Compiled by Athena Smith.
Articles
The Rising Islamic State Threat to Europe and the West
In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Lucas Webber, Peter Smith, and Colin P. Clarke explained how the Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP) has evolved from a regional insurgency into a transnational terror hub with a path into Europe. The authors described how ISSP has built a logistical corridor from the Sahel through Morocco and into Spain to recruit personnel, move money, and transport materials—including in connection with plots targeting Spain.
The emergence of a foreign fighter pipeline between the Sahel to southern Europe has clear implications for European security. To date, European counterterrorism efforts have focused on the Islamic State-Khorasan Province and Middle Eastern remnants of the broader Islamic State network, and less on the threat emanating from the Sahel, despite the steady accumulation of data points suggesting a growing trend. There appears to be only limited visibility into trans-Saharan logistics and a burgeoning Morocco-Spain nexus, with fragmented coordination between the European Union, Moroccan, and Spanish intelligence services, despite the shared challenge of preventing an attack.
Proposed Rules for the Use of Force at or Near Election Sites
Dan Maurer, Steven J. Lepper, and Marc Koblentz** **argued that the military should publicly release Rules for the Use of Force (RuF)—orders that specify when force can be used against civilians during a domestic deployment—to ease alarm about the federal government’s potential use of the military during the midterm elections. The authors compared the generic Standing Rules for the Use of Force with mission-specific rules and ultimately recommended election-specific RuF.
But this article also offers a way thoughtful military planning can mitigate the pernicious—if not outright dangerous—tactical consequences of such a deployment through clear Rules for the Use of Force (RuF), the domestic equivalent of rules of engagement in traditional armed conflicts. It cannot, of course, prevent the foreseeable undermining of civil-military relations that such a domestic deployment would trigger.
The EU AI Act Mandates AI Incident Reporting—If We’re Lucky
Hannes Bastians and Maarten Herbosch argued that the EU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act should be interpreted with a strong focus on the AI model regime’s purpose so that serious AI safety incidents or cybersecurity incidents–like OpenAI models escaping their test environments–do not go unreported. Bastians and Herbosch identified areas where the legislation’s legal certainty could be strengthened, including how“serious incident” is defined for frontier AI models, whether near-misses are covered, and whether the reporting obligation reaches internal models.
Absent such changes, we may be more reliant on providers’ goodwill outside of the AI Act’s scope. While OpenAI, for example, recently did publish a framework indicating that it would be willing to share information voluntarily, such reliance comes with its limits. Not all providers may be equally willing to report incidents, and internal or competitive considerations might make a provider change its mind as to how open it wants to be.
Podcasts
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 16:Benjamin Wittes sat down with Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Eric Columbus and Loren Voss to discuss the D.C. Circuit argument in challenge to the National Guard’s deployment in D.C.; hearings and orders in multiple cases related to Donald Trump’s latest political ads; the temporary restraining order in the administration’s ongoing work at the East Potomac Golf course; and more.
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