Fayad K. Hassan
Essays and field notes
Open source intelligence, conflict, the technology I build with, and the way people behave around all three. 12 pieces, oldest from 2023. Follow by RSS.
2026
Zero for Eight: What History Says About the Nuclear Scare Over Iran
The nuclear risk that does repeat is slower, and it starts with 440 kilograms of uranium nobody outside Iran has seen in more than a year.
Politics18 min
18 Sep
The Instrument Is Going Blind
On what ‘losing control of AI’ actually means, and why the phrase misleads almost everyone who uses it.
AI13 min
2025
Your Voice Is Now a Setting
We were told AI would help us find our voice. Instead it turned voice into a dropdown menu: persuasive, casual, authoritative, friendly.
AI3 min
9 Aug
A $10K OSINT Red-Team Against a Simulated Intelligence Network
A tabletop red-team against a fictional joint-intelligence network, run on open-source material and a small budget.
OSINT8 min
25 Jul
The High Price of Ambition: UAE’s Role in Sudan’s Costliest Conflict
From strategic advantage to international blowback: how the RSF proxy gamble may have backfired, and what it cost the state that placed the bet.
Geopolitics8 min
2023
Sudan’s Proxy War Unveiled: How Regional Powers Are Crafting a New Form of Conflict
How outside powers turned Sudan’s civil war into a proxy contest, and what that newer, deniable form of intervention looks like on the ground.
Geopolitics15 min
9 Apr
The Friction Was the Learning
The worry about AI in education is usually that students will cheat or absorb wrong answers.
AI5 min
9 Apr
In Sudan, ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Is the Wrong Diagnosis
The Western cure for conspiracy belief is more critical thinking and media literacy.
Society5 min
2 Apr
Recourse Is the AI-Ethics Question That Ships
Most AI ethics argues in the abstract about bias and transparency. The question that protects a person is smaller and harder to dodge: when a model decides against you, can you find out why, contest it, and reach a human who is accountable?
AI5 min
19 Mar
What Language Decides Before You Do
The strong claim, that your language decides what you can think, is dead and deserves to be.
Language5 min
19 Mar
Data-Driven Is the Easy Part. An Honest Number Isn’t.
The analysis is rarely the hard part. The hard part is getting an honest number in the first place, and noticing the decisions you already cannot make because nobody wrote the field down.
Data4 min
Tell me what isn’t adding up
An operation that has outgrown its spreadsheets and phone calls, a system that says one thing while the business does another, or a security or OSINT question. I read every message myself.
Or write directly to fayad_k@outlook.com