Compiled by Sarah Willrich.
Articles
Laundering Federal Election Interference in the Midterms
Julia Curlee argued that the Trump administration’s recent claims about Chinese election interference are part of its broader efforts to manipulate intelligence to discredit election results. Curlee described how the administration’s recent claims that voting machines are vulnerable could be used to later justify blocking unwelcome election results. She recommended steps the pro-democracy coalition can take to push back against such claims by elevating the role of civil society, preparing lawyers, and providing information about the voting process.
First, the administration will use official documents, including declassified intelligence assessments and the DHS letterhead, to claim the underlying vulnerability constitutes an ongoing threat. Why the alleged manipulation hurts the president’s party and only helps his opponents will go unexplained. It will not attempt to prove that any votes were changed. No such evidence exists, but the accusation itself is the point, and the alleged machine vulnerability cannot be remediated before Election Day.
No amount of auditing, and no use of the SAVE database, can prove the negative that no fraud occurred. In place of evidence, the administration will borrow the credibility of the CIA, DHS, and FBI to declare that specific counties’ voting machines have been “compromised.” The right-wing media ecosystem has already kicked into gear, claiming the DHS memo confirms that previous elections were stolen.
Why We Opted Not to Work at the AI Labs
Bharat Chandar and Kevin Frazier warned about the dual brain drain of experts leaving academia to join the artificial intelligence (AI) industry and the brain wane of students joining AI firms instead of pursuing further studies. Chandar and Frazier argued that having a robust population of independent experts is critical to regulating and understanding AI and advocated for adjusting incentives to maintain that talent outside the labs.
But without a healthy ecosystem of external experts, regulators may become increasingly reliant on industry researchers to draft responsive regulations. A review of the visitors log to the White House, for example, would reveal that visits from AI CEOs and calls from staffers with ongoing connections to industry stakeholders tend to coincide with major policy shifts. Congressional hearings have also tended to include significant industry participation. Under the status quo, the public may have to form its understanding of the technology based on company talking points, with a resultant breakdown in trust over the technology’s promise and peril. And, in the longer term, the next generation of AI experts may be smaller than an alternative world in which higher education institutions have the resources and personnel necessary to train students about the latest and greatest tech.
Podcasts
Lawfare Daily: ‘A Whole Other Country,’ with Zoe Kurland and Terence O’Rourke: Tyler McBrien sat down with Zoe Kurland and Terence O’Rourke to discuss “A Whole Other Country,” a podcast series hosted and produced by Kurland that tells the story of a secessionist movement in the mid-90s called the “Republic of Texas.” They talked about the group’s claim that the federal government improperly annexed Texas, how its leader appointed himself as the “Ambassador of the Republic of Texas” and sought international recognition, and why that leader asked O’Rourke to represent him.
Scaling Laws: ** Is Meta’s Oversight Board a Model for AI Governance: **Frazier and
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