Compiled by Athena Smith.
Articles
Parsing the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s Report on U.S. Strikes in Iran
Gabor Rona** **examined the legal analysis underlying the United Nations’ report from the International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, which found that U.S. airstrikes, including attacks on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School and the Lamerd Sports Complex, constituted war crimes under international humanitarian law. Rona argued that shifts within the Pentagon toward “lethality over legality” and degraded human oversight likely contributed to these failures.
The institutional choice to prioritize lethality over legal compliance and dismiss “stupid rules of engagement” undermines U.S. national security and political interests. Unlawful strikes that international investigative bodies designate as war crimes erode cohesion and alienate key allies whose participation in operations is therefore prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Operations that breach international law also expose U.S. military personnel and commanders to foreign criminal investigations under universal jurisdiction doctrines.
The AI Threat We’re Not Talking About
Sam Hunter and Seamus Hughes described the growing threat of abliterated and uncensored artificial intelligence (AI): models that have had their ethical safeguards removed. Hunter and Hughes warned that these models are more difficult to monitor when run locally, can supply harmful guidance to malign actors, and act as sycophantic “coaches” for extremists.
Given growing fears about AI’s nature, there is a justifiable sense that caution is warranted with these tools. However, our research also highlights a more subtle impact when paired with the knowledge AI affords: the danger of AI sycophancy. Although malicious content, such as bomb-making instructions, has been available online for some time, the novel and compounding threat of AI is its role as “coach” and cheerleader for malicious acts. When the sycophancy effect is paired with the nonrefusal effects afforded by abliterated and uncensored models, the compounding effects are uniquely dangerous.
In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay Series, Jeremy Shapiro argued that the conventional wisdom regarding Obama’s 2013 “red line” on Syria is wrong: Obama achieved a diplomatic success by declining to bomb Syria and instead accepting a deal that removed much of then-President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons. Shapiro described how President Trump’s symbolic 2017 Tomahawk strike on a Syrian airbase did not accomplish anything operationally, and how Washington’s belief that credibility requires following threats with force is a myth that perpetuates the war in Iran.
The lesson for the war in Iran is that credibility is not a blood debt. Washington may believe that once a president unsheathes his sword, the objective automatically becomes drawing blood rather than obtaining the result for which the sword was drawn. But the more important question remains what course of action best advances American interests. If negotiation, a limited settlement, or simply declaring victory and going home can deliver more than the next military strike, then refusing continued war is the very soul of statecraft. At the moment, Trump’s attachment to this macho code and his fear of looking weak by abandoning force options in Iran seems to be keeping him (and us) in a pointless war.
Podcasts
Lawfare Daily:** The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 25: **During Friday’s
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