Today, while preparing a university lecture on intelligence collection in digital networks, I had a rather interesting exchange with ChatGPT. It made me reflect on how artificial intelligence interprets information, particularly when national security is involved. I was working on…
In 1981, the Police released Too Much Information, a track from their album Ghost in the Machine. That song, and the album as a whole, have always meant a great deal to me. I was twelve or thirteen at the time, and…
Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and European Sovereignty: A New Arena of Transatlantic Tensions The remarks made by the US ambassador to the European Union, Andrew Puzder, about Europe’s plans to regulate cloud and artificial intelligence services strike me as particularly revealing,…
On 16 October 2026, President Trump signed an Executive Order implementing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, enacted on 18 September. There is an important distinction here that deserves some attention: what Congress decided and what…
I had been waiting for this judgment for some time. The request for a preliminary ruling from Germany, in Case C-67/25, raised a seemingly narrow question, but one with important implications for the effective enforcement of EU sanctions against Russian…
The Trump administration’s decision to allow Russian diesel imports for a limited period raises a question that I find more interesting than the immediate policy debate about energy prices or sanctions pressure on Moscow. Can the executive branch use an…
The Graham Act, Trump’s decision of 9 October 2026, and the politics of sanctions exemptions 9 October 2026 — Legal and policy analysis Barely three weeks after the enactment of one of the most far-reaching US sanctions statutes directed at…
Switzerland’s vote on 27 September 2026 deserves some reflection beyond the referendum result itself. With 70.16% of voters rejecting the popular initiative to “Safeguard Swiss Neutrality”, and a majority voting against it in all 26 cantons, the outcome was remarkably…
Congress, the President, and the changing constitutional law of U.S. trade policy It is easy, in the current tariff debate, to take for granted precisely what needs clarifying: who actually has the constitutional authority to impose tariffs in the United…
The European Union’s response to Russian hybrid activities has developed into a distinct sanctions regime with an increasingly broad reach. Rather than focusing exclusively on Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, the framework addresses forms of destabilisation that operate across the…
There is a vocabulary that saturates almost every conversation about education today. Learning outcomes. Skills. Performance indicators. Employability. Assessment. Measurable results. You hear it in faculty meetings, in ministerial documents, in accreditation reports, in the way students themselves describe what…
Anyone studying economic security today faces a fundamental question: when does economic interdependence become a weapon? Edward Fishman’s “How to Fight an Economic War” addresses this question head-on, offering a sharp analysis of how globalization has been transformed from a…
One of the persistent challenges in studying international security is understanding how the UN’s counter-terrorism architecture actually works—not in theory, but in the overlapping, sometimes redundant network of bodies that has grown since 2001. The United Nations addresses the threat…
The Opinion of Advocate General ?apeta in Elisa Eesti (Case C-354/24) of 19 March 2026 is one of those cases that looks, at first glance, highly technical, almost niche, and then suddenly reveals itself as something much larger. On the surface, the…
What happens when a military strike exposes the fragility of the entire global energy architecture? The joint U.S.–Israeli strike on Iran at the end of February 2026 has answered that question with uncomfortable clarity: what initially appeared as a regional…
How much independence is too much? This is a question that runs through EU institutional law, from the European Central Bank to the data protection authorities created under the GDPR. Independent authorities are public bodies that exercise regulatory, supervisory, or…
The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (607 U.S. (2026)) confronts a question that is at once technical and deeply structural: can an emergency economic statute be read to authorize the President to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from…
Natalie Alkiviadou’s presentation highlights how freedom of expression, a cornerstone of democracy, is currently facing political “weaponization” and an inconsistent approach from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The tension she identifies is one that anyone working at the intersection…
The Perseus Digital Library, developed at Tufts University, is one of the most important digital humanities projects devoted to the study of the ancient world. Founded in the late 1980s, it began as an ambitious attempt to use digital technology to make…
Understanding in science is often invoked as though it were a single, self-evident achievement—and this confusion matters far beyond the natural sciences. Anyone who works with legal reasoning knows how easy it is to mistake a well-structured argument for a…
On 7 November 2025, the first SPHERE Space Policy Forum took place at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. The Forum was organised by the SPHERE Unit (Space Policies, Humanities and Exogeographical Research Ecosystem) of the LUISS Research Center for International and Strategic Studies (CISS), under the patronage…
Overview: The transformation of Germany’s intelligence system in 2025 is arguably one of the most significant institutional shifts in European security governance since the end of the Cold War. The year 2025 brought significant changes to Germany’s intelligence community, driven by…
The system of UN Special Rapporteurs stands or falls on credibility. These mandates have no coercive power, no enforcement machinery, and no democratic mandate of their own. Their authority depends almost entirely on method, restraint, and the perception of independence.…
According to the 18 December 2025 Report, the European Parliament’s Security and Defence Committee puts a blunt proposition on the table: Europe is entering an era in which drones are not a “capability”, drones are the environment. Drones as the…
The question of whether withdrawal from international organizations strengthens or weakens a state’s actual sovereignty is far from settled. On January 7, 2026, the White House published a Presidential Memorandum directing U.S. executive departments and agencies to take “immediate steps”…
Joshua Rovner’s Strategy and Grand Strategy offers what is, in my view, one of the clearest analytical frameworks available for understanding why states so often fail to connect military action with long-term security. The book begins from a deceptively simple…
