The Angel of Death

It's obvious, no?

Good Morning:

The look on Pope Francis’s face says it all.

---

Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher has returned from her college tour and brought us a report on the state of liberal academia. From there, we started talking about land acknowledgements, and pretty soon we were having a fascinating conversation about the complexities of historical memory, covering everything from post-colonial governance to the concept of indigeneity. It wasn’t exactly where I expected the episode to go, but, hey, it’s a revolution:

---

The Situation

In yesterday’s “The Situation” column, I consider the yet unanswered question of what authority permits the government to send migrants to El Salvador for indefinite detention, as well as the substantial differences that set these detentions apart from war on terror cases:

By contrast, what the Trump administration proposes here really could be the basis of a large-scale domestic round-up. Under what appears to be the administration’s legal theory—the parameters of which the administration has never spelled out—any Venezuelan or El Salvadoran who is deportable is potentially subject to indefinite detention contracted by the United States from its Salvadoran proxy. This is many hundreds of thousands of people. And it’s not obvious to me that it stops there. Why not deport people from other countries to El Salvador too?

---

Yesterday On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett

Beyond a Manhattan Project for Artificial General Intelligence

Matt Chessen and Craig Martell argue that the Apollo program’s whole-of-society approach, rather than the more narrowly focused Manhattan Project, is a better model for developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) due to its potential to accelerate AI diffusion, fund research initiatives, and prevent escalation with China:

The Manhattan and Apollo programs represent starkly different approaches to technological advancement. Both were massive government initiatives consuming approximately 0.4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product annually—equivalent to $100 billion today. However, the Manhattan Project was a classified, military-led effort focused on a single-use case: building an atomic bomb. Its success ensured U.S. superpower status but was also marked by fear and destruction. In contrast, the Apollo program was a public, civilian-led, whole-of-society initiative that developed dual-use technologies—such as advanced guidance and propulsion techniques—that benefited both civilian and military applications. AI dominance will not come from leading in a single use case. Instead, the United States needs to lead in a wide range of use cases along the jagged frontier of AI.

Ready for Launch: A Space Cybersecurity Road Map for Trump 2.0

Lauryn Williams discusses the importance of public-private collaboration in addressing the cybersecurity needs of the United States space industry, such as cyber solutions for on-orbit systems and enhanced information-sharing mechanisms:

Securing our space infrastructure—much of which is privately owned and operated—will require deep public-private collaboration. The Biden administration’s space cybersecurity efforts, which I led, focused on engaging space industry and academic experts to understand their perspectives on cyber challenges. In the administration’s final days, President Biden issued an executive order that included minimum cybersecurity requirements for all government space operators. These requirements were driven equally by cyber threats and the industry’s frustrations with fragmented U.S. space cybersecurity guidance, which had previously been dispersed across an array of non-space-specific security frameworks.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Kevin Frazier sits down with Chris Hughes to discuss his new book “Marketcrafters” and what historical examples of directing the markets for the public good can teach us at a time of immense economic uncertainty and political upheaval:

Documents

Olivia Manes shares a March 28 letter from the White House citing the War Powers Resolution and informing Congress of military actions in Yemen that started on March 15.

---

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a bobcat named Mr. Murderbritches, for reasons which should quickly become clear:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, take a moment to think through who your allies really are.