Roger Parloff explained recent developments in the prosecution of James Comey for a picture he posted of seashells spelling “8647.” Parloff chronicled the continued attempts by the Department of Justice to prove that “8647” is mafia slang for killing someone, even as almost all the evidence points to the contrary.
On Lawfare Daily, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Parloff to discuss the Trump administration requesting the Supreme Court stay the district court’s order halting the enforcement of the mail-in voting executive order, updates on where temporary protective status stands following the Supreme Court’s order, developments in the Reflecting Pool prosecution, the D.C. Circuit blocking the ballroom construction, and more.
On this week’s Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Wittes sat down with Roberts, Anna Bower, and Parloff to discuss a fired Justice Department prosecutor challenging his firing, a nationwide preliminary injunction against President Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order, the new birthright citizenship order, and more.
Jonathan Shaub considered the aftermath of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s vote to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt for invoking the Fifth Amendment during questioning. Shaub explained that, because a contempt vote is unlikely to overcome the filibuster, any prosecution pursued by the Department of Justice would bypass the standard procedure for contempt created by statute and precedent.
Lee Licata highlighted how vast amounts of data on U.S. troops are easily available for purchase, allowing adversaries to track movements without needing to find a security breach. Licata argued that the Justice Department’s Data Security Program should be used to develop a robust regulatory framework to address this vulnerability in ways case-by-case regulation and enforcement cannot.
Mae Thompson, Kristine Beckerle, and Luke Moffett considered the Department of Defense’s reversal of progress in recent years on its civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) initiatives. They explained that, beyond Trump administration leaders’ rhetoric dismissing concerns over CHMR, key policy developments and reviews have been abruptly halted, even as the need for them remains.
On Lawfare Daily, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold for the latest installment of their podcast series on developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They discussed the Trump administration's new plan for Gaza, why Israel doesn't appear to be on board with it, related developments in Lebanon and the West Bank, and how it is all intersecting with Israel's impending elections.
Annie Brett and Cory A. Evans explained the history leading up to the Supreme Court’s recent decision holding that Cuba’s CIMEX cannot invoke sovereign immunity to block Exxon’s suit against it, which alleges that CIMEX continues to traffic in and profit from property nationalized by Cuba in 1959. They broke down the case’s core question: whether Title III of the Helms-Burton Act implicitly abrogates Cuba’s sovereign immunity, and argued that the decision erodes the U.S.’s commitments to respecting sovereign immunity and international law more broadly.
Also, on Lawfare Daily, Anastasiia Lapatina sat down with Danylo Mokryk to unpack what's happened since the firing of Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, including the dismissal of General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Fedorov's rejection of a hollow "vice prime minister" role, his rise in the polls despite having no formal political ambitions, and what it all means for President Zelensky and the public’s trust.
ShahrYar M. Sharei explained that contradictions dating back to its founding continue to plague the United Nations (UN) Security Council, rendering it ineffective. Sharei argued that now, on the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, is the time to reform the UN Charter, and he highlighted a historical episode when meaningful progress on charter reform was made despite the objections of the Security Council’s permanent members.
In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Tricia Bacon analyzed the current security situation in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, highlighting the gap between the government’s rosy vision of near victory over al-Shabaab and the opposition’s more pessimistic emphasis on the group’s surviving networks. The interpretative gap, Bacon argued, is indicative of continued political fissures in the country which hinder the government’s ability to confront al-Shabaab and will only become more important as external support is withdrawn.
On Rational Security, Anderson sat down with Alan Rozenshtein, Michael Feinberg, and Loren Voss to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including cyberattacks on water utilities in at least seven states, the latest revelations about OpenAI’s agents hacking other companies, the cost and implications of the continued National Guard presence in D.C., and more.
Yotam Berger explained that civil forfeiture investigations, the government’s current favored legal response to pig-butchering scams, are overly reliant on cooperation from international companies and often fail to restore funds to victims, even when considered successful. Berger proposed reforms to the way such investigations are conducted to make them less fragile and more legitimate in the eyes of victims.
Mailyn Fidler reviewed Fiona M. Alexander, Laura DeNardis, Nanette S. Levinson, and Francesca Musiani’s book, “Geopolitics at the Internet’s Core.” Fidler praised the authors’ detailed case studies of how the internet protocol, the technical rules that allow the internet to operate across the globe, was shaped by political forces. However, Fidler critiqued the book’s lack of a strong theoretical frame and sometimes limiting focus on digital infrastructure.
Jessica Tillipman argued that a revised General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation clause governing artificial intelligence (AI) contracts fails to clearly define what constitutes a “government usage context,” creating ambiguity about what data the clause protects. Tillipman explained that the ambiguity is too consequential to be left to acquire meaning over time through contract administration. Instead, she proposed a functional, three-part test for defining "government usage context” itself.
Nicolas McMullan and Frazier discussed what regulation of AI constitutions—documents that contain sets of principles, values, and/or rules that AI models should follow—could look like. McMullan and Frazier argued that AI constitutions contain speech protected by the First Amendment, which limits how far the government can go in regulating them, and considered what more narrow approaches the government could utilize instead, such as requiring certain disclosures, exercising its leverage as a purchaser of AI models, or mandating provisions against criminal conduct.
On Lawfare Daily, Kate Klonick sat down with Renée DiResta to talk about her new piece on Grokipedia, finding that Grokipedia’s edit-review queue froze around April 24, with no announcement to users or contributors. They discussed DiResta’s methodology, how a mass rewrite of the site broke the anchors linking suggested edits to specific text, and how the new AI information ecosystem is being shaped by out-of-date but open-access resources with no accountability.
On Scaling Laws, Frazier spoke with Matthew Schwartz about how AI is beginning to reshape gastroenterology and how Schwartz’s company is opening new possibilities for earlier diagnosis, personalized treatment of diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, and faster clinical research.
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discussed a rise in data theft extortion, why it might be time to reinvigorate the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Secure by Design initiative, and more.
And on Scaling Laws, Anil Seth joined Frazier to examine whether AI could ever be conscious. Drawing on Seth’s recent essay, they attempted to define consciousness, develop arguments for and against machine consciousness, assess what the current evidence can and cannot tell us, and what it all means for policymakers and users.
And that was the week that was.
