It's Shark Season! Panic!

Plus, sea lions are coming for your swimming pool.

Good Afternoon:

I cannot confirm or deny that I ordered some new dog shirts.

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Tapping is when you knock gently against a hard surface repeatedly. And no, it can’t improve your mental health. But it can drive other people nuts. Try it sometime in a library or a theater or something. Check out how much it erodes the mental health of the person sitting next to you.

So worried.

Sharks are really dangerous. They bite.

Don’t go anywhere near the water. Stay away even from fresh water, just to be safe.

Yes.

That’s why humans didn’t exist prior to the invention of prepackaged electrolyte drinks.

More than anyone else does.

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, we had an unusually revolutionary episode, wherein the estimable Mike Feinberg, the estimable Carol Tsang, and I somehow ended up having a long discussion about Japanese cinema and its place in broader culture. In the process, we also covered the Epstein files, the limits of inspectors general, and whether the estimable

Holly Berkley Fletcher

is a typical CIA analyst:

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Yesterday On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Mary Ford

The U.S. Cannot Prevent Every AI Biothreat—But It Can Outpace Them

Tal Feldman and Jonathan Feldman argue that protein language models (PLMs) are a double-edged sword: While they pose a serious biosecurity threat, they can also help generate useful new drugs to combat that threat. Consequently, the Feldmans suggest that the United States must take a more resilient approach to national defense, funding PLM research and increasing the country’s capacity to respond to potential biothreats.

PLMs are both the cause of and solution to this risk. The same models that could be used to design pathogens are already helping scientists discover new drugs. Their ability to generate novel, functional proteins is precisely what makes them indispensable for rapid response. Shutting them down wouldn’t just slow biomedical progress—it would weaken U.S. defenses. If the U.S. can’t stop the technology, it must outrun its weaponization. In the age of generative biology, resilience is the only viable defense.

The End Game for Schedule G

Nick Bednar analyzes President Trump's changes to personnel policy, including the creation of Schedule G—which exempts noncareer government hires from competitive examination— suggesting that the president’s tendency to reward loyalty over merit threatens to upend the civil service and the expertise the federal government relies upon.

The key is the administration’s broader efforts to prioritize loyalty over merit and expertise. While much of the attention has been focused on personnel policy in the courts, the most meaningful changes have occurred within obscure executive orders and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memos. Stitching together Schedule G with several other recent actions reveals a plan to render much of the federal workforce exempt from prohibitions on political hiring and removable at will. Reviving a 19th-century patronage model, the Trump administration seeks to replace the civil service’s merit-based system with one that rewards loyalty. This patronage system threatens to erode the expertise on which state capacity depends.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Scott Anderson speaks with Ali Nazary about the position of Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front almost four years after the Taliban recaptured Kabul. Anderson also speaks with Samuel Charap about the Trump administration’s U-turn on aid to Ukraine.

Documents

Mary Ford shares the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on states’ obligations to address climate change.

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The #BeastOfTheDay is the sea lion, seen here being a pushy asshole:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, barge into somewhere you don’t belong and don’t apologize.