Urban Kayaking with Manatees
A new Christmas tradition
Good Evening:
I did a new thing this Christmas Day, and I suggest it rank up there in Jewish Christmas traditions with Chinese food and bowling. I went kayaking with manatees. It doesn’t make for good photography. Manatees hang out underwater, after all. But they’re there. They’re big. They’re slow. They don’t mind people. And they’re kind of adorable. So you get up on Christmas morning. You have some coffee. You go to a kayak rental place. And you grab a boat and go up into the river systems. And they’re there. And it’s really nice.
Okay, let’s do some catch-up.
Tuesday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Anastasiia Lapatina came on to ask me and the estimable Mike Feinberg about how the presumption of innocence plays out in large anti-corruption investigations:
Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Mike Feinberg and I celebrated Boxing Day by discussing all forms of boxing:
And today on #DogShirtTV, the mysterious Albert Craig appeared once more to perplex us with his resemblance to the estimable Eve gaumond, who is renovating her house and has a Christmas tree. Also, I have new audio mixing toys:
Recently On Lawfare
Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo
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While headlines fixate on who will build the most powerful models, China has already surged ahead in a different and consequential contest: the race to shape global AI governance. On this front, Beijing’s agenda raises significant concerns about freedom of expression around the world. This push echoes China’s years-long effort to influence international technical standards and promote authoritarian internet governance objectives.
The U.K.’s Cybersecurity Refresh
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It is worthwhile to reflect on the performance of previous efforts to improve domestic cybersecurity, counter foreign cyber threats, and seize opportunities to pursue the national interest in cyberspace. As a recent national audit indicated, the largest challenge facing the U.K. government is not necessarily the development of a new strategy, but the allocation of adequate resources to implement the existing strategy—with significant gaps in skills and planning to remediate outdated public-sector information technology (IT) systems.
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How to challenge these groups’ growing reach remains a challenge. First, there is no single group to address; instead, there are multiple members and groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State that, given their existence in the same area of operation, collaborate, flip-flop, and engage with each other and other non-jihadist elements—including criminals, insurgents, and independence movements—when the opportunity arises.
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Podcasts
On Lawfare Daily, Loren Voss sits down with Kori Schake and Carrie Lee to discuss the state of civil-military affairs, standards for assessing the health of the civil-military relationship, and the challenges posed by unlawful orders and an “unprincipled principal.”
On Scaling Laws, Cass Sunstein joins Alan Rozenshtein to discuss when we should trust algorithms over our own judgment, why artificial intelligence (AI) can eliminate the noise and bias that plague human decision-making but struggles to predict even basic outcomes, the decisions AI should be empowered to make, and Sunstein’s new book “Imperfect Oracle.”
Videos
On the Lawfare Lecture series, Laura Field, author of “Furious Minds,” teaches her first lecture on the intellectual movement that has emerged around Trumpism, the factions competing to shape its ideology, and the cultural dynamics of the movement.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is this large iguana I don’t know the lizard’s context, which the estimable Tamara Cofman Wittes saw on a walk the other day.
In honor of today’s Beast, bask in the sun, if you can find any.
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