A Brief Dog Shirt From Buenos Aires

Greetings from the flight home

Good Evening:

Argentina

It is customary, I think, when taking pictures of Buenos Aires, to focus on the many spectacular buildings. Honestly, this sequence of meat pictures strikes me as more appropriate to my brief visit.

Yes, it was all as good as it looks.

My apologies to the vegetarians among you.

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There was no #DogShirtTV last Friday, because I was in Argentina.

There is also no #DogShirtTV tomorrow, because I’m on my way back from Argentina.

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The Situation: Stand With Perkins Coie!

In Friday’s The Situation column, I respond to the Trump administration’s recent announcements that it would review government contracts with Perkins Coie LLC—the law firm that represented the Clinton campaign in 2016—and revoke at least $400 million in grants to Columbia University for its alleged failure to adequately combat antisemitism. I explain that these moves are a part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to consolidate power by attacking its perceived opponents and critics.

Perkins Coie and Columbia University are, respectively, a big law firm and a wealthy and powerful university. These are entities capable of protecting their own interests, as I’m sure they will. There will be litigation, and these plaintiffs will not need pro bono representation.

Nor are they victims that people are going to take to the streets to defend. Nobody is going to man the barricades chanting, “Stand With Perkins Coie!” but perhaps they should. It is critically important to recognize how dangerous these actions are and how they relate to the administration’s ongoing attempts to seize power.

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Friday On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett

Judicial Independence May Require Confrontation

Suzanne Spaulding argues that the Supreme Court must not allow the Trump administration's threats to disobey court orders to intimidate them into issuing rulings that avoid confrontations with the executive branch about fundamental constitutional questions:

Regardless, it would be a mistake for the courts to make decisions on the assumption that a ruling against the administration will inevitably provoke a clash between the branches. Threats to ignore a court decision are designed to elicit such behavior. The intent is to intimidate the courts into reaching for dubious procedural or substantive excuses not to find constitutional impediments to executive branch actions. Yet, if these legalistic gymnastics lack legitimacy, the constitutional crisis will not have been avoided, even if it is less theatrical. The role of the Court in maintaining the constitutional framework of checks and balances and serving as an independent interpreter of the Constitution—calling balls and strikes—still will have been ceded, along with the public’s trust.

‘Data Colonialism’ and the Political Economy of Big Tech

Chinmayi Arun reviews Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry’s new book “Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back.” Arun praises Mejias and Couldry’s account of how companies commodify social engagement and how the data value chain inherits inequalities from colonialism, but suggests that the authors—who view the law as a tool to combat data colonialism—also consider how the law enables the exploitative business models they criticize:

Both Mejias and Couldry are scholars of communication, and perhaps that explains their optimistic view of the law’s role in data colonialism. Most references to the law in the book are to data protection law or how lawsuits can enable workers to assert their rights. Legal scholars take a more complex view of the law’s engagement with Big Tech companies, recognizing that although law can restrict the companies’ exploitative and extractive behavior, it can also enable it. Julie Cohen offers the most detailed and complex articulation of this view in her book, “Between Truth and Power,” in which she points out that institutional transformation of the law is a key part of the shift to the neoliberalism that drives the information economy.

Starlink: An Internet Lifeline for Scam Compounds

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses criminal syndicates’ use of Starlink to keep scam compounds in Myanmar online, the potential for Five Eyes countries to limit intelligence sharing with the U.S., the internal logic behind U.S. Cyber Command halting current cyber operations targeting Russia, and California’s settlement with data broker Background Alert:

The upshot here is that dealing with terms-of-service violations isn't SpaceX's forté. What levers will get the company to pay attention here? And what will it take for SpaceX to regularly identify and boot off harmful customers like scam compounds?

Taking known scam compounds offline would be good, but having an ongoing process to identify and remove the most abusive users of Starlink would be even better.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Scott R. Anderson sits down with Edward Fishman to discuss his new book: "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare." They discuss Fishman's career at the cutting edge of economic statecraft, the evolving toolkit it has come to present U.S. policymakers, the role he thinks it will play in our new era of major power competition, and what it may all mean for the future of the global order:

Videos

On March 7 at 4 p.m. ET, Natalie Orpett spoke to Anderson, Anna Bower, and Nick Bednar about the status of the civil litigation against President Donald Trump’s executive actions, including the firing of probationary employees, the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the foreign aid freeze:

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a bit of a mystery. I went to the Buenos Aires Ecoparc today hoping to catch sight of a capybara, since the world’s largest rodent is native to these here parts.

But the capybaras were not out and about today, and the closest I could find were these fellows, who were lounging about in large numbers. I was unable to identify them and pose the question of the beast’s identity to the dog shirt community.

We will research the matter as well.