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Well, the Israeli election returns are more or less in. Still got some to go, but we know the shape of things. And let’s just say the results mean things will suck a little less. No, it’s not clear that anyone can form a government. And no, it’s not clear that the Bibi Netanyahu won’t remain prime minister. And no, it’s not clear that Israel is not headed straight back to new elections in which he will prevail. And yes, it’s depressing that after all Israel has been through the last few years, the support of the right-wing bloc has held up as well as it has. That said, a decisive majority of Israelis voted to oust Netanyahu and his clique of ultra orthodox and religious nationalists. And the opposition, including two parties representing Israel’s large Palestinian majority, have leverage for the first time in four years. That’s no small thing—especially if the opposition leadership can develop the cojones to use the leverage the electorate has given it.

Monday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable wanted me to give him an Israeli election preview, so that’s what we did—with Eve Gaumond:

Tuesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Molly Roberts came on to discuss Trump’s latest attacks on his favorite targets:

And yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the inevitable follow-up to Monday’s election preview, featuring the estimable :

Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Athena Smith

Chemical Security Is National Security

Gregory D. Koblentz argues that the U.S.’s failure to pay the full amount it owes this year to the Chemical Weapons Convention could jeopardize programs to halt the use of chemical weapons around the world. Koblentz states that the U.S. should deliver its full contribution immediately and outlines how the Organization for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons cannot continue to destroy weapons in Syria or defend Ukraine against Russia’s use of toxic chemicals without its regular budget.

The OPCW’s financial crisis threatens the ability of the organization to pursue its vital mission of preventing the proliferation and use of chemical weapons around the world. In addition to endangering current operations overseeing the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria, the OPCW’s assistance to Ukraine to defend it against Russia’s use of toxic chemicals on the battlefield may have to be curtailed and the agency would be unable to launch new missions such as investigating recent revelations about Sudan’s production and use of chemical weapons.

A Rejoinder to Healey and Snyder: Engaging on Stability

Michael P. Fischerkeller, Emily O. Goldman, and Richard J. Harknett write a response to Jay Healey and Jack Snyder’s Sept. 2, 2026 piece, “Persistent Engagement and the Illusion of Cyber Equilibrium,” and argue that Healey and Snyder misrepresented cyber persistence theory as a theory of offense in which a country simply exploits an adversary’s cyber vulnerabilities. The authors note that Healey and Snyder failed to explain their definition of cyber stability and incorrectly held that cyber behavior is driven by factors outside of the cyber strategic environment.

Overall, the Healey-Snyder essay is dangerously one-sided in its description of CPT as offensive in logic and prescription. That is simply inaccurate, and a full reading of our book, “Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace” (2022), and many of our articles substantiate the critical role of securing one’s own networks and digital assets through proactive anticipation of exploitation that, when translated into practice, is primarily defensive in character. Distorting the theory’s logic is dangerous. It undermines accurate communication with allies and adversaries alike that is necessary for stabilizing dynamics to occur. Bottom line: CPT does not prescribe aggressive, offensive, and escalatory cyber behavior.

Can Hungary Derussify Its Electric Power Sector?

Elek Krizsán and Thomas N. Russo outline how Hungary deepened its dependence on Russian natural gas and nuclear fuel under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and analyze the feasibility of plans under current Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party to diversify its energy sources. Krizsán and Russo maintain that Hungary has fallen into import dependence due to both a lack of natural resources and by political choice, and the new government needs to balance derussification, diversification, and decarbonization.

Hungary can derussify, diversify, and decarbonize its power sector at once, but only by treating nuclear power, not gas, as the keystone of its Russian dependence: By correctly sequencing nuclear fuel supply diversification, gas sourcing, and domestic low-carbon generation, Hungary can overcome the political incentives that entrenched that dependence.

How Judge Reyes Became the Lorax

Molly Roberts examines litigation in the D.C. Preservation League v. Department of Interior, in which D.C. District Judge Ana C. Reyes issued a preliminary injunction preventing the National Parks Service from cutting down trees—after more than 500 were taken down—at the East Potomac Golf Links course. Roberts outlines Reyes’s frustration in potentially being misled by the government and how this fight reveals the difficult position the courts find themselves in when they are unable to trust the Department of Justice.

What’s perhaps most striking about the history of D.C. Preservation League is that Reyes indicated throughout that the government might well win. Initially, she didn’t believe there had been final agency action that even justified her involvement. She was skeptical that the government, assuming it followed all the rules, couldn’t do what it wanted with the course.

The U.S.-Taiwan ART’s Export Control Puzzle

William Yuen Yee argues that the U.S.-Taiwan Agreement on Reciprocal Trade contains a commitment to align Taiwan’s export controls with U.S. rules. Yee notes that this could be addressed if Taiwan expanded the category of items it restricts for import to mainland China or by amending export restriction on artificial intelligence (AI) chips into its Foreign Trade Act and argues that either way, the agreement’s ambiguity may benefit both parties.

Although the United States has already signed ARTs with 10 economies as of October 2026, none quite match the depth of the export control alignment commitments that Taiwan has undertaken. While the agreement states that Taiwan “shall align” its export controls with U.S. rules, what that “alignment” looks like in practice is unclear. Many in Taiwan recognize the flaws in Taiwan’s existing export control framework but differently interpret the legal commitments that Taipei must undertake to achieve alignment under the ART.

Podcasts

On Monday’s Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, and Loren Voss to discuss developments in the litigation over the Trump administration’s plan for the East Potomac Park and Arch, the 9th Circuit ruling that President Trump exceeded his authority in the deployment of the National Guard in L.A., legal challenges to the Trump administration’s various actions surrounding the election, and more.

On Tuesday’s Lawfare Daily, Julia Curlee sits down with Cole Bucy, Nate Swanson, and Ariane Tabatabai to discuss the Iran war eight months in and the Trump administration’s likely strategy in the Middle East after the midterms.

On Scaling Laws, Kevin Frazier sits down with Nik Blosser to discuss Oregon’s approach to adopting and governing AI, including Oregon’s Medicaid information chatbot and its public disclosure card; Gov. Tina Kotek’s recent executive order on frontier-model procurement; the limits of state expertise and purchasing power; and the AI issues likely to shape Oregon’s 2027 legislative session.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the beaver, seen here engaging in civil disobedience to protest against beaver discrimination:

Notes from Poland reports:

A sign installed to warn the public about damage caused by beavers has been destroyed by the beavers themselves, according to the Polish foresters who erected it.

The incident was reported in a post on social media by the forestry district of Lubliniec in southern Poland, which shared photos of the sign, which read “Warning! Damage caused by beavers”. The wooden post it was displayed on had been destroyed in an apparent beaver attack…

Beavers were once almost hunted to extinction in Poland. By 1928, it was estimated that only 235 remained in the country. However, thanks to postwar efforts to reintroduce the animals into the Polish wilderness, the beaver population has grown and is currently estimated at around 150,000.

Ecologists note that beavers play an important role in tackling drought by retaining water through the dams they build. Those dams also create “oases of biodiversity”, notes the state water agency PGW WP.

In honor of today’s Beast, find a MAGA ad and shred it with your teeth.

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A week ago Thursday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable came on to advise me on my entrance to the Dyed Red Hair Club:

The next day on #DogShirtTV, the estimable John Hawkinson showed off what a better staircase he can build than I can:

Last Monday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable and the estimable Kate of the Greek Chorus debated the propriety of asking Abdul El-Sayed to denounce the Muslim Brotherhood:

Tuesday on #DogShirtTV, I gloated at the estimable John Hawkinson about my latest carpentry exploits, and the estimable asked for help with her grout:

Thursday on #DogShirtTV, the Greek Chorus Foundation now accepts Bitcoin:

Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Athena Smith

The Russian Bots Went Silent. Or Did They?

Renée DiResta explains that the evidence does not show that Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian Yandex data centers knocked out large numbers of Russian propaganda bots, as a viral story claimed. She notes that the dramatic decline in traffic from Yandex’s main network reflects a drop in web crawler activity rather than social media bots, and that Russian influence operations—which obscure their origins using VPNs and other proxies—may not originate from Yandex. DiResta concludes that the story’s popularity reflects a widespread sense that online conversations are crowded with suspicious or inauthentic accounts.

The Yandex story is appealing because it confirms something many people already suspect: that much of what they encounter online is fake or manipulative. It’s also comforting to believe that one’s noisiest or most aggressive political opponents aren’t even real. The Ukrainian drone story offers the poetic justice of seeing a bad actor get its comeuppance: Ukrainian drones hit Russian infrastructure, and suddenly the internet becomes a nicer place.

America Didn’t Lose Its Rare Earth Industry. It Sold It.

Kirsten Asdal, Tom Koch, and Tao Tan propose a financing instrument—a contingent convertible security that converts into ownership if Beijing weaponizes supply—to rebuild U.S. rare earth supply and blunt China’s leverage. The authors explain that American companies sold off the U.S. rare earth industry for reasons that made economic sense at the time, but that the United States erred in treating it as a market rather than, as China recognized, a geostrategic industry.

Translating this concept into reality raises important implementation questions about statutory authority, precise trigger definitions, CFIUS integration, and corporate governance. We offer the CoCo bond model to stimulate discussions around aligning interests in a market failure and national security context, and we invite the legal, policy, and financial communities to help refine the “plumbing” necessary to make asymmetric financing a workable pillar of U.S. statecraft.

Why Anthropic Is Asking for a Rehearing En Banc

Kevin Frazier analyzes Anthropic’s request for a hearing en banc in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after the Department of Defense designated the company a supply chain risk for refusing to drop their conditions that its technology not be used for mass surveillance or fully automatized weapons systems. Frazier describes the legislative history of the statute, in which Congress was concerned with hostile threats, and outlines principles the government may rely on in their argument.

Anthropic does not contest the Pentagon’s right to discontinue using it on covered projects and, on the contrary, volunteered to help it transition seamlessly to another provider. It simply wants the department to follow procurement laws rather than stigmatizing it as a supply chain risk, a term it contends is associated with malicious actors.

Dissecting Trump’s Deal for Russian Diesel

Scott Anderson details the Trump administration’s decision to waive sanctions on Russian diesel fuel and what potential legal routes the administration may use given other sanctions and a statute banning Russian fuel imports. Anderson concludes that the deal is unlikely to deliver lower prices, and its most serious consequences will be felt in Ukraine, as Putin appears to have convinced Trump that Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s diesel industry have raised global energy prices.

In this sense, the main payoff of the diesel deal may be limited to what President Trump deployed on Truth Social on Friday: a politically convenient talking point, promising relief to U.S. consumers that may never arrive. The fact that global diesel fuel prices have not meaningfully moved in the days since the deal was announced suggests that the broader diesel fuel industry does not seem to view this promise as credible. Meanwhile, the hostile reception the diesel deal has received domestically—including among Trump’s fellow Republicans—suggests it may not be the domestic political boon that Trump may have hoped for.

Gaps in the Deep: How the Law of the Sea Fails the Undersea Kingdom

David W. Opderbeck reviews Elisabeth Braw’s book, “Undersea War: The Battle to Control the Cables and Pipelines That Connect Our World,” and finds that Braw compellingly discussed the network of undersea global communications and energy infrastructure, including the growth of threats to undersea cables from malicious actors like Russia and China. Opderbeck explains that the book could have also explored international maritime policy and questions of market concentration.

Braw ably describes how undersea communications technology developed and how the industry works, but the real strength of her book is in her deeply reported discussion of suspicious cable-cutting incidents over the past five or so years, including ones involving cables serving Norway, the Baltic states, and islands near Taiwan. The geography of these incidents, of course, suggests involvement by Russia and China.

Russia’s Digital Detox Boomerang

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren breaks down recent Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian data centers, the possibility of loosening cyber safeguards on American frontier artificial intelligence (AI), and more.

We think it’s only a matter of time before open-weight models provide the world with cyber capability that tightly leashed American models don’t. Everyone having access to advanced cyber capabilities definitely presents risks, and Bad Cyber Things™ will happen.

The practical policy response here is to loosen safeguards on American frontier models. It’s time to make the most advanced capabilities broadly available to attackers and defenders, and let the chips land where they may.

The Rising Islamic State Threat to Europe and the West

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Lucas Webber, Peter Smith, and Colin P. Clarke explain how the Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP) has evolved from a regional insurgency into a transnational terror hub with a path into Europe. The authors describe how ISSP has built a logistical corridor from the Sahel through Morocco and into Spain to recruit personnel, move money, and transport materials—including in connection with plots targeting Spain.

The emergence of a foreign fighter pipeline between the Sahel to southern Europe has clear implications for European security. To date, European counterterrorism efforts have focused on the Islamic State-Khorasan Province and Middle Eastern remnants of the broader Islamic State network, and less on the threat emanating from the Sahel, despite the steady accumulation of data points suggesting a growing trend. There appears to be only limited visibility into trans-Saharan logistics and a burgeoning Morocco-Spain nexus, with fragmented coordination between the European Union, Moroccan, and Spanish intelligence services, despite the shared challenge of preventing an attack.

Proposed Rules for the Use of Force at or Near Election Sites

Dan Maurer, Steven J. Lepper, and Marc Koblentz argue that the military should publicly release Rules for the Use of Force (RuF)—orders that specify when force can be used against civilians during a domestic deployment—to ease alarm about the federal government’s potential use of the military during the midterm elections. The authors compare the generic Standing Rules for the Use of Force with mission-specific rules and ultimately recommend election-specific RuF.

But this article also offers a way thoughtful military planning can mitigate the pernicious—if not outright dangerous—tactical consequences of such a deployment through clear Rules for the Use of Force (RuF), the domestic equivalent of rules of engagement in traditional armed conflicts. It cannot, of course, prevent the foreseeable undermining of civil-military relations that such a domestic deployment would trigger.

The EU AI Act Mandates AI Incident Reporting—If We’re Lucky

Hannes Bastians and Maarten Herbosch argue that the EU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act should be interpreted with a strong focus on the AI model regime’s purpose so that serious AI safety incidents or cybersecurity incidents–like OpenAI models escaping their test environments–do not go unreported. Bastians and Herbosch identify areas where the legislation’s legal certainty could be strengthened, including how “serious incident” is defined for frontier AI models, whether near-misses are covered, and whether the reporting obligation reaches internal models.

Absent such changes, we may be more reliant on providers’ goodwill outside of the AI Act’s scope. While OpenAI, for example, recently did publish a framework indicating that it would be willing to share information voluntarily, such reliance comes with its limits. Not all providers may be equally willing to report incidents, and internal or competitive considerations might make a provider change its mind as to how open it wants to be.

Will the Supreme Court Finally Dismantle Bivens’s House of Cards?

Mary Hampton Mason and Laura Katherine Smith describe Nielsen v. Watanabe—an Eighth Amendment case which the Supreme Court will hear in November—and how it could end remedies under Bivens, which allows a federal agent to be sued for violating someone’s constitutional rights. Mason and Smith argue that an end to an already hollowed-out Bivens would be doctrinally sound and necessary for Congress to take action and design real federal constitutional accountability.

Retiring the fiction of individual liability invites reform far more meaningful than briefly reviving Watanabe’s one Eighth Amendment claim. History suggests this must come from congressional oversight, public pressure, political consequences, official-capacity suits for declaratory and injunctive relief, and direct judgments against the United States.

Who, If Anyone, Should Have a License to Kill AI?

Lisa Klaassen and Kevin Frazier explain that kill switches for artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly appear in legislation as solutions to AI threats, but the specifics of who is authorized to control the switch, when the shut off could be justified, and what it would entail are unclear. Klaassen and Frazier recommend greater transparency from labs about their safeguards, research to develop and share mitigations, and increased internal testing.

Fearing the possibility of existential risk, both federal and state officials have proposed legislation to mandate the implementation of kill switches at leading AI companies. In a traditional factory, such a switch would perhaps involve a lever with the power to shut off all the machines in one fell swoop. For AI systems, however, it’s trickier to describe what exactly a kill switch would entail, who would hold the authority to trigger it, and how it would be enforced in practice. The recent surge in interest in such a far-reaching power invites serious scrutiny of these questions.

The Immigration Enforcement Hydra Without a Kill Switch

Chinmayi Sharma explains that it could be tempting to use a “kill switch” to put an emergency stop to the large quantity of information running through automated immigration enforcement infrastructure. However, immigration enforcement’s interoperability—its ability to share data with different systems—makes it difficult to shut off on all fronts. Sharma recommends that subfederal actors procure more information about these connections, provide citizens with meaningful privacy rights, and use state constitutions to secure them.

Interoperability is not inherently unlawful or undesirable. A limited, documented request can resolve identity, prevent errors, and support ordinary public functions. The problem is a design that couples whole-population data flows to durable vendor integrations and supplies no reliable route to see and remove downstream copies. Resistance efforts should make the apparatus visible at the sites where public law can still reach it and dismantle the Hydra at the seams.

Technology, War, and the Limits of Innovation Power in the Middle East

David Goodstone and Eitan Danon describe how Israel and Iran have applied innovation power in current wars in the Middle East, exploiting each other’s weaknesses. Israel used sophisticated, short-term tech in campaigns against Iran like Operation Rising Lion and Operation Roaring Lion, while Iran has utilized cheap and expendable systems. The authors note that domestic factors sustain impasses in Israel, Gaza, and Iran, where politics matter in addition to military power.

Each country’s model of innovation power exploits the other’s weakness. Israel can destroy what Iran has built but cannot compel Iran to change course. Iran can make Israel pay but cannot protect the nuclear, security, and proxy architecture it has spent decades building.

The Unhidden Hand

Julia Curlee argues that Moscow’s campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election was a major success, with Russia’s largest gains coming after the vote from the president it helped elect. Curlee describes what is publicly known about the covert action operation and how the Biden and Trump presidencies have since approached the issue of foreign election influence. She recommends Congress create an election threats office with protected funding and a statutory mission, and warns that foreign interventions are more likely to succeed when beneficiaries have an incentive to hide them.

Moscow has also enjoyed payoffs beyond the original aims identified by the intelligence community, because the man it helped elect shared many of its preferences and worldview. Trump has been solicitous of Putin, despite opposition within his own party, hostile to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and skeptical of U.S. assistance to Kyiv in its war with Russia. Trump’s election and the fight over the Russia investigation have also deepened polarization in the U.S. and likely sapped Washington’s ability to keep its commitments to NATO and other allies.

The Insiders Know How Covert Foreign Malign Influence Works. You Should Too.

Katie Kedian lays out a two-part proposal to help Americans recognize covert foreign malign influence: an industry-supported clearinghouse that pools what technology companies and researchers see across platforms, and partnerships with trusted institutions, such as public libraries, to get that information to the public. Kedian explains that although this plan is not a substitute for government action and faces difficulties, tech companies already publicly report on the influence operations they detect and can provide a clearinghouse of data to ground media literacy efforts in knowledge of real influence operations.

The federal government remains indispensable for sanctions, indictments, domain seizures, and other disruptive actions, but those actions often come only after a foreign malign influence operation is well underway. Helping Americans recognize the tactics being used against them can begin much earlier. And, if doing so makes those tactics less effective in the first place, it could ultimately prove as important as the government’s after-the-fact disruptive actions.

Comey Tries to 86 the Seashells Case: Part I

Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Molly Roberts analyze former FBI Director James Comey’s motions to dismiss the indictment against him for a post on his Instagram page of seashells arranged to spell out “86 47.” The authors break down Comey’s motion to dismiss the charges because they lacked a true threat—therefore protecting the speech under the First Amendment—as well as his motion to dismiss based on selective or vindictive prosecution.

The Comey prosecution appears to be—to put it mildly—utterly lacking in merit. It is difficult to imagine that it will lead to a conviction. Whether Comey can end it before a jury is sworn in, however, is far from certain.

There’s an old saying in the law: The process is the punishment. Trump would almost certainly delight in seeing Comey behind bars. But forcing Comey to sit in court while a prosecutor presents a felony case to a jury—as weak a presentation as it’s likely to be—might be enough to make the president’s day.

Comey Tries to 86 the Seashells Case: Part II

Bower, Columbus, and Roberts examine two pretrial motions Comey has filed challenging evidence the government intends to present at trial. The trio explain that, in addition to two motions seeking dismissal, Comey is seeking to suppress evidence and an evidentiary hearing under Franks v. Delaware, under which a defendant may be able to challenge the validity of a search warrant based on misrepresentations in the affidavit.

Neither motion would end the seashells case outright. But one could put the government’s own case agent under oath, while the other could provide a rare glimpse into the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment. If granted, either motion could bring new facts to light that support Comey’s motions to dismiss the indictment—and force the government to defend its conduct well before trial.

OpenAI’s Kazoo-Grade Spying Incident

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren writes about an OpenAI employee’s arrest for allegedly bugging a conference room in the company’s San Francisco office; the security firm NorForge’s report detailing how threat actors are using the Cairn agent in cybercrime; and more.

To us the significant thing here is that threat actors have found a target set where they can automate the entire process, from hacking a site to transferring a victim’s cryptocurrency to an attacker-controlled wallet. Old-school cybercriminals should be worried. AI is coming for their jobs!

Israel’s Destruction of Gaza and the Moral Decline of Zionism

Dov Waxman reviews Omer Bartov’s book, “Israel: What Went Wrong?” and notes that Bartov’s book is a powerful and timely guide to the war Israel has waged in Gaza and the evolution of Zionism. However, Waxman also argues that Bartov does not thoroughly address Palestinians as political actors, how the events of October 7th traumatized Israelis, and does not fully explain how an Israeli constitution could have provided greater rights to Palestinians.

This century-long conflict, however, barely features in Bartov’s book. He largely ignores the Palestinians as political actors and attributes sole responsibility for the perpetuation of the conflict to Israel because Israel is much more powerful than the Palestinians. But this power imbalance does not erase Palestinian agency. Palestinians are not entirely passive and blameless. Zionism has evolved in interaction with Palestinian nationalism, and what Palestinians do influences Israeli politics and Israeli-Jewish public opinion.

Podcasts

On last Wednesday’s Lawfare Daily, Michael Feinberg sits down with author and journalist Ben Macintyre to discuss his new book, “Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy,” about a little-known intelligence coup from the Cold War that changed the strategies of great powers in the Middle East.

On last Thursday’s Lawfare Daily, Anderson sits down with Rachel Alpert and Peter Harrell to discuss the legality of President Trump’s recent announcement lifting U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel fuel.

On Rational Security, Anderson sits down with Daniel Byman, Julia Curlee, and Michel Paradis to discuss Trump’s deal with Putin to import Russian diesel, Yemen’s civil war and recent Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, sanctions against the International Criminal Court, and more.

On last Friday’s Lawfare Daily, Peter E. Harrell sits down with Kristen Eichensehr and Ashley Deeks to discuss the U.S. government’s expanded use of tariffs, sanctions, export controls, and investment screening to regulate the economy. The group discusses America’s new “command economy,” what it means for companies and the government, and how increased transparency and oversight could be implemented.

On Tuesday’s Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Anastasiia Lapatina and Jimmy Rushton to discuss the latest news from Kyiv, including the grave rupture in U.S.-Ukrainian relations, reported breaks in intelligence sharing and in Ukrainian access to Starlink, the Russian assault on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and the impending arrival of winter.

On Scaling Laws, Kevin Frazier sits down with Jerod Tufte to discuss why the courts do not utilize more AI in their operations and what the public should expect from AI as its capabilities grow. The two consider how AI may change our constitutional system and how judges should weigh the risks of adopting new tools with the costs of delaying their use.

On Wednesday’s Lawfare Daily, Kevin Frazier sits down with Asad Ramzanali to discuss the creation of a Cyber Safety Review Board, a mechanism based on the National Transportation Review Board designed to independently monitor cybersecurity incidents; how it would monitor incidents; and what advantages it would have over current independent monitoring firms.

On Thursday’s Lawfare Daily, Renée DiResta sits down with Riana Pfefferkorn and Cyndie Demeocq to discuss the guests’ new research into how existing federal criminal law applies to artificial intelligence (AI)-generated child sexual abuse material , what 71 federal prosecutions reveal about the legal issues created by generative AI, and more.

On Rational Security, Scott Anderson sits down with me, Ariane Tabatabai, and Joel Braunold to discuss next week’s Israeli election and what a new government could mean for Israel’s wars in the Middle East; the recent new lows reached in U.S.-Ukraine relations during the current Trump administration after Trump said he would ease U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel; and the current student protests across France.

On Friday’s Lawfare Daily, Natalie Orpett sits down with Roberts, Loren Voss, Renée DiResta, and Julia Curlee to discuss potential threats to election security and integrity ahead of the midterms. They speak about how they are identifying and evaluating the threats, what impact these threats might have, and what, if anything, can be done about them.

Videos

On Friday, Oct. 16, at 4 p.m. ET, I sat down with Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Eric Columbus and Loren Voss to discuss the D.C. Circuit argument in challenge to the National Guard’s deployment in D.C.; hearings and orders in multiple cases related to Donald Trump’s latest ads; the temporary restraining order in the administration’s ongoing work at the East Potomac Golf course; and more.

On Friday, Oct. 23, at 4 p.m. ET, I sat down with Roberts, Bower, Roger Parloff, and Columbus to discuss developments in litigation against the Trump administration’s policies and more.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is Juno the snow leopard, seen here being ambivalent about Halloween decorations:

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Wednesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable and I discussed the absolute mess of a failed execution in Tennessee, and the estimable jumped in to talk about a major counterespionage failure in Germany:

Thursday on #DogShirtTV, the viola. Also, political prophylaxis and people who tour hell:

Friday on #DogShirtTV, the extremely estimable Ada Palmer came on to tell us about a new Hittite archive and the collapse of medieval Italian republics:

Monday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable visits with Boomers and argues with communists:

Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Scott Shapiro came on to tell us about computational jurisprudence:

And today on #DogShirtTV, I was alone and bereft of cohosts, but the Greek Chorus rescued me:

Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Athena Smith

The Law Can’t Keep Up With Flock’s AI Surveillance

Matthew Cavedon and Laura Bondank-Harmon describe the apparatus of Flock’s artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled surveillance tools and other technologies, such as license readers, drones, and smart cameras, and note that the Supreme Court has yet to determine whether many of these practices qualify as searches or seizures under the Fourth Amendment. The authors recommend policy changes—such as search warrants and ending qualified immunity—in combination with enforcement by the courts to protect civil liberties.

Without civil liberty protections, these methods may even be used against critics of AI surveillance. Flock’s chief executive Garrett Langley recently called the company’s opponents “terroristic.” Joint intelligence centers run by federal, state, and local law enforcement are monitoring social media accounts critical of AI-enhanced surveillance. After Rhode Island police officer Noel Pichardo criticized his department’s use of Flock cameras, “he was subjected to five internal affairs investigations in less than two years.” Policymakers should address the risks faced by citizens critical of AI surveillance.

How to Make an AI Deal With China: Trade Throttling for Pacing

Simon Goldstein and Peter N. Salib argue that, because concerns about Chinese competition are common objections to pausing AI research, any plan to pace AI development must include a deal China may accept. Goldstein and Salib explain that, to pace frontier AI development, the U.S. must trade its policy of limiting China through chip restrictions for a mutual agreement between the two countries to slow AI development.

We recognize that this suggestion will be met with significant resistance. Absent throttling, Chinese AI systems could quickly catch up to American capabilities, and could even take the lead. However, we think that accepting U.S.-China parity is likely the price of doing an AI safety deal. Neither country seems like it would be willing to accept the prospect of the other running away with the AI race.

Citizens’ Assemblies in AI Governance: An Interview With Audrey Tang

Kevin Frazier interviews Audrey Tang about the use of citizens’ assemblies in artificial intelligence (AI) governance. Tang argues that assemblies should name up front who must act on their recommendations, and that frontier AI labs should fund community evaluations and publish how they handle public input. Tang also explains that, although AI can automate clerical work, substantive work—the recruitment of participants, decision-making, and the response to an assembly—should be handled by humans.

Lawmakers should regulate outcomes rather than the specifics of today’s models, and that is precisely the layer where an assembly can make a difference. Which outcomes a community wants, where a data centre may be sited, who must answer when a system fails: these questions do not change every week. A model version changes in weeks. The values and the tests a community sets for it should hold for years and be revised on purpose. Deliberation is slow in the way a constitution is slow.

A Case Study in Pivoting: Investigating Hacked and Leaked Data on a Budget

Ceren Fitoz describes how her team at the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center analyzed six terabytes of leaked internal Mexican military emails for an investigation into the targeting of journalists and human rights defenders. Fitoz illustrates how, despite limited resources and technical setbacks, the group examined this data using network analysis tools; patterns in the military’s emails, signatures, and file paths; and an AI-designed search tool.

The takeaway here for any human rights research group or investigative team is to take the theory and put it into practice as much as possible; to try to handle complicated data problems, even when the team is learning as they go, as we did.

Our work is driven to expose the use of digital technologies in grave human rights violations. As bad actors harness sophisticated tools such as zero-click spyware or mass surveillance, we need human rights research to match the pace and creativity of these technology-enabled crimes. This investigation shows what we accomplished with little infrastructure; imagine what is possible with the right investment.

The AI Model Distillation Paradox

Lisa Klaassen argues that the U.S. government defends American artificial intelligence labs for training models on copyrighted work while branding Chinese labs a national security threat for distilling American models. Klaassen explains that these two positions cannot both be true, and Washington has yet to settle whether model outputs are legally protected.

Both propositions cannot hold simultaneously. Either the outputs of these systems are protectable under the law, in which case the writers, musicians, artists, and programmers whose work American models were built on can hold a claim that the Justice Department has denied. Or they are not, in which case the six Chinese laboratories accused of “malicious and targeted” distillation attacks have not done anything that Elon Musk has not freely admitted to under oath, without consequence.

The Cyber Corps: Ukraine’s Least Understood Cyber Actor

Stefan Soesanto describes connections between Ukraine’s military intelligence service (GUR) and a hacktivist group calling itself the Cyber Corps. Soesanto outlines a pattern of circumstantial evidence—linking the GUR to the Cyber Corps—including the Cyber Corps’ selective claiming of GUR-linked operations and its absorption of members of the volunteer IT Army of Ukraine, that collectively suggests a relationship between the two organizations.

Taken individually, each observation laid out in this article is open to plausible alternative explanations. Collectively, however, the evidence paints a different picture. The Cyber Corps consistently claimed a defined subset of GUR-linked cyber operations, published operational details that extended beyond official GUR information releases, repeatedly overlapped operationally with the GUR and the IT Army, was linked to GUR operations in multiple Ukrainian media reports citing intelligence sources, and ultimately absorbed experienced IT Army members.

Why the U.S. Military Has Never Threatened Civilian Governance

Loren Voss reviews Kori Schake’s book “The State and the Soldier,” in which Schake argued that the U.S. military has never posed a threat to civilian governance. Voss highlights the author’s historical account of military officers acting politically and the book’s conclusion that these examples are rare due to strong military professionalism. Voss argues that military professionalism alone cannot sustain healthy civil-military relations and notes how civilian leaders must also be constrained in how they exert power over the military.

Schake argues that despite the founders’ fears about the risks associated with a standing army, the U.S. military has never posed a threat to civilian governance. Throughout the book, she uses historical examples to explain how the military professionalism that so worried the founding generation has instead become a bulwark of American democracy. Her history effectively demonstrates the importance of military professionalism but also raises the question: What obligations do civilian leaders have to ensure the military does not pose a threat to democracy?

Dispatch: In ‘Fake News’ Ban Hearing, Trump Is His Own DOJ’s Worst Enemy

Molly Roberts describes the events in the courtroom during Cable News Network, Inc. v. Trump, a hearing to determine whether the temporary restraining order U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted CNN following the Trump administration’s revocation of their White House access should be converted to a preliminary injunction. The plaintiffs argued the ban was viewpoint discrimination, while the Justice Department explained the plaintiffs had failed to contest by their deadline and were on notice not to publish classified information.

Boutrous now returns to the falsity question, this time with real force. The Supreme Court has never said that the First Amendment’s speech protections evaporate because of fraud, he says. Quite the contrary: Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his 2012 plurality opinion in United States v. Alvarez striking down the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 that criminalized falsely claiming to have received military honors, referenced “1984”: “Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.”

What Washington Got Wrong About the Houthis—and What It Must Do Now

Nadwa Al-Dawsari argues that Washington and its regional allies should not see the Houthis as simply an Iranian proxy but instead address the regenerative roots of the Houthi resistance. Due to the Houthis’ recent seizure of Yemen’s Red Sea coast—and the internationally recognized government’s Operation Dawn of Yemen to retake Houthi-held territory—Al-Dawsari notes that diplomacy and military action should support a broader goal of reducing the Houthis’ territorial, economic, and military base.

The experience of the past decade points to a basic conclusion: The United States cannot bomb its way out of the Houthi problem, but diplomacy without leverage will not solve it either. The missing element has been a strategy aimed at the source of Houthi resilience—the territorial base that allows them to recruit fighters, generate revenue, control ports and smuggling routes, manufacture and store weapons, and rebuild capabilities degraded by air strikes and sanctions.

The Many Open Questions About the Trump Administration’s New De Facto AI Model Licensing System

Adam Conner describes how President Trump’s June 2026 Executive Order 14409 on Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation and Security raises many questions about the text of its AI framework, which designates a threshold for covered frontier models but has been kept secret from the public. Conner explains that Trump’s sole discretion over the release of frontier U.S. AI models—without authorization from Congress—reduces transparency and safety around AI.

But it is worth stepping back and asking, What is the intent of the administration’s actions? The June AI EO was entitled “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security.” A secret de facto licensing regime is possibly the worst way to promote AI innovation and security. The secrecy is counterproductive because it undermines any ability to assure the public of the safety or security of new AI models at a time of growing concern, particularly as the government appears to have the opportunity to misuse unreleased models for its own purpose. Keeping this framework secret does nothing to reassure the public, other AI developers, Congress, U.S. allies, or even the nation’s enemies.

The Mercenary Exception That Never Existed

Lucas Gualtieri examines the Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice’s (STJ) ruling in the case of Lucas Passos Lima, a Brazilian national who surveyed synagogues for Hezbollah. The STJ reverses an earlier judgement by the Regional Federal Court of the Sixth Circuit, holding that one cannot escape liability for terrorism just because there were monetary incentives behind an action. The reversal signals an opportunity for greater international cooperation to prosecute the transnational networks used by Iran and Hezbollah.

Legal systems that focus only on the inner beliefs of the paid operative may miss the organizational relationship that gives their conduct meaning. The relevant distinction is not between ideologues and mercenaries. It is between a person who unwittingly provides an ordinary service and one who knowingly and voluntarily contributes to a terrorist plan. Payment may be evidence of recruitment, task allocation, and control. It should not become an immunity mechanism.

Podcasts

On Tuesday’s Lawfare Daily, Daniel Byman sits down with Peter Bergen to discuss counterterrorism in the 25 years after 9/11 and the many mistakes the United States and al-Qaeda made, as well as some of their surprising successes. Bergen also draws upon past lessons to understand the war in Iran and how the U.S. could better respond to a future terrorist attack.

On Scaling Laws, Kevin Frazier sits down with Hélène Landemore and examines who should decide the uses for AI. The pair discuss why decisions about AI’s purpose, limits, and governance should not be left solely to elected officials, technical experts, and the companies building the systems.

On Wednesday’s Lawfare Daily, Tyler McBrien sits down with Akbar Shahid Ahmed to discuss Ahmed’s new book “Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza.” The two discuss the top officials in the administration who drove President Biden’s Gaza policy, how the war quickly became a moral and strategic disaster, and what the heavy civilian death toll might augur for the future.

On Thursday’s Lawfare Daily, Julia Curlee sits down with Shawn Howard and Ariane Tabatabai to consider how the Gulf states are coping with a war they didn’t start: the Iran War. They discussed why U.S. protection has made the Gulf states targets, how Tehran sees them, Iran’s strikes on the mediators, the possibility of a United Arab Emirates side deal, and what a post-midterm return to U.S. bombing would mean for the region.

On Rational Security, Scott Anderson sits down with me, Molly Roberts, and Molly Reynolds to talk through the week’s big national security news, including the White House’s pocket rescission of federal funding appropriated by Congress, the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape U.S. elections, and an incident of plague at a biological research institute in Siberia.

On Friday’s Lawfare Daily, Scott Anderson sits down with Omar Mohammed, Doug Silliman, and Victoria Taylor to discuss the recent withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq 23 years after the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. The group considers whether the current Iraqi government is up to preventing a resurgence of ISIS and what lessons can be drawn from this experience and prior withdrawal in 2011.

Videos

On Friday, Oct. 9, at 4 p.m. ET, I sat down with Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Eric Columbus to discuss the preliminary injunction hearing in CNN’s lawsuit against the Trump administration; oral arguments in the Harvard University lawsuits over grants being cut by the administration and new visa restrictions; court-appointed U.S. attorney Roger Rogoff agreeing to stay out of office until the appeal is decided; and more.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the crane, seen here having unreasonably long legs:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, stretch.

Tell Me Something Interesting

Last week on #DogShirtTV, there was some discussion about the uses and abuses of the phrases “yeah no” and “no yeah.” I——am a frequent user of “yeah no,” but I hadn’t given it much thought. Fortunately for me, other people absolutely have.

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