Compiled by Athena Smith.
Articles
2025 Civilian Casualties Report Reveals U.S. Civilian Protection Gaps
Madison Hunke, Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen, and Anna Zahn examined the Pentagon’s “1057” report on civilian harm from U.S. military operations in 2025 and how the report raises concerns about the military’s ability to protect civilians from harm, outlining harms the report failed to acknowledge in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The authors noted how structural challenges, such as cuts to civilian-harm assessment capacity, may have left the military unable to learn from mass casualty incidents.
The report reveals a number of apparent shortcomings and raises significant concerns that merit further congressional and public scrutiny. For instance, the report suggests that the U.S. military now has seemingly little capacity to investigate even a relatively small caseload of harm claims. The report also acknowledges two of the largest mass casualty incidents in U.S. military history, both of which occurred in Yemen in 2025, yet demonstrates little appetite to respond to or learn lessons from such devastating harm.
A Warning for Frontier AI Model Governance
Mailyn Fidler and Matt Kristoffersen argued that lawmakers attempting to regulate frontier artificial intelligence (AI) face the temptation toward cybersecuritization: flattening complex issues into their technical complexity and danger to the public. Fidler and Kristoffersen described that “cybersecurity” can become a substitute for hard policy choices when it pulls decisions out of democratic deliberation into separate expert and national security channels and increases secrecy around governance.
Frontier AI model governance is especially susceptible to cybersecuritization. AI models involve real cybersecurity and national security risks. AI also has the makings of a societally disruptive technology. Frontier AI models implicate the future of work, access to knowledge, economic orders, political decision-making, geopolitical competition, and more. Still, the deeply technical nature of frontier AI models, along with their genuine national security and cybersecurity implications, makes it tempting to treat them primarily as a tech threat and to respond on those terms.
Podcasts
Lawfare Daily: The Remaking of the Department of Defense:Natalie Orpett sat down with Rachel VanLandingham to discuss the many ways the Trump administration has been remaking the Department of Defense, ranging from bans on transgender service members and the so-called “High-T” initiative to quiet bureaucratic moves such as changes to personnel management. The two spoke about how these changes are being implemented, what’s rhetoric and what’s reality, and the impact it’s all having on the Defense Department and on troops themselves.
Rational Security: The “Techs Appeal” Edition: Scott Anderson sat down with Tyler McBrien, Anna Bower, and Michael Feinberg to talk through the week’s big news in national security. The group discussed the Supreme Court clearing the way—for the third time—for the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to “third countries,” public corruption investigations into Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and other members of Congress, President Trump’s war on the press, and more.
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