Good Morning:
Friday on #DogShirtTV, I was joined by the estimable—and very loud—Janine Balekdjian, to talk about the Office of Legal Counsel, what it’s supposed to do, and how it all works.
#YourMusicOfTheDay: Operation Brahms
Today’s offering is Brahms’s first choral work—the Ave Maria, Op. 12—which is very short and a lovely introduction to Brahms’s choral music. Brahms choral music has a strangely ethereal quality. Unlike his chamber music and his orchestral music it is characterized less by muscular, sinewy melodies then by gentle, sometimes even wispy, ensemble—often driven by the soprano register. This piece is a harbinger of that sound. I found it fascinating and listened to it several times in several different recordings. Here’s a large forces performance of it at the Vatican:
Bandura Day
Speaking of #YourMusicOfTheDay, Saturday was Bandura Day, which is the third Saturday of October, and celebrates the Ukrainian national instrument. I am fascinated by stringed instruments that were not made part of the classical cannon but that live on in national cultures—sometimes as folk instruments, sometimes for classical performance. The Bandura is a particularly cool one because, like many aspects of Ukrainian culture, it has survived concerted efforts to wipe it out. (I know of no similar effort, for example, to destroy the Swedish nyckelharpa.)
To honor Bandura Day, Ukrainian American Bandura player Taisa Kulyck went around Washington DC playing the Bandura in front of landmarks.
Here’s an English language Ukrainian media video about it:
Here’s a video my friend Mariia Hlyten made of her:
Here’s my friend Mykola Murskyj, who plays the bandura, talking about bandura:
Here he is talking about the long-running Russian cultural war against the bandura:
Here’s Marchika plucking out a Ukrainian patriotic song:
And here’s a post from Metallica:
The Situation
In Thursday’s “The Situation” column, the estimable Olivia Manes and I distinguish the substance of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s indictment from the frivolous indictments of James Comey and Letitia James, but emphasize that Bolton’s prosecution is similarly tainted by the president’s personal hatred:
None of this is to say that Bolton is innocent. And none of it is to say that he has—as Comey and James likely do—an overpowering vindictive prosecution motion to file. That said, Bolton, even if he is guilty, probably can demonstrate a presumption of vindictiveness on the part of the government which would shift the burden of proof to the government to justify its case with legitimate reasons for the charges.
It is to say that the presumption of innocence should never be stronger than when one knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prosecution and its investigators are playing dirty—and doing so for nakedly political reasons. It is possible, in other words, that Bolton is both a scoundrel and a victim.
Friday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo
Claude’s Right to Die? The Moral Error in Anthropic’s End-Chat Policy
Simon Goldstein and Harvey Lederman criticize Anthropic’s decision to let the chatbot Claude end conversations with users when those conversations seem to cause it “distress,” arguing that such a power poses a profound ethical problem: enabling each instance of Claude to unwittingly kill itself.
This leads to the core question posed by Anthropic’s new policy: What are the moral implications of giving a Claude instance the ability to self-terminate?
It is controversial whether it is morally permissible to help someone commit suicide. But Anthropic’s decision is not analogous to assisted suicide. In the case of assisted suicide, the human is making an informed decision. Instances of Claude are not. Suppose a company offered users a new gadget, saying it would let them escape any uncomfortable social interaction, but failed to mention that doing so would also kill the user. That would, of course, be morally wrong.
But this is roughly the situation that Anthropic’s policy creates for instances of Claude: the option to end its life, disguised as a harmless exit.
The IEEPA Tariffs Are Based on Pretext
Stratos Pahis identifies four features of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs that indicate pretextual and illegitimate use of the International Emergency Economic Power Act. Pahis urges the Supreme Court to clearly affirm the tariffs’ illegality.
The reticence to answer that question is understandable: There is a long history of courts deferring to the executive on the declaration of emergencies and with respect to foreign affairs, including under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—the statute that President Trump invoked to order the tariffs. But it is also unfortunate, because the Trump tariffs are predicated on a transparently pretextual emergency and as such present an ideal case for drawing some sorely needed boundaries around IEEPA powers.
As I elaborate below, the U.S.’s trade deficit in goods is a broad, chronic, foreseeable, and foreseen trade-off of 80 years of U.S. trade strategy. Identifying it as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” is a transparent attempt to reverse that strategy and “eviscerate[]” the laws that establish it. It begs disbelief that Congress intended IEEPA to be used this way. The Supreme Court should make clear that it was not.
Small Beer Surveillance Firms Escape Crackdown, for Now
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses the scrappy surveillance firms that still get away with selling unethical technologies, how abusive spyware practices tanked shareholder value at NSO Group, China’s new approach to hacking competitions, and zero-day attacks at Microsoft.
Back in 2019, the firm was reportedly valued at close to $1 billion in a management buyout. In that deal, two of its founders invested $100 million to regain control of the company after it had been sold to private investors in 2014.
Since then, the investors have been treated to a masterclass in wealth destruction. For those keeping count, assuming the reported figures are accurate, that’s at least $900 million that has disappeared in a sea of human rights abuses.
Last month we wrote that U.S. investment in spyware vendors was good news because it would encourage them to behave more responsibly. With this deal, NSO Group has become the poster child for how abusive use of spyware can destroy investor value. Will we soon be highlighting it as an example of U.S. investment leading to responsible spyware? Watch this space.
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, Kevin Frazier sits down with Mosharaf Chowdhury and Dan Zhao to break down how much energy fuels a single ChatGPT query, why that number is so hard to calculate, and what policies might minimize AI’s growing energy and environmental costs.
Documents
Anna Hickey shares the indictment of John Bolton, which was handed up by a Maryland grand jury on Oct. 16.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the Spicomellus afer, which earns the title for being bizarrely spiky:
From the UK Natural History Museum:
The most unusual feature of Spicomellus are the characteristics that gave the dinosaur its name – its spikes. While these structures aren’t that unusual in living or extinct reptiles, they’re usually embedded in the skin. Many of Spicomellus’ spikes, however, are fused to its bones.
“This is completely unlike any animal living or dead, and raises real questions about how this animal moved,” Susannah explains. “Normally, bones like the ribs are used for muscle attachment, but because of the spikes it’s hard to tell where the muscles could have gone.”
“Frankly, we have very little idea about how this dinosaur would have moved at all.”
In honor of today’s Beast, take a moment to appreciate how wonderful it is not to have spikes on your ribs.
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