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The saga of Irek Hamidullin has come to a close, more or less, with a life sentence (plus 30 years) in a Virginia courtroom today. You may recall the name: Hamidullin was once a Russian tank commander, ...
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Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the Pentagon will open all combat roles to women without exception. The New York Times writes that “the groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon ru...
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It's a fun week on Rational Security. Shane and I both try our hands at singing. Tamara wisely refrains. Meanwhile, President Obama is sending 200 more special operations forces to Iraq to combat ISIS. ...
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Following 10 hours of debate, the British Parliament voted late Wednesday evening to participate in the bombing campaign in Syria against the Islamic State.
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This year droughts crippled California and heat waves claimed the lives of hundreds in India and Pakistan. Major flooding caught Texas by surprise and Yemen was hit, not once but twice, by deadly cyclone...
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The contours of the present encryption debate are well known. Especially in the wake of the Paris shootings, law enforcement and national security (LE/NS) officials are worried that terrorist use of enc...
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Buried in this morning's article covering the ongoing U.S.-China cybersecurity talks, Chinese state-owned media outlet Xinhua News said that an investigation had determined that the hack of the Office of...
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The Pentagon intends to deploy “a targeting force of elite U.S. special operations troops into northern Iraq” in order to gather intelligence and target ISIS leaders, the Daily Beast reports.
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The House Judiciary Committee had a hearing yesterday on HR 699, the Email Privacy Act. The bill, which has more than 300 co-sponsors in the House (!) would update the Stored Communications Act to app...
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Audio of the D.C. Circuit's en banc oral argument in Al Bahlul is available here. I haven't listened to it yet. I'll offer thoughts after I do.
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In this comment, I would like to offer some thoughts in response to Butch Bracknell’s recent post on the targeting of ISIL oil transport trucks by the US in eastern Syria.
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The UK Parliament is in the midst of a tumultuous debate over whether British forces should participate in airstrikes on Syrian territory. Thus far, the debate has featured frequent calls for Prime Minis...
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The third in our series of our book soirees at the Hoover Institution's Washington Office will take this evening at 5:00 pm, when I interview Edward Lucas of the Economist about his new book, Cyberphobia...
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Is the internet really worth it? Our guest for episode 91, Jason Healey of the Atlantic Council and Columbia University, recaps a study finding that, even with a worst-case Clockwork Orange Internet, th...
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Earlier I wrote a short primer on refugee law for those who follow this blog. It seems worthwhile to follow up with the news that yesterday several former national security officials sent a letter to Se...
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As proof of the dramatic impact the Paris attacks have had in Europe, the German cabinet has approved plans to contribute forces to the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. With the parliament expec...
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A few weeks ago, I took note of the comments of China-cybersecurity expert James Lewis to the effect that those much-derided US indictments of PLA hackers had actually had a big impact of Chinese cyber-s...
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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has released the names of the first five Amici Curiae that will serve the Court as part of reforms enacted under the USA Freedom Act. The list, effective Novem...
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Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck comes on the show to talk about jihadism in Algeria. Some of the topics covered include:
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Here is the December 2015 supplement for my casebook with Curtis Bradley, Foreign Relations Law: Cases and Materials, (5th ed. 2014).
