Push Polling Disinformation and L'Affaire Drosophila

EJ Wittes snows you all

Good Evening:

Oh my freakin’ God. You guys are so gullible.

I am relieved to see that voter turnout in this push poll that

EJ Wittes

all but labeled as such was low. But sheesh! You folks would acquit a parent-murderer who pleaded that he was an orphan.

Let’s review the facts here—none of them contested by the accused:

• EJ let an orange, which had fallen behind his dresser, rot for weeks until a positively Biblical swarm of fruit flies emerged from his room in a murmuration that darkened the skies.

• He withheld from his increasingly perplexed family that he was aware that the source of the flies was in his room.

• He did this even as he moved out of his room so as to be minimally inconvenienced by the plague.

• Even as a guest was sipping Drosophila-infused Scotch while being assaulted by a writhing mass of flying insects, EJ chose to play dumb about what was going on rather than to say to his father, “I think it’s coming from my room.”

Innocent, my ass.

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable

Jonathan Rauch

dropped by with a question: what should Democrats be trying to attach to Trump’s budget bill? The estimable

Holly Berkley Fletcher

and I discussed it with him:

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Today On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett

The WITAOD Chronicles

Anna Bower reports on her months-long quest to identify the true administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Bower examines contradictory statements by the administration about DOGE’s leadership, questions of constitutionality and authority under the Appointments Clause, court filings, and much more.

We have published many eccentric pieces on Lawfare: my challenge to Vladimir Putin to fight me mano a mano, Margaret Taylor’s apology for her vetting failure in helping the Senate confirm a guy who then brought a whip to his State Department job to intimidate his colleagues. But “The WITAOD Chronicles,” in my humble estimation, the most eccentric piece we have ever run. It’s long. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. And it’s deeply substantive:

So, to review:

• The executive order Trump signed on Jan. 20 created DOGE.

• In that order, DOGE is defined as the U.S. DOGE service, a subcomponent of the U.S. DOGE Service, and the agency DOGE teams.

• Musk’s lawyers say Musk is in charge of what the executive order created.

• Trump says Musk is in charge of what the executive order created.

• But the Solicitor General now claims that Musk is “not part of” what the executive order created.

The estimable

Anna Bower

will be on #DogShirtTV today.

Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?

Steven Adler discusses the development of new artificial intelligence (AI) models such as Anthropic's Claude Opus 4, which has shown a dangerous level of capability related to bioweapons. Adler warns of the consequences of prioritizing speed over safety in AI research and calls for regulation to mitigate the risks posed by dangerous AI technologies.

Anthropic’s announcement that their AI system has triggered this new risk level carries three important implications. First, Anthropic crossing this threshold suggests that many other AI developers will soon follow suit because the means of training such a system is accessible enough and well-understood. Second, other Western developers cannot be counted upon to take the same level of precautions as Anthropic did—either in testing or applying risk mitigations to their system—because, in the absence of federal or state safety mandates, society is relying on purely voluntary safety practices. Third, the international scale of anti-proliferation for powerful AI systems will require even more than just domestic safety testing regulation (though that would be a good start). The world isn’t yet ready to head off the risks of these systems, and it might be running out of time.

Personal Jurisdiction in Fuld v. PLO and U.S. v. PLO

Alexander Perkowski and Lulu Mansour summarize the arguments parties made before the Supreme Court in Fuld v. PLO and U.S. v. PLO, in which the Court considered whether a 2019 terrorism statute that brought the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority (PA) under the personal jurisdiction of a district court violated the PLO and PA’s due process rights.

After a two-hour discussion, the justices seemed poised to reverse the Second Circuit’s earlier decision finding that the district court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction violated the PLO’s and the PA’s due process rights. It is unclear if the Court will decide the question of whether the Fifth Amendment imposes the same jurisdictional constraints on federal courts as the 14th Amendment does on state courts. While fairness and reasonableness concerns colored the liberal justices’ questions, conservatives on the Court seemed to question the judiciary’s role in deciding the constitutionality of a statute that presents a “Youngstown category 1 situation, where the president and Congress have acted together,” as Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it. That the political departments have acted in concert to achieve foreign policy and national security objectives pursuant to their respective constitutional authority to regulate respondents’ conduct—a pervasive theme throughout the argument—might indicate that the Court will issue an opinion on narrow grounds that allows the case to move forward in the lower court.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Minna Ålander joins Anastasiia Lapatina to talk about Russia's buildup of military infrastructure along the Finnish border, potential scenarios of Russian aggression against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the critical role the United States plays in NATO's security framework.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a butterfly being an absolute pain in the ass:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, annoy someone thousands of times your size. You’ll have to find someone thousands of times your size first, but when you do, start annoying them instantly.

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AI Irritation

The estimable

Diana F.

commented on yesterday’s Dog Shirt suggesting that the Beast of the Day—a whale getting scrubbed—was likely an AI generated video.