I Didn't Do This
And I have no idea who did
Good Morning:
I received a text message Saturday evening from a friend who was walking on Columbia Road in Washington DC. Someone was projecting these images on the wall of a building.
It wasn’t me.
And that, my friends, is kind of cool.
The revolution is spreading.
Friday on #DogShirtTV, there was a baby! She played with a balloon, she ran around, she had adventures, and a stuffed dog leapt out of my dog shirt to entertain her. She was extremely estimable.
Also,
and I were there talking about corruption in Ukraine. But let’s be real. Ava was the star. We were just her back-up dancers.The Situation
In Friday’s “The Situation” column, I reflect on my experience taking a Waymo for the first time during a recent trip to San Francisco.
An Uber would have cost me $100.81 and gotten me there in just over an hour.
The Waymo, by contrast, promised to cost more and deliver less—much less. It would cost $109.47 and proposed to take a whopping two-and-half hours to get me a mere 30 miles. Why so much longer? Because the Waymo won’t go on the highway, at least not yet. It would take city streets. It was objectively a bad deal.
On the other hand, taking the Waymo would allow me to contribute to the de-post-industrialization of America—to personally deprive some gig worker, whose union job had long since been shipped overseas, of a much needed, if highly exploitative, fare. It would let me reach into that person’s pocket, take that fare out, and put it instead in the hands of a Silicon Valley tech company that had replaced that gig worker with a snazzy robot driving, of all things, a Jaguar.
Friday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo
The Case for AI Doom Rests on Three Unsettled Questions
Jakub Kraus reviews Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares’s new release, “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.” Kraus praises the authors’ persuasively written case for artificial intelligence (AI) pessimism but notes that their argument hinges on negative answers to three still-unsettled questions about AI alignment.
His newest book, co-written with MIRI President Nate Soares, is an ambitious attempt to explain this grim outlook to a broad audience, complete with extensive online resources to address objections. Its arguments weave creative logic together with persuasive prose. But its central thesis remains unproven, as the risk of AI-powered extinction hinges on three open questions that Yudkowsky and Soares do not—and perhaps cannot—conclusively settle: How hard is it to achieve alignment? Would misaligned AI actually succeed in overthrowing humanity? And what will happen before the first superhuman AI system is built?
Hearing Dispatch: NPR Fights Trump on the First Amendment
Molly Roberts reports on a Dec. 4 hearing in National Public Radio et al. v. Trump, in which NPR argued that an executive order depriving public broadcasters of taxpayer funding was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Without directly disputing NPR’s case, lawyers for the government argued both that the order was permissible and that the whole case was moot anyway.
The government doesn’t bother to argue in National Public Radio et al v. Trump et al that it isn’t kneecapping public broadcasters because it doesn’t like what they have to say. Instead, it argues that it is allowed to do exactly that. But really, it would prefer that the judge not reach the merits.
That’s the upshot of nearly two hours of oral argument during yesterday’s hearing on the two sides’ cross-motions for summary judgement. The gallery in Courtroom 8 in the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C. is filled mostly with members of the media—including your correspondent—scribbling intently in our notepads. Which makes sense. The freedom of all the press is, indirectly at least, at stake here. (This freedom apparently does not extend to the ability to use electronic devices for notetaking in a courtroom.)
When Do Cyber Campaigns Cross a Line?
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses a Germany-based think tank’s mixed success in defining responsible cyber operations, steady integration between Iran’s cyber warfare and the kinetic war of its proxies, Anthropic’s testimony before Congress about Claude-based cyberespionage from China, and more.
The author thinks that more concrete definitions of responsible behavior would help guide states and prevent dangerous conduct.
It’s a commendable effort, but we don’t think the architects of cyber operations really care about norms, and a German think tank writing down its preferred rules on a piece of paper won’t make any difference to state behavior.
Governments do, however, care about potential political costs and the risk of retaliation. One of the paper’s goals is to provide a framework that makes it easier for victim states to flag irresponsible operations and respond appropriately.
Documents
Tyler McBrien shares the Pentagon inspector general’s report on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal.
Katherine Pompilio shares the National Security Strategy recently released by the White House.
Isabel Arroyo shares the final report on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan published by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, Caleb Withers joins Kevin Frazier to discuss how frontier models disproportionately advantage attackers in cyberspace, the steps labs and governments can take to address attacker-friendly asymmetries, and the future of cyber warfare driven by AI agents.
Videos
On Lawfare Live, Natalie Orpett sits down with Roberts, Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Eric Columbus, and James Pearce to discuss the 3rd Circuit’s decision upholding the disqualification of Alina Habba as U.S. attorney, where the prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James stand, and more.
Announcements
Beginning on Dec. 10, Laura Field, the author of “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right,” will teach a 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. The lectures will also be published on Lawfare’s YouTube channel on a delayed timeline.
Submissions are now open for Lawfare’s annual Ask Us Anything podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare editors and contributors your most burning questions of the year. You can submit questions through Dec. 16.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the giant anteater, seen here appreciating the beauty of music by hitting things:
In honor of today’s Beast, find something pretty and give it a good smacking.
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