Shrapnel Pulled From the Wall
I think Putin really wants a deal
Good Morning:
The Cause Of The Day
If you’ve noticed a woeful lack of Tell Me Something Interesting content this week, it’s because I—
—have spent the last several days recovering from a rather terrifying experience.On Monday, just outside the DC city limits, I encountered a man with a serious head injury. He was bleeding. He was vomiting. He could not stand up straight, walk without falling over, or keep track of what was happening for more than five minutes at a stretch. He needed immediate medical attention. And when I tried to call him an ambulance, he refused.
This man was undocumented. And he was so terrified of attracting official attention that, despite his undeniable, desperate need of help, he would not let me call him an ambulance. He would not go to an emergency room. In the end, I could only take him to his home and hope he would live without medical attention. I left him with his family, and I have no idea if he recovered. Given his condition, it’s very possible that he did not.
I know we’ve all been enjoying ourselves watching the National Guard guarding the Krispy Kreme donuts and picking up trash on the Mall, but let’s not kid ourselves. This isn’t actually funny. Trump’s brownshirts aren’t in DC to protect the donuts. They’re here to terrorize people like the man I met on Monday, to drive them away from the institutions that could offer them shelter and force them, even in the greatest extremity, to hide on the margins of society, without aid or recourse. Let’s keep that firmly in mind.
Anyway, the Cause of the Day is the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, which runs a medical clinic providing free medical care to DC area residents who can’t access government assistance, explicitly including undocumented people, and provides free legal and administrative services to immigrants in need. You can direct your gift specifically to immigrant services if you, like me, hesitate to just give the Catholic Church money.
Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Carol Tsang popped up to express our collective hopelessness and terror. So we talked about which institutions are resisting Trump and how. Then the estimable
came on to give us an update from Kyiv under missile fire:Yesterday On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Mary Ford
The Legal Bases for Government Stakes in Private Firms
Peter E. Harrell—amid the Trump administration’s recent announcement that the U.S. government had taken a 9.9 percent equity stake in Intel—examines the legal basis for government stakes in private companies. Harrell argues that even though the executive branch can lawfully acquire equity stakes, Congress can take action to stipulate the circumstances under which this can occur.
That said, if Trump begins to regularly require companies to hand over shares as a condition of government contracts or receiving permits and licenses, someone will eventually sue. But a more targeted approach may let the government duck legal challenges. If Congress wants to oversee the government’s acquisition of private assets, or limit the government’s ability to acquire them, it needs to act rather than waiting on the courts.
Setting the Stage: Cyber Contingency Campaigning
Michael Fischerkeller, Emily Goldman and Richard Harknett urge the United States to complement its current efforts to deter Beijing from invading Taiwan by using “contingency campaigning”—that is, using cyber activity in peacetime to create an advantageous operational environment—for maximum strategic impact.
In the run-up to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, both Russia and Ukraine engaged in activity consistent with cyber contingency campaigning and extended this “campaigning mindset” into the armed conflict. Now, China is doing the same by intruding into and persisting on defense and dual-use critical infrastructure that the U.S. relies on to defend Taiwan. The United States must enhance its cyber strategy by complementing its campaigning for advantage in peacetime with campaigning for a Taiwan contingency. We call this “concurrent campaigning,” and it is a hallmark of the cyber policies of great powers. Done well, it would achieve an objective articulated by U.S. government officials: Making sure “that every single day, President Xi wakes up and says, ‘Today is not that day,’ and that that decision [to invade] never comes.”
Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Eric Ciaramella to discuss the history of American security commitments around the world and how historical precedent can inform the debate surrounding security guarantees for Ukraine.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the millipede, seen here as a terrifying specter on the wall of Plato’s cave:
In honor of today’s Beast, please enjoy my (EJ Wittes’s) favorite comic of all time:
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