It’s still too early to say that any of the material in the Trump dossier is true, or to dismiss it all as false. But even at this early stage, it should be apparent the Trump machine is resilient to the...

The question is provocative, but the answer is hard. The reaction to WikiLeaks’ publication of the fruits of Russia’s DNC hack raises many puzzles about how we should think about publication of truthful ...

Nearly half a year after the DNC hack, the United States finally took action. Citing the role of the Russian government in cyber operations apparently intended to affect the U.S. presidential election, a...

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 ("NDAA") is likely to complete its journey into law this week, and so the time has come to spotlight some of the nuggets in it that might matte...

As noted here, a law forbidding retired military officer from serving as Secretary of Defense until seven years after retirement currently stands in the way of the Mattis nomination, and will require fre...

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." —Dick the Butcher, Henry IV, Part 2.

With less than two months to go before it hands over power to the Trump administration, the Obama administration is continuing to fine-tune the legal, policy, and institutional architectures that guide i...

Dawn Johnsen has a new essay in Foreign Affairs defending the Obama administration’s national security law legacy and drawing lessons for constraining the incoming Trump administration.

Over at War on the Rocks, I have a post explaining that a new statute will be needed in order for General Mattis to serve as Secretary of Defense. It's been done once before, with George Marshall during...