Ashley Deeks is the Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law at the University of Virginia Law School and a Faculty Senior Fellow at the Miller Center. She serves on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law. In 2021-22 she worked as the Deputy Legal Advisor at the National Security Council. She graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked on the Third Circuit.
Subscribe to this Lawfare contributor via RSS.
Innovative tools could collect the views of U.S. national security officials about what kinds of defense and intelligence AI we should use.
Small-group cooperation and unilateral efforts to develop settled expectations around the use of national security AI are far more likely than an international regime analogous to nuclear arms control.
Sharing classified information with nonfederal actors has benefits that extend well beyond protecting elections and improving cybersecurity.
The director of national intelligence has decided to curtail in-person briefings to Congress about election security. Congress should push back.
The U.S. government should start thinking now about how states might apply law tech to international law settings and should consider how foreign governments, especially China’s, might use it in ways that cut against U.S. foreign policy goals.
When a state suffers an internationally wrongful act at the hands of another state, international law allows the injured state to respond in a variety of ways. Depending on the nature, scope, and severity of the initial wrongful act, lawful responses can range from a demand for reparations in response to a low-level violation to a forcible act of self-defense in response to an armed attack. Countermeasures offer an additional way for a state to respond to an internationally wrongful act.
Whether a recent private military excursion violated U.S. law might hinge on the answers to a few important questions.