Silicon Curtain

Edition No199 | 23-07-2025 - The gates of the financial level crossing are coming down, but the Russian banking system is still stuck on the tracks, like the idiot driver that ignores the signals and bells and thinks they can cross in time. The express train of sanctions and consequences is careening down the tracks. Get ready for the troubled Russian banking sector to be turned to scrap by the im...

Edition No198 | 23-07-2025 - In this episode, we take a hard, unsparing look at the Russian military’s transformation, or lack of it—and the West’s slow, uncertain response, at times pessimistic and laden with panic, at others complacent and bloated by hubris and overconfidence. Drawing on the analysis of John Foreman CBE and Edward Lucas of The Times, this episode insights from Bob Seely’s new bo...

Livestream with Jonathan MS Pearce - Scandal in Ukraine and the US - we break down what's happening.----------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----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https:...

Tom Keatinge is the founding Director of the Centre for Finance & Security (CFS) at RUSI. According to The Economist, Tom Keatinge is one of a small group of '‘White collar vigilantes and poachers-turned-gamekeepers’. Tom’s research focuses on matters at the intersection of finance and security, including the use of finance as a tool of intelligence and disruption. He has a Master’s in Int...

Edition No197 | 22-07-2025 - Putin is tightening the digital noose in Russia, as the crackdown on the internet intensifies. We explore What It Signals in this episode. The Kremlin isn’t just at war with Ukraine — it’s at war with its own population, and the internet itself. Connectivity blackouts are plaguing regions of Russia, and now spyware is being installed on every internet capable device. T...

Today’s episode is dedicated to the recent NATO Summit to discuss potential outcomes for Ukraine as well as the ongoing Russian invasion. What discussions took place behind closed doors, what is the Western perspective on Ukrainian victory, and why was the role of Ukraine downgraded compared to last year’s summit. Is there now a risk of countries like the US normalising relations with the pariah t...

Live stream with Yuri Rashkin. ----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/Come Back A...

Edition No196 | 21-07-2025 - This episode is about satire as a threat to authoritarianism, and why it’s one of the first things to get shut down by any dictator, or aspiring autocrat. But let’s be specific before anyone calls this out. Of course, minorities and vulnerable communities are the first things that autocrats come after – in Germany it was the communists and the Jews. In Russia it was th...

Edition No195 | 20-07-2025 - The night skies turn hostile, but this time it’s not only over Ukraine, but the capital of the aggressor, Moscow. This episode investigates the impact of three nights of drone raids on Moscow – both the material and psychological effects. There is a phrase is Russian, sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Now the city of Lenin and Stalin is becoming Dronegrad, an imperial...

Joe Lindsley is a traveler and a writer, and American who was reporting for Chicago's WGN Radio from Ukraine each and every weekday of Russia's full-scale war. He once was protégé to Fox News founder Roger Ailes, but Lindsley escaped that frenzied world where power mattered more than truth. He came to Lviv for a Ukrainian Catholic University journalism conference on Information Overload, AI, and R...

Edition No194 | 19-07-2025 - The divisive and controversial “Russia Hoax” has made a reappearance on the political scene, and this time it’s the ringmaster of politics, Donald Trump that has reanimated it. And there is nothing accidental about the timing as the Epstein scandal deepens and broadens. Grab your tin-foil hats—because we’re diving into the *alleged* “Russia Hoax”, or rather the claims...

Livestream with Jonathan MS Pearce and Andrew Perpetua. Focusing on the alleged connections between Jeffrey Epstein and Russian Intelligence, the state of the Russian war economy, Putin's rapidly degrading war machine, and the problems in Russia's military industrial complex. ----------SILICON CURTAIN FILM FUNDRAISERA project to make a documentary film in Ukraine, to raise awareness of Ukr...

Edition No193 | 18-07-2025 - After episodes that focused on the utterances of Igor Girkin (Strelkov), here is another repugnant character, but one nonetheless that is speaking out about the ineptitude and pointlessness of Putin’s war against Ukraine. Is this the start of a Z-Patriot rebellion, something that Putin is likely far more fearful of, than the so-called liberal opposition. Z Rebellion: G...

A comprehensive investigation by DFRLab and OpenMinds exposes a vast, coordinated Russian bot network exploiting Telegram to disseminate pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian propaganda across occupied Ukrainian territories. ----------Yuliia Dukach leads Disinformation Investigations at OpenMinds, focusing on Cognitive Threats Intelligence and Response, ensuring that their research translates into real-w...

Edition No192 | 17-07-2025 - What has been the reaction to Trump’s ultimatum of military backing and sanctions increases after 50 days? We break down Western and Ukrainian responses, but crucially also the reaction from Russian leaders and propagandists. Without giving too much away, the Russian reaction can be summarized as “so what”. It seems they have heard all these threats before, from stoppi...

Edition No191 | 17-07-2025 - Putin’s Economic Terminal Spiral — More Guns, No Butter, and Not Much of anything Else. This is what happens when you launch a war, alienate the civilized world, and try to run a dark-ages style empire on barrels of crude and a bunch of Telegram propagandists. Let’s dig into the quiet implosion of the Russian economy – rampant inflation, falsified numbers, and a milita...

Edition No190 | 16-07-2025 - Brains Over Brute Force – Zaluzhnyi's Vision of Future WarfareGeneral Valerii Zaluzhnyi, now ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, has written a foreword to the 2024 book by Ukrainska Pravda journalist Roman Romanyuk “What Will Be Used to Fight in World War III”. In it, he outlines his vision for the future of warfare and the trajectory of Russia’s War again...

I’m speaking today with Yevhen Lyr, author of the novels, The God of the Steps (Євген Лір «Степовий бог») and The Flood. On June 6, 2023, the Kakhovka Dam in Russian-occupied Ukraine was destroyed, unleashing catastrophic flooding in Kherson and surrounding regions. It is widely believed to have been a deliberate act of ecocide by Russian forces. The Flood was inspired, provoked event by that act...

Edition No189 | 15-07-2025 - Today’s episode, Trump’s 50‑day ultimatum to Putin, is this a serious threat, or another way of kicking the can down the street? We look at Russia’s looming summer offensive, and what it all means for Ukraine. Trump gave Putin “another 50 days… or else,” hinting at 100% secondary tariffs on Russia or its trading partners (The Daily Beast). He also unexpectedly cited Me...

Live stream with DW Phillips, Honor Phillips and Jonathan MS Pearce. ----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukra...

Live stream with Yuri Rashkin. ----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/Come Back A...

Edition No188 | 14-07-2025 - Russia’s demographic reckoning is going to be brutal—this is a story too urgent to ignore. We’ll explore how Putin’s catastrophic war, fully enabled by the Russian people, authoritarian secrecy, and a collapsing birth rate are intersecting to redefine the Russian state—and cast a grim shadow over its future. The Russian empire is an historical anachronism, which may no...

Lesia Ogryzko is a visiting fellow with the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She leads a Ukrainian think-tank on security and defence, Sahaidachnyi Security Center, and is board member of Ukraine’s biggest expert coalition on the country’s reconstruction, RISE Ukraine. Previously, Ogryzko served as international civil servant across the UN system, dealing with h...

Edition No187 | 13-07-2025 - In this Silicon Bites, we’ll look at the latest comments of Russian patriots calling out their own army – not for its crimes but for its ineffectiveness, and inability to mount breakthrough offensives. There are rumours of North Korean troops being drafted to support, Putin’s “last throw of the dice” in a major summer offensive. We look at Russia’s brutal tactics and U...

In-Depth Discussion with Paul Warberg: Ukraine War, Russian Propaganda & Global GeopoliticsIn this episode, Jonathan interviews Paul Warberg, an independent open-source geopolitical analyst renowned for his content within the pro Ukraine activist community. They delve into Paul's background, motivations, and his rapid rise as a credible voice in the field. Paul shares a moving story about...