Today's Headlines and Commentary
The Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on a number of informal money-exchange networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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The Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on a number of informal money-exchange networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These are the first uses of sanctions, according to Joby Warrick's Washington Post story, to "attack the financial underpinnings of Taliban militants who rely on the system to fund their insurgency."
Brendan Sasso of The Hill updates us on the Senate's cybersecurity legislation negotiations.
Three British troops were killed by a man in an Afghan police uniform in southern Afghanistan. Matthew Rosenberg at the New York Times reports.
Today's New York Times' editorial is entitled "Crippled, Chaotic Pakistan." The gist of it is:
Pakistan’s political system is growing ever more dysfunctional, even as the need to take on the border chaos becomes more urgent. Obama administration officials are “reaching the limits of our patience,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said recently. But the United States cannot just walk away. It needs Pakistan’s help in reopening a critical supply route to Afghanistan and in urging the Taliban to engage in peace talks so that combat troops can be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. It also needs to monitor Islamabad’s growing nuclear arsenal.Mike Corder of the AP has this piece on the 10th anniversary of the International Criminal Court. There are plenty of people writing about drones, and even some who aren't appalled at Ben's post over the weekend about his little drone smackdown: John Hudson at The Atlantic reports on General Stanley McChrystal at the Aspen Ideas Festival, who said "We should be using drones a lot." And his follow up: "We need to understand what drones are not." I was disappointed that his next line didn't end with the words hot, plot, or bot. Spencer Ackerman also blogged on his remarks at Wired's Danger Room blog. The latest Foreign Affairs edition has this article by Christopher Swift on drone strikes in Yemen. Wired's Danger Room reports on the lack-of a winner in the DARPA UAVForge competition, despite the fact that 140 teams entered the competition to design a next-gen drone. Over at Forbes, John McQuaid writes about the successful hacking down at the University of Texas Radionavigation lab of drones' navigation systems. As we noted on Friday, negotiations between the U.S. and Kuwait are ongoing regarding the status of several Kuwaiti detainees in Guantanamo. The Kuwait Times writes about the news that charges have been dropped against Fayez Al Kandari, as does the Kuwait News Agency. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is contemplating an arrangement with the Taliban whereby some Taliban detainees in Guantanamo would be transferred to a prison in Afghanistan. Anne Gearan and Deb Riechmann at the AP report. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and singh.lawfare@gmail.com.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
