Project Battery: An Update

And some observations on stress and frictions

Good Afternoon:

First off, here’s an update on Project Battery.

We bought two more large Ecoflow batteries this evening, delivered one, and deposited the other in temporary storage at a restaurant. This evening’s attempts at delivery were sobering. Conditions are so bad in the apartment of one of the intended recipients that she isn’t even staying there right now and thus couldn’t receive the battery this evening. We'll attempt delivery tomorrow or the following day.

The delivery we did manage to accomplish today, at the building pictured above, was also complicated: The recipient lives on the 16th floor of an old Soviet-era building. The elevator in this building mysteriously has power, for now anyway; but the rest of the building does not and hasn’t for more than two days. Now if you get in the elevator in an old building in Kyiv, there is a significant chance of getting stuck in that elevator—in the cold and for hours. It happens a lot here. But the alternative is to walk up 16 flights of stairs, which is impossible with a battery of this size.

The estimable Jimmy Rushton, a British freelance writer who has spent the war in Kyiv and has been helping me a great deal over my time here—in fashions including, but not limited to, using his truck to drive batteries around—warned me sharply against getting in elevators anywhere in Kyiv.

So after consulting with the recipient and her neighbors, we helped load the battery into the elevator, sent the ‘vator on its way, and waited on the ground floor until we got the all-clear from neighbors that it had been unloaded upstairs.

We left knowing that this battery will be of limited use in the immediate term. The building currently has no power, heat, or water. And the battery is only useful after it’s been charged, which requires power. We are hoping it will be of help whenever power comes back online.

As I said, a sobering evening.

Here’s the current data:

• Total contributions so far: $49,338.30

• Number of individual contributions so far: 323

• Median contribution: $75

• Largest individual contribution: $3,500

• Batteries purchased: 14

• Batteries delivered to families: 12

• Batteries awaiting delivery to families: 1

• Batteries awaiting delivery to institutions: 1

• Current wait-list of families and institutions: 4

Donations are still coming in, and as long as they do, we will keep buying and distributing stuff. The volume of contributions has slowed enough, however, that it may well make sense to shift gears and buy larger volumes of cheaper stuff: snow suits for children, electric blankets, and space heaters. Just putting people on notice that we reserve the right to do this depending on our sense of need—and what kind of funds are available.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute.

The 16th floor conundrum in delivering the battery tonight crystalized for me the added friction the war adds to every-day life here in a thousand small ways that cumulatively add a lot of stress to one’s life. I had dinner last night with a prominent Kyiv intellectual, now serving in government, who observed that it was a strange and stressful time for me to come here. I knew what she meant: It’s cold, and there are power outages, and getting into Kyiv is a bit of a project, and it’s not a period in which the war is going well and there’s excitement about Ukrainian prospects.

There are weirdnesses that particularly jump out at the foreigner: that people use the subway system as bomb shelters, even as other people use it to commute, for example. And it’s completely opaque to the foreigner whether the people using the stations as shelters are being over-cautious, given that others are just passing through on their way to the surface, or whether the people passing by them to go up escalators are being reckless given that there are people using the same spaces as bomb shelters at the same time. Or maybe both are being rational and just reasoning their way from different premises.

But it was standing outside of that building tonight with a family that couldn’t immediately use the battery we were delivering that the added friction of day-to-day life really struck me.

Here we were with a big battery. We just wanted to deliver it and be on our way. But getting in the elevator was dangerous; one could get stuck and freeze. And carrying the battery up 16 flights of stairs was impossible. And leaving the battery on the ground floor for now would just delay the problem—and maybe get the battery stolen. And the battery wouldn’t warm anyone up in the short-term anyway. And by the way, this family shouldn’t even need a battery; their need being the function of an absence of power that is a deliberate man-made hardship.

Within minutes, we had collectively figured it out—and by “we” I mean Nastya and the recipient and the grandmother of the recipient (which family is Russian-speaking, by the way) and their neighbors while I stood around stupidly—and we got it done. And we got in the truck and headed back. And it wasn’t a big deal. But it was all with just a bit more stress and effort than the situation should have required—all to address a situation that shouldn’t require addressing at all.

A lot of interactions are like that here. People gets things done. Nastya buys the batteries. That takes more effort than it should, because there’s a shortage of batteries. And Kyiv manages to have day-to-day life, and the world congratulates it for its resilience. But it’s all with a bit more friction in a thousand little things—and some very big things—than every situation should require.

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Yesterday On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Marissa Wang

Ted Cruz Has a Detailed Plan to Loosen AI Regulations

Jakub Kraus assesses how Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) Sandbox Act would allow artificial intelligence (AI) companies to bypass federal regulations. Kraus explains that the act would—rather than help accelerate U.S. AI innovation—shift power away from federal agencies and Congress, thus limiting democratic oversight.

That framework makes his priorities clear: deregulation. Where some lawmakers have pushed for stronger oversight of AI, Cruz wants to cut federal rules, state laws, foreign regulations, environmental permits, and government “censorship” of AI-generated content. Each of these priorities connects to broader movements already reshaping U.S. tech policy.

How to Handle “The Adolescence of Technology” Like Adults

Kevin Frazier reviews Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for evidence-based AI governance to safeguard against disastrous AI outcomes. Frazier largely agrees with Amodei’s five proposed principles and emphasizes that lawmakers should rely on experts and data-driven guardrails in their approaches to AI regulation.

As Amodei makes clear, there’s a real risk of poorly-crafted laws inadvertently smothering the very innovation required to solve our most pressing societal challenges. True “adult” governance requires the courage to prioritize permissionless innovation for the vast majority of “Boring AI” applications, ensuring that regulator intervention is reserved only for proven, empirical risks at the frontier. By embedding humility into our statutes—through sunset clauses and rigorous data-gathering requirements—legislators can replace static, stifling mandates with a dynamic legal infrastructure that evolves alongside the technology.

Measuring Congressional Sentiment Toward the Maduro Strike

Patrick Hulme, Katherine Irajpanah, and Andrew Kenealy analyze thousands of statements from U.S. policymakers demonstrating significant polarization in Congress following U.S. military operations in Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The authors explain that their findings suggest that the president’s war powers are constrained more by political risk than by law.

But perhaps counterintuitively, the administration’s efforts to deceive legislators in order to prevent an earlier vote prohibiting military action suggests it cares about formally expressed congressional opinion. Overriding an explicit congressional prohibition of the use of force would seem to be a bridge too far, even for this administration. Doing so might entail serious domestic political costs for the president, as well as for the Republican Party more broadly. Trump, after all, has a strong interest in maintaining GOP control of Congress. The voice of Congress on matters of war may still shape administration decision-making regarding military interventions.

The Hemisphere of Exceptions

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Jeffery Tobin explains how governments’ increased use of emergency powers to expand executive authority around the globe, including the U.S., is harming democratic systems and blurring the lines between necessary action and executive overreach.

While still democracies, more and more states in the Western Hemisphere are adopting a framework shaped by exception rather than by ordinary institutional practice. The result is a quieter, more ambiguous transformation: Political life continues, but under conditions that increasingly treat fear and crisis as governing assumptions. The Americas are not necessarily moving toward abrupt authoritarian breakpoints. But they are drifting into a system where the extraordinary becomes routine, and where the space between crisis and governance grows harder to distinguish.

Documents

Tyler McBrien shares the Trump administration’s 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy, which identified the U.S.’s four lines of effort aimed to strengthen U.S. ally burden-sharing and defend U.S. interests against potential opponents.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Roger Parloff, Olivia Manes, Anna Bower, and Eric Columbus to discuss the search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home, the Justice Department’s criminal inquiries into Minnesota state officials, oral arguments at the Supreme Court in President Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, and more.

On Lawfare No Bull, Marissa Wang shares audio from former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 22 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, in which he discussed indictments previously brought against President Trump, the Jan. 6 investigation, and the decision to subpoena congressional phone records.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the octopus, seen here being taught how to play the piano:

Now, you may be thinking, this video is 18 minutes long. Do I really want to spend 18 minutes of my finite, mortal life watching a video about how to teach an octopus to play the piano?

Yes. Yes, you do. You deserve to spend 18 minutes of your life watching this video. Honor today’s Beast by watching it learn to play the piano. I promise you will not regret it.