What the Neocons Got Wrong

And how the Iraq War taught me about the limits of American power

• The D.C. District Court Upholds the Government’s Geofence Warrant Used to Identify Jan. 6 Rioters

Searches stemming from a geofence warrant can be likened most succinctly to “fishing expeditions”

• Combating Ransomware: A Roadmap for Progress

Needed: a comprehensive federal and international approach to addressing the growing problem of ransomware

• U.S. Negotiators: ‘Much Work Remains’ on WHO Pandemic Accord; Can’t Undermine U.S.‘Sovereignty or Security’

Conspiracy peddlers charge that WHO Pandemic Accord would supersede U.S. law

• FEMA Expands its Reinsurance Program by Transferring $275 Million in Flood Risk to Capital Markets

Reinsurance reduces the program’s need to take on additional debt in order to pay claims

• Pentagon Looking to Make Sure SpaceX Doesn’t Abandon Them in War

What happens if SpaceX executives decides to stop supporting certain U.S. military operations?

• Highly Politicized Congressional Hearings Air COVID Lab-Leak Hypothesis

The hearing offered a heavy dose of political theatre, giving a preview of what’s to come

What the Neocons Got Wrong (Max Boot, Foreign Affairs)

Shortly after September 11, 2001, I became known as a “neoconservative.” The term was a bit puzzling, because I wasn’t new to conservatism; I had been on the right ever since I could remember. But the “neocon” label came to be used after 9/11 to denote a particular strain of conservatism that placed human rights and democracy promotion at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy. This was a very different mindset from the realpolitik approach of such Republicans as President Dwight Eisenhower, President Richard Nixon, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and it had a natural appeal to someone like me whose family had come to the United States in search of freedom. (We arrived from the Soviet Union in 1976, when I was six years old.) Having lived in a communist dictatorship, I supported the United States spreading freedom abroad. That, in turn, led me to become a strong supporter of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Traditional conservatives, such as U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, wanted to teach the Taliban and Saddam Hussein a lesson and then depart each country as quickly as possible. The neoconservative position—which eventually triumphed in the George W. Bush administration—was that the United States could not simply topple the old regimes and leave chaos in their wake. The Americans had to stay and work with local allies to build democratic showcases that could inspire liberal change in the Middle East. In this way, Washington could finally lance the boil of militant Islamism, which had afflicted America ever since the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.

Regime change obviously did not work out as intended. The occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were, in fact, fiascos that exacted a high price in both blood and treasure, for both the United States and—even more, of course—the countries it invaded. As the saying goes, when the facts change, I change my mind. Although I remain a supporter of democracy and human rights, after seeing how democracy promotion has worked out in practice, I no longer believe it belongs at the center of U.S. foreign policy. In retrospect, I was wildly overoptimistic about the prospects of exporting democracy by force, underestimating both the difficulties and the costs of such a massive undertaking. I am a neocon no more, at least as that term has been understood since 9/11.

The D.C. District Court Upholds the Government’s Geofence Warrant Used to Identify Jan. 6 Rioters (Saraphin Dhanani, Lawfare)

The district court’s Jan. 25 holding green-lights the government’s use of geofence warrants to pin down Jan. 6 insurrectionists and use the fruits of the warrants as evidence of culpability.

Combating Ransomware: A Roadmap for Progress (Gary Corn and Melanie Teplinsky, Lawfare)

The Biden administration’s freshly minted National Cybersecurity Strategy calls for, among other things, a comprehensive federal and international approach to addressing the growing problem of ransomware. In line with the strategy’s focus, a newly released white paper from American University Washington College of Law’s Technology, Law, and Security Program (TLS) explores the ransomware problem and identifies actionable, expert-informed recommendations for combating the evolving ransomware threat. Entitled “Combating Ransomware: One Year On.”

U.S. Negotiators: ‘Much Work Remains’ on WHO Pandemic Accord; Can’t Undermine U.S.‘Sovereignty or Security’ (Bridget Johnson, HSToday)

HHS, State Department say accord would “in no way empower the World Health Organization or any other international body to impose, direct, or oversee national actions.”

FEMA Expands its Reinsurance Program by Transferring $275 Million in Flood Risk to Capital Markets (FEMA)

On March 7, the agency transferred $275 million of the program’s financial risk to qualified investors of capital markets by sponsoring catastrophe bonds. This is the sixth time FEMA has entered into three-year reinsurance agreements with Hannover Re (Ireland) Designated Activity Company.

Reinsurance reduces the program’s need to take on additional debt in order to pay claims and creates a more financially sound program that benefits policyholders and taxpayers alike. Additionally, the financial risk transfer helps to further stabilize the program.

Combined with FEMA’s existing bond reinsurance coverage from 2021, 2022 and the 2023 traditional reinsurance placement, FEMA has transferred $1.8 billion of the flood insurance program’s risk to the private sector ahead of the 2023 hurricane season.

Pentagon Looking to Make Sure SpaceX Doesn’t Abandon Them in War (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)

Spooked by the company’s new limits in Ukraine, military leaders are mulling new types of contracts.

Highly Politicized Congressional Hearings Air COVID Lab-Leak Hypothesis (Mariana Lenharo and Lauren Wolf, Scientific American)

House Republicans have kicked off an investigation into how the pandemic began with witnesses who largely favor a lab origin

Source: EMM/ Homeland Security News Wire