Compiled by Athena Smith.
Articles
Where the Weight Lies: A Balancing Act for the Governance of Open-Weight AI Models
Jennifer Tridgell, Chinmayi Sharma, and John Speed Meyers argued that restrictions on foreign open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) models would not keep foreign influence out of the American AI ecosystem and could weaken U.S. influence abroad. The authors contented the binary between open Chinese AI and closed American AI misdescribes the competition since influence also lies in compute and other layers of the AI stack, not only in the weight file.
Policymakers, hawks, and much of the press frame the open-weight debate as a simple binary. Open-weight models are often portrayed in a way that flatters a favored narrative: two superpowers locked in an epic technology trade war with the U.S. as champion of its closed models (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI) versus China as the insurgent pushing for openness (e.g., Moonshot AI, DeepSeek). Even those resisting restrictions accept the frame: Industry voices insist the geopolitical question and the open-versus-closed question “have nothing to do together.”
Musk’s Minnesota Deepfake Fight Could Define AI’s First Amendment
Jeff Kosseff broke down the legal battle between Elon Musk’s xAI and Minnesota over a state law that lets the state’s attorney general seek fines from a tech company each time it enables a user to download a nudified image. Kosseff explained the First Amendment problems the law may raise and why a ruling in the case could reach well beyond nudification.
When laws impose liability on speakers or speech intermediaries, courts examine whether those laws apply only to defendants who act with a particular state of mind, such as intent, recklessness, or knowledge. Generally, the more rigorous the state-of-mind requirement, the more likely the law is to pass constitutional muster. What courts have yet to answer is what state-of-mind requirement applies to the regulation of speech generated using artificial intelligence.
Podcasts
Lawfare Daily: ‘Little Blue Dot’ and GPS in War and the World with Katherine Dunn:Justin Sherman sat down with Katherine Dunn to discuss navigation technologies and bombing in World War II, satellites during the Cold War, the birth and evolution of the U.S. government’s GPS program, and more.
Videos and Webinars
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