Don't Be Afraid To Scratch Yourself In Public
And ten important things to remember in hard political times.
Good Afternoon:
Ten Things To Remember Every Day
Love your country, especially when it makes it hard.
Love your country’s friends, especially when your country torments them.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Do what you can for individual people.
Never look to political leaders for moral leadership.
Don’t cooperate with evil.
Don’t resign quietly.
Focus on what’s important.
Speak the truth.
It’s an honor to live in these times.
Today on #DogShirtTV, an estimable group of cohosts—Minna Ålander, Anastasiia Lapatina—and I welcomed the estimable Karen-Anna Eggen, a Norwegian expert on Russian influence operations. We talked Greenland, Svalbard, the Russian Orthodox Church, beluga spy-whales, PhD exhaustion, and a conference in and on the Arctic that everyone has been invited to except me about which I have FOMO:
Then, this afternoon,
and I have a tête-à-tête on this platform on the crazed spree of statements by the Trump administration concerning Ukraine, Russia, and Europe.We talked about this article on the subject which Nastya posted recently on her Substack, to which many of you have not yet followed instructions and subscribed:
I have to say, I like the Substack live format a lot. It’s not flexible enough to replace YouTube and Riverside for DSTV purposes, but it’s really good for impromptu one-on-ones. I think I’ll use it a fair bit.
The Situation: No Way Out
In Fridays “The Situation” column, I discuss the spate of resignations by federal prosecutors following the Department of Justice’s directive to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. I acknowledge their bravery but emphasize how this shows the extent to which the Trump administration has destroyed the norms within the department that protect prosecutors from gross ethical misconduct and, in doing so, the ability of those within the department continue working there:
There is a deep problem here and it goes way beyond the Adams case: Having ripped apart the only system that allows prosecutors to function ethically, we no longer have a mechanism by which federal prosecutors can function ethically. We have a rule in which the president can reach down to the assistant U.S. attorney level and order political favors for his friends in exchange for other remunerations. And we have ethical expectations of prosecutors that they will not entertain such demands.
The result? We have resignations. And we’re going to have more. Because if the president or his minions care about the case you’re working on, there is no place in government for an ethical prosecutor any more.
Today On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett
How the Attack on USAID Hurts Ukraine
Anastasiia Lapatina describes the severe effects of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on Ukraine. Lapatina emphasizes the role that USAID has played in developing Ukraine’s economy, civil society, and media, and warns of the drastic consequences already happening as a result of the freeze:
Perhaps more importantly, the Ukrainian government has received more than $30 billion in direct budget support from USAID. As Ukraine’s economy shrank and budgets were redirected to the country’s defense, USAID essentially allowed the government to sustain its operations, helping pay state workers salaries and provide state services.
All this impact had come at relatively marginal cost to Americans, with the agency’s total annual budgets being consistently around 0.5 percent of total federal spending.
The TikTok Ban Withers Away
Alan Rozenshtein evaluates the continued non-enforcement of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACCA), as evidenced by the recent decisions of Apple and Google to restore TikTok to their app stores. Rozenshtein expresses concern about the broader implications of the non-enforcement, particularly the seeming ability of the executive branch to choose which laws to enforce:
The indefinite “pause” on PAFACAA may well be the law’s death knell. At this point, there is no genuine impetus for ByteDance to divest from TikTok or for Congress to impose the ban it once championed. The tech companies hosting TikTok have either resigned themselves to the liability risk or believe the president’s non-enforcement promises are ironclad. And with each day that the ban remains unenforced, the political and public will to revive it evaporates further.
Beyond DeepSeek: How China’s AI Ecosystem Fuels Breakthroughs
In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Ruby Scanlon discusses how Beijing’s investments in artificial intelligence (AI) contributed to the success of Chinese AI company DeepSeek. Scanlon assesses that the United States must further develop its tech ecosystem to match China’s progress and secure AI dominance:
The United States’ ability to maintain an AI edge will depend on a similarly comprehensive strategy: one that establishes a durable policy framework to align private-sector innovation with national strategic priorities. While the United States should not mimic China’s state-backed funding model, it also can’t leave AI’s future to the market alone. The U.S. government should prioritize effective policy actions, including permitting reforms to lower barriers to data center expansion, updating the aging U.S. power grid to meet AI’s energy demands, and expanding H-1B visa programs to keep the U.S. the top destination for tech talent.
Calibrating Secure by Design with the Risks Faced by Small Businesses
In the latest paper for Lawfare’s Security by Design Paper Series, Sezaneh Seymour and Daniel W. Woods argue that Secure by Design (SbD) policies should be calibrated to the actual risks faced by small businesses, rather than focusing primarily on software vulnerabilities. Seymour and Woods offer four recommendations for implementing SbD, including the deployment of multi-factor authentication and the remediation of insecure configurations.
The widespread adoption of Secure by Design principles can begin to address this market dynamic. But to be effective, SbD implementation should be guided by real-world risk. The new administration is well positioned to recalibrate SbD implementation to align with those risks.
Empirical evidence suggests that for small businesses, insecure configuration is a more pressing problem than software vulnerabilities. This suggests that policymakers could more effectively boost societal resilience under the SbD framework by prioritizing the reduction of insecure configurations that reach the market. This is in stark contrast to the disproportionate focus on software vulnerabilities.
Governments Are Losing the Crypto Wars
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business newsletter, Tom Uren discusses Apple’s refusal to obey a United Kingdom government order requesting access to encrypted data, a widespread decrease in ransomware payments, and Israeli mobile spyware company Paragon’s decision to cut ties with the Italian government.
Aggressive government action over the past few years is curbing, but not eliminating, damaging ransomware attacks. This may be as good as it gets, with governments needing to continuously cut heads off the regenerating ransomware hydra.
Evidence of change in the ransomware ecosystem comes from incident response firm Coveware and blockchain analysis company Chainalysis's tracking of cryptocurrency flows.
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, Minna Ålander joins Anastasiia Lapatina to discuss NATO’s efforts to enhance Europe’s maritime security after four incidents of damaged underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea:
Videos
On Feb. 14 at 4 p.m. ET, I spoke to Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff about the status of the civil litigation against President Trump’s executive actions, including the attempts to dismantle U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his firing of inspector generals, and the attempt to fire FBI agents and employees:
Documents
Tyler McBrien shares a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directing Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. McBrien also shares Sassoon’s response, in which she outlined the reasons she refused to do so—citing prosecutorial ethics, the attorney general’s own memos, and more—and offered her resignation.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a muppet pretending to be a dinosaur pretending to be a bird:
In honor of today’s Beast, don’t be afraid to scratch yourself in public.
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