Drones
320 Articles

Trump’s Opportunity to Keep Up with Obama on Use of Force Transparency
One year ago, today, the Obama administration released a 66-page report detailing the legal and policy framework governing the use of military force and related national security…

Congress Steps Up Accountability for Drones Strikes and Other Military Operations
On the same day that The New York Times Magazine published a disturbing account of the monumental gap between the number of acknowledged civilian casualties and the number of casualties…

Yemen Strike Raises Questions About Whether the US Follows Its Own Drone Rules
While we were visiting Yemen this month, the United States conducted a drone strike against alleged al-Qaeda members in Mareb Governorate, reportedly killing two suspects while…

Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Policy-Making Amid Disruptive Technological Change
(In Part I of this post on UN talks on lethal autonomous weapons, I discussed how the underlying artificial intelligence that enables autonomous systems is improving rapidly. In…

Implications of Trump’s New Drone Policy for Countries Assisting the U.S.
At the end of October, the New York Times reported two government officials as saying that the Trump administration had adopted its anticipated new approach to the deployment of…
Recap of Recent Pieces on Just Security (Oct. 28-Nov. 3)
Cybersecurity and Cyber Conflict Robert S. Taylor, Cyber, Sovereignty, and North Korea–And the Risk of Inaction Michelle Richardson and Mike Godwin, What the White House Needs…
Recap of Recent Pieces on Just Security (Oct. 21-27)
Russia Investigation and Facebook Ryan Goodman, Top Experts: Can Facebook Legally Disclose Russian Ads–What does the Stored Communications Act say? Artin Afkhami, Former Federal…

Letter to the Editor: Finding a Middle Ground on “Areas of Active Hostilities”
News that the Trump administration is close to revising the Obama-era policy on direct action against terrorist targets has reawakened the long-simmering debate over the appropriate…

Amnesty Sets Out Key Principles on the Use of Armed Drones
There’s been a lot of discussion at Just Security about how international law applies to the use of armed drones, so I wanted to share here a new briefing paper that Amnesty…

NYU Law Forum: “National Security: The Role of Senior Advisers in the White House”
On October 18, the Latham & Watkins Forum at NYU Law presented discussion on “National Security: The Role of Senior Advisers in the White House.” Just Security…

Pluses and Minuses of the Imminence Standard in Counterterrorism Strikes
Last month, I wrote on the revisions that the Trump Administration reportedly plans to make to President Obama’s drone policy. The piece set off a robust conversation with…

Responding to Goodman’s Memo to the Human Rights Community: Context is Critical
I write to respond to Ryan Goodman’s recent post, “Why the Laws of War Apply to Drone Strikes Outside ‘Areas of Active Hostilities,’” and to remind readers where…