Jonno Evans

Launching the @SovereignAlbion Podcast: How to Regulate British Nuclear, with @JohnFingleton1 & Mustafa Latif-Aramesh Since writing @sovereignalbion, I have been lucky to have some of the truest and best conversations of my life. What was intended to be a personal essay, albeit with a little hope that it might lead to something more, came to represent a first draft at nation-building. That might sound a little grand, but it’s when I’ve taken these ideas seriously, and stopped caveating the ambition, that I’ve had much deeper conversations and built much deeper friendships and relationships to learn from — especially with founders, artists, policymakers and many others. These conversations tend to skew a bit more Sovereign — i.e. focusing on hard power, critical industries, state capacity and AI — but frequently stray into the Albion: the aesthetics and cultures that run in parallel to progress. In effect: who we are, where we’re going and how we get there. So I’m going to record some of these conversations. Maybe you’re like me: you enjoy listening to @dwarkesh_sp, but you’re left wondering what AI continuing to scale means for us. What is our strategy, in Britain, as it does? Maybe you’d like to see us building more infrastructure and homes across the country, but also think protecting the mysticism and enchantment of nature is critical for restoring collective national purpose. Maybe you believe that startups are the delivery units of progress and you’re frustrated by generic, reflexive ‘anti-tech’ sentiment, but you look around and recognise that we’ve made it easier to build slop than sovereignty, industry and state capacity. @SovereignAlbion looks for better choices. Progress and preservation. Based and woke. Rational and mystical. Metal and moss. Means and meaning. Episode 1 is with @JohnFingleton1 and Mustafa Latif-Aramesh, who were part of the UK’s brilliant recent Taskforce on Nuclear Regulation. When it launched, the report quickly became a rallying point for the many people who refuse to accept that Britain is at some terminal value, both economically and culturally. Nuclear could play an enormous role in enabling safe, clean, abundant energy — solving the energy trilemma of cost, climate and capacity! — but we have made it slow and expensive to build. Britain was the first country in the world to have civil nuclear energy, but today we haven’t built a new nuclear power station for 30 years. I wanted to understand how we got here, and what needs to come next. Thank you to @BritishProgress for supporting this experiment, and please share your feedback, however small, so this can as good as possible. I’m excited to start imperfectly and improve at what @tamarawinter calls ‘deploying your taste’. If it works, I hope to build an audience and leverage that distribution to give power — in the style of @Alex_Danco — to the people, ideas and machines rebuilding our national spirit and restoring national agency.