Compiled by Sarah Willrich.
Articles
Persistent Engagement and the Illusion of Cyber Equilibrium
Jason Healey and Jack Snyder critiqued the U.S. Cyber Command’s posture of “persistent engagement” in cyberspace, arguing that it fails to produce a stable equilibrium between great powers. Healey and Snyder argued the U.S.’s increasing focus on dominance in cyber warfare is likely to create an escalating spiral of the security dilemma.
Different combinations of power, interest, and means of struggle led to differing outcomes in these contests. As exemplified by the differing patterns of escalation control in Kargil and World War I, not all of these conflicts remained stable for long periods, nor did they all resolve peacefully. Most were based largely on unilateral calculations about the dangers of escalation, lacking explicit agreement over the thresholds and rules of the competition. Some—such as Britain’s coercion of France over Fashoda—wound up with a (limited) winner and a (limited) loser, whereas in the most extreme case—the brinksmanship crises between the great powers between 1905 and 1914—the adversaries no longer cared about limits and escalated to world war.
This perspective should encourage great humility among cyber theorists and strategists of self-limiting rivalry.
Search Warrants for Election Materials Get Their Day in Court
Justin Levitt discussed a case before the California Supreme Court considering the legality of warrants authorizing a county sheriff—who, at the time, was running for governor—to seize and count ballots. Levitt argued the case presents the court with an opportunity to clearly define ensuring election integrity as a civil, not criminal, responsibility.
But those systems belong to the zone of civil process. And while those systems and criminal justice systems can coexist peacefully, they should not be conflated. California jurisdictions have procedures for observers to watch most aspects of the election process. They have procedures to allow challenges to voter eligibility based on reliable information. They have procedures for jurisdictions to test voting machines under the public eye, to maintain strict chains of custody, and to audit results to ensure their accuracy. They have procedures to contest election results in court, to weigh allegations of error or misconduct against real evidence in a judicial crucible subject to adversarial scrutiny.
Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier compared artificial intelligence (AI) agents to genies and other magical events that give humans what they want, but not always in the way they intended. Raghavan and Schneier warned that as AI makes that process even faster, it becomes more important to think cautiously about how, when, why, and to what effect the technology is being used.
We have recently proposed measuring this gap directly under a metric called the “genie coefficient”: how far an AI agent’s actions drift from what a person really meant. In other words, how genie-like is an AI system? The gap is a fundamental feature of human language and human society. Human intentions have never been fully specifiable, and the world around us is complex enough that attempts to boil it down into data, systems, and language have always had the limitations that AI is now bumping up against. But in individual circumstances, people have relied on human judgment and wisdom to decide what is reasonable. It’s what jury trials depend upon.
Podcasts
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 1: Benjamin Wittes sat down with Molly Roberts and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision allowing President Trump to continue to build the White House ballroom while litigation is ongoing, and information about the U.S. Postal Service’s system handling of mail ballots released by a whistleblower to Sen. Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
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