On Lawfare Live on Friday, Nov. 13, at 4 p.m. ET, Wittes spoke with Roberts, Parloff, Columbus, and Bower to cover the latest litigation over Trump administration policies, including the politicization of the Justice Department, an update on President Trump’s monuments, immigration roundups, and more.
Nick Bednar reviewed Michael Lewis’s book “Blockers,” describing how Lewis used vignettes of career civil servants to follow the second Trump administration’s campaign to push out experienced federal employees. Bednar noted that although Lewis makes a few stray administrative law errors in his analysis, he effectively communicates why the public should care about those who do the work of the government.
On Lawfare Daily from last week’s Lawfare Live, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, Anna Bower, and Eric Columbus to discuss the latest litigation over Trump administration policies, including D.C. and Virginia’s suit to block construction of the triumphal arch, the Ahmed Soliman case, the politicization of the Justice Department, election litigation in California and Alaska, President Trump’s defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal, and more.
Matthew Tokson outlined how automated license plate readers (ALPRs) likely violate the Fourth Amendment in the absence of a warrant. Although up until recently courts held that ALPR systems were legal, Tokson detailed how the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chatrie v. United States—which held that a warrant is required to obtain data from Google Maps—has guided lower courts in echoing these concerns with ALPRs, which can expose extensive location data.
Julia Curlee argued that the war in Iran was a policy failure—not an intelligence failure—and that voters held the White House accountable for it, giving Democrats control of both chambers of Congress in the midterms. Curlee maintained that the Iran war followed a year in which the White House dismantled the institutions that should have warned Trump against it. She contended that the new Congress should investigate this damage and enact statutory reforms to protect intelligence analysis and personnel and keep the intelligence committees informed.
Aaron S.J. Zelinsky drew on the history of the U.S. Court for Berlin to apply lessons to the newly-revived Alien Terrorist Removal Court. Zelinsky outlined the history of the U.S. Court for Berlin, an Article II court established to exercise jurisdiction over West Berlin but which convened only once for a plane hijacking case, United States v. Tiede. Zelinsky examined what Tiede can reveal about the independence of Article III judges and argued that a court without precedent faces novel problems at every step.
Bailey Schiff argued that a future nuclear deal with Iran should close off the country’s plutonium pathway, which runs through the spent fuel at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. Schiff explained that Iran’s development of a plutonium weapon could be slow now but has the potential to accelerate, especially with the help of Russia, although it remains to be seen if Iran has the necessary reprocessing capability, specialized equipment, or expertise to build it. Schiff held that Washington should constrain this pathway by seeking a deal to suspend Iran's plutonium reprocessing activities.
Viola Rothschild detailed how China, following the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development, sees foreign aid retrenchment as a historic opportunity to cautiously move forward and reap the rewards of U.S. withdrawal. Rothschild noted that Chinese analysts remain wary of rushing through this window of opportunity and explained turbulence in the foreign aid sector as a microcosm of shifts in international power.
On Lawfare Daily, Justin Sherman sat down with Oscar Jonsson to discuss the origins and evolution of the Russian General Staff, its role in the early Putin system amid reforms and power consolidation, the General Staff’s role—or lack thereof—in Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the future of Russian military thought and planning, and more.
On Lawfare Daily, Peter Harrell sat down with Aya Ibrahim to discuss what a progressive economic and national security agenda under a Democratic Congress could look like with regard to artificial intelligence (AI) regulation, U.S.-China policy, and more.
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren analyzed supermarket freezer hacks in France, how French authorities have attributed these attacks to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and why they resembled Russia’s cyber campaigns in Europe. Uren also detailed three Chinese cyber operations and the contrasting tactics each deployed, and more.
On Lawfare Live on Nov. 9 at 3:30 p.m. ET, Kate Klonick and Michael Feinberg sat down to discuss the explosive allegations about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the role of seduction in intelligence gathering, how the public should think about the growing scandal, and more.
Jay Healey and Benjamin Pearl argued that often-burdensome cyber regulations should instead seek to create regulatory harmony, allocating resources toward safety rather than compliance. Healey and Pearl contended that unwieldy regulations generate a “harmonization tax”—the cost of addressing compliance tasks—which overwhelms companies but generates little pay off in security. The authors analyzed the benefits of using AI systems to streamline regulations.
Healey argued that cyber reporting regulations should spell out the specific policy purposes each incident report serves to promote regulatory harmony. Healey outlined a decision-support framework which sorts reporting purposes into three categories: government knowledge of incidents, government knowledge of vulnerabilities and threats, and key stakeholder knowledge of incidents. Healey concluded that this structure can reduce inconsistent reporting regulations by determining which particular issue regulation seeks to address.
Satya Thallam argued that the AI testing failures at OpenAI and Anthropic were not primarily caused by models outsmarting their keepers, but took place because the models’ testing environments were misconfigured. Thallam outlined a mandatory incident reporting regime for Congress to set up so that industry incentives are changed to invest more in security and safety testing while providing transparency.
On Lawfare Daily, Kevin Frazier sat down with Roberto Tallarita to discuss Anthropic’s recently filed s-1, the company’s experiment in corporate governance, how to maintain a commitment to safety precautions even when that is in tension with profit, and more.
And that was the week that was.
