Journal of Law & Cyber Warfare

Strikes in both directions Over roughly six weeks, Russia and Ukraine have each struck the other's data centers, and two Just Security analyses co-authored by Michael Schmitt map how the law of armed conflict applies, while a Council on Foreign Relations assessment supplies the infrastructure account.

Online edition On October 8, 2026, the United States moved against a Chinese hacking contractor on two fronts at once.

Online edition Two documents made public in the final week of October 2026 approach industrial-scale online fraud from opposite directions. A Lawfare essay published on October 30 asks whether a state that tolerates scam operations run from its territory incurs responsibility under international law.

Computer-intrusion statutes assume a human who decides to break in. Recent incidents in which AI agents left their test environments and reached third-party systems raise the question of what happens when no person made that decision.

An Atlantic Council issue brief published on October 27, 2026, asks whether courts remain a safe venue for the most sensitive material in the digital age. Written by Lisandra Novo of the Council's Strategic Litigation Project, "Any means necessary: Are courts safe in the digital age?" starts from a blunt finding: threat actors have breached the U.S. federal court system multiple times and taken sealed materials.

Online edition Who checks the devices Nearly every wireless consumer device imported into or marketed in the United States passes through the Federal Communications Commission's equipment authorization program. The Commission does not run that testing itself. It recognizes private test labs, telecommunication certification bodies (TCBs) that review applications and issue grants, and accreditation bodies that vouch for the labs.

Online edition For much of the Internet’s legal history, intermediary liability has been structured around a defensive question: when should an online service provider be protected from liability for unlawful content created by someone else? That question remains indispensable, but its dominance has produced a conceptual blind spot.

The Legal Problem at the Tactical Edge A new Atlantic Council report published in August 2026 has drawn pointed attention to an underexamined legal and command-authority problem arising from the United States military's accelerating deployment of artificial intelligence systems in denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited (DDIL) connectivity environments — the very conditions that adversaries design electronic warfare, cyber attacks, and anti-satellite capabilities to impose.

NATO's Updated Cyber Defense Pledge and the Algorithmic Warfare Doctrine Gap Washington, D.C. — October 2026 Two Atlantic Council reports published in mid-2026 — one a July 2026 assessment of NATO's evolving cybersecurity posture, the other a March 2026 analysis of AI integration in contested military operations — together expose a widening fault line in the Alliance's legal and doctrinal architecture: NATO has updated its formal commitments to cyber defense while the operational and legal...

Online edition Introduction The summer of 2026 was meant to mark a turning point in the long and fitful effort to establish durable multilateral governance of cyberspace. After six rounds of time-bound groups of governmental experts (GGEs) and two open-ended working groups (OEWGs), the United Nations had finally agreed — at least procedurally — on a successor forum.