Do Not Ask For Whom the Orb Glows

It glows for thee.

Good Morning:

As John Donne once wrote, “Do not ask for whom the orb glows. It glows for thee.”

A very happy birthday to the very estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher, who tells me she is seizing control of the show today, will be doing the monologue and is relegating me to cactus duty. I’m excited about it.

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Anastasiia Lapatina and the estimable Mike Feinberg showed up to discuss a topic the two of them are uniquely suited to cover: how the FBI was involved in developing the Ukrainian government’s anti-corruption capabilities. And more particularly, how the Ukrainian anti-corruption system depends on an arrangement that would certainly be unconstitutional in the United States under even a modest unitary executive theory, and how American federal law enforcement has historically managed the problem of presidential control—and is failing to do so now:

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Yesterday On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo

Platforms, Sanctions, and Unrecognized Regimes

In a report for the Lawfare Research Initiative, the estimable Scott R. Anderson outlines a new strategy for social media platforms to follow when official government accounts are taken over by unrecognized or sanctioned groups like the Taliban.

This report outlines a novel strategy—called the “de facto authorities rule”—for addressing such scenarios that would have social media platforms (and potentially other private actors) align the services they provide to regimes like the Taliban with the extent to which they qualify as local de facto authorities under international law. Doing so would strike a better balance between these competing concerns, in a matter that is both rooted in international and domestic legal practice and can be substantially reconciled with national and international sanctions obligations.

A Political Earthquake in Ukraine

The estimable Anastasiia Lapatina examines the tenure and downfall of Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s former chief of staff who was fired three weeks ago amidst an anti-corruption investigation.

Despite the relative institutional unimportance of the office of the president, Yermak turned it into the single most powerful body of the Ukrainian government. Ever since he became the chief of staff in 2020, Yermak had amassed unprecedented influence over the country’s domestic and foreign policy. He was effectively a co-president, despite not being the country’s prime minister—who is supposed to share the country’s executive power—and despite the growing allegations of his corruption and nepotism, allegations that have come from civil society, from journalists, and from Zelensky’s political opposition.

Healthy Insurance Markets Will Be Critical for AI Governance

Cristian Trout argues that a well-steered insurance market can function as private governance over artificial intelligence (AI) development by correcting perverse incentives and promoting AI safety. Trout outlines a series of steps insurers and policymakers can take to facilitate that salutary regulation of AI by insurance firms.

In a recent Lawfare article, Daniel Schwarcz and Josephine Wolff made the case for pessimism, arguing that “liability insurers are unlikely to price coverage for AI safety risks in ways that encourage firms to reduce those risks.”

Here I provide the counterpoint. I make the case, not for blind optimism, but for engagement and intervention. Synthesizing a large swathe of theoretical and empirical work on insurance, my new paper finds considerable room for insurers to reduce harm and improve risk management in AI. However, realizing this potential will require many pieces to come together. On this point, I agree with skeptics like Schwarcz and Wolff.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Alan Rozenshtein sits down with Anderson to discuss Anderson’s report on how social media platforms should handle unrecognized regimes like the Taliban. The two discuss platforms’ response to the Taliban takeover in 2021, the concepts of recognition and de facto authority under international law, and how this framework can be reconciled with U.S. and international sanctions requirements.

On Rational Security, Anderson, Rozenshtein, and Ariane Tabatabai discuss the Trump administration’s decision to allow Nvidia to export its advanced H200 chips to China, the president’s executive order aimed at asserting federal preemption over state AI regulations, and the mass shooting at a Hanukkah event on Australia’s Bondi Beach.

Videos

The Claremonters: Founding Fanatics: At 4 p.m., Laura Field, the author of “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right,” taught the second lesson of her 6-part class on the conservative intellectual movement and how it has shaped Donald Trump’s presidency as a part of the Lawfare Lecture series. You can gain access to these classes by becoming a paid supporter at Patreon or Substack.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the lion, seen here in a passionate embrace with a ball of rope:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, have a torrid affair with an unsuitable partner.