Experts in the News

Topic
Just Security

Friction, Framing & U.S. Cybersecurity-Related Actions Against Russia

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had “disrupt[ed] a two-tiered global botnet of thousands of infected network hardware devices under the control of a threat actor known to security researchers as Sandworm,” and identified by the U.S. government as “the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (the GRU).” This action is the latest in what appears to be a string of public moves to impose additional friction on malicious Russian actors in cyberspace since the invasion of Ukraine, and it’s also emblematic of the efforts by the United States over the last few months to shift the framing of some cybersecurity threats from purely criminal matters to national security concerns.
Kristen Eichensehr
RTD

These Virginians knew Ketanji Brown Jackson before she made history

She didn’t shy from grunt work, said Kimberly Robinson, her law school roommate who also worked for the publication. It was a 40-hour-a-week job, on top of classwork. Late nights and weekends were common. “I definitely realized she was extraordinary in law school,” said Robinson, now a law professor at the University of Virginia.
Kimberly J. Robinson
Washington Post

How Ketanji Brown Jackson will recast the Supreme Court

But the no-holds-barred battle over her confirmation underscored the new reality that for now, filling a Supreme Court vacancy has become dependent on a party controlling both the White House and the Senate. That could mean even more strategic decisions about when a justice retires, said Barbara Perry, a presidential and Supreme Court historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Remember, they love their jobs,” she said, and generally are reluctant to give up their lifetime appointments. The conditions were right for Breyer, who saw a Democratic president and Senate, and warning signs both in the recent past and the immediate future, when Democratic control of the Senate is threatened.
Barbara Perry
Bloomberg

Jackson’s Confirmation Tees Up Monthslong Wait to Join Court

Jackson might have less need for downtime than some previous new justices since she already lives in the Washington area, said Barbara Perry, a presidential and Supreme Court scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Even so, the coming months will give her time to “get her sea legs” and “figure out her chambers and just get the folkways of the court down,” Perry said.
Barbara Perry