No crazier than many other government programs.

https://www.bespacific.com/doj-clears-way-for-government-to-hire-technologists-still-connected-to-private-sector-employers/

DOJ clears way for government to hire technologists still connected to private sector employers

NextGov/FCW  – “The Justice Department issued an opinion last week authorizing the Trump administration’s plan to allow employees from tech companies to work for the federal government while remaining employed by their companies and keeping their not-yet-vested company stocks. The administration will be onboarding managers from twenty-plus companies including Anduril, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir and xAI as part of its U.S. Tech Force program, launched last year to recruit early-career engineers after the administration pushed over 20,000 technologists out of their government posts last year. The setup is an unusual one. Federal employees are subject to ethics rules meant to ensure that they work for the public interest. The Office of Personnel Management now has DOJ’s blessing to allow individuals joining the Tech Force to keep their restricted stock units that haven’t yet vested company stocks issued with a vesting plan that dictates when employees get full ownership of them while they work for the government on a leave of absence from their private sector employer. Ethics experts and public sector lawyers told Nextgov/FCW that they are skeptical about the arrangement.  “Why are we replacing a workforce we already had with individuals who may still be beholden to an outside employer?” asked Cynthia Brown, the senior ethics counsel at the nonprofit watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. It “raises a lot of very serious concerns.” It’s unclear exactly how many people will join the government on a leave of absence as part of the Tech Force. It’s likely that the DOJ decision will be primarily used for the 100-plus managers being recruited from tech companies partnering with the government, rather than for the class of early-career employees, an OPM spokesperson told Nextgov/FCW.  “This opinion from the Department of Justice provides much-needed clarity on the treatment of deferred compensation and strengthens the federal government’s ability to recruit top talent from the private sector to complete stints of government service,” the spokesperson said in a statement. The statute addressed by DOJ in its opinion generally bans federal employees from receiving outside compensation for their government service…”

• CGP has a record to all the OLC memos/slip opinions back to 1934 when it began producing them (OCLC) 839756075, System Number 000599089. memo  [h/t Ben Amata]

I suspect this will be a long fight…

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/ab-1043s-internet-age-gates-hurt-everyone

A.B. 1043’s Internet Age Gates Hurt Everyone

EFF has long warned against age-gating the internet.  Such mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet. They create unnecessary and unconstitutional barriers for adults and young people to access information and express themselves online. They hurt small and open-source developers. And none of the available age verification options are perfect in terms of protecting private information, providing access to everyone, and safely handling sensitive data. 

Last year, EFF raised concerns about A.B. 1043 as one of several bills in the California legislature that took the wrong approach to protecting young people online —by focusing on censorship rather than privacy. Now that A.B. 1043 is set to go into effect in 2027, we've received a lot of questions about its possible effects. 

Inevitable.

https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/police-escort-robot

Robot Escorted Away By Cops After Terrorizing Old Woman

A robot in Macau was escorted away by cops after apparently startling an old lady who was later hospitalized, according to reports from the Macau Post and the South China Morning Post.

Police told public broadcaster TDM that the incident occurred near a residential complex in Patane last Thursday. The 70-year-old woman was reportedly looking at her phone while walking down the street around 9:00 PM when she suddenly noticed a humanoid robot, a Unitree G1 model, following right behind her.

Her reaction was anything but positive. A video circulating online shows the woman berating the robot as a small gaggle of passersby looked on, with reports saying that she was complaining of how the bot “frightened” her. 

These are all ‘within range’ from Iran. What stops Iran from shipping weapons closer to the US?

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/11/iran_threatens_us_tech_companies/

Iran plots 'infrastructure warfare' against US tech giants

Iran has reportedly designated Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Palantir facilities as legitimate targets of retaliatory strikes, according to an Al Jazeera report citing Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim news agency.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has pinpointed 29 locations in Bahrain, Israel, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates that house offices, datacenters, and research facilities that Iran has set its sights on destroying, according to Tasnim’s Telegram channel.

This comes a week after Iran said it deliberately targeted three AWS datacenters in the region.

The list was presented under the title “Iran’s New Targets.” It included five Amazon facilities, five Microsoft, six IBM, three Palantir, four Google, three Nvidia, and three Oracle buildings.

(Related)

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/03/iran-backed-hackers-claim-wiper-attack-on-medtech-firm-stryker/

Iran-Backed Hackers Claim Wiper Attack on Medtech Firm Stryker

A hacktivist group with links to Iran’s intelligence agencies is claiming responsibility for a data-wiping attack against Stryker, a global medical technology company based in Michigan. News reports out of Ireland, Stryker’s largest hub outside of the United States, said the company sent home more than 5,000 workers there today. Meanwhile, a voicemail message at Stryker’s main U.S. headquarters says the company is currently experiencing a building emergency.

Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Stryker [NYSE:SYK] is a medical and surgical equipment maker that reported $25 billion in global sales last year. In a lengthy statement posted to Telegram, an Iranian hacktivist group known as Handala (a.k.a. Handala Hack Team) claimed that Stryker’s offices in 79 countries have been forced to shut down after the group erased data from more than 200,000 systems, servers and mobile devices.

To be expected.

https://industrialcyber.co/reports/cyber-retaliation-surges-after-us-israel-strikes-on-iran-as-hacktivists-hit-governments-defense-critical-sectors/

Cyber retaliation surges after US–Israel strikes on Iran as hacktivists hit governments, defense, critical sectors

New analysis from Intel 471 found that military strikes by the U.S. and Israel against Iran triggered a sharp surge in hacktivist activity across cyber threat landscape. Researchers observed numerous ideologically aligned groups launching campaigns in response to the escalation, with many cyber adversaries claiming DDoS (distributed-denial-of-service) attacks, website defacements, and other disruptive operations against government, corporate, and regional targets. The activity highlights how geopolitical events increasingly spill into cyberspace, where loosely organized hacktivist collectives and state-aligned proxies use cyber operations to signal support, amplify propaganda, and retaliate against perceived adversaries.

According to the report, these campaigns often involve a mix of pro-Iranian and regional hacktivist groups coordinating attacks or amplifying claims through social media and messaging platforms. While many operations remain low-level or largely symbolic, the surge in activity illustrates how modern conflicts rapidly trigger waves of cyber retaliation that can target government systems, private companies, and potentially critical infrastructure in countries linked to the dispute.

“In the week of Feb. 27, 2026, to March 6, 2026, Israel was by far the most impacted region, followed by Kuwait and Jordan,” Intel 471 identified. “Additionally, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE also landed in the top ten most impacted regions for the week. Moreover, the top three most impacted industries were national government, aerospace and defense, and technology.”

Why don’t we see more ‘push back?’

https://www.bespacific.com/anthropic-v-us-department-of-war-peter-b-hegseth/

Anthropic v. U.S. Department of War, Peter B. Hegseth

ChatGPTIsEatingtheWorld: March 9, 2026. Anthropic wasted no time filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of War and Peter B. Hegseth.  Download the petition here.  Anthropic filed 2 lawsuits against the U.S. Department of War and Peter B. Hegseth today.  D.C. Circuit case First, Anthropic filed a petition in the D.C. Circuit to challenge the U.S. Department of War’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk. Then, Anthropic filed a lawsuit in the N.D. California challenging the legality of the Department of War’s action under the Administrative Procedures Act as “arbitrary and capricious,” as as well as a First Amendment violation penalizing Anthropic’s views, among other claims.

The  legal documents available here.

Trueer words…

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/3/9/it-is-time-for-the-world-to-move-on-without-the-united-states

It is time for the world to move on without the United States

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran. The US-Israeli attacks came without prior warning or approval by the United Nations and targeted and killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Just two months earlier, the US launched another attack, on Venezuela, in which its special forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his residence in Caracas and transferred him to New York, where he faces criminal charges in federal court.

In between these two violent attacks, US President Donald Trump withdrew from 66 international organisations, including 31 UN entities, and launched the Board of Peace, a new institution he chairs personally that he suggested might replace the UN.

These and other developments in recent years demonstrate that the world order the US helped establish in 1945 no longer serves its interests.

For eight decades, US treasure, diplomacy and military power sustained this architecture. Whatever one’s criticisms of how that power was exercised, the scale of the commitment was remarkable, and the US did not have to do this. It chose to.

The AI war…

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/09/kettle_2026_episode_01_iran_war/

Iran is the first out-loud cyberwar the US has fought

Unlike previous military conflicts, the cyber domain has been front and center since the Trump administration invaded Iran, upending the traditionally quiet role played by hackers in military conflicts.

Join us for our first episode of the relaunched Kettle as host Brandon Vigliarolo discusses the US-Iran war, how it's affecting tech, the outsized role cyber operations are playing in Iran, and whether the tech industry will be affected by the conflict if it drags on.

The episode also touches on Anthropic and the Pentagon, whether CISA cuts mean the US is less safe if threat actors enact revenge for Iran, and more.

Unique approach? (Is there an algorithmic version of mens rea?)

https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/icsliai-26/126022002

When AI Breaks the Law: Rethinking Mens Rea in the Age of Autonomous System

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has quickly shifted to the periphery of fantasy and the core of human decision-making of humans, challenging the very principles by which criminal law has always been built. The crux of this interference is mens rea, the presence of a guilty mind on which intention, awareness, and moral agency are assumed. The AI systems, however, lack consciousness or emotion. Thus, their independent actions may cause damage in the real world, where the human agent cannot be easily identified. This conflict reveals a growing fault line in the law: how can a system built to judge human culpability respond when the culpability is of the algorithm?

The paper examines how the disturbances caused by the rise of AI affect the traditional principles of criminal liability under Indian laws, especially the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. It examines the hypothetical impossibility of assigning mens rea to machines, the practical ineffectiveness of the existing laws, and the dangers of uncontrolled and unregulated autonomy. Basing its arguments on the comparative experience of other jurisdictions, the paper finds a way forward in reform, including the clarification of AI-specific definitions, the creation of risk-based negligence standards, and the development of accountability models that focus on human accountability and not on constraining innovation. Finally, it argues that the criminal justice system in India needs to develop wisely without sacrificing fairness, accountability, and the rule of law in a world in which algorithms are defining the destinies of humans more and more.

Our AI rights…

https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/jour_mlr/vol77/iss2/7/

From Phone Booths to Digital Booths: Rethinking Fourth Amendment Privacy in the Age of Open Source Intelligence

The use of Open Source Intelligence (“OSINT”) by the U.S. intelligence community marks a paradigm shift in national security practices, leveraging vast troves of publicly available and commercially acquired data. Yet this shift raises urgent constitutional questions regarding the applicability of the Fourth Amendment’s protections in the digital age. As OSINT practices increasingly rely on sophisticated aggregation techniques and artificial intelligence tools, the line between publicly available information and constitutionally protected privacy interests begins to blur. This Article critically examines whether certain forms of OSINT collection and analysis, particularly those that aggregate digital data at scale or use predictive algorithms, may constitute an unreasonable search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

Relying on an evolving body of caselaw, this Article argues that the long‑standing Third Party Doctrine is increasingly ill‑suited for the realities of the modern digital age. It explores how the aggregation of seemingly public data can reveal deeply private patterns, behaviors, and insights, thereby implicating a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. To help courts, the intelligence community, and policymakers navigate this complex legal terrain, this Article introduces a three‑part framework to assess when OSINT practices risk constitutional infringement: (1) whether the government obtains aggregated data, including commercially available information, of a type and volume that implicates a reasonable expectation of privacy; (2) whether advanced technologies are employed to extract digital information that would otherwise be unknowable through conventional means; and (3) whether such technologies are used to enhance insights into areas where courts have recognized a reasonable expectation of privacy. This Article concludes by urging a more balanced approach that reflects both the operational needs of the intelligence community and civil liberties. As technology evolves and OSINT capabilities grow courts, the intelligence community, and policymakers must act to ensure that the Fourth Amendment remains a meaningful safeguard, not an obsolete artifact, in the digital era.

The first AI war?

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zaza-Tsotniashvili/publication/401535600_Algorithmic_Warfare_in_the_Iran_Conflict_AI-Driven_Decision_Compression_the_Erosion_of_Human_Oversight_and_Accountability_Gaps_in_Contemporary_Military_Operations/links/69a7e6ebceb31f79ab23081c/Algorithmic-Warfare-in-the-Iran-Conflict-AI-Driven-Decision-Compression-the-Erosion-of-Human-Oversight-and-Accountability-Gaps-in-Contemporary-Military-Operations.pdf

Algorithmic Warfare in the Iran Conflict: AI-Driven Decision Compression, the Erosion of Human Oversight, and Accountability Gaps in Contemporary Military Operations

Introduction/Background: The joint United States–Israeli military offensive against Iran commencing on February 28, 2026, Operation Epic Fury/Operation Roaring Lion, produced an unprecedented operational tempo: nearly 900 strikes within the first twelve hours. What made this possible was not merely superior firepower but the deep integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into every phase of the kill chain. The Iran conflict has thus emerged as the first large-scale armed confrontation in which AI functioned not as a supporting analytical tool but as a core operational component of military decision-making, compressing targeting cycles from days to minutes and systematically marginalizing substantive human deliberation.

Methods: This article employs a critical analytical framework drawing on OSINT based investigative reporting on Operation Epic Fury, the academic literature on AI-enabled military targeting, documented AI deployments in prior conflicts (Gaza, Ukraine), emerging scholarship on the Iran-Israeli confrontation, international humanitarian law, and analysis of corporate governance tensions between leading AI developers and defense establishments.

Results: The Iran conflict demonstrates three interlocking phenomena: first, AI-driven decision compression that reduced multi-day planning cycles to hours; second, the structural transformation of human oversight into a performative 'rubber stamp' - a formal authorization with no substantive deliberative content; and third, the collapse of corporate AI ethics under competitive military procurement pressure, illustrated most sharply by the simultaneous events of February 28, 2026, when Anthropic was blacklisted by the Pentagon for refusing to remove constraints on autonomous weapons, while its model was already embedded in Iran strike operations and OpenAI immediately assumed its defense contracts.

Conclusions: Current governance frameworks are structurally inadequate to address the accountability gaps created by AI-assisted targeting. The Iran conflict has rendered urgent the development of binding international instruments that operationalize meaningful human control not as a nominal designation but as an enforceable behavioral standard, anchored in minimum deliberative time requirements and technical transparency mandates for AI-DSS used in lethal force decisions.

(Related)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/07/it-means-missile-defence-on-data-centres-drone-strikes-raises-doubts-over-gulf-as-ai-superpower

‘It means missile defence on datacentres’: drone strikes raise doubts over Gulf as AI superpower

It is believed to be a first: the deliberate targeting of a commercial datacentre by the armed forces of a country at war.

At 4.30am on Sunday morning, an Iranian Shahed 136 drone struck an Amazon Web Services datacentre in the United Arab Emirates, setting off a devastating fire and forcing a shutdown of the power supply. Further damage was inflicted as attempts were made to suppress the flames with water.

Soon after, a second data centre owned by the US tech company was hit. Then a third was said to be in trouble, this time in Bahrain, after an Iranian suicide drone turned to fireball on striking land nearby.

… Millions of people in Dubai and Abu Dhabi woke up on Monday unable to pay for a taxi, order a food delivery, or check their bank balance on their mobile apps.

Whether there was a military impact is unclear – but the strikes swiftly brought the war directly into the lives of 11 million people in the UAE, nine out of 10 of whom are foreign nationals. Amazon has advised its clients to secure their data away from the region.

An Iranian hack or normal government incompetence?

https://www.theverge.com/policy/890904/trump-administration-cbp-tariff-refunds-technology-issues

The Trump administration says it can’t process tariff refunds because of computer problems

The US Customs and Border Protection says it currently can’t comply with an order to process billions of dollars in refunds stemming from tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. In a filing on Friday, CBP executive director Brandon Lord says the agency’s digital import processing system is “not well suited to a task of this scale,” as reported earlier by CNBC.

The CBP’s admission comes after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) last month. This week, the International Trade Court ruled that importers impacted by the tariffs are entitled to refunds with interest. The CBP estimates that it collected around $166 billion in IEEPA duties as of March 4th, 2026.

Replacing lawyers with AI is probably not happening, yet.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/openai-hit-with-lawsuit-claiming-chatgpt-acted-an-unlicensed-lawyer-2026-03-05/

OpenAI hit with lawsuit claiming ChatGPT acted as an unlicensed lawyer

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has been accused in a new lawsuit of practicing law without a U.S. license and helping a former disability claimant breach a settlement and flood a federal court docket with meritless filings.

, opens new tab

Nippon Life Insurance Company of America alleged on Wednesday in a lawsuit ‌filed in federal court in Chicago that OpenAI wrongfully provided legal assistance to a woman who sought to reopen a lawsuit that was already settled and dismissed.

“ChatGPT is not an attorney,” the lawsuit said. Although OpenAI has shown ChatGPT can pass an attorney bar exam, Nippon said, “it has not ​been admitted to practice law in the State of Illinois or in any other jurisdiction within the United ​States.”

The lawsuit seeks an order declaring that OpenAI violated Illinois' unauthorized practice of law statute, as well as $300,000 in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.

OpenAI in a statement on Thursday said “this complaint lacks any merit whatsoever.” [On the advice of their AI? Bob]

War tools. This likely written by Iran…

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/06/spyware_disguised_as_emergency_alert/

Spyware disguised as emergency-alert app sent to Israeli smartphones

Hamas-linked attackers are dropping spyware disguised as an emergency-alert app on Israelis' smartphones via SMS messages, according to security researchers.

Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) analysts discovered the malicious app - a trojanized version of the Red Alert rocket app used by millions of Israelis - on March 1, after multiple citizens began reporting the scam on social media.

That’s it?

https://cyberscoop.com/trump-cybersecurity-strategy/

The long-awaited Trump cyber strategy has arrived

President Donald Trump released his administration’s cyber strategy Friday, promoting offense operations in cyberspace, securing federal networks and critical infrastructure, streamlining regulations, leveraging emerging technologies and strengthening the cybersecurity workforce.

Trump also signed an executive order Friday directing agencies to take action to combat cybercrime and fraud.

A little more than half of the five pages of strategy text of the long-anticipated document is preamble, and two of its seven pages are title and ending pages. Administration officials have said the strategy is deliberately high-level, and the White House promised more detailed guidance in the future.

The strategy “calls for unprecedented coordination across government and the private sector to invest in the best technologies and continue world-class innovation, and to make the most of America’s cyber capabilities for both offensive and defensive missions,” the White House said in a statement accompanying its release.