Ciaran Martin says US warning that China is targeting key infrastructure should be taken more seriously

The UK is not paying enough attention to a “gamechanging” shift in China’s cyber-espionage tactics towards infiltrating critical infrastructure including energy and communications networks, a former head of Britain’s cybersecurity agency has warned.

Ciaran Martin, the ex-chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said a warning from the US this year that Chinese state-backed hackers were targeting key sectors was a pivotal moment in Beijing’s approach to cyberwarfare.

The transformation of John Woodcock exposes the authoritarian potential that can lurk in Britain’s centre left

During the final, beleaguered stages of the last Labour government, one of the stern young party functionaries who used to cluster protectively around the prime minister, Gordon Brown, on his visits to public places was John Woodcock, then one of Brown’s special advisers. Despite the government’s disintegrating poll ratings, Woodcock still had that New Labour cockiness, giving journalists disdainful glances as he strode past in a close-fitting suit.

At the 2010 election, despite Brown’s defeat, Woodcock became MP for the relatively safe Labour seat of Barrow and Furness. Three years later I interviewed him there for an article about the defence industry, of which he was a strong supporter, partly because Barrow is where Britain’s nuclear submarines are built. He was surprisingly affable company – perhaps seeking election had softened him – but his unyielding, militaristic politics were clear nonetheless. Talking about the local submarine business, he said: “This is a sort of shark. It’s got to keep going forward.”

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Look at a new report proposing horrifying clampdowns on protest – and ask where the threat to our society truly lies

It’s not hard to spot the extremists inflaming public passions in Britain and disrupting our lives. They play an active role in politics, and sometimes claim to be running the country. But I’m not sure many people have understood just how far they are prepared to go.

The new report by the government’s “independent adviser on political violence” and crossbench peer, John Woodcock (Lord Walney), is bad enough: horrifying in fact. It proposes that the government should restrict the ability of protest groups “to organise or fundraise”, tighten the laws against protest even further and, driving what could be a final nail, permit any businesses targeted by protesters, or people disrupted by them, to pursue them for financial damages.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Enlarge (credit: Apu Gomes / Stringer | Getty Images News)

An Australian federal court sided with Elon Musk on Monday, rejecting an Australian safety regulator's request to extend a temporary order blocking a terrorist attack video from spreading on Musk's platform X (formerly Twitter).

The video showed a teen stabbing an Assyrian bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel—whose popular, sometimes controversial TikTok sermons often garner millions of views—during a church livestream that rapidly spread online.

Police later determined it was a religiously motivated terrorist act after linking the 16-year-old charged in the stabbing to a group of seven teens "accused of following a violent extremist ideology in raids across Sydney," AP News reported. Bishop Emmanuel has since reassured his followers that he recovered quickly and forgave the teen, Al Jazeera reported.

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