Two Exclusives! Farage’s Crypto Connection + Burnham’s AI Adviser

In this week’s issue

• How a QAnon-believing Scientologist and ‘personal friend’ of Farage hyped an “anti-woke” cryptocurrency that investors later alleged was a scam
• UK government has ‘no record’ of discussions at AI chief’s secret briefing to elite intelligence firm’s Big Tech clients
• How global security obsession has led governments to manage threats with force and control, rather than tackling root causes
• England’s summer of record-breaking heatwaves and wildfires is pushing fragile food system to brink of collapse
• How a convicted fraudster spun a Balkan web of offshore shell companies, illicit crypto-ATMs, and financial subterfuge to bankroll Reform UK’s elite
• UK firefighters battling wildfires struggle to protect themselves from lethal heatstroke and cancer-causing toxins

“Send me to Montenegro, and the leads will follow,” Sian Norris, openDemocracy’s senior investigative reporter, insisted in an editorial meeting this summer. Turns out she was right. 

Our cover this week is Sian’s joint-investigation with The Times into John Mappin, a figure who cuts a familiar silhouette in this age of Reform, crypto-currencies, conspiracy theories, fraudsters, old money and new wealth. Like Posh George, the Faragist Sian previously investigated on her Montenegro trip, Mappin is either extremely known or completely obscure — depending on the circles you move in.