In our interview, Elsa Kania and Sam Bendett explain what China and Russia have learned from the American way of warfighting—and from Russia’s success in Syria. The short answer: everything. But instead of leaving us smug, I argue it ought to leave us worried about surprise. Elsa and Sam both try to predict where the surprises might come from. Yogi Berra makes an appearance.

In the News Roundup, David Kris explains the Fourth Circuit’s decision to accept a lib/left invitation to screw up the law of stored electronic communications for a generation.

And in other litigation, a Trump-appointed judge dismisses a lawsuit against Silicon Valley’s censorship of the right. Nate Jones and I agree that, while the decision is broadly consistent with law, it may spell trouble for Silicon Valley in the long run. That’s because it depends on an idiosyncratic U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit interpretation of the District’s public accommodation law. I speculate that Alabama or Texas or Mississippi could easily draft a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of viewpoint in public accommodations like the Internet. 

Nick Weaver and I note the UN report that North Korea has stolen $571 million, much of it in cryptocurrency. I ask whether the US Treasury could seize those ill-gotten bits. Maybe, says Nick, but it would really bollix up the world of cryptocurrency (not that he minds).

I explain why DHS will be rolling out facial scanning technology to a boatload of US airports—and why there’s no hidden privacy scandal in the initiative.

It kind of makes you wonder about their banks and their chocolate: Nick gloats as Switzerland’s proposed Internet voting system follows his predicted path from questionable to deep, smoking crater.

Elsa Kania and I touch on the Navy Secretary’s willingness to accept scathing criticism of the Navy’s cybersecurity. And Nick and I close with an effort to draw lessons from the disastrous software and human factor interactions at the heart of the Boeing 737 MAX crashes.

On Episode 254 of The Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart spends a few days off the grid, and David Kris, Maury Shenk and Brian Egan extol the virtues of data privacy and the European Union in his absence.

Maury interviews James Griffiths, a journalist based in Hong Kong and the author of the new book, “The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet.”

In the news, David and Brian discuss last week’s revelation that the NSA is considering whether it will continue to seek renewal of the of the Section 215 “call detail record” program authority when it expires in December. We plug last week’s Lawfare Podcast in which the national security advisor to House Minority Leader McCarthy made news when he reported that the NSA hasn’t been using this program for several months. David waxes poetic on the little-known and little-used “lone wolf” authority, which is also up for renewal this year.

We explore the long lineup of politicians and government officials who are lining up with new proposals to “get tough” on large technology companies. Leading the charge is Sen. Warren, who promises to roll out a plan to break up “platform utilities”—basically, large Internet companies that run their own marketplaces—if she is elected president. Not to be outdone, the current chair of the Federal Trade Commission has urged that Congress provide new authorities for the FTC to impose civil enforcement penalties on tech (and presumably other) companies that violate their data privacy commitments. And last—but never least—the French finance minister announced that he will propose a 3 percent tax on the revenue of the 30 largest Internet businesses in France, most of which are U.S. companies.

David discusses how one technology company is using a more familiar tool—litigation—to fight back against Chinese companies for creating and then selling fake Facebook and Instagram accounts.

In the “motherhood and apple pie” category, Maury explains French President Macron’s call for the creation of a “European Agency for the Protection of Democracies” to protect elections against cyberattacks. And Brian covers a recently re-introduced bill, the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act, which would impose sanctions on “all entities and persons responsible or complicit in malicious cyber activities aimed against the United States.”

In the news, Klon Kitchen talks about the latest on cyberconflict with Russia: CyberCom’s takedown of the Russian troll farm during 2018 midterms. The Russians are certainly feeling abused. They are using U.S. attacks to justify pursuing “autonomous Internet,” and they’ve sentenced two Kaspersky Lab experts to long jail terms for treason.

Gus Hurwitz, Klon, and Nick Weaver muse on the latest evidence that information intermediaries still haven’t settled on a business model. Amazon marketplace sellers will now have the ability to remove what they deem counterfeit listings. Amazon has let the FTC discipline fake paid Amazon reviews. And The Verge has a disturbing article on the human costs of using human beings to enforce Facebook’s content rules. (The failure of Silicon Valley to get a handle on this problem is, of course, the key to NewsGuard’s business model.) 

Finally, just to give me an excuse to link to this Dr. Strangelove clip, Gus tells us that not even our prosthetic arms are safe from IoT hacking.