The Lawfare Podcast: An Empirical Analysis of Targeted Killing

Jen Patja, Jack Goldsmith, Mitt Regan
Wednesday, June 8, 2022, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

What does the American public actually know concretely about the effectiveness of U.S. drone strikes? Jack Goldsmith sat down with Mitt Regan, a professor at Georgetown Law School and the co-director of its Center on National Security and Law, who seeks to answer this question in his new book, “Drone Strike—Analyzing the Impacts of Targeted Killing.” They discussed his deep analysis of the empirical literature on the effectiveness of targeted strikes outside active theaters of combat against al-Qaeda and affiliates and the impact of these strikes on civilians. They also explore the theoretical challenges to real empirical knowledge of these questions, the extent to which drone strikes have contributed to security within the United States, and what his findings imply about the consequences of the impact of the Afghanistan withdrawal.


Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Jack Goldsmith is the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003.
Mitt Regan is McDevitt Professor of Jurisprudence and co-director of the Center on National Security at Georgetown Law and senior fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the U.S. Naval Academy.

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