The Week That Was

Deportation, Inc. is a new series of short investigative videos from Lawfare and SITU examining how United States immigration enforcement has evolved into a rapidly growing multi-billion-dollar industry shaped by private profit and political power—a system in which profitability increasingly dictates policy and enforcement priorities. Watch “Chapter 1: Detention” here.

On Lawfare Daily, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Scott R. Anderson, Daniel Byman, and Kori Schake to discuss the National Security Strategy, its emphasis on immigration as a national security threat, its implications for U.S. foreign policy, and more.

Wittes discussed the Trump administration’s recent National Security Strategy, including its peculiar strategic focus on border security, unusual tone and structure, and evident racial animus. 

Anderson and Natalie Orpett evaluated the Trump administration’s legal defense of its second Sept. 2 airstrike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean.  The authors unpacked the administration’s argument for treating trafficked drugs like chemical weapons and parsed the second strike’s permissibility under domestic military guidelines and the international law of armed conflict.

On Lawfare Daily, Orpett sat down with Frank Rosenblatt and Colby Vokey to discuss the duty to disobey unlawful orders within the military, the complexity of choosing to do so, what that duty means for the future of U.S. operations, and more.

Sean Case reviewed Peter Roady’s “The Contest Over National Security” and Andrew Preston’s Andrew Preston, “Total Defense,” two historical accounts of how the term “national security” has developed since its popularization by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Case compared the two authors’ approaches to telling this story and argued that the Trump administration's refusal to attend this year’s Aspen Security Forum epitomizes a new turn in the meaning of “national security.” 

On Lawfare Daily, Olivia Manes sat down with Susannah Glickman to discuss the role of defense tech in the second Trump administration; the historic relationship between tech, defense, and the U.S. government; why defense tech firms that have benefitted from U.S. industrial policy now find it more profitable to undermine it; and more.

Isabel Arroyo shared a memorandum from the secretary of defense directing staff to immediately learn and integrate the department’s generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform GenAI.mil into their workflows.

On Lawfare Live, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Loren Voss joined Wittes to discuss Judge Paula Xinis’s order that Kilmar Abrego Garcia be released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, the Supreme Court oral arguments in Slaughter v. Trump, and more.

Wittes explored whether any rules formally limit Lindsey Halligan’s capacity to appear before an infinite number of grand juries seeking an indictment of Letitia James.

Peter E. Harrell and Jennifer Hillman argued that several issues raised during oral argument in Learning Resources v. Trump—including the limits of the embargo power and the distinction between regulatory and revenue tariffs—point back to the conclusion that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize tariffs.

Columbus examined how Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr has successfully pressured a range of media outlets into changing or removing coverage, then explained how backlash from viewers and legislators alike forced Disney to stand up to that pressure in the case of Jimmy Kimmel. Columbus discussed the lessons that this instance of successful resistance holds for civil society.

On Lawfare Daily, Orpett sat down with Bower, Michael Feinberg, Roberts, Roger Parloff, Columbus, and James Pearce to discuss the arrest of a suspect in the attempted bombing of the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021, a hearing in NPR’s lawsuit over the Trump administration cutting its funding, where the prosecutions of Letitia James and James Comey stand, and more.

Laura Field, the author of “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right,” taught the first lesson of her 6-part class on the conservative intellectual movement and how it has shaped Donald Trump’s presidency as a part of the Lawfare Lecture series. You can gain access to these classes by becoming a paid supporter at Patreon or Substack. The lectures will also be published on Lawfare’s YouTube channel on a delayed timeline.

Thomas Brzozowski analyzed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s memo directing intelligence personnel to focus on the threat of Antifa, arguing that the memo hollows out protections against investigating and prosecuting ideas and beliefs rather than conduct tied to crime or violence. Brzozowski explained how the directives outlined in the memo will drive investigations into protestors, philanthropic organizations, and more.

Byman and Riley McCabe catalogued the challenges inherent in counting, classifying, and analyzing acts of terrorism—particularly domestic terrorism—to inform policy. The authors identified 11 specific methodological challenges and explained how their recent report on terrorism trends for the Center for Strategic and International Studies dealt with each one.

On Rational Security, Anderson, Tyler McBrien, and Alex Zerden discussed the state of Syria one year after ousting dictator Bashar al-Assad, the Trump administration’s national security strategy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s pledge to invest $1.5 trillion in national security-critical U.S. companies, and more.

Feinberg explained how restricting visas for Chinese students inhibits U.S. intelligence agencies’ capacity to recruit and cultivate sources in China long-term. Feinberg emphasized the need for lawmakers to carefully balance that forfeiture—alongside losses in research and tuition—against the espionage risk some Chinese students might pose.

Elaine Korzak compared the implementation of the 2013 Wassenaar Arrangement spyware export controls in the European Union to their implementation in the United States. Korzak examined the factors that complicated the controls’ rollout in the U.S. and identified key lessons for future efforts to regulate commercial spyware. 

In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Maximilian K. Bremer and Kelly A. Grieco discussed the ins and outs of hybrid air denial, a gray-zone tactic in which adversaries use low-cost aerial technologies to disrupt air traffic and travel while probing a state’s defenses.

Anastasiia Lapatina—in response to President Trump’s comments that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is “using the war” to hold onto power—parsed the massive legal, logistical, and combat-related risks of holding elections for a new Ukrainian president while still at war with Russia.

Erin Sikorsky and Siena Cicarelli analyzed this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, highlighting the degrading effects of the Trump administration’s hostility toward climate change mitigation, China’s progress on clean energy, and the emergence of the conference as an arena for power-projection and contestation rather than climate problem-solving.

On Scaling Laws, Graham Dufault joined Kevin Frazier to discuss how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are navigating the EU's AI regulatory framework, The App Association’s recent survey of SMEs, and more.

Arroyo shared the White House’s executive order aimed at preempting state AI regulation.

Jakub Kraus shared the Office of Management and Budget’s memo providing guidance on compliance with President Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order on blocking ‘woke AI.’

Justin Curl warned that developers might leverage ambiguous and qualifying language to avoid complying with California’s recent spate of AI legislation. Curl urged lawmakers to clarify the operational meaning of vague terms before the laws take effect. 

Matt Boulos argued that tech companies cannot be allowed to block personal AI agents from platforms, suggesting that these agents offer a rare opportunity for consumers to push back against predatory, data-backed algorithms designed to exploit them.

And on Lawfare Daily, Renée DiResta sat down with Jimmy Wales to discuss Wales’s new book, “The Seven Rules of Trust,” how Wikipedia—which Wales founded—has managed to remain one of the most trusted sites on the internet; threats to Wikipedia from Congress, Russia, and Elon Musk’s “Grokipedia;” and more.

And that was the week that was.