The discovery by AI models of vulnerabilities in financial systems raises unsettling questions about security and trust in banking - a sector that can also be intensely political.

Over the years I have come to realise there is a group of people who think quite deeply about what money and value and currencies really are.

Some of them, I fear, go down awful rabbit holes that end with them wanting to go back onto the gold standard and to an age when they believed money was money and was worth, literally, the gold held underground or in Fort Knox or who knows where.

There was even a big fight at one point about the "Bimetallic Question". If, like me, you had to look that up, you'll know it was an argument about whether to stay with the gold standard, or to include silver in that standard.

We probably spend more time now on the bi-credit card question.

I've probably bored you with this before, but I find the interconnected networks and people who are momentarily attached when I tap my phone while buying an Americano fascinating. My money probably goes halfway around the world before it ends up in the bank account of the person who has prepared the only coffee worth drinking.

Just lately I've wondered a little about what our landscape would look like if our...