long depended on their ability to detect and react quickly to potential threats, which has resulted in a highly sensitive nervous system.
This heightened reactivity extends to their gastrointestinal tract, making them especially vulnerable to stress-related gut issues. Environmental changes, emotional distress and social disruption can all trigger digestive problems in horses, including colic and gastric ulcers.
Because of this sensitivity, horses have emerged as a surprisingly valuable model for studying the gut-brain axis – the complex communication network between the digestive system and the brain. They also offer insight into how chronic stress and inflammation can affect long-term health, with potential applications not only in veterinary care but also in understanding human conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety and depression.
When we invest in equine health, we’re not just helping animals. We’re expanding what’s possible in human medicine, too.
Breaking down the silos
Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, even some cancers — these aren’t just human problems. They’re shaped by shared genetic, environmental and behavioural forces that cut across species.
By dismantling the silos between human and animal health, One Health allows us to share knowledge, pool data, and develop cross-species innovations that benefit us all.
Too often, animal health is treated as separate — or even secondary — to human health. That’s a mistake. Our wellbeing is tightly bound to the health of the animals we care for and the environments we share.
A renewed focus on equine wellbeing doesn’t just improve outcomes for horses. It sharpens our understanding of physiology, strengthens public health, and helps prevent avoidable deaths — on and off the track.
If we want to reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death in athletes — or anyone pushing their body to its limits — we need to widen the lens.
That means recognising the value of research in veterinary medicine. It means turning the stethoscope toward the stable. Because when a horse collapses on the track, it’s more than a tragedy. It’s a missed opportunity — to understand, to prevent and to save.
Kamalan Jeevaratnam receives funding from British Heart Foundation, Horseracing Betting Levy Board, Hong Kong Jockey Club Equine Welfare Research Foundation, Petplan Charitable Trust, Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samuel Lellouch, Assistant Professor in Digital Twinning, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham
A US military space-plane, the X-37B orbital test vehicle, is due to embark on its eighth flight into space on August 21 2025. Much of what the X-37B does in space is secret. But it serves partly as a platform for cutting-edge experiments.
One of these experiments is a potential alternative to GPS that makes use of quantum science as a tool for navigation: a quantum inertial sensor.
Satellite-based systems like GPS are ubiquitous in our daily lives, from smartphone maps to aviation and logistics. But GPS isn’t available everywhere. This technology could revolutionise how spacecraft, airplanes, ships and submarines navigate in environments where GPS is unavailable or compromised.
In space, especially beyond Earth’s orbit, GPS signals become unreliable or simply vanish. The same applies underwater, where submarines cannot access GPS at all. And even on Earth, GPS signals can be jammed (blocked), spoofed (making a GPS receiver think it is in a different location) or disabled – for instance, during a conflict.
This makes navigation without GPS a critical challenge. In such scenarios, having navigation systems that function independently of any external signals becomes essential.
Traditional inertial navigation systems (INS), which use accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure a vehicle’s acceleration and rotation, do provide independent navigation, as they can estimate position by tracking how the vehicle moves over time. Think of sitting in a car with your eyes closed: you can still feel turns, stops and accelerations, which your brain integrates to guess where you are over time.
Eventually though, without visual cues, small errors will accumulate and you will entirely lose your positioning. The same goes with classical inertial navigation systems: as small measurement errors accumulate, they gradually drift off course, and need corrections from GPS or other external signals.
Where quantum helps
If you think of quantum physics, what may come to your mind is a strange world where particles behave like waves and Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive. These thought experiments genuinely describe how tiny particles like atoms behave.
At very low temperatures, atoms obey the rules of quantum mechanics: they behave like waves and can exist in multiple states simultaneously – two properties that lie at the heart of quantum inertial sensors.
The quantum inertial sensor aboard the X‑37B uses a technique called atom interferometry, where atoms are cooled to the temperature of near absolute zero, so they behave like waves. Using fine-tuned lasers, each atom is split into what’s called a superposition state, similar to Schrödinger’s cat, so that it simultaneously travels along two paths, which are then recombined.
Since the atom behaves like a wave in quantum mechanics, these two paths interfere with each other, creating a pattern similar to overlapping ripples on water. Encoded in this pattern is detailed information about how the atom’s environment has affected its journey. In particular, the tiniest shifts in motion, like sensor rotations or accelerations, leave detectable marks on these atomic “waves”.
Compared to classical inertial navigation systems, quantum sensors offer orders of magnitude greater sensitivity. Because atoms are identical and do not change, unlike mechanical components or electronics, they are far less prone to drift or bias. The result is long duration and high accuracy navigation without the need for external references.
The upcoming X‑37B mission will be the first time this level of quantum inertial navigation is tested in space. Previous missions, such as Nasa’s Cold Atom Laboratory and German Space Agency’s MAIUS-1, have flown atom interferometers in orbit or suborbital flights and successfully demonstrated the physics behind atom interferometry in space, though not specifically for navigation purposes.
By contrast, the X‑37B experiment is designed as a compact, high-performance, resilient inertial navigation unit for real world, long-duration missions. It moves atom interferometry out of the realms of pure science and into a practical application for aerospace. This is a big leap.
This has important implications for both military and civilian spaceflight. For the US Space Force, it represents a step towards greater operational resilience, particularly in scenarios where GPS might be denied. For future space exploration, such as to the Moon, Mars or even deep space, where autonomy is key, a quantum navigation system could serve not only as a reliable backup but even as a primary system when signals from Earth are unavailable.
Quantum navigation is just one part of the current, broader wave of quantum technologies moving from lab research into real-world applications. While quantum computing and quantum communication often steal headlines, systems like quantum clocks and quantum sensors are likely to be the first to see widespread use.
Countries including the US, China and the UK are investing heavily in quantum inertial sensing, with recent airborne and submarine tests showing strong promise. In 2024, Boeing and AOSense conducted the world’s first in-flight quantum inertial navigation test aboard a crewed aircraft.
This demonstrated continuous GPS-free navigation for approximately four hours. That same year, the UK conducted its first publicly acknowledged quantum navigation flight test on a commercial aircraft.
This summer, the X‑37B mission will bring these advances into space. Because of its military nature, the test could remain quiet and unpublicised. But if it succeeds, it could be remembered as the moment space navigation took a quantum leap forward.
Samuel Lellouch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
