The First Make America Read Again Book Club Meeting

Coming up on Monday evening

Traces remain

A reminder to everyone that the first meeting of the MARA (Make America Read Again) Book Club will take place on August 25, at 7:00 pm Eastern time and will run for two hours. It will feature former FBI counterintelligence agent Mike Feinberg: We will be discussing Ben Macintryre’s “A Spy Among Friends” and John LeCarre’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” Each episode of the MARA Book Club features conceptually paired works of fiction and non-fiction. These events are for paid subscribers only and will allow a detailed conversation of the books in question with authors or with people who—for one reason or another—know the books and their subjects intimately.

Please note that unlike #DogShirtTV, full video of these events will not be released publicly. The MARA Book Club is this a cool perk for those who choose to support #DogShirtDaily and associated mayhem.

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable

Alicia Wanless

rescued me at the last moment from doing the show by myself. We talked about silliness and satire as aspects of healthy public discourse—and when they aren’t healthy. Also, Alicia wanted advice on how to promote a book when you’re an introvert, and we ended up having a long conversation about communications strategies for different types of people who are trying to live in the world of ideas:

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Yesterday On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Mary Ford

U.S. Bullets, U.S. Law: The Legal Net Around Gaza’s Private Guards

Safia Southey examines the legal framework to hold private security contractors accountable for harming civilians, and argues that although there is legal precedent for prosecuting militants of a company and not a flag, translating that to timely prosecutions of contractors who have killed Gazan civilians has been slow and has allowed for continued bloodshed.

Opening fire on civilians seeking aid violates the laws of war. Compared with 2007, today’s statutes reach further and the factual record is clearer, yet the Blackwater timeline serves as a reminder that litigation alone can be protracted and uncertain. Speed and leverage lie elsewhere: Grant managers can reopen the risk file and tighten conditions; DDTC staff can draft a debarment order before lunch; suspension-and-debarment officials can issue a show-cause letter that shuts the federal spigot overnight. Cutting off funds can stop the wrongdoing without new legislation or high‑level sign‑off. The compliance architecture built after Nisour Square exists precisely for moments like Rafah.

Algorithmic Foreign Influence: Rethinking Sovereignty in the Age of AI

Angelo Toma explains that in the age of artificial intelligence, the definition of foreign interference should be broadened to include algorithmic effects on the public sphere. Toma emphasizes that current international law is ill-equipped to respond to algorithmic foreign interference (AFI), and identifies four ways policymakers can address the legal ambiguity surrounding AFI.

But the problem isn’t just technical—it’s conceptual.

Legal scholars are now grappling with what it means to regulate consequence without intent. Can a system that systematically alters democratic discourse, suppresses linguistic communities, or restructures access to truth be treated as a foreign actor if no one gave an order? Or does this demand a new legal paradigm—one that shifts the locus of sovereignty from motive to impact?

One promising direction reframes AI systems not as agents, but as instruments of transnational consequence. From this view, legal accountability must evolve to recognize effects that mirror foreign interference, even if the source is infrastructural and the influence is ambient. The issue is not whether AI intends harm—but whether it enables systemic harm across borders, outside the control of democratic institutions.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Justin Sherman sits down with Adam Chan to discuss the FCC’s new guidance on submarine cables, the role of subsea cables in the U.S. telecommunications supply chain in an age of artificial intelligence, and why Washington wants to limit Chinese influence on U.S.-tied cables.

On Rational Security, Anna Bower, Chris Mirasola, and Mykhailo Soldatenko join Scott Anderson to take stock of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, the motivations behind Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and what the purported installment of a co-deputy director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation signals.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the eider duck, which earns its title today on account of making a quite improbable sound:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, watch this incomprehensible Monty Python sketch and marvel at how similar today’s Beast sounds to strange British men pretending to be elderly women:

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Tell Me Something Interesting

In the Anglophone tradition, we often credit Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) as the earliest articulation of a theory of religious tolerance. Mind you, Locke’s idea of what constituted tolerance explicitly excluded Catholics, but still. It was a real breakthrough.

So I (

EJ Wittes

) was surprised and somewhat delighted to discover that there is an earlier articulation of religious tolerance in Europe. Not just earlier, but 121 years earlier. And not just an articulation of the theory of tolerance, but a binding decree of tolerance by an actual sovereign entity. If you can guess where it was, you get brownie points.