#SpecialMilitaryOperation: Kryvyi Rih

The Russians kill kids. I project their names of the Russian embassy walls.

Good Evening:

A special military operation took place this evening at the Russian embassy. I came there intending to project the name of the town—Kryvyi Rih—where Russian bombing killed 18 people the other day, including nine children. But then a woman who showed up for the projection had the wonderful idea of projecting the names of the children killed. So we did:

Here’s the version I prepared for Instagram:

A reminder that the only way to support #SpecialMilitaryOperations is to be a paid subscriber of #DogShirtDaily. #LadyLaser needs some repairs. And Himar the gobo projector, as many of you know, died in battle a few months back and needs to be replaced. So if being part of the Greek Chorus on #DogShirtTV is a good enough reason, and if having access to the material below the paywall isn’t a good enough reason, maybe helping me increase my arsenal of lights with which to harass Russian diplomats will convince you:

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Today on #DogShirtTV, there was no #DogShirtTV. I went to the dentist instead. We will be back tomorrow at 8:00 am.

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The Situation

In today’s “The Situation” column, I ask a simple question: “Can the government win a case by losing the plaintiff?”

this morning, an ideologically mixed panel of the court declined to do so. Two of the judges described the case thus: “The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.” The third concurred, writing, “There is no question that the government screwed up here.”

But while there may be no question that the government screwed up, the government is certainly making a question out of whether the court has any power to do anything about its screw-up.

Its position boils down to this: We lost the plaintiff fair and square, so the courts can’t give him any relief now.

Today On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett

The Dangers of AI Sovereignty

Kevin Frazier argues that the pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) sovereignty—in which states seek domestic control over essential AI inputs and infrastructure—comes at the expense of global collaboration and collective progress. Frazier further discusses the risks associated with the securitization and centralization of AI and proposed mechanisms to democratize AI access, including public interest endowments and tiered access agreements:

A shift toward strong AI sovereignty marks a critical juncture in the trajectory of artificial intelligence. Nations are increasingly framing AI as a tool of geopolitical competition, risking its potential to address shared global challenges. The securitization of AI development threatens to divert resources toward military applications and state control at the expense of open innovation and public benefit. However, this path is not inevitable. By fostering strategic international cooperation, implementing thoughtful governance, and leveraging federated technical approaches, nations can balance sovereignty with collaborative progress. Excessive compartmentalization will only fragment AI research, slow technological advancement, and lead to inefficiencies that delay critical breakthroughs. Innovation thrives in environments of openness and cross-pollination—stifling it through isolationist policies undermines AI’s transformative potential. The true challenge is not AI itself but how we choose to govern it: as a weapon of state power or a force for collective progress.

The Legal Counteroffensive to Russia’s Hybrid War

In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Candace Rondeaux explains the significance of a Krakow court’s conviction of two Wagner Group operatives on charges of espionage and terrorism-related activities, including spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda. Rondeaux emphasizes how the case highlights an emerging legal framework for combating Russian influence operations and other forms of hybrid warfare:

The Krakow case proves that prosecuting Russian sabotage operations through organized crime frameworks cuts through Moscow’s deliberately cultivated ambiguity, as investigators mapped concrete financial connections between defendants and state-adjacent entities. This approach succeeds because organized crime units possess the ideal toolkit: established intelligence networks, experience with complex investigations, legal mechanisms targeting support infrastructure, and crucially, the ability to act on lower evidence thresholds while employing financial investigation tools that expose hidden connections—directly attacking the plausible deniability that has otherwise fractured Western responses.

Understanding Cyber Market Failures

Jason Healey, Carina Kaplan, and Christine McNeill describe the challenges the government faces in regulatory cybersecurity amid four key market failures—information asymmetries, negative externalities, market power, and public goods. Healey, Kaplan, and McNeill offer recommendations for refining understanding of the market and developing a coordinated strategy for cyber regulation:

The Trump administration may lead a new push to deregulate cybersecurity, loosening or completely undoing the many rules instituted over recent years. Any such deregulation should be accompanied by an understanding of the market structure to ensure failures are not created or amplified.

Many market failures are intertwined. Almost all are complex, requiring coordinated actions by various government agencies and elements of society. Regardless of whether this administration will regulate or deregulate, perhaps the most important task ahead is a uniform, targeted strategy for cyber regulation, ensuring coordination across all stakeholders.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Scott R. Anderson speaks to Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, James Pearce, and Steve Vladeck about the status of the civil litigation against President Donald Trump’s executive actions, including how the Supreme Court is handling the cases and deportations under the Alien Enemies Act:

In this bonus episode, Escalation’s reporting and production team—me, Anastasiia Lapatina, Max Johnston, and Tyler McBrien—share a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show:

Documents

Anna Bower shares a letter from the District of Columbia Office of Disciplinary Counsel declining to launch a probe of the interim United States attorney Ed Martin over an alleged ethics violation he committed when he sought to dismiss the criminal charges of a man whom he represented as a defense attorney.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the dire wolf—or at least a facsimile thereof:

The New York Times reports:

For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.”

In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.

The result is three healthy wolves — two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — that have some traits of dire wolves.

They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.

Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, described the wolf pups as the first successful case of de-extinction. “We’re creating these functional copies of something that used to be alive,” she said in an interview.

In honor of today’s Beast, get yourself a dense, pale coat and be enormous.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is not the cave bear: