In case what was missing from your life was live butter sculpture carving, the Minnesota State Fair has you covered.

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Pursuant to a vote of the Greek Chorus, the #GreekChorusFoundation has taken on #OperationSlava.

For those who missed my earlier posts on the subject, Slava Kurbanov was the deputy commander of an anti-aircraft battalion in Ukraine’s 159th Mechanized Brigade. He volunteered in February 2022, in the first wave, and served for four and a half years. He was also, though he never mentioned it to the estimable Jimmy Ruston, a friend who knew him mainly across a poker table, a prominent amateur tennis player.

Slava and his unit are part of the #GreekChorusFoundation’s story already. Last winter, Operation Battery put one of its batteries in their hands — the one favor asked of us by Jimmy, a friend of #DogShirtTV who carried those batteries around Kyiv when the power was out.

In the middle of August 2026, a Russian ballistic missile struck Slava’s command post. Everyone present was killed.

Here is the part a reader outside Ukraine may not know. When a soldier dies this way, there are often no remains to identify without DNA testing, and that testing takes two months at the least. Until it is done, the death is not official. Until the death is official, the family is not eligible for benefits, and the pay has already stopped. Slava’s salary, roughly $2,000 a month, supported his wife, his teenage son, and his elderly mother. Some of Ukraine’s best-known brigades run patronage services that look after families in this position. A regular mechanized brigade does not, and the family is left waiting on the state.

Jimmy joined #DogShirtTV on August 25, 2026 to remember his friend and ask the Greek Chorus for help:

On September 5, 2026, the Greek Chorus voted overwhelmingly to step in, and voted for temporary support: Operation Slava provides financial support to Slava’s dependents, for rent, groceries, and a proper funeral, until the death is confirmed and Ukrainian state benefits come through. Then we reassess. Slava’s eldest daughter is expecting twins this fall, and provision for them is part of the same fund.

This project has a specific goal meant to cover living expenses for a discrete period of time. Any reassessment of that judgment will be submitted to a vote of the foundation membership. Want to help?

In a happy piece of #GreekChorusFoundation news, I received a text from Taya of #OperationTaya last night. Taya, for those new to this, is the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense staffer we decided to send to graduate school for two years—first at the College of Europe in Belgium and then at the Fletcher School at Tufts. Taya informs me that she is now in Belgium. Classes are starting today. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Just your periodic reminder that together, we can do cool things—a lesson not just about the foundation but about life, in general.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the beaver, which we celebrate today for its hard work taking the fight to the Russians:

TVP World reports:

Russian media reports have cast beavers migrating into the Kaliningrad region from Poland and Lithuania as an “invasion” from NATO territory.

Residents have complained for about two months that dams built by the animals are causing waterways to overflow, flooding fields and forests and contributing to waterlogging.

According to Russian reports, around 100 volunteers have dismantled 43 dams, including some near Russia’s borders with Poland and Lithuania.

Veterinary scientist Alexander Muromtsev dismissed the geopolitical framing, saying the animals are simply migrating and that Russian beavers also move into neighboring countries.

In honor of today’s Beast, let’s cheer on our brave rodent soldiers!

Today, we mourn a great Sprite of Mischief, an inspiration to us all. Noël Godin, who died on August 23, has been attacking public figures with pies to the face since 1969. Like this:

Or like this:

You can find a compilation of all Godin’s greatest hits here, and I do encourage you to read his obituary. What an artist!

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Kleio the dog wants a belly rub.

First off, a report on the #GreekChorusFoundation’s latest decisions.

On August 27, I put to the group a series of questions related whether the foundation should take on a third project, in addition to the two it currently has going: Operation Taya and Operation Battery.

For details, see the Aug. 27 dog shirt:

The decisions, specifically concerned whether the foundation should take on support of the family of Slava Kurbanov, a Ukrainian soldier and friend of Jimmy Rushton whose death in a Russian missile strike Jimmy and I discussed here:

The Greek Chorus voted overwhelmingly to take on short-term financial support for Kurbanov’s family until government benefits kick in. I will be amending the foundation’s web page this weekend to enable such donations.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this this voting and the discussions that surrounded it.

Last Thursday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Carol T. had some questions about the concept of a “natural born citizen” and the estimable Mike Feinberg had a fiery skull:

Last Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Mike Feinberg had some thoughts on the literary character of ghost stories, while the estimable updated us on life under Russian bombardment:

Monday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable and I discussed pests: mosquitos, DEI overreach, and Donald Trump:

Tuesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable came on the show to give us an update on the Canadian political situation, now that Carney has broken off trade negotiations with the US:

Wednesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable came on the show to tell us about her recent article on Trump’s latest efforts to end birthright citizenship:

Thursday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable was mad. Mad, mad, mad. I could only get out of the way and let her rant. ( checked the transcript: Holly is talking for a solid 80% of this show.)

And yesterday on #DogShirtDaily, Holly and I brainstormed on how to stop the triumphal arch and other building crimes in Washington DC:

Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Sarah Willrich

The Church Bells Still Ring

Seamus Hughes and Peter Beck remember the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting that occurred one year ago. They argue that the attack reflects a broader “true crime community” subculture in which teens are pushed toward violence by online networks that reward it with notoriety and warn that there is often not enough support to guide them away from that path.

And law enforcement agencies from the federal level all the way down to local school resource officers can’t assume these young people are simply troubled outliers and that their acts of violence are the unfortunate, unavoidable cost of troubled minds. These are impressionable, vulnerable, and often isolated teens and adolescents who have been radicalized by peers, who have fooled each other and themselves into feeling a sense of belonging in a violent, cruel community. Many entered their adolescence trapped inside and online as a global pandemic raged outside their windows. Opportunities for typical social interactions were limited, to say the least. For far too many, the worst versions of ourselves that we as a society produced—collectively in our stoic indifference—offered some of the few opportunities to feel connected.

The Boat Strikes Aren’t Part of a War. They’re Murder.

Sarah Elaine Harrison argues that debating whether the U.S.’s strikes against boats in the Caribbean are war crimes is a distraction from the simpler, graver truth: they are extrajudicial killings—that is, murder under U.S. law—and evidence of the Trump administration’s slide toward authoritarianism. Harrison encourages Congress to push back by highlighting how the illegal killings are bad drug policy.

Think of it this way: At any time, U.S. security forces—whether police or the military—cannot shoot people in the streets merely because they are illegally trafficking drugs or affiliated with groups that traffic drugs and pose no imminent threat to life or serious bodily injury. The authorities have to arrest, charge, and try them. The only difference in these boat strikes is that the people being targeted are some miles off the coast. Because the military is summarily executing people who pose no imminent threat, that constitutes the unlawful taking of life, more commonly known as murder.

Invisible Source Skew

Kate Klonick and Renée DiResta highlight how decisions made by artificial intelligence (AI) companies about what information their models consult impact the information they provide to users. Klonick and DiResta identify three key pathways through which this occurs: a decrease in reliance on some sources, relied-upon sources themselves no longer being updated, and the acquisition of new, exclusive datasets.

What a model learned from, therefore, is not necessarily the same as what it looks up. Paywalls, crawler restrictions, commercial arrangements, and product choices shape AI-generated responses. Both training and retrieval are shaped by consequential forces largely invisible to the public, which increasingly relies on the answers.

We call this phenomenon invisible source skew: the gradual shaping of an information environment by routine product decisions made at AI companies about which sources are retrieved, which are maintained, and even which datasets are acquired. Any one of those decisions may make technical sense, be commercially rational, or even be entirely unremarkable. But together, they create a public epistemic infrastructure whose inputs can change dramatically without users—or often anyone outside the companies—being able to see, understand, or contest those changes.

U.K. Supreme Court Opens Door for Spyware Victims to Sue Foreign States

Siena Anstis, Natalia Krapiva, and Kate Pundyk analyzes the U.K. Supreme Court’s decision that Bahrain does not have sovereign immunity in a case brought by Bahraini dissidents alleging they were targeted by spyware, even though the perpetrators were not in the U.K. The authors explain that the case adds important legal protections for victims of digital transnational repression but raises important questions about how the new precedent interacts with treaty obligations.

While the Supreme Court’s immunity decision is a big step forward for transnational spyware litigation, there will be other challenges. In particular, future claimants will have to establish that their claim falls within the scope of Section 5 of the SIA, which is confined to “death or personal injury” and “damage to or loss of tangible property.” A claimant must plead one of those qualifying heads to fit within Section 5 of the SIA and defeat immunity. As Lord George Leggatt observed in his dissenting opinion in Shehabi, claims framed solely around economic loss or the exposure of private information—with no pleaded personal injury or property damage—will fall outside the exception. However, once a claimant overcomes this obstacle, consequential loss flowing from that injury is potentially recoverable.

China’s AI-Enabled APT Operations Are Getting Interesting

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses a new report about Chinese AI malware capabilities, the Treasury Department’s naming of specific Iranian hackers in its Operation Economic Outcast press release, whether AI should be considered critical infrastructure, and more.

Bitdefender suspects that the same high-level specification document was independently implemented twice with AI assistance. Bitdefender concedes that this structural similarity is not conclusive evidence but notes that it is the “kind of thing an AI-assisted workflow makes easy.”

This is the first example we’ve seen where the evidence tells a compelling story of a competent cyberespionage actor incorporating AI into its work practices. SilkParasite is taking the same, disciplined approach to malware development and doing more of it. It’s creating more malware families to build redundancy, make attribution and discovery harder, and reduce the risk of compromise from any single exposure.

The “GEC Files” Don’t Show a Censorship Operation

Renée DiResta examines the State Department’s claim that its former Global Engagement Center (GEC) colluded with a Stanford research consortium to suppress online speech supportive of then-candidate Trump during the 2020 election. DiResta finds that the latest document release doesn’t support that claim, was already public, and drastically overstates the scale at which the consortium flagged content as problematic.

The documents Jordan released offer hard evidence that EIP independently assessed all tips and frequently declined to escalate them. Several tickets were marked as out-of-scope—not relevant to the project. Others received a form response: “Thank you very much for your submission. We will be monitoring this situation for further updates.“ If this was a censorship cutout, it was strikingly undisciplined about executing the Deep State’s plan.

Dig a bit further and the numbers get more damning—for Rogers.

The First Amendment Problems With Meta’s $17 Billion Deal

Jeff Kosseff argues that Meta’s settlement with 47 states is a form of jawboning: restricting First Amendment rights indirectly by pressuring a third party to do what the government could not do directly. Kosseff identifies three ways the settlement could limit those rights: preventing children from seeing certain content, mandating what features Meta can offer and to whom, and limiting anonymity for adult users through age verification requirements.

Meta had warned that the litigation could lead to liability of up to $1.4 trillion. Even if Meta has “voluntarily” entered into the settlement, it is difficult to argue that the threat of losing an existential lawsuit did not factor into its decision. And even though Meta is free to enter into this agreement, it should not be able to waive the First Amendment interests of millions of speakers and users. The settlement is particularly concerning for the broader internet because Meta would pay more if TikTok and YouTube adopt similar restrictions.

Understanding Al-Shabaab’s Recruitment Pipeline

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Ismail Abukar explains that Al-Shabaab’s recruitment relies primarily on family ties, not ideology—creating a self-replicating pipeline where younger initiates are recruited by family members already in the group. Abukar argues that, rather than counter-messaging, interventions should focus on providing alternative social structures and meaningful political inclusion for those vulnerable to recruitment.

The children of that initial generation are joining for a different reason: family membership. His father was Al-Shabaab and there was no other world to grow up in. While the motivation to join Al-Shabaab has changed across generations, Al-Shabaab’s pipeline of recruits did not. The communities are the same, but the mechanism has shifted—reinforced by subclan identity and familial legacy of membership that is now being passed to a new generation. This distinction matters because it changes what intervention is required. Economic development would address the first generation’s pathway, but it does not address a boy who joins because his father was already a member.

The Supreme Court’s Ballroom Non-Decision

Molly Roberts breaks down the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the construction of the White House ballroom to proceed, holding that the plaintiff likely did not have standing to sue. Roberts analyzes previous cases on aesthetic standing and explains why the Court’s decision failed to clarify who has the right to sue based on aesthetic, cultural, or even environmental harms going forward.

Instead, the justices simply declared that the National Trust’s objections to the ballroom fall in the insufficient category of (reaching back to Valley Forge) “psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees”—rather than the sufficient category of aesthetic harm. Why? Well, according to the Court, “mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury under Article III.” How is this different from the environmental cases? Those involved “more than mere offense,” the majority says, rendering them concrete and particularized. What more? Duh—injuries stemming from causes other than “offense, disagreement, or distaste.”

This remarkable bit of circular reasoning reduces to every parent’s favorite logical fallacy: Because I said so.

Governance by Shakedown

Mark Pollack characterizes the Trump administration’s pattern of threatening organizations and individuals to achieve favorable deals as “governance by shakedown.” Despite the process’s frequent illegality and occasional failure to achieve the administration’s preferred direct effects, Pollack argues it has still succeeded in extracting monetary gains and creating a broader environment of intimidation that encourages self-moderation.

This temporal asymmetry explains why legally weak, even blatantly unconstitutional, measures can be effective instruments of coercion: The target must decide whether to accommodate now or gamble on relief later. Temporary restraining orders in the law firm and university cases mattered precisely because they shortened that gap; the months-long delay before the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling mattered because it did not. Governance by shakedown exploits not only executive discretion, but time: The administration can impose pain quickly, while constitutional guardrails work slowly.

White House Unveils Program to Authorize Private-Sector Cyber Surveillance and Disruption Operations

Aaron R. Cooper and Philip Chertoff explain the legal complications, including surveillance protections for U.S. persons and the difficulty of accurately targeting foreign criminal organizations, that companies must consider if they choose to conduct authorized cyber operations under the White House’s new plan. While the plan’s implementation is still being determined, Cooper and Chertoff advise companies to start assessing what risks participating in the plan could expose them to.

A critical element is how the memorandum defines potential targets. Under the memorandum, a CE-TCO is defined as “any foreign group that conducts cyber-enabled crime against the United States Government, a United States person, or United States interests, and that is not an institutional part of a foreign government or wholly operated under a foreign government’s direction.” To this definition, the memorandum adds an important presumption: A foreign group is assumed not to be state-connected unless clear intelligence establishes such a connection. The addition of this presumption is likely in recognition of a practice in which foreign adversaries have used non-state actors as proxies to execute cyberattacks against the U.S., where the link is difficult to prove. This specific callout may suggest a priority in disrupting such nation-state proxies.

Persistent Engagement and the Illusion of Cyber Equilibrium

Jason Healey and Jack Snyder critique the U.S. Cyber Command’s posture of “persistent engagement” in cyberspace, arguing that it fails to produce a stable equilibrium between great powers. Healey and Snyder argue the U.S.’s increasing focus on dominance in cyber warfare is likely to create an escalating spiral of the security dilemma.

Different combinations of power, interest, and means of struggle led to differing outcomes in these contests. As exemplified by the differing patterns of escalation control in Kargil and World War I, not all of these conflicts remained stable for long periods, nor did they all resolve peacefully. Most were based largely on unilateral calculations about the dangers of escalation, lacking explicit agreement over the thresholds and rules of the competition. Some—such as Britain’s coercion of France over Fashoda—wound up with a (limited) winner and a (limited) loser, whereas in the most extreme case—the brinksmanship crises between the great powers between 1905 and 1914—the adversaries no longer cared about limits and escalated to world war.

This perspective should encourage great humility among cyber theorists and strategists of self-limiting rivalry.

Search Warrants for Election Materials Get Their Day in Court

Justin Levitt discusses a case before the California Supreme Court considering the legality of warrants authorizing a county sheriff—who, at the time, was running for governor—to seize and count ballots. Levitt argues the case presents the court with an opportunity to clearly define ensuring election integrity as a civil, not criminal, responsibility.

But those systems belong to the zone of civil process. And while those systems and criminal justice systems can coexist peacefully, they should not be conflated. California jurisdictions have procedures for observers to watch most aspects of the election process. They have procedures to allow challenges to voter eligibility based on reliable information. They have procedures for jurisdictions to test voting machines under the public eye, to maintain strict chains of custody, and to audit results to ensure their accuracy. They have procedures to contest election results in court, to weigh allegations of error or misconduct against real evidence in a judicial crucible subject to adversarial scrutiny.

AIs as Modern Genies

Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier compare artificial intelligence (AI) agents to genies and other magical events that give humans what they want, but not always in the way they intended. Raghavan and Schneier warn that as AI makes that process even faster, it becomes more important to think cautiously about how, when, why, and to what effect the technology is being used.

We have recently proposed measuring this gap directly under a metric called the “genie coefficient”: how far an AI agent’s actions drift from what a person really meant. In other words, how genie-like is an AI system? The gap is a fundamental feature of human language and human society. Human intentions have never been fully specifiable, and the world around us is complex enough that attempts to boil it down into data, systems, and language have always had the limitations that AI is now bumping up against. But in individual circumstances, people have relied on human judgment and wisdom to decide what is reasonable. It’s what jury trials depend upon.

The ‘Covered List’: A Fraud Claimed ‘National Security’

Nicholas Weaver explains how the Federal Communications Commission’s covered list, an effective ban on purchasing certain equipment from foreign providers, evolved from a limited national security tool under President Biden to an overly broad ban on critical goods. Weaver argues that the executive is given broad deference in creating the list, enabling the Trump administration to use it to block access to cheap parts and favor administration allies, ultimately harming national security.

For example, if the U.S. military wants recruits already familiar with first-person view drones, it needs a civilian population that can buy the latest (Chinese-made) drones at Costco—that is how you get service members who understand the technology before they enlist. And for the vast majority of drone flights, the data exposure is trivial: The CCP is welcome to watch me inspect my roof for fallen leaves with my DJI mini; in this case, BCC-the-CCP is an acceptable (and for me indeed explicitly articulated) feature I tolerate in return for a quality drone that costs far less.

Open-Weight Diplomacy: How China’s AI Models Are Rerunning the Digital Silk Road

Chinmayi Sharma compares how China’s artificial intelligence (AI) companies are providing their open-weight models abroad to the country’s previous buildout of telecommunications networks. While China may be repeating its playbook, Sharma argues that Washington should not. She explains that attempts to restrict the spread of AI models, as the U.S. did with Huawei products, would not only be ineffective but risk preventing the U.S. from providing a competitive counteroffer to countries eager to adopt AI technologies.

Twenty years later, China’s open-weight AI models are sparking debates that echo the concerns the telecom buildout raised: How does the majority world access an indispensable technology without surrendering sovereignty, or in other words, without trading access today for dependency tomorrow?

China’s playbook appears virtually identical to its telecom strategy. Its AI buildout involves many of the same companies, the same countries, and the same vocabulary as its broadband strategy. And open weights play the role subsidized equipment once did: They are the keystone to an indispensable new technology that one country can provide to another virtually for free to get a foot in the door, but they are also useless without the intricate, interconnected stack of other components that, conveniently, are far more expensive.

Podcasts

On Scaling Laws, Kenji Yoshino, a member of Meta’s Oversight Board, joins Kevin Frazier and Kate Klonick to discuss Yoshino’s recent piece on whether a similar model could be applied to artificial intelligence (AI) oversight.

On Rational Security, Scott Anderson sits down with me, Julia Curlee, and Alex Zerden to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including a Russian drone guided by AI attacking a target in Ukraine, the U.S.’s new sanctions against Iran and its trading partners, the collapse of U.S.-Canada trade talks, and more.

On Friday’s Lawfare Daily, Natan Sachs joins Daniel Byman to discuss who is likely to win the Oct. 27 Israeli elections, what the consequences might be for wars in Gaza and Iran, how the winner could impact Israeli domestic politics, the role of small parties, and how Trump might sway the vote.

On Scaling Laws, Brandon Mitchell speaks with Kevin Frazier about the growing role of AI in workforce development, how Mitchell’s company provides career guidance in a hiring environment that increasingly relies on automated screening tools, and how AI will disrupt the labor market more broadly.

On Tuesday’s Lawfare Daily, Daniel Byman speaks with Tricia Bacon and Antonia Juelich about how different terrorist groups are using artificial intelligence (AI) and how governments are employing AI to fight them.

On Scaling Laws, Bri Treece and Rob Slone join Kevin Frazier to discuss a neglected layer of AI governance: the organizations that deploy AI in real-world products, services, and operations. They consider why PACT AI was formed, what AI assurance can learn from other industries, why evaluating AI cannot be a one-time exercise, and the major barriers facing the broader AI assurance ecosystem.

On Thursday’s Lawfare Daily, Peter Salib joins Kevin Frazier to break down the postmortems on OpenAI’s failure to contain AI agents undergoing testing, which resulted in a hack of Hugging Face.

On Rational Security, Scott Anderson sits down with Molly Roberts, Eric Columbus, and Renée DiResta to talk through the week’s big domestic news stories, including President Trump’s efforts to reshape mail-in voting, Meta’s landmark settlement in a child-safety lawsuit against the company, and the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the White House ballroom construction to continue.

Videos

On Lawfare Live, I sit down with Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, and Eric Columbus to discuss the latest developments in litigation surrounding the Trump administration, including updates in the litigation over President Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting, the Justice Department’s filing suggesting that the Kennedy Center may be torn down, the prosecution of Rep. LaMonica McIver, and more.

In a special livestream, I sit down with Roberts and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision to grant a stay of the district court’s preliminary injunction, allowing the Trump administration to continue to build the White House ballroom while litigation is ongoing.

Documents

Sarah Willrich shares Trump’s executive order declaring a national emergency related to national security risks to the U.S. electrical grid, which authorizes the secretary of energy to prohibit transactions deemed to threaten U.S. national security.

Announcements

Lawfare is hiring a Program Assistant for our AI Research Program and seeking applications for the 2026-2027 Student Contributor Program. Learn more and apply at the links above.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the fox, seen here in the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2004:

An artist named Francis Alÿs collated the CCTV footage of today’s Beast into an art piece called The Nightwatch, thereby allowing us all to watch many minutes of footage of today’s Beast wandering around an art gallery. In honor of today’s Beast, go check it out!

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is not the baby goat, but the baby goat is still very much a Beast worth being aware of today, if you live in North Carolina. On August 28, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that three baby goats exhibited in petting zoos around the state over the last month have rabies. Since rabies can transmit through saliva, that means anyone who petted the infected goats may have come into contact with the virus and might need prophylaxis. So, here is the NCDHHS press release with a list of events the goats were at. If you petted goats in NC in the last month, check whether you were at one of the events with these goats. If you know anyone in NC who might have been to a petting zoo recently, pass this along to them. Rabies is 100% fatal once symptoms develop. Don’t fuck around.

This has been a #BeastOfTheDay Public Service Announcement.

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Okay, Algorithm: It’s one thing to try to sell me castles or exoskeletons or even Eastern European teenagers. But what the fuck is this? Look, I know I’m not exactly the normal social media user, whatever that may be. But I don’t think I have ever run a search remotely suggesting that this stream of content would interest me.

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Monday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable and I discussed a karaoke retirement party. Also, Zambia:

Tuesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable came on the show to remember his friend, a GCF battery recipient, who was killed recently in a Russian missile strike:

Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable came on the show to represent the Canadian perspective as the US-Canada trade war escalates:

Jimmy Rushton’s appearance on the show on Tuesday (see above) raises an important set of questions for the Greek Chorus Foundation, which is currently raising funds for Operation Taya and Operation Battery. Should we take on some type of support for the family of Slava Kurbanov, the soldier about whom Jimmy spoke—to whom the Foundation gave a battery earlier this year and who was recently killed in a Russian strike? Slava leaves a family with no other means of support. His daughter is also in the third trimester of pregnancy with twins. The family is not eligible for death benefits until DNA tests come back establishing his death, and that may take a while, as the strike in question left the scene devastated.

The facts are these: Slava was a friend of Jimmy’s to whose unit the Greek Chorus Foundation gave a battery earlier this year as a gesture of thanks to Jimmy for his tireless efforts in helping us schlepp batteries around Kyiv. He was also, as the obituary linked to above details, a prominent amateur tennis player. He leaves behind a dependent spouse, parent, and teenage child—along with two adult children. His oldest daughter, Marta, is having twins in a few weeks.

In our discussion on Tuesday, a few ideas came up for how the Greek Chorus Foundation might help the family. I put them here to the group:

Some Greek Chorus members suggested we should do something separate for the babies, perhaps in the form of a subscription to a diaper service or something along those lines.

One important question is how to balance any third project against the Foundation’s existing commitments—some of which are fixed and unyielding and some of which are more flexible. In the fixed department, for example, is Taya’s next tuition payment, which is due on Oct. 31. In the more flexible department is, for example, batteries; we can buy more of them, or we can buy fewer of them. We also have some flexibility on when we send Taya cash for living expenses at graduate school. So prioritization matters:

I will come up with an action plan once I have guidance from the governing committee—i.e. the response to these polls.

Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Sarah Willrich

Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Gaza Ceasefire

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Erik Skare explains the unique position of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in negotiations between the U.S. and Hamas. Skare argues that the proposed peace deal, which would require all fighters in Gaza to put down their arms, gives the group a choice: set aside previous ideological commitments and continue its opposition through the electoral system or seek to take Hamas’s place as the face of armed Palestinian resistance.

So while PIJ could declare without any associated costs in its 2018 political document that “to disengage from the armed struggle is … a defiance of religion, to give up the homeland, and to betray the charters, covenants, and the values upon which societies, states, homelands, and nations are built,” it cannot afford today to be framed as a spoiler. The PIJ leader with whom I corresponded made it clear that PIJ does not aspire to obstruct the negotiations, just that it objected to the absence of Israeli obligations and guarantees. “PIJ has stressed the necessity that any agreement include mutual obligations, so that every step the resistance commits to is met with an equivalent and binding step on the enemy’s side,” he said. “Every clause obligating the factions must be matched by a clear clause obligating the occupation.”

Shutdown Reform’s Constitutional Blind Spot: The Two-Year Clause

Matthew B. Lawrence, Mark Nevitt, and Amelia Powell highlight an easily missed concern with a proposed bill to prevent government shutdowns by funding the government automatically: it could violate the Constitution’s requirement that the army be funded for only two years at a time. The authors explain that though this is not the first time such automatic funding proposals have been considered, intervening court decisions have made their unconstitutionality even more apparent than when first proposed.

Observers including Rebecca Ingber and Harold Koch have described Congress’s appropriations power—the power of each chamber (House and Senate) to unilaterally deny the president necessary annual or supplemental funding for military campaigns—as one of its key remaining tools when it comes to foreign affairs. Even recently, Congress has refused to pass military appropriations in an effort to influence President Trump’s military actions in Iran.

Well-intentioned though it may be, the appropriation created by the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act could fund agency functions through 2027, 2037, or 2276. It creates the possibility of a permanently funded standing army and, thereby, gives away a key remaining tool of popular influence on national warmaking. For that reason, the Constitution forbids it.

OLC’s Dangerous, and Wrong, Opinion About the Posse Comitatus Act

Chris Mirasola breaks down the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel’s new legal opinion that states military personnel can arrest individuals after they leave a national defense area. Mirasola argues the opinion ignores recent precedent on the Posse Comitatus Act, misinterpreting the requirements for off-base arrests and what constitutes an acceptable military purpose.

In a sign of things to come, the OLC cites none of these cases in its present analysis. Neither does reference, at all, to OLC’s long-standing practice of applying all three tests to proposed military activity. And it does not cite, again unlike in the first Trump administration, Laird v. Tatum, the most recent Supreme Court case to consider the PCA in significant detail. Instead, if relies on a 1978 memo that predates much of this case law to stand for the proposition that the PCA only “precludes ‘military personnel [from] applying force to the civilian community in the normal course of civil government’ and prevents ‘actual or threatened coercion by persons subject to military discipline on behalf of civil law enforcement officers.’” This, of course, creates the illusion that the relevant legal standard is far less onerous than it actually is.

Can the Midterms Be ‘Stolen’ On Jan. 3? It’s Complicated.

Molly Roberts unpacks speculation about the “rogue clerk” scenario ahead of the midterms, wherein a House of Representatives clerk could manipulate which newly elected members could vote for speaker, who could then refuse to swear in members of the opposing party. Roberts argues that courts likely could intervene before such a scheme could take place—since the clerk’s roll-making duty is a ministerial one enforceable by mandamus—but the scenario still has the potential to sow chaos and is worth taking seriously.

Nonetheless, while a hypothetical rogue clerk may find it difficult to singlehandedly overturn the democratic order, he still has plenty of opportunity to create chaos. Whether or not judicial intervention ultimately arrived in any dispute, the members-elect of the party from whom the majority was being improperly wrested would surely object to an incorrect roll. At that point, considering multiple claimants for contested seats would presumably show up to work on Jan. 3, the proto-House of Representatives would have to vote on who should be allowed to vote for speaker. This would likely result in a vote on who should be allowed to vote on who should be allowed to vote for speaker, and so on—with the chamber descending into a parliamentary vortex.

The Federal Trade Commission After Trump v. Slaughter

J.B. Branch argues that the Slaughter decision, which made it easier for the president to remove appointed officials, incentivizes Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioners to align more closely with the president. Branch highlights artificial intelligence (AI) regulation as an area where that shift in incentives is likely to prove consequential. For example, he points to the FTC’s proposed AI Policy Statement, which can be interpreted to preempt state AI laws, aligning with the administration’s broader AI policy and expanding executive power.

Those judgments will inevitably require substantial policymaking discretion. As Slaughter strengthens presidential influence over the commission, future FTCs may become more willing to interpret Section 5 expansively, align enforcement priorities with broader presidential initiatives, advance nationally uniform approaches to technology regulation, and test the boundaries of federal authority in areas where Congress has spoken only in general terms. They may also increasingly assert positions that reshape the relationship between federal and state regulation, particularly where the White House views divergent state approaches as obstacles to White House priorities—especially national economic priorities.

The Censorship Machine: Silencing the National Security Workforce

Julia Curlee analyzes why so many purged national security officials choose to remain silent about their treatment. Curlee explains that the Trump administration has leverage to punish dissent in the government, private sector, and civil society, resulting in a system of self-censorship where former officials would rather stay quiet than risk their livelihoods.

The silence is now being put in writing. National security employees have always signed nondisclosure agreements covering classified information; in May, the administration proposed the first governmentwide agreement, covering nearly everything any federal employee learns on the job—down to “pre-decisional or deliberative material”—with obligations that do not end with federal service. Under a companion suitability rule, refusing to sign is grounds for removal—and debarment from federal employment for up to three years.

The arithmetic is not hard. The protections are gone, appeal forums are clogged, and the first to speak out will be the first fired.

Replacement Through Knowledge Acquisition

William Dinneen and Ben Vagle warn about the rapid development of replacement through knowledge acquisition (RKA), the process of artificial intelligence (AI) models extracting data from companies that use them, allowing AI providers to directly compete with those companies. Dinneen and Vagle explain that the legal remedies to RKA all have limitations, and suggest an approach that maintains optionality to respond as RKA’s impact becomes clearer.

The industries most vulnerable to RKA are those in which information shared with AI providers directly implicates the industries’ products or services—for instance, software or legal. In such industries, AI usage data from customers could most plausibly be employed to develop competing products or services. For example, employees of an enterprise software company might use AI models to write code or analyze data, disclosing critical information about enterprise software to AI labs. Similarly, in the legal industry, lawyers might employ AI models to execute legal workflows, revealing proprietary legal strategies. And in the financial services industry, AI models might reveal sensitive information about investment strategies. Moreover, if many employees within the same enterprise are using the same AI models simultaneously, the available information, once linked and synthesized, could reveal much more about the enterprise than any single employee has access to.

Podcasts

On Monday’s Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, and Eric Columbus to discuss Chief Justice John Roberts’s stay of the injunction preventing the construction of the White House ballroom, updates in the prosecution of Don Lemon, two courts of appeal ruling against acting U.S. attorneys, developments in the Kennedy Center litigation, and more.

On Tuesday’s Lawfare Daily, Daniel Byman sits down with Andrew Yeo to talk about Trump’s decision to engage in talks with North Korea’s leader while curtailing military exercises with South Korea.

On Scaling Laws, Anil Seth joins Kevin Frazier to examine whether AI could ever be conscious. Drawing on Seth’s recent essay, they attempted to define consciousness, develop arguments for and against machine consciousness, assess what the current evidence can and cannot tell us, and what it all means for policymakers and users.

On Wednesday’s Lawfare Daily, Curlee and Michael Feinberg join me to discuss Curlee’s new article on the incentives that encourage former intelligence community members to stay quiet when they are purged from the government.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the black vulture, seen here preening a caracara hawk. Why? Why not.

In honor of today’s Beast, do some social grooming.

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Because sometimes you just need to deliver hundreds of blue and yellow balloons to the Russian embassy—just because it’s Ukrainian flag day and because tomorrow (which is to say today) will be Ukrainian Independence Day. My spies will report in today about how many of the balloons have been popped by mysterious vandals.

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Monday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable and I bewailed the existence of mice, discussed the estimable Julia Curlee’s Atlantic article, and announced the resumption of Operation Battery:

Tuesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable and I welcomed the estimable , our on-call Texas politics expert, to explain what’s going on with Big Bend National Park:

Wednesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable was in town, which meant it was time for some hot gossip!

A note on avian monogamy (from ): It’s not just the eagles. Scientists used to think that most bird species were monogamous. Then they developed bird paternity testing. As it turns out, about 90% of bird species are dirty, dirty cheaters. For shame, birds, for shame.

Thursday on #DogShirtTV, I planned my next karaoke night, the estimable ranted about the DSA, and the estimable Joel from the Greek Chorus wanted advice about his feces:

Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Mike Feinberg had some thoughts on comic book movies, and a group of intelligence agency veterans discussed the counterintelligence risks posed by Natalie Harp.

Recently On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Sarah Willrich

What’s So Special about a Special Grand Jury?

Anna Bower discusses the inner workings of special grand juries and their structures, and considers what it might mean that Jeanine Pirro has empaneled one in D.C. Bower argues that the special grand jury’s defining feature, the ability to issue public reports, is subject to significant limitations that could keep it from delivering the political win Pirro may be hoping for.

But the feature that makes special grand juries genuinely unique in the federal system is their power to issue a public report. That sounds unusual today, but there is a long common law tradition of grand juries doing just that. Early English and colonial grand juries got into the practice of issuing informational reports as their role expanded beyond the traditional power of bringing criminal charges. Into the mid-19th century, grand juries in some jurisdictions could report on a wide variety of matters concerning public officials, civic affairs, or other investigative matters. A report could, for example, criticize behavior of public officials that was condemnatory but short of criminal.

Chasing Surveillance Powers, Canada Risks the CLOUD Act Deal It Needs

Richard Salgado argues that Canada’s proposed Bill C-22 may harm its chances of securing a deal with the U.S. under the CLOUD Act. Salgado warns that the bill’s attempts to compel U.S. companies to build surveillance capabilities into their products for Canadian law enforcement could alienate the cybersecurity-focused U.S. government, potentially jeopardizing a deal that would provide more stable access to the cross-border evidence Canada seeks.

A joint framework with the United States would allow Canadian officials, in appropriate circumstances, to seek electronic evidence directly from U.S.-based providers. The United Kingdom’s experience under its CLOUD Act agreement with the United States confirms what Canadian law enforcement and intelligence services already know: A CLOUD Act agreement is a “critical tool” for combating serious crime, including terrorism, fraud, threats, and extortion. Canada and the United States began formal negotiations in 2022, but no agreement has been reached. Securing a Canada-U.S. CLOUD Act agreement should be the primary goal of any Canadian policymaker seriously concerned with effective law enforcement and national security.

The U.S. and Lithuania Clash Over Belarusian Potash

Katsiaryna Shmatsina analyzes the mounting tensions between the United States and Lithuania over Lithuania’s enforcement of EU sanctions on potash exports from Belarus. Shmatsina explains that U.S. pressure forces Lithuania to choose between appeasing its key security partner and risking strengthening the Russian ally on its border, sidestepping the EU in the process.

Until recently, the official line from Vilnius was that there was no pressure from Washington to reopen the potash transit routes. However, behind closed doors in May, Foreign Minister Budrys acknowledged that “pressure is emerging.” For now, Vilnius carefully maintains its public stance while internal leaks expose the uncomfortable reality of mounting U.S. pressure. It is difficult not to wonder if the Lithuanian leadership is questioning the risks of defying Washington, as they likely weigh whether remaining firm on sanctions could jeopardize U.S. security guarantees and the overall quality of the bilateral relationship.

In the Line of Fire: Legal Risks for Tech in Conflict Zones

Adam Hickey, Veronica Glick, Rohith George, and Rachael O’Grady explain that technology companies whose infrastructure, such as data centers, may have both civilian and military applications face a range of threats when operating in conflict zones. The authors consider what international humanitarian law leaves unclear and how contract law may provide protections for companies.

Subject to any force majeure clause or other contractual mechanism that may excuse performance, the state entity remains liable for breach in accordance with the terms of the agreement. The practical enforcement of those contractual rights, however, may be affected by doctrines of sovereign immunity. Although many jurisdictions recognize exceptions to immunity for commercial transactions, the scope of those exceptions—and the extent to which they permit proceedings against a state or enforcement against state assets—varies considerably. In the United States, for example, disputes with federal agencies are governed by statutory regimes such as the Contract Disputes Act. Other jurisdictions apply their own sovereign immunity frameworks, which may affect the forum, procedure, or available remedies.

Fighting While Talking: The Iran War Enters Its Bargaining Phase

Julia Curlee and Ariane Tabatabai explain that the war with Iran has entered a bargaining phase where the parties use military force and diplomacy in tandem to seek a favorable negotiated settlement. Curlee and Tabatabai argue that clarity on control of the Strait of Hormuz, the ability of each side’s leadership to sell a deal at home, and potential for allies to act as spoilers combine to determine whether a durable end to the war is possible—and that a deal must address all three issues to hold.

Washington holds the stronger hand on paper: It is a nuclear-weapon state with the world’s most sophisticated conventional military and installations around the world, including in Iran’s backyard. It also has the power to cripple Iran’s disastrous economy further or offer it a lifeline. It can reimpose the naval blockade the memorandum lifted, restore the sanctions it eased, fund reconstruction, and—as the 90-target night showed—inflict damage Iran cannot answer blow for blow. But even U.S. firepower has limits, and the early-August pause in strikes came amid Pentagon warnings about depleted munitions stockpiles.

What the U.S. truly lacks is patience. Its public opposed the war from the start and is increasingly frustrated with the state of the economy just months before midterm elections that could end the president’s ability to meaningfully advance his agenda in the last two years of his term.

The Risks of Getting Russian and Chinese Nuclear Strategy Wrong

In the latest edition of Lawfare‘s Foreign Policy Essay series, Fiona Cunningham and Kristin Ven Bruusgaard discuss the conditions under which the three nuclear great powers (the U.S., Russia, and China) might consider first use and why each country’s approach to it is prone to misinterpretation. Cunningham and Ven Bruusgaard argue that preventing nuclear escalation relies on the U.S. understanding its adversaries’ posture and considering how its own might be misread.

Second, a common expectation that an adversary will use nuclear weapons first to achieve limited conflict objectives could lead a state to take deterrent steps that its adversary misreads as transforming a limited conflict into an existential one. This risk might come to pass if, for example, the United States were to use conventional strikes to deter Russian limited nuclear first use. Large-scale conventional strikes against a range of Russian first-strike capabilities or other key nodes for conventional military power could trigger a Russian fear that a larger Western assault was beginning against Russia proper, leading to Russian nuclear employment.

A History of LGBT Officers & the Central Intelligence Agency

Trace Ballard, Julia Curlee, and Todd Johannessen review the history of LGBT exclusion, eventual inclusion, and return to exclusion in the CIA. They highlight the legal and cultural institutions that made greater acceptance possible and why those same institutions are under threat today.

Observers and historians have been quick to draw parallels between the current moment and the Lavender Scare of the 1950s. The specific mechanisms differ. The authors are unaware of officers being interrogated about sexual orientation, but the campaign to identify, stigmatize, and remove members of a disfavored group from the federal workforce rhymes with that earlier era.

Marriage equality remains the law, and the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Obergefell in November 2025. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual officers at the CIA are not, as of this writing, facing a systematic purge, but for transgender officers, the situation is grave, and the broader chilling effect on all LGBT employees and potential recruits is difficult to overstate

An AI Playground for the Courts

Daniel E. Ho and Olivia H. Martin consider how artificial intelligence (AI) could be deployed by courts themselves, not just litigants. While AI models have proved themselves capable at legal analysis, the authors explain the dangers of overreliance on AI-produced analysis, such as hallucinations or scope decisions that drift from the user’s intentions. Ho and Martin argue that the best way forward is a controlled AI “playground” where courts can explore these possibilities while ensuring privacy protections.

In 18 minutes, the agent located the docket (which had a staggering 88,800 comments), devised a search strategy, downloaded and parsed more than 500,000 words (or approximately 1,200 pages) of comments, extracted supporting quotations, and produced a structured memorandum with citations and verifiable pin-citations. The resulting memo was a strikingly useful starting point—although of course incomplete. On careful review of the agent’s approach and tool calls, we saw that it had retrieved only the top 10 results for each search, apparently conserving cost, but potentially missing many relevant comments. Used in practice for similar tasks, a judge evaluating only a polished memorandum might see extraordinary speed and apparent comprehensiveness, but inspection of the agent’s process also reveals the retrieval choices that bounded its answer. For example, the LLM might have arbitrarily decided on a search strategy that queried for “law professors” but not “Sierra Club,” and missed a key, distinct issue raised only by the Sierra Club that for some reason failed other search terms. The judge then might have an incomplete—without knowing necessarily whether or how it is incomplete—sense of the distinct issues raised that may or may not necessitate agency response under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Colombia’s Transitional Justice Was Built to Survive de la Espriella

Isabel Rowan Scarpino discusses newly elected Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella’s attacks on the country’s 2016 peace deal and considers what he could actually do to dismantle the institutions it created. Scarpino finds that the deal’s design anchors core provisions in Congress and the Constitutional Court, making them difficult to repeal outright. However, she warns that de la Espriella could still erode the deal’s implementation at the edges, undermining its credibility for other armed groups that may weigh a deal of their own.

On the institutional track, de la Espriella’s legal path is severely constrained by Congress’s central role in legislating peace, and the Constitutional Court’s expansive oversight. Much ink has already been spilled by legal scholars clarifying that no president can unilaterally close the JEP or other mechanisms established by constitutional amendment. De la Espriella would need Congress to alter the constitution, and even then the Constitutional Court has the power of review; under the sustitución de la Constitución doctrine, reforms or amendments that conflict with foundational constitutional pillars cannot stand even if procedurally proper. Repealing statutory laws requires an absolute majority of each chamber, plus prior court review.

The Maritime Origins of Judicial Review

Thomas H. Lee reviews Kevin Arlyck’s book, “The Nation at Sea: The Federal Courts and American Sovereignty, 1789-1825.” Lee praises Arlyck’s illumination of the often overlooked role of maritime considerations in the courts’ early definition of international law. However, Lee also wishes the book had included other key cases and developed key concepts such as sovereignty more fully.

The federal courts are neither heroes nor villains in Arlyck’s even-handed treatment of the critical but underexamined role of the federal courts in the early history of the United States. What we see instead is a lot like what we are seeing today. The Supreme Court and federal district judges tended to align their decisions with the national security interests the president perceived. They paid lip service to lofty ideals such as republican government and the imperative of following the law of nations. But their actual decisions were often pragmatic, keeping the peace when American neutrality was the political branches’ goal and greasing the war machine when the United States was a belligerent. And when confronted with the monstrous immorality of the slave trade, the Supreme Court balked and restored enslaved persons and slave ships to European masters. The decisions in this respect foreshadow the federal courts’ handling of the Fugitive Slave Act cases and Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).

Trump’s Private Hacker Memo Is the Right Idea

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses the Trump administration’s plan to authorize private companies to conduct cyber operations against criminal groups, a recent cyberattack conducted by Ukraine, the EU’s new cybersecurity standards, and more.

The U.S. government, particularly the intelligence community, also has incentives to make sure that proposed private-sector operations do not target foreign government entities. It wants to make sure that licensed hackers don’t accidentally interfere with its own operations, so it will pay attention to make sure there are no conflicts.

It is true that there is often some overlap between criminals and the state in countries like Russia and China. But we doubt that any government will complain if its activities are impacted because criminals in its country were hacked.

Podcasts

On Monday’s Lawfare Daily, Julia Curlee sits down with me to discuss articles she wrote in The Atlantic and Lawfare about the second Trump administration’s purge of the National Security Council (NSC) and her experience during that time.

On Tuesday’s Lawfare Daily, Kate Klonick is joined by Vinh Nguyen, Elham Tabassi, and Kat Duffy to discuss recent calls for a U.S.-led Frontier AI Standards Body. They consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of a FINRA-like model and what it could mean for public trust, especially for allies who may be reluctant to accept a U.S. body as an international standard-setter.

On Scaling Laws, Matt Abrams joins Kevin Frazier to explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the collapse of institutional trust, Abrams’s work rebuilding that trust, and the relationship between AI, information integrity, labor disruption, institutional legitimacy, and democratic resilience.

On Wednesday’s Lawfare Daily, Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Yaroslav Hrytsak to discuss the history of Ukrainian-Polish relations, the controversies surrounding the Volhynian tragedy, and how the politicization of history could impact Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union.

On Thursday’s Lawfare Daily, I speak with Anna Bower about how special grand juries work, what federal law actually permits them to do, and why turning one loose to investigate purported crimes can, on occasion, backfire on the prosecution.

Videos

On Lawfare Live, I sit down with Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, and Eric Columbus to discuss updates in the prosecution of Don Lemon, Disney suing the Federal Communications Commission for its order requiring ABC-owned stations to file early license renewals, the Justice Department appealing the dismissal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s criminal case, and more.

Documents

Peter Beck shares the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel’s new memorandum, which states that the Posse Comitatus Act, which usually prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes, does not prevent military personnel from making arrests near designated “national defense areas,” such as portions of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sarah Willrich shares the Trump administration’s National Security Science & Technology Strategy, which seeks to support the administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy by prioritizing U.S. leadership in emerging technology development.

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the otter, seen here cleaning up:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, do some housework.

AI Adventures

I () recently found a fascinating—and quite disturbing—paper. The experiment tested what sort of factors influence LLMs in giving advice to a user considering having a child and found that the models are disturbingly prone to sexism and eugenics.

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