The Week That Was

Benjamin Wittes contemplated developments that took place over Thanksgiving weekend, from a court ruling against Alina Habba’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alleged order to kill all survivors of a boat strike in the Caribbean.

Molly Roberts reported on a Dec. 4 hearing in National Public Radio et al. v. Trump, in which NPR argued that an executive order depriving public broadcasters of taxpayer funding was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Without directly disputing NPR’s case, lawyers for the government argued both that the order was permissible and that the whole case was moot anyway.

On Lawfare Live, Natalie Orpett sat down with Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Roberts, Eric Columbus, and James Pearce to discuss the 3rd Circuit upholding the disqualification of Alina Habba as U.S. attorney, where the prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James stand, and more.

John Lewis presented three strategic lessons for litigants unsure how to navigate the dynamics of the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket.” Lewis stressed the preliminary nature of shadow docket decisions and urged litigants to continue bringing cases.

Joshua Braver assessed the value of the Whiskey Rebellion as precedent for modern deployments of the National Guard, examining both the rebellion itself and the procedure that early American leaders followed in quashing it. Braver argued that, contrary to its invocation in Oregon v. Trump, the history of the Whiskey Rebellion undermines the president’s claim to a freestanding “protective power” authorizing broad domestic deployments.

On Lawfare Daily, Parloff sat down with Reynolds Holding and Jed Rakoff to discuss Holding’s recent book profiling three district judges, including Rakoff; the role of district judges in our justice system; why Holding chose to profile Rakoff in his new book  the attacks district judges are now enduring from the Department of Justice, the White House, Congress, and members of the U.S. Supreme Court; and more.

Matthew Boaz evaluated how removing noncitizens to “third countries” helps the Trump administration circumvent certain due process obligations under immigration law. Boaz detailed the removal processes available in different deportation cases and argued that those at risk of removal to a third country should have protections on par with those facing traditional expedited removal.

On Rational Security, Wittes, Orpett and Eric Ciaramella sat down with Anderson to discuss the Trump administration’s shifting plans for ending the Russia-Ukraine War, Hegseth’s reported order to “kill everybody” in the first strike on an alleged narcotic-smuggling boat this September, the Defense Department’s avenues for retaliation against six congressmen who urged troops to refuse illegal orders, and more.

Katherine Pompilio shared the National Security Strategy recently released by the White House. 

Tyler McBrien shared the Pentagon inspector general’s report on Hegseth’s use of Signal.

On Lawfare Daily, Jonathan Cedarbaum sat down with Mark Montgomery to discuss how Trump administration funding and staffing decisions have impacted performance at leading cybersecurity agencies, the weakening of public-private collaboration, the closing of the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council, and more.

Nick Leiserson broke down how the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council’s failure to issue timely rules on federal software procurement makes it easier for attackers to carry out supply chain attacks, including high-profile attacks such as F5 and SolarWinds.

On Lawfare Daily, Ariane Tabatabai sat down with John Drennan and Matthew Sharpe to discuss the looming expiration of New START, the bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia due to expire in February 2026. The three weighed the significance of arms control architecture in ensuring stability between the U.S. and Russia, what the end of New START might mean for relations between them, what sort of arms control regime might take New START’s place, and more.

Yuval Shany and Amichai Cohen argued that, while the International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion correctly determines that Israel violated international law by cutting ties with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, it does not give enough weight to Israel’s legitimate interest in the neutrality of relief operations.

Isabel Arroyo shared the final report on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan published by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

On Lawfare Daily, Daniel Byman and Seth Jones discussed Jones’s new book "The American Edge: The Military Tech Nexus and the Sources of Great Power Dominance,” which compares the industrial bases of China and the United States.

Weijia Rao analyzed how China’s latest export controls, sanctions, and cybersecurity review processes borrow from the U.S.’s own geopolitical lawfare playbook. Rao analyzed how China’s choice to codify these retaliatory and escalatory measures in law changes the dynamics of U.S.-China competition. 

In the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discussed DeepSeek’s tendency to write inferior code when responding to geopolitically sensitive prompts, a new report exposing personnel and operations at Iranian cyberespionage group Charming Kitten, pervasive cybersecurity myths, and more.

Doni Bloomfield, Joe Khawam, and Tim Schnabel explained why U.S. export restrictions on assisting the design of biological weapons risk chilling critical biosecurity testing at frontier artificial intelligence (AI) firms.

On Scaling Laws, Caleb Withers joined Kevin Frazier to discuss how frontier models disproportionately advantage attackers in cyberspace, the steps labs and governments can take to address attacker-friendly asymmetries, the future of cyber warfare driven by AI agents, and more.

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Uren discussed a Germany-based think tank’s mixed success in defining responsible cyber operations, steady integration between Iran’s cyber warfare and the kinetic war of its proxies, Anthropic’s testimony before Congress about Claude-based cyberespionage from China, and more. 

Jakub Kraus reviewed Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares’s new release, “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.” Kraus praised the authors’ persuasively written case for AI pessimism but noted that their argument hinges on negative answers to three still-unsettled questions about AI alignment.

Maarten Herbosch argued that existing negligence and products liability frameworks are well-equipped to address the novel harms posed by AI agents.

Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier described how four major decisions will shape the future of AI and stressed the need to avoid the same sort of policy naïvete that plagued the rise of social media.

And Wittes reflected on his experience taking a Waymo for the first time during a recent trip to San Francisco.

And that was the week that was.