Author Archive | Kenneth Anderson

Fun spread at the Atlantic of photos of many different kinds of robots.  Thirty three photos showing the amazing variety of robots and their uses today.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has been publicly against drone warfare for over a year now, and his latest piece continues that stance.  Indeed, he describes them as an “addictive tool of national security policy” and says flatly that their deployment to Libya is a “rare error in judgment by Secretary Gates.” Ignatius’s argument in […]

Hofstra’s Richard Neumann has made an estimate of the cost of producing a law review article by a professor at a top law school, and says it’s in the $100,000 ballpark.  Here is the National Journal article, reporting on a conference on the future of legal education. His estimate factors in the salary and benefits […]

The US has now deployed armed drones over Libya, according to press reports.  Drone systems have been operating as surveillance systems for weeks now, but acting on a NATO request, the US has now put up at least two weaponized drones in the Libya conflict. The logic of this move is inescapable.  NATO countries launch […]

A quick further comment to Jonathan’s post below on the missing 50 million climate change refugees that were supposed to be migrating across the globe by 2010 and, if I read the update correctly, are now supposed to materialize by 2020.  We are used to reading such stories as the politicization of science and its […]

I’m attending a terrific University of Pennsylvania conference on targeted killing – an interdisciplinary conference with philosophers, lawyers, and national security professionals.  Congratulations to Penn’s Professor Claire Finkelstein for a great meeting. (There are a number of military and former military officers here, but it would be great if the CIA would see its way […]

Glenn Reynolds argues today in the Wall Street Journal that decisions about the drinking age should be returned to the states, repealing the 1984 Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act, which set it at 21 as a condition for receiving federal highway funds, among other things.  I agree, and I agree particularly with the initiative undertaken […]

The LA Times has a good story on the complete backing away of the CIA from any new detentions or interrogations in counterterrorism under the Obama administration (though it started back under the Bush administration).  It describes a general paralysis of policy, frozen among a variety of government actors wary of doing anything that might […]

I am curious whether there is any evidence that high levels of student loan debt negatively impact a person’s marriage prospects.  Is there any evidence that prospective marriage partners take student loan debt specifically into account as a liability?  (I mean evidence based studies or something empirical, not the sort of arm-chair hypothesizing that you […]

Like clockwork, I isolate myself in my UVA apartment the Batcave to write on the CIA and the use of force, and within an hour or two, sources confirm that the CIA is on the ground in Libya.  Sometimes I amaze myself! (Don’t take this post too seriously, btw. Actually, don’t take it seriously at all.  I […]

Can the coalition forces using force in Libya under the Security Council’s authorizing resolution lawfully target Gaddafi personally?  This question has provoked some heated back and forth among political leadership of several coalition countries, including the US and the UK: Yesterday a war of words erupted between the U.S. and Britain after the U.K. government […]

Many commentators have discussed the “strategic ambiguity” – undoubtably purposeful – of the Security Council’s resolution authorizing the use of force in Libya.  The resolution speaks of protection of civilians, but nowhere nails down the following, among many other issues: ‘Referees’ or ‘taking sides’? Are forces authorized under the Security Council resolution authorized to pursue […]

The US military has appointed its first drone test pilot, Captain Nicholas Helms, at the prestigious USAF test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in California.  His tasks include figuring out how to reduce the number of crashes by UAVs in Afghanistan: [U]nmanned aerial vehicles were pushed into service quickly in the wake of […]

In my forthcoming book on US-UN relations (appearing this summer from Hoover Press), Living with the UN, I describe three different “modes” of the Security Council.  By this I mean ways in which the Security Council might function, for some given situation, in regards to international peace and security.  (An early version of this is […]

Duke University law professor Steven L. Schwarcz is a leading and prolific commentator on the financial crisis, its origins and aftermath, and the ways forward in financial regulation.    A week or so ago, Steve delivered the keynote address at a George Mason conference on financial services regulatory reform, “Identifying and Managing Systemic Risk:  An Assessment […]