I spent last week doing "field research" - that is, participant-observation in one of the several communities of practice whose work I'm following as part of my new book project on global norm development. In this case, the norm in question is governance over...
THE CANARD"All the fake news that fit to print."-- AmherstThe academic and foreign policy worlds were rocked today by the news that Charli Carpenter -- prolific academic, policy wonk, and mom -- is...
Yesterday as I drove to work, two stories on NPR caught my attention with how completely out of touch the interviewees sounded about their particular fields. These are people who are highly trained,...
In the mailbox today, I found my pre-ordered copy of Peter Singer's new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. NPR had an interview with Singer yesterday,...
I have a post up right now at Complex Terrain Lab about developments in the area of autonomous weaponry as a response to asymmetric security environments. While fully autonomous weapons are some distance away, a number of researchers and bloggers argue that these trends in military technology have significant moral implications for implementing the laws of war. In particular, such writers question whether machines can be designed to make ethical targeting decisions; how responsibility for mistakes is to be allocated and punished; and whether the ability to wage war without risking soldiers’...
Foreign Policy has released its annual “Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2007.” Among the contenders: 1. The Cyberwars Have Begun. However, see Miriam Dunn Cavelty’s article “Cyberterrorism: Looming Threat or Phantom Menace” in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics. 2. US Navy is in Iraq for the Long Haul. And a good thing too, if trade in the Arabian Gulf is to be protected from the emerging threat of piracy, which is on the rise off the coast of Iraq and is already thriving in other areas of the world characterized by state failure. See the International...