Small drones are killing more civilians than ever before - and we need to act. Here’s my thoughts on what we need to do, like establishing a center dedicated to evaluating and investigating drone attacks, training investigators, and explaining how IHL applies to self-defense against drones:

What Can We Do About Drone Attacks on Civilians? Some Thoughts

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time analyzing, reporting on, and researching the horrifying global uptick in the use of small, cheap, short-range drones to intentionally target and kill civilians...

little-flying-robots.ghost.io

Chapter 12 is up! And note that we're intentionally posting these chapters as googledocs open to comments, as we welcome suggested additions and citations.

Rebecca Crootof@crootof.bsky.social · yesterday

Chapter 12 is the longest chapter by far, which is appropriate to the subject: When and how to use analogies to stretch old law to cover new scenarios. Thanks to @casssunstein.bsky.social Dan Hunter @hbarw.bsky.social @genevievelakier.bsky.social for excerpts! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

New working paper with @janinadill.bsky.social: "The Moral Logic of Blame for Civilian Casualties": In survey & interview data, residents of Mosul Iraq penalize the intentional killing of 5 civilians more than the unintentional killing of 125, & blame is not zero-sum: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This is an excellent encapsulation by @doctorow.pluralistic.net of one of the core takeaways I want my students to get from my AI Law & Policy course. pluralistic.net/2026/07/24/s...

Chapter 11 is up! And note that we're intentionally posting these chapters as googledocs open to comments, as we welcome suggested additions and citations.

Rebecca Crootof@crootof.bsky.social · last wk.

In Chapter 11, we start to explore one of the biggest techlaw questions: When to regulate? We lean on @gaiabernstein.bsky.social's "windows of opportunity" concept to begin a discussion around relevant questions and framing strategies. (We continue the timing discussion in Chaps 12 and 13 . . . )

Honestly surprised by this framing. LOAC is hardly a moral compass, and it wasn't designed to be one. It's a practical floor, not an aspirational ceiling - it reflects states' self-interest, not human rights or morality. Cavalier violations of baseline requirements just show how far we've fallen.

Just Security@justsecurity.org · 2w ago

The law of armed conflict (LOAC) is designed to provide a moral compass for what is the most brutal of human endeavors. Abandoning that compass will benefit no one, writes @mikeschmitt.bsky.social (Michael Schmitt). When Civilian Infrastructure Becomes a Lawful Target:

I AM SO EXCITED TO READ THIS (that I screwed up my first attempt to post about it)! @tiffanycli.bsky.social papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

A group of academics/policy ppl have been shouting for more than a decade about technological due process, the right to know, and the right to human decision making. Why? 👇🏻

Melody Schreiber@melodyschreiber.com · 2w ago

NEW: The HHS just paused $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota. They used AI to identify "suspected fraud and noncompliance." From me: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Chapter 10 is up! And the techlawbook.com site now has teaching materials, with more to come this week!

Rebecca Crootof@crootof.bsky.social · 2w ago

Chapter 10 unpacks the Precautionary Approach, including bans (I finally got to write about AWS!), general critiques (@casssunstein.bsky.social), and variations (moratoriums, licensing regimes, burden-shifting, etc) (Sachs). It closes with a GenAI X-risk case study (@mtokson.bsky.social).

JunYoung Hur's "War Emission Protocol - A Scope-W Framework for Measuring the Climate Costs of War": A means of putting a price tag on environmental harms in armed conflict? #WarTorts

The perfect skee, that marries my college and PhD theses, doesn't exi . . .

Yu-Ming Liou@yumingliou.bsky.social · 3w ago

We need a better class of techbro so that every evil company is named after a place in Dublin visited by Leopold Bloom and every new evil product is launched on June 16.

google's "why don't you want to use our documentation chatbot" survey offers a pretty good list of reasons not to use their documentation chatbot

After a brief pause, we're back! And now with a fancy new website: www.techlawbook.com I'll be posting the remaining chapters of the first edition of Technology Law here weekly; they'll all be up by mid-August.

Rebecca Crootof@crootof.bsky.social · 3w ago

Chapter 9 leans heavily on @zittrain.bsky.social's concept of "generative technologies" to explore the tradeoffs and limits of the permissive approach. We discuss the promise and perils of generativity and how it may be layered, relative, and regulated. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Surveillance capitalism? You mean the pan-opt-in con?

I have a foolproof way to make sure that your papers contain absolutely no fake references . . . . . read the papers you cite.

@propublica.org: I can answer this: "Current and former CHMR personnel said it’s impossible to know whether a more robust prevention team could’ve helped the military avoid civilian casualties in Yemen and Iran." Because I was the person whose job it was to check potential targets at CENTCOM. 1/

ProPublica@propublica.org · last mo.

NEW: Ten members of Congress have warned the secretary of defense that the Trump administration’s gutting of a program focused on shielding noncombatants puts service members in peril, erodes the military’s moral standing and may violate federal law.

Indiscriminate firing on civilians (from cranes or otherwise) is unconscionable and unlawful. www.npr.org/2026/06/25/n...

In Gaza, nowhere is safe despite ceasefire

As the world focused on the war with Iran, Israeli forces steadily took more territory in the Gaza Strip and killed more people last month than at any time this year, according to Gaza health records.

npr.org

As American as International Law at www.justsecurity.org/145416/as-am...

As American as International Law

A Fourth of July barbecue demonstrates how international law shapes daily life, and where that architecture is under strain.

justsecurity.org

Reading "Hellscape for Taiwan" by @spettyjohn.bsky.social @mollykcam.bsky.social @cnas.bsky.social and struck by the (utter lack of) discussion of relevant int'l law. Essentially, the report advocates for fielding indiscriminate weapons. Which is prohibited by the law of armed conflict. Unless...

States should not be able to consent to others using force that they cannot use themselves, and intervening states should not blindly rely on host state consent, writes @crootof.bsky.social (Rebecca Crootof).

Consent is Not Enough for U.S. Military Activities in Latin America

States should not be able to consent to others using force that they cannot use themselves, and intervening states should not blindly rely on host state consent.

justsecurity.org

Wild. Horrific. But still, blame the Pentagon, not Grok. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/blam...

Blame the Pentagon, Not AI, for Preventable Targeting Mistakes

Yet another preventable tragedy—with an AI twist.

lawfaremedia.org

Asha Rangappa@asharangappa.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Did DoD just admit in a court filing that it used xAI's Grok Gov Model to hit the girls' school on the first day of the Iran war? Based on some passages flagged by @rgoodlaw.bsky.social in DoD's recent filing in NAACP's case against X, it looks like it did 1/

If you're involved in training/teaching, or a student, this is worth a read – "The Anatomy of a Learning Stall": tagide.com/blog/llm/the...

Ok this is a truly great tweet

Lots of tech companies are releasing surveillance specs & I’m reminded of the internal Meta memo to put facial rec in their glasses during a “dynamic political environment” because people will be too focused on other issues to resist. Companies think now is the right time to foist these on us all.

Yes, and - these quoted remarks are also an implicit shifting of moral, possibly legal responsibility from those making the tech to those who are (under duress) using it. This is a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. From the guy selling the gun.

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 3mo ago

If ours was a world where AI (the ideology, politic, and tech) were, uh, asking these graduates to shape AI this might resonate. But it’s not. Look, you cannot go out and market your new corporate monopoly widget as the death kneel to American workers and then ask new workers to be excited.

Hey @scottjshapiro.bsky.social - It seems that YLS is not doing quite enough to instill a sense of ethics in its graduates. The solution? "Bad Lawyers": a class based entirely on case studies of YLS grads who did not make the right decisions. Thought you'd be the perfect prof to teach this!

We live in a time dominated by deeply unserious people making deeply unserious arguments in support of tragically serious results that serious people would have both avoided and known to avoid.

TFW someone who *so* deserves recognition for their work is rightly recognized -

Jeff Horwitz@jeffhorwitz.bsky.social · 3mo ago

We got a Pulitzer! Along with thanking my editors here - Steve Stecklow, Mike Williams and Paulo Prada -- I need to thank Jason Dean, my former WSJ bureau chief who oversaw and occasionally fought for my Meta work. Congratulations to @theinformation.com for hiring him!

We need more accountability for accidents in armed conflicts. #WarTorts

Oona Hathaway@oonahathaway.bsky.social · 3mo ago

What do states owe the innocent civilians they kill in war? When we started this article, we had no idea how relevant it would be when it was published. "War Hazards Compensation for Civilians"--now out! With coauthors @sarahdonilon.bsky.social & Carter Squires. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Here’s my map of targeted small drone attacks on civilians globally. Which I made because I do not work for a defense contractor, and am looking for work and funding for doing the exact opposite of killing people with drones: map.faineg.com

Targeted Small Drone Attacks on Civilians: A Global OSINT Picture

A global OSINT map of targeted small drone attacks on civilians since 2022.

map.faineg.com