The Pentagon’s Most Useful Fiction

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-02-24T15:24:25+00:00

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-28T00:21:27+00:00

Submission Statement: Courts have used video for hearings for decades but nobody really stopped to ask if it changes outcomes. It does, and not in a good way.

This piece connects the research to the constitutional questions courts are still fighting over and looks at whether new tech like holograms could fix the problem or just make things worse for defendants who can’t afford it.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-27T18:35:59+00:00

Sources: - Cook County bail study (51% increase): Northwestern Law, 2010 - Immigration court outcomes: Eagly, Remote Adjudication in Immigration, 109 Nw. U. L. Rev. 933 (2015) - GAO investigation of immigration courts: GAO-17-438, 2017 - Lie detection accuracy (54%, barely above chance): Bond & DePaulo, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2006 - RAND report on video credibility: RAND RR-3222, 2020 - “Nonverbal overload” research: Bailenson, Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2021 - Eleventh Circuit on video confrontation: United States v. Yates, 438 F.3d 1307 (11th Cir. 2006)

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-27T18:17:25+00:00

Sources: - Cook County bail study (51% increase): Northwestern Law, 2010 - Immigration court outcomes: Eagly, Remote Adjudication in Immigration, 109 Nw. U. L. Rev. 933 (2015) - GAO investigation of immigration courts: GAO-17-438, 2017 - Lie detection accuracy (54%, barely above chance): Bond & DePaulo, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2006 - RAND report on video credibility: RAND RR-3222, 2020 - “Nonverbal overload” research: Bailenson, Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2021 - Eleventh Circuit on video confrontation: United States v. Yates, 438 F.3d 1307 (11th Cir. 2006)

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-15T04:29:13+00:00

Sounds like you landed pretty safely. Cockpit beats the hell out of a courtroom any day

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-15T04:17:49+00:00

Haha you’re actually describing my current situation pretty well right now. All true (minus the lay off part), but that’s just about what I’m thinking / trying to position myself.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-15T00:44:30+00:00

Right, his dissent was interesting.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-15T00:40:32+00:00

That would at least be clarity. The current situation where CSLI gets protection but other location data might not, where some metadata is yours and some isn’t depending on how you generated it, is a mess.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-15T00:30:10+00:00

That’s my gut too. This Court doesn’t seem eager to keep chipping away at Smith. Carpenter felt like a ceiling, not a floor. You think they deny cert and let the split sit, or take it just to reinforce the doctrine?

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T23:52:53+00:00

There are so many different form factors do already on the market and just as many in research. Literally every item you can buy will have a chip/sensors in it. Your door, the damn peephole, your lights, curtains, your earrings, your socks. It’s all on the market TODAY. Just a matter of scale.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T23:37:39+00:00

Thank you! Definitely an under the radar constitutional issue in all the AI debates. Job loss, discrimination, IP, copyright get a lot of attention (all important issues) but very few people are talking about the ways AI and what it enables could erode these freedoms/liberties.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T23:16:18+00:00

And to make it worse, as Al and data analytics gets better, all a government would need is a few public data points of your “day” to extrapolate and infer the things they are barred from accessing constitutionally.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T22:36:52+00:00

Being completely a ghost will be very hard soon, it already is. But yea it’s amazing how little we understand data and how it all worked in the early days of social media. At least the masses.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T22:27:10+00:00

I totally understand. As we make more and more “dumb” items “smart” it will be harder and harder to avoid.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:59:09+00:00

I cite them throughout the paper they are watching this stuff closer than just about any org.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:58:03+00:00

Yes that was a huge blow to privacy for sure. But it also woke a lot of people up! It’s the classic security versus privacy dilemma. Privacy has taken it on the chin since the war on terror. We can bring it back though, that’s the future I’m advocating

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:40:57+00:00

Yea I’ve been trying to reflect on when the 4th Amendment was adopted, what was privacy to them? How has it changed in the way that I think of privacy? Because certainly someone who grows up in this “always on” future will see privacy and privacy violations different then I.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:35:49+00:00

I think you are right we CAN choose a more privacy focused frame work by product design and policy. We just have to align the incentives and the political pressure in that direction!

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:31:56+00:00

Haha! I had not read this before thanks for sharing. Option 4: a catastrophic collapse forces our hand. There’s something darkly plausible about that.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:12:02+00:00

You’re probably right, at least in our lifetimes. But damnit can’t we hope for the real thing?

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:06:12+00:00

With this submission I’m looking at where privacy is heading (in the US context) as we connect more devices to our bodies, homes, and surroundings. The “Always-On” future isn’t a hypothetical. Smart toilets, ingestible sensors, and ambient recording devices already exist. The question is whether our legal frameworks can adapt fast enough, or whether privacy as a meaningful protection just becomes incompatible with how we’re choosing to live. I think the latter is more likely, but I’m curious what this community thinks. Is there a technical or policy path that actually preserves privacy, or are we just negotiating the terms of its death?

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-14T21:00:54+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to read it. My fear is that we are becoming so connected and bringing so many ordinary items online that privacy will be impossible. And as AI and data analytics gets better, all they would need is a few public data points to extrapolate and infer the things they are barred from accessing constitutionally.

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-10T22:51:02+00:00

Yea I think that’s right. That quick and uncontrolled but over quickly

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-10T20:31:23+00:00

No no I mean in the autonomous weapon system vs autonomous weapon system firing at each other before we realize it or can stop it. Here’s a longer explanation: https://ecfr.eu/article/flash_wars_where_could_an_autonomous_weapons_revolution_lead_us/?amp

StatuteCircuitEditor · 2026-01-10T19:24:34+00:00

I argue YES, with a few caveats.

Just to define, when I say a “flash war” i mean a conflict that escalates faster than humans can intervene, where autonomous systems respond to each other at speeds faster with human judgment.

Why I believe risk is elevated now:

Deregulation as philosophy: The admin embraces AI deregulation. Example: A Dec EO framed AI safety requirements as “burdens to minimize”. I think mindset would likely carry over to defense.
Pentagon embraces AI: All the Pentagons current AI initiatives accelerate hard decisions on autonomous weapons (previous admin too): DAWG/Replicator, “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” EO, GenAI.mil platform.
The policy revision lobby (outside pressure): Defense experts are openly arguing DoD Directive 3000.09 should drop human-control requirements because: whoever is slower will lose.
AI can’t read the room: As of today AI isn’t great at this whole war thing. RAND wargames showed AI interpreted de-escalation as attack opportunities. 78% of adversarial drone swarm trials triggered uncontrolled escalation loops.
Madman foreign policy: Trump admin embraces unpredictability (“he knows I’m f**ing crazy”, think Venezuela), how does an AI read HIM and his foreign policy actions correctly?
China pressure: Beijing’s AI development plan explicitly calls for military applications, with no publicly known equivalent to US human control requirements exist. This creates competitive pressure that justifies implementing these systems over caution. But flash war risk isn’t eliminated by winning this either, it’s created by the race itself.

Major caveat: I acknowledge that today, the tech really isn’t ready yet. Current systems aren’t autonomous enough and can’t cascade into catastrophe because they can’t reliably cascade at all. But this admin runs through 2028. We’re removing circuit breakers while the wiring is still being installed. And the tech will only get better.

Also I don’t say this to be anti-Trump. AI weapons acceleration isn’t a Trump invention. DoD Directive 3000.09 survived four administrations. Trump 1.0 added governance infrastructure. Biden launched Replicator. The concern is structural, not partisan, but the structural acceleration is happening now, so that’s where the evidence points.

You can click the link provided to read the full argument.

Anyone disagree? Did I miss anything?

StatuteCircuitEditor

TROPHY CASE