Wake Up Honey! The SBU Just Hit the Kerch Bridge

Maybe this time they will finish it off

Good Morning:

Here’s everything I know:

The SBU’s statement is here. It’s not translated yet but Google translates the Ukrainian as follows:

The SBU conducted a new unique special operation and struck the Crimean Bridge for the third time — this time underwater!

The operation lasted several months. SBU agents mined the supports of this illegal facility. And today, without any civilian casualties, at 4:44 am the first explosive device was activated!

The underwater supports of the piers were severely damaged at the bottom level - 1,100 kg of explosives in TNT equivalent contributed to this. In fact, the bridge is in a state of emergency.

The head of the SBU, Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk, personally supervised the operation and coordinated its planning.

"God loves the Trinity, and the SBU always brings what it has conceived to the end and never repeats itself. Previously, we hit the Crimean Bridge twice in 2022 and 2023. So today we continued this tradition under water. No illegal Russian facilities have a place on the territory of our state. Therefore, the Crimean Bridge is an absolutely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops. Crimea is Ukraine, and any manifestations of occupation will receive our tough response," Vasyl Malyuk noted.

Here’s the Kyiv Independent’s initial story.

And here’s a cool video of one of the detonations:

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable

Alicia Wanless

, the estimable

Holly Berkley Fletcher

, and I welcomed the estimable Erin Saltman of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, for a discussion about gaming, AI, and other internet influences contributing to youth radicalization—and how we can get them to contribute to deradicalization instead:

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The Situation

In my “The Situation” column yesterday, I reflected on Operation Spiderweb and my decade-old book with the very estimable Gabriella Blum, “The Future of Violence.” Also on a really badass report from RAND from 1995 that imagined a drone attack on an airbase:

The Ukrainian operation was, in important respects, a case study in the thesis of Blum and my book, which was that the diffusion of technologies of mass empowerment—drones included—was leveling the playing field between states, between states and non-state groups, and between armed groups and individuals. The book opens with a near-future fantasy of—yes, really—a spider drone sent to kill the reader by … someone.

Now, barely a decade later, a militarily weaker state has sent a fleet of small drones—by truck—to destroy Russia’s most lethal nuclear-capable aircraft. The operation, at least according to pictures released by the Ukrainian government, appears to have used technology that is widely available and inexpensive. The incredible asymmetry between the Russian government’s investment in these major aviation systems and the Ukrainians’ use of quadcopters carrying small munitions to destroy them really does bring Blum and my thesis to mind.

Yet that fact notwithstanding, I’m hesitant to declare that the future of violence has arrived. The reason is that Operation Spiderweb is still state-level violence. This is not the Leviathan having to contend with a school of little fishes and being bested by them. This is one leviathan being bested by a smaller leviathan, one which has deployed and refined the power of a great many little fishes. It’s no small thing. It’s definitely a data point. And I do think the book’s thesis is aging well. But Operation Spiderweb seems to me a complicated example of our point.

Today On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett

Regulation or Repression? How the Right Hijacked the DSA Debate

Renee DiResta and Dean Jackson discuss right wing attacks on the impending integration of the Disinformation Code of Practice into the European Union Digital Services Act (DSA). DiResta and Jackson acknowledge issues with the regulation, such as uneven compliance and private industry involvement, but emphasize that many of the criticisms—which cast the regulation as authoritarian in nature—are intended to delegitimize content moderation and efforts to combat disinformation.

While right-wing populists are using the upcoming July 1 integration as a news hook to allege that Western Europe has succumbed to authoritarianism, most technology policy professionals have barely registered the development at all. The Code’s integration into the DSA has been largely treated as a technical update to a sprawling piece of legislation. The DSA itself is primarily a transparency and accountability law. It requires that “very large online platforms” (VLOPs)—platforms with more than 45 million monthly active users in the EU—conduct risk assessments, disclose how their systems function, share data with researchers, and offer meaningful recourse to users whose content has been moderated. The regulation also includes explicit protections for free expression, such as the right to appeal moderation decisions and receive explanations when posts or accounts are restricted. The transparency components are the opposite of censorship.

The Strategic Role of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau

Daniel Byman outlines the strategic value of the Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism (CT Bureau) in an evolving threat landscape. Byman offers recommendations to enhance the bureau’s effectiveness, such as increasing funding and depoliticizing the bureau’s power to designate foreign terrorist organizations.

Despite its modest profile compared to the Pentagon or intelligence community, the CT Bureau plays a pivotal role in shaping U.S. counterterrorism strategy. It acts as a bridge between U.S. military and intelligence activities and the Department of State’s regional and functional bureaus. When functioning effectively, it ensures that defense operations and intelligence collection are aligned with broader U.S. diplomatic goals, while also ensuring that diplomacy is informed by operational realities.

The Light That Only a Trial Can Shed

Roger Parloff reviews Emmanuel Carrère’s “V13: Chronicle of a Trial,” which recounts the 2021 trial of fourteen men for their alleged involvement in the November 2015 terrorist attacks in France. Parloff praises Carrère’s detailed coverage, attention to the proceedings’ emotional weight, and attempts to understand the perpetrators’ motives.

Through Carrère the reader re-lives the trial. And when a trial goes on for months and is handled, as was the case here, by outstanding attorneys and a thoughtful jurist, it becomes a phenomenon in itself. (I covered the four-month Proud Boys and two-month Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trials for Lawfare.) Journalists, attorneys, and magistrates came to refer to this case as the “V13 Liner,” Carrère tells us—as if it were a massive, plodding vessel, with its own momentum and logic. It’s a shared experience that brings some healing to victims, some knowledge to those who seek it, some justice to those who deserve it, and some catharsis for a nation.

Foreign Economic Investment Kills Independence Hopes in Balochistan

In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Jayita Sarkar discusses why the region of Balochistan—which declared independence from Pakistan in May—faces a difficult path to sovereignty due to foreign powers’ interest in the region’s natural resources and Pakistan’s efforts to repress Baloch nationalism.

Instead of bringing development to the people of Balochistan, such investment has enriched foreign companies while setting back Balochi’s hopes for more political rights and economic progress. Foreign mining companies and infrastructure development have allowed the Pakistani state to repress Baloch activists and civilians in the name of protecting foreign investments, making these actors willing partners in repression. The economic logic of profit has overshadowed the political rights of the province.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, I sit down with Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, and Parloff to discuss the civil litigation targeting President Donald Trump’s executive actions, including two court rulings finding Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs to be unlawful, the government’s appeal of those rulings, the Supreme Court allowing Trump to end the humanitarian status of 500,000 migrants, and updates in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Government Efficiency.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the hippopotamus baby:

Source

In honor of today’s Beast, chomp.

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Tell Me Something Interesting

In honor of the Ukrainian drones decimating Russian aircraft, let us recall the time, back in the halcyon days of 2012, when Lawfare sponsored some experimental drone warfare.