Action, faster.
Palantir’s Maven Smart System is an AI-powered Kanban board for killing people.
The company recently hosted a series of speakers at AIPCon, including Cameron Stanley, the Department of War’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, who gave a chilling demo of Palantir’s Maven Smart System, where anyone or anything can be targeted for a military strike with a “Left click, right click, left click.”
Ethics for all actually.
https://scholarworks.uark.edu/arlnlaw/27/
Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence For Lawyers: Resistance Is Futile: Candor, Supervision, And Fees
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Borg deliver their iconic warning to every species they encounter: “Resistance is futile.” The line resonates because it conveys the inevitability that once the Borg arrive, escape is no longer an option.
For lawyers, the duties of candor, supervision, and fairness in fees are just as inescapable. ABA Formal Opinion 512 (“ABA Opinion”) makes clear that, regardless of how powerful artificial intelligence becomes, it cannot relieve attorneys of their obligation. Attorneys must verify what they file, oversee how their colleagues use the technology, and ensure that clients are charged fairly. This installment examines those three pillars, showing how courts and the ABA are making plain that ethical rules still govern.
(Related)
https://scholarworks.uark.edu/arlnlaw/26/
Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence For Lawyers: You Will Be Assimilated: Best Practices For Lawyers Using Artificial Intelligence
… This installment explores the best practices for responsible adoption: protecting client confidentiality, addressing AI openly in engagement letters, learning the skill of prompt engineering, and preparing for the workforce changes AI will accelerate. Assimilation may be inevitable, but the terms of assimilation, ethical, careful, client-centered, are still within the control of the profession.
A scary thought that I ain’t thunk yet.
https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol30/iss1/2/
Python Hunting: How Laws that Protect the Everglades from the Invasive Burmese Python, Including Eradication Programs, Can Inform the Regulation of Objects Controlled by Artifical Intelligence
This Article explores the surprisingly apt analogy between the Burmese python problem in the Florida Everglades and abandoned objects that are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI). With few natural predators, the invasive Burmese python, which was likely introduced to the Everglades through abandonment by pet owners, has threatened native species with extinction. Objects controlled by AI, which we will likely increasingly share our environment with, such as autonomous taxis and food delivery robots, as well as a variety of objects that are used by the military, may be abandoned by their owners and continue to operate. Over time, these objects may be given increasing levels of agency and learn from their environments, making them potentially more dangerous. These objects are likely to create material losses if allowed to run amok. The Burmese python similarly has agency and has run amok.
Beyond the superficial analogy between these two paradigms, this Article provides an interesting thought journey aimed at finding a precedent to cling to when we predict and analyze a problem that hasn’t fully emerged but is likely on the horizon. Borrowing frameworks from other areas of law when writing atop a blank slate is a time-honored tradition in American law. What is old can be new again, and we have seen—and wrestled with—the essence of this problem before. Unfortunately, we seem to be fighting a losing battle against the pythons in the Everglades. Hopefully, creative solutions, technology and the dedication of resources will cause the tide to turn. Sounding the alarm now about autonomous AI objects can help us predict problems in advance and create mechanisms for the mitigation of losses and ultimate redress when harm occurs, unlike the situation in the Everglades.
For want of a nail…
Iran war could wreak havoc on farmers, create a potential 'bottleneck for the entire AI story'
… Earlier this month, Qatar shut down one of the world's largest energy hubs due to drone attacks. That halted production of liquefied natural gas and helium, a byproduct of natural gas extraction. The disruption accounts for about one-third of the global helium supply, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Helium has essential uses, including in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and welding, as well as electronics and semiconductor manufacturing, which consumes a large portion of the world's supply. It's crucial for rapidly cooling chips during fabrication to prevent overheating and defects.
It’s like…
https://academic.oup.com/jiplp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jiplp/jpag018/8509416?guestAccessKey=
Metaphors we judge (AI) by: a rhetorical analysis of artificial copyright disputes
This article is a ‘metaphorical’ guide to today’s most pressing artificial intelligence (AI) copyright questions, focusing in particular on the EU and the USA. Is unauthorized training on copyright-protected works permitted? Can AI models copy? And is AI-generated output itself protected? As this article demonstrates, debates on these questions can all be traced back to a handful of crucial metaphors.
After all, generative AI is hardly comprehensible without the extensive use of metaphors and analogies. Most notably, AI is systematically conceptualized in human terms such as ‘neural networks’ that ‘learn’, ‘know’ or ‘memorize’. This article aims to demonstrate how such metaphors (unconsciously) influence legal evaluations and even judicial decisions in copyright law.
The resulting analysis is particularly relevant to lawyers, judges and artists interested in copyright and its intersection with AI. Yet, it may also appeal to those interested in AI, legal reasoning and language more generally, as metaphors and their (rhetorical) effects are by no means unique to copyright and may be equally relevant in fields such as privacy law and (legal) philosophy.
The whole book.
The AI Classroom: How Artificial Intelligence Will Reshape Teaching and Learning
Think of it as ‘double secret probation.’
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/eff-launches-new-fight-free-law
EFF Launches New Fight to Free the Law
EFF has filed a new lawsuit against the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to ensure that the public has full access to the laws that govern us.
Our client Public.Resource.Org (Public Resource), a tiny non-profit founded by open records advocate Carl Malamud, has a mission that’s both simple and powerful: to make government information more accessible. Public Resource acquires and makes available online a wide variety of public documents such as tax filings, government-produced videos, and federal rules about safety and product designs. Those rules are initially created through private standards organizations and later incorporated into federal law. Such documents are often difficult to access otherwise, meaning the public cannot read, share, or comment on them.
Working with Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, Public Resource has been submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to the CPSC requesting copies of the legally binding safety codes for children’s products—an area of law of intense interest to child safety advocates and consumer advocates, not to mention the families who use those products. But CPSC says it can’t release the codes, because the private association that coordinated their initial development insists that it retains copyright in them even after they have been adopted into law. That’s like saying a lobbyist who drafted a new tax law gets to control who reads it or shares it, even after it becomes a legal mandate.
No crazier than many other government programs.
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.
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…
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.
