I used to work in US government intelligence. I now live in London. Those two facts make me uniquely uncomfortable about Palantir's expanding presence across the British state. In December 2024, Switzerland's military concluded that data held by Palantir could be accessed by the American government and that leaks "cannot be technically prevented." Their recommendation was unambiguous: find alternatives. The UK's response to the same evidence has been to award Palantir more than £900 million in contracts spanning health records, defence operations, policing, and nuclear weapons systems. The reality is this: those are not compatible positions.

I have watched this exact disaster unfold five times in 40 years. Personal computers in the eighties. BYOD in the 2010s. Cloud migrations that nobody secured. SaaS tools that HR adopted without telling IT. And now AI agents that can read your email, execute commands on your machine, and send data anywhere, installed by employees who thought they were being productive. OpenClaw is not the problem. OpenClaw is the symptom. The problem is that every time a shiny new technology appears, businesses adopt it first and think about security never. This time the cycle is measured in weeks, not years.

The Data (Use and Access) Act just went live on 5 February, and if you're only hearing about it now, you're not alone. The commencement regulations were published two days before the provisions kicked in. That's the government's idea of adequate notice. Guest contributor Kathryn Renaud cuts through the panic with something actually useful: four repeatable workflows for DSARs, complaints, cookies, and automated decisions that any UK SMB can build this week with tools they already own. No expensive software. No consultant fees. Just structure, ownership, and documented processes. Read this before the ICO comes knocking.

You've seen the memes. Trump is controlling cloud providers like puppets. Trump is literally unplugging Europe from US infrastructure.

They're viral because they touch a nerve about something real: UK businesses run on American infrastructure controlled by American laws. But the political framing misses the actual problem.

This isn't about any particular president or administration. This is about 15 years of infrastructure consolidation, creating structural dependency that predates and will outlast any political cycle.

Let's dissect what those images actually represent, why they're simultaneously right and wrong, and what UK SMBs need to understand about where their data actually lives.

The reality is this: the acting director of America's civilian cybersecurity agency uploaded sensitive government contracting documents to ChatGPT's public platform. Multiple automated alerts were triggered.

A Department of Homeland Security investigation was launched. And somehow, this still happened. From my former life in government service, I can tell you this isn't just embarrassing.

It's a systems failure that reveals fundamental problems with how we approach privileged access, AI governance, and the dangerous assumption that senior officials understand operational security better than the controls designed to protect them.

Right, so I'll be honest. Six months ago, I thought cyber insurance was just another checkbox on the compliance list. Pay the premium, tick the box, hope you never need it. Then Noel challenged me to actually read my policy and treat my insurer as an incident response partner. What I found changed everything. Turns out my €10,200 annual premium wasn't buying risk transfer. It was buying a specialist IR team, forensics support, tabletop exercises, and gap assessments I'd been trying to budget for separately. Here's what I learned implementing this approach at our 100-person Dublin firm.

The UK Government is to implements personal director accountability for cyber risk in public sector. So logically Private sector is next. What directors need to know now.

I watched a board meeting where someone was asked to turn off their hearing aid during a security discussion. Bluetooth concerns, apparently.

The company meant well, but they'd created a policy that would exclude anyone using assistive technology.

I've seen this same pattern emerge in charity governance—organisations pursuing Cyber Essentials creating barriers for disabled trustees and staff.

This isn't about security frameworks being flawed. It's about implementation requiring thought beyond checklists. Here's how charities can build security AND inclusion together, not force people to choose between them.