Mike Kelly and I continued our collaboration on AI issues, with an essay in Just Security entitled “Nuclear-Powered AI: The Risks of De-Regulation,” in which we analyze the risks associated with the Trump administration’s coordinated loosening of regulation in AI development, nuclear energy deployment, and environmental review. The government is relaxing regulation in all three areas in order to facilitate the development of nuclear energy — particularly small modular reactors — for purposes of providing power to the ever spreading and expanding AI data centers. While the use of nuclear energy has some appeal from a climate change perspective, the coordinated relaxation of regulations in all three areas raises significant risks, which we explore and explain.
national security
New Substack – Law in Crisis
I have launched a new substack, entitled Law in Crisis, which some might find interesting. As the masthead explains, it is a forum for “musings on how law can help our response to crises, and how to respond to the crisis in law itself – use of force and armed conflict, climate change and security, AI and security, constitutional and int’l human rights, and the rule of law more generally.” The plan is to publish an essay of between one to two thousand words at least once a week.
The Global Risk in Trump’s AI Action Plan
In this blog post Mike Kelly and I examine how Trump’s AI Action Plan, issued in July of 2025, contributes to the risks associated with artificial general intelligence, and explain why global governance of the research and development of AI that is at the frontier of artificial general intelligence is so important. Some are skeptical of how close we are to AGI, or how much of a risk it really posses, but as we explain, there is a non-trivial possibility that AGI could pose an existential threat to humanity, and thus the precautionary principle requires that take steps now to address that risk.
Can Climate Trigger Armed Conflict? A Discussion with Ayesha Malik of Dawn News
It was a pleasure to discuss in a podcast with Ayesha Malik of Dawn News in Pakistan a range of climate change issues, and in particular the ways in which contributions to climate change, and particular responses to climate change, may contribute to the risks of armed conflict.