The question is not simply how much we spend on defence, but what we understand defence and security to mean, says SIMON BRIGNELL
THERE is a common origin story to the new far-right billionaire backers of Donald Trump: apartheid South Africa.
Both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel — the biggest tech billionaires backing Trump — grew up there, where their fathers grew rich, respectively, mining diamonds and uranium — sectors at the core of the apartheid economy.
“The centrality of South Africa for the far right and for neoliberals is quite extraordinary,” said Boston University’s Professor Quinn Slobodian in a recent interview. “For Musk himself the experience of growing up there with a very authoritarian dictatorial father was a very dystopian one, from the way his biographer recounts it.”
The greatest threat to democracy may no longer come from political parties but from unelected tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and his powerful Silicon Valley network, argues JOHN GREEN
JENNY CLEGG looks at the key points that defined the China-US relationship, for now
Politicians who continue to welcome contracts with US companies without considering the risks and consequences of total dependency in the years to come are undermining the raison d’etre of the NHS, argues Dr JOHN PUNTIS



