Benjamin Friedman has an interesting and thoughtful piece at the National Interest this afternoon, commenting on Dennis Blair's recent criticism of the current approach to drone strikes in Pakistan.  One...

...and guess what? This post is not about any gross factual errors in either of them concerning the legality of detention. Perhaps that's because neither editorial really deals with the legality of deten...

Scott Shane has an important story in the New York Times on the controversy over the number of civilian deaths caused by the CIA's drones program outside of Afghanistan. Shane reports that, The civilian ...

During the early months of the Arab Spring phenomenon, there was much discussion of the role that technology played in undermining the capacity of authoritarian regimes to suppress political dissent.  So...

An interesting column by David Ignatius pointed me to this fascinating-looking report by Richard Danzig, Marc Sageman, and others. Published by the Center for a New American Security, the report is entit...

Thomas Barnett has an interesting post at Battleland playing off Thom Shanker's piece in the Times today regarding biometrics and security in Afghanistan.  Barnett's point: such measures are more likely ...

In her post the other day, Marcy Wheeler hit on a theme I have been thinking a great deal about recently--indeed, that I have been writing a book about. So I know this is supposed to be a debate, but in ...

I promised yesterday that I would collect and post my thoughts in response to Spencer Ackerman's and Marcy Wheeler's comments on drones and debates. Rather than try to take on the many big themes they ra...

A few days ago, I posted this little comment concerning Eugene Robinson's column on drones. The response to it has, I confess, surprised me, particularly as it has focused largely on an off-hand remark I...

My former colleague Eugene Robinson has a column in the Washington post entitled "Assassination by Robot," which seems to me to warrant a brief response. Robinson begins by saying that, "The skies over a...

Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedmann have a piece in the new issue of Foreign Affairs (mostly behind the pay wall, but an excerpt is here) offering a mixed verdict on drone strike operations in Pakistan. ...

The Washington Post reports this morning that JSOC recently carried out a drone strike in Somalia, targeting two al-Shabab leaders.  The piece emphasizes that the Administration has recently highlighted ...