Buying Batteries for Ukrainians
Let's do it
Good Evening:
This is Ava. She lives in Kyiv. Many of you have met her on #DogShirtTV. She is dressed warmly today because Kyiv has very little power, limited heating, is undergoing continued bombardment, and is facing a nasty winter cold snap. Ava is sleeping bundled up in her sweater. But she is comparatively warm.
The reason as her mother—my friend (and Lawfare employee) Anastasiia Lapatina—wrote this evening is that, “I am privileged enough to have a large battery, powerful enough to give my family at least several hours of heat, power a lamp, a hair dryer, what have you.”
Some of you contributed funds to help buy that battery, and Nastya and I have decided to try to replicate that for other Kyiv residents.
She and I are committed to buying as many such batteries as we can for residents of the city who live in parts of the city that have been suffering the most. Their prices range between roughly $1,500 and $2,500.
If you want to help, please consider donating through my Venmo or Zelle or though PayPal at benjamin.wittes@gmail.com.
To be very clear, these are not tax deductible contributions to a non-profit. They are funds I am collecting to spend myself, through Nastya, as quickly as I possibly can.
Every time I collect enough to send someone a battery, I will wire the money to Nastya, who is responsible for selecting families who need them and making sure the money gets spent as intended.
We will spend 100 percent of the money we take in. I will update readers on the project as it goes on.
The estimable Katherine Pompilio asked Sora to make a video today using the following prompt: “Editors working at the Lawfare Institute.”
I can vouch for the fact that this AI-generated video is a 100 percent accurate representation of what working at Lawfare is like:
Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher threatened us all with a good time: if Jerome Powell is prosecuted. The economists, she says, will take to the streets.
We discuss.
Yesterday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Marissa Wang
The Trump Administration Targets Europe’s Content Moderation Laws
Kenneth Propp—amid the Trump administration’s visa bans against five Europeans shaping content moderation policies—assesses the United States’ stance against the European Union’s content moderation laws requiring social media platforms to employ mechanisms for the removal of illegal content, hate speech, and disinformation.
Ultimately, the Trump administration is unlikely to back away from its campaign against European content moderation laws. Washington views these efforts as a signal of support to its populist allies in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. The administration is also undoubtedly responding to the disgruntlement of U.S. social media platforms like X with the burdens imposed by the DSA.
Priorities for U.S. Participation in International AI Capacity-Building
Chinasa T. Okolo examines how U.S. retreat from international artificial intelligence (AI) capacity-building has opened the door for China and Russia to shape global AI governance, particularly across the Global Majority. Okolo posits that, absent sustained investment in AI education, infrastructure, and local partnerships, the U.S. risks ceding long-term influence over AI systems worldwide.
The current administration’s prioritization of impeding Chinese growth over building genuine partnerships is a strategic miscalculation. While concerns about Chinese AI expansion are legitimate, a purely reactive approach focused on containment rather than offering compelling alternatives fails to address why many Global Majority countries find Chinese partnerships attractive: predictable funding, respect for sovereignty, and commitment to long-term engagement regardless of political changes. For the United States to regain meaningful influence in global AI capacity-building, there must be a fundamental shift from viewing international AI engagement primarily through the lens of great power competition to recognizing it as essential for democracy, equitable innovation, and global stability. Without immediate course correction, the United States risks becoming increasingly marginalized in global AI governance discussions and excluded from collaborative partnerships shaping AI development across the majority of the world’s population.
U.S.-China Space Competition Is Anchored to Geography on Earth
In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Aaron Bateman explains that the U.S. maintains dominance over China in great-power space competition because of U.S. allies’ willingness to permit U.S. space infrastructure on their land, while China’s space infrastructure remains dependent on incentivized non-treaty allies.
Today, the United States retains this infrastructural advantage in great-power space competition. Many of Washington’s allies around the globe permit U.S. space infrastructure on their territories. In contrast, Beijing relies on economic inducements and scientific cooperation to secure access to foreign land because it lacks allies. This strategy has been successful to a degree, allowing China to expand its space infrastructure across the world. But the lessons of the Cold War suggest that relying on non-treaty allies is a tenuous solution.
Documents
Peter Beck shares Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-Ariz.) complaint against the Department of Defense over the military disciplinary proceedings initiated against him—citing First Amendment, Speech or Debate Clause, separation of powers, and due process violations, among others.
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Eric Columbus, Michael Feinberg, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Jan. 7 deadly shooting of a Minnesota woman at the hands of an an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the legal implications of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s indictment, the disqualification of a U.S. attorney in New York, and more.
Operation Brahms
The Brahms Op. 26 Piano Quartet No. 2 is less celebrated than the first piano quartet, and I certainly know it less well.
I think because it is a somewhat lesser work—less perfect, a little bit less in all respects than its sibling. Except length. It is longer.
And all that conceded up front, it’s a pretty wonderful quartet. I listened to it this morning, actually unsure if I had ever heard it before. The contrast with my intimacy with the Op. 25 quartet struck me hard. Whereas with the Op. 25 quartet, I have 30-year-old memories of listening to the piece as a young person with my family, this one was fresh for me. Parts of it sounded familiar, but I’m not honestly sure I had ever listened to it before—and certain I had never listened to it carefully.
Here’s the recording I listened to:
And here’s the Borodin Quartet playing it in a live performance with pianist Pavel Nersessian, for those who prefer video:
I actually want to spend a few days with it and listen to it a few more times.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the cow, seen here expecting hay:
In honor of today’s Beast, take a dirt bath.
Tell Me Something Interesting
The extremely estimable Annalisa left a long comment on my (EJ Wittes’s) New Years TMSI post, addressing several of my questions and linking to some neat resources, including this r/AskHistorians post about Classical naming conventions. That post in turn alerted me to the existence of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, which is apparently a searchable database of more than 400,000 names from the Hellenistic world. I have no idea what manner of mischief I can make with such a database, but I’m certain I will find some, given time to think on it.
Annalisa also provided an answer for me on the issue of what precisely makes balsamic vinegar “balsamic,” which I will quote here in full for our collective edification:
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