Dianne Feinstein, Opening Remarks at the Senate Intelligence Committee Confirmation Hearing for John Brennan, February 7, 2013. Read more »

In a series of farewell interviews over the past three days, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made some interesting observations about drone strikes. As the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (February 2009–June 2011) and secretary of defense (June 2011–present) he has unprecedented access and insights into the U.S. targeted killings program, which both the CIA and Pentagon serve as the lead executive authority to conduct. As the director of the CIA, he personally approved roughly two hundred drone strikes in Pakistan under the rules implemented early in the Obama administration. Read more »

Senator Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee was a protracted, repetitive, and disappointing affair. Rather than discuss the decisions for which the secretary of defense is empowered by U.S. law to make and implement as the “principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the Department of Defense,” the hearing focused instead on forcing the former Nebraska senator to defend or deny his previous statements and positions. Read more »

Emma Welch is a research associate in the Center for Preventive Action and the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In early January, Mohamed Abdi Hassan—dubbed a “pirate kingpin” by the United Nations—announced his retirement from piracy. In his farewell press conference, Hassan explained: “After being in piracy for eight years, I have decided to renounce and quit, and from today on I will not be involved in this gang activity.” He added, “I have also been encouraging many of my colleagues to renounce piracy too.” Read more »

Jill Lepore, “How Much Military is Enough?” New Yorker, January 28, 2013.

Veit Medick, “Germany Plans to Deploy Armed Drones,” Spiegel Online International, January 25, 2013. Read more »

Tony Capaccio, “Iran’s Cyber Threat Potential Great, U.S. General Says,” Bloomberg News, January 17, 2013.

Iran’s developing ability to launch cyber attacks will make it “a force to be reckoned with,” the head of the U.S. Air Force Space Command said. Read more »

Remarks by Secretary Leon Panetta at Ali Salem Air Base, December 12, 2012.

“The war of the future is going to involve cyber war.  That’s a reality.  We will do that; others will do that.” Read more »

Whenever I speak about the emergence of drone warfare and how it has been used for U.S. targeted killings, people react with a mix of unease, fascination, and curiosity. They also often ask for suggested readings on drones, and I rarely have a good answer readily available. Read more »

Nicholas Schmidle, “After Pakistan,” The New Yorker, November 26, 2012.

And then there were the drones. A couple of weeks ago, on his first day at Columbia, Munter admonished a class of fourteen law students not to blog his comments—“These are very sensitive things”—before dishing about the CIA’s classified drone program. He distinguished three types of drone attacks: high-value targets (“Article Fifty-one of the UN charter gives us the right to go after these people…I don’t have a problem with that”); imminent threats, mostly to troops in Afghanistan (“Those, too, are fairly uncontroversial, at least inside our government”); and signature strikes, firing a missile at guys who “look like they’re up to no good” (“targeting based on behavior, rather than identity”). This became a source of contention between Munter and the CIA: “When you kill people and you don’t know who they are, what are you leaving yourself open to?” Read more »