Silicon Curtain

Silicon Bites #257 - Breaking news episode – there’s been a blast at a Russian chemical factory, thought to be a key facility for chemicals manufacture for munitions. On October 18, a deadly blast at a Russian chemical / munitions factory in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, the city of Sterlitamak. What happened? Why does it matter? And what does it tell us about Russia’s war‑machine, its vu...

2025-10-18 | Silicon Wafers 032 | Trump’s dangerous reversal in U.S. support for Ukraine, - predictable, yet somehow these reversions to weakness and appeasement of Russia surprise most commentators and the media every time. Why did we think this time would be any different? We explore that other narrative the media seems to fall for, that there is a peace process to salvage, that a viable peace w...

2025-10-17 | Silicon Wafers 031 | DAILY UPDATES | Today: Why Russia’s War Machine Is Cracking, and it fails to fundamentally reform. Is the Russian military failing? What systemic, strategic, technical, and economic fractures are eating it from within? And what does that mean for Ukraine and Russia’s imperial dreams? Here are the angles we’ll explore: 1. Strategic misalignment & flawed doctrin...

Edition No256 ||| Day 1,342 ||| 17-10-2025 - This is your Silicon Bites Daily Geopolitics Brief, with a rundown of news stories on 17th October 2025. We cover Ukraine, Russia, China and the global struggle against autocracy. Welcome to Groundhog Day. We seem to be stuck in a loop, of threat, reversal, appeasement and then the whole cycle repeats. It creates the illusion that positions have changed...

Livestream with Yuri Rashkin----------SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISERA project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukraine's struggle and in supporting a team running aid convoys to Ukraine's front-line towns.https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras----------https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-silicon-curtainDonate and Receive - Collectable Patch...

Edition No255 ||| Day 1,341 ||| 16-10-2025 - This is your Silicon Bites Daily Geopolitics Brief, with a rundown of news stories on 16th October 2025. We cover Ukraine, Russia, China and the global struggle against autocracy. Tonight’s rundown of the authoritarian front: Russia pounds Ukraine’s grid again; Kyiv’s drones torch refineries and substations deep inside Russia; London hammers the “shadow...

2025-10-16 | Silicon Wafers 030 | The Cracks Are Showing in the Russian economy. Loyalist economists on state TV now warn the economy is sliding into a hole the Kremlin can’t paper over. Alarm bells inside Russia’s own information space are ringing. We’ll dig into the numbers—tax hikes, corporate losses, shuttered factories, and cash-starved regions—and why it matters for Putin’s war machine. What...

Welcome to our monthly conversation with Konstantin, who is one of the most respected voices on YouTube about what is happening Inside Russia. Konstantin Samoilov is a well-known YouTuber whose channel ‘Inside Russia’ comments insightfully on Russia’s decent into authoritarianism over the last few years. But now, like many others, he’s outside Russia, with no idea of when he can return there. ----...

David DeBatto is host of the ‘No Delusion Zone’ podcast is a retired U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, a geopolitical analyst, writer, and podcaster. David is an Iraq war veteran who served as Team Leader of a Tactical Human Intelligence Team (THT) in operations within Iraq and is also a former police officer. David is considered too conservative for the progressive left and too indepen...

Edition No254 ||| Day 1,339 ||| 15-10-2025 - This is your Silicon Bites Daily Geopolitics Brief, with a rundown of news stories on 15th October 2025. We cover Ukraine, Russia, China and the global struggle against autocracy. We start with a moment of extraordinary weakness, a comment that could act as a red rag to a bull, as far as Putin is concerned, because he is provoked to aggression by weakne...

2025-10-15 | Silicon Wafers 029 | DAILY UPDATES | Tonight: the Kremlin’s intimidation tour—veiled threats to Moldova, unmarked Russian troops skirting Estonia’s border, and Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary admission that Russian air defense fired near an Azerbaijani passenger jet in 2024. We connect the dots: coercion, deniability, and the authoritarian habit of pushing the boundaries of the rules-b...

Georgijs Ivanovs started the Ukraine Matters channel in 2007, and it has garners 11.5 m views. He started the channel to explain the situation surrounding the war in Ukraine in simple terms. Like myself, he is not Ukrainian, nor is he a military expert. But he has been to Ukraine many times and seen it almost fully (except for Odesa region). He has a lot of good friends in Ukraine, and in fact his...

2025-10-14 | Silicon Wafers 028 | DAILY UPDATES | Right-wing authoritarian populism is gaining sway around the world, exemplified in the US by the phenomenon of Trump’s MAGA movement, across Europe and in the UK by Farage’s latest pop-up populist part Reform, and by Tommy Robinson. This episode explores the assets, agents and useful idiots of the Kremlin, how they seek to leverage populism, and wh...

Edition No253 ||| Day 1,339 ||| 14-10-2025 - This is your Silicon Bites Daily Geopolitics Brief, with a rundown of news stories on 14th October 2025. We cover Ukraine, Russia, China and the global struggle against autocracy. Russia’s winter playbook returns — mass strikes on Ukraine’s grid — while Ukraine pushes the war deep into Russia’s energy heartland. Moscow’s markets wobble, the World Bank t...

Jeffrey Hartman is the Founder & CEO of Ukrainian Action, a volunteer-run non-profit dedicated to supporting the survival of Ukrainian citizens and development of Ukraine. Twenty years after serving as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, he responded to the full scale invasion by leaving his day job trading commodities to focus on building a non-profit organization to address Ukraine's...

2025-10-13 | Silicon Wafers 027 | DAILY UPDATES | The cracks are widening in relation to approval for Putin’s handling of the war. Internal critics—especially Evgeny Minchenko’s circle and Igor Strelkov (Girkin)—have broken their silence in warnings about failure, regime risk, and the unravelling of Russia’s imperial project. Here’s the roadmap for this episode:1. Setting the strategic context — W...

2025-10-12 | Silicon Wafers 026 | DAILY UPDATES | Russia’s Manpower Gamble. In every war there comes a point where on one side, or even both, the demand for men outweighs the supply. There are insinuations that Russia is approaching — or already passing — that tipping point. In this episode, we peel back how Moscow is testing public obedience via propaganda, how earlier mobilization waves spurred...

2025-10-11 | Silicon Wafers 025 | DAILY UPDATES | Energy warfare in Ukraine 2025 — is becoming a brutal duel over power plants, gas fields, and energy grids that may decide whether Moscow or Kyiv controls the winter and emerges dominant in the Spring. We’ll ask: is this war’s turning point? And what are the legal, moral, and strategic stakes in what is shaping up to become a brutal energy duel? Ov...

Live-stream with Yuri Rashkin, Konstantin Samoilov and company. ----------This is super important. There are so many Battalions in Ukraine, fighting to defend our freedoms, but lack basics such as vehicles. These are destroyed on a regular basis, and lack of transport is costs lives, and Ukrainian territory. https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-silicon-curtainOnce again Silicon Curtain...

Steven Lacey is an Award-winning insight specialist. Winner of the Market Research Society (MRS) best Cultural Insight award 2022, the MRS best Creative Development research award 2022 , MRS best International Research 2021 award and MRS Bravery award 2016.Resilience & Reconstruction is a an agile research agency, delivering policy insights, consultancy and partnerships that drive resilience,...

Edition No252 | 10-10-2025 - For those not following British politics, and in fact for those that only get their news via the mainstream media the following story may com as a shock. We have our own problem with Kremlin assets, propaganda mouthpieces and useful idiots. Yes, support for Ukraine is higher than in most other countries of the world. But we also have unprincipled scumbags that are prep...

2025-10-09 | Silicon Wafers 024 | Russia is starting to experience the dramatic economic shock, that we’ve long been predicting: In October 2025, the Russian stock market crashes — we ask: What does a falling Moscow Exchange tell us about the war, the war economy, Putin’s regime, and war in Europe. Here’s the roadmap:1. What just happened — the crash and immediate reactions2. Longer-term economic...

David DeBatto is host of the ‘No Delusion Zone’ podcast @NoDelusionZone is a retired U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, a geopolitical analyst, writer, and podcaster. David is an Iraq war veteran who served as Team Leader of a Tactical Human Intelligence Team (THT) in operations within Iraq and is also a former police officer. David is considered too conservative for the progressive left...

Vatnik soup is a Twitter thread series where Pekka Kallioniemi introduces pro-Russian actors and propagandists from around the world. This includes so-called “independent journalists”, politicians, military personnel and of course just regular grifters looking to make money. The series has introductions and deeper insights on how online propaganda and disinformation works and is spread. There are...

2025-10-08 | Silicon Wafers 023 | DAILY UPDATES | Russia is running short of fuel — both at the pumps for civilians and in supply lines for its war machine. Ukraine’s escalating long-range strikes, many using its own domestically made weapons, are intensifying pressure. How serious is the crisis? Why Tomahawks are politically powerful but not the only threat, and how Ukraine’s Flamingo missiles, d...