The Commons
Feb. 28-29, 2020
25th Annual National Security Law Conference
Dunlap
Center on Law, Ethics and National Security
25th LENS conference continues focus on national security and military law
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uke Law’s 25th annual National Security Law Conference began on Feb. 28 with a keynote speech by the editor-in-chief of the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, who described how and when offensive cyber operations violate a nation’s sovereignty. Immediately afterwards, a panel of experts from the military and academia discussed legal challenges implicated by the use of drones domestically, humanitarian operations involving military forces, the latest developments in the International Criminal Court, and the prospect of war in outer space. And that was all before lunch. Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap, Jr. (USAF Ret.), the executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security (LENS) and a professor of the practice of law, crafted an agenda for the two-day conference that showcased the dynamism of national security law as a field shaped by an ever-evolving set of interrelated challenges and strategies. Many of them are driven by rapid-fire technological innovation, reflected in discussions of social media, surveillance, the use of technology both to enable terrorism and fight it, and how some nations have utilized it in coercive campaigns against state adversaries that fall short of acts of war. Featured speakers included Lt. Gen.
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Duke Law Magazine • Summer 2020
Charles W. Pede, the judge advocate general of the U.S. Army, whose talk addressed the important role legal advisors have to help their clients find clarity — or at least confidence — to perform their mission, and Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, whose talk was titled “Security Cooperation and the Rule of Law.” Also featured: Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard (USA, Ret.) and Master Sgt. Wes Bryant (USAF, Ret.), authors of a book detailing how airpower was incorporated into the ground-level operations in the U.S. fight against ISIS. As always, registration for the conference filled quickly with attorneys from government and the private sector — including military lawyers — judges, students of law and other disciplines, and members of the public. “I think it’s the best national security legal conference in the country,” said David Hoffman ’93, director of security policy and global privacy officer at Intel Corp., who teaches Informational Privacy and Government Surveillance Law at Duke Law and is a professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy. A former member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee and chair of an advisory
