National security and law road wrote an article that is truly intriguing and you will all agree. It is worthy of serious discussion. It is called the power to wage war successfully. It touched on many things that we at the society are interested in. First and foremost, it centered on a truly historic figure that sadly, few of us know much about anymore and has basically been lost to time. I dont like that phrase but it has been lost to time. It is the extraordinary Charles Evans hughs. Mr. Hughes had what anyone would say is an Extraordinary Public Service career. It was unparalleled by most measures. He served as the governor of new york state from 19071910 and was named to the Supreme Court by William Howard taft. Four years into that term, he republicane nomination for president and narrowly lost the Electoral College to what was then president wilson. It was 4000 votes in california. In 1921, president Lauren Harding president Warren Harding named hughs the secretary of state and a entered Government Service again as the choice for chief justice of the Supreme Court. Two times he went into service of the court. He had a remarkable career. And a remarkable accomplishment. Our discussion this evening is about a speech that he gave when he held no public office. Just about 100 years ago. Just before the United States entered into world war i. Waxman who you will meet in a moment, on earth from the deep recesses of the Columbia Law School archives, he gave all his archives to the columbia law university, a hughsin all of contemporaneous notes about that speech. There are very few speeches other than from president s at some point in time that have continued residence, significance, 100 years later. The topic sentence of this speech, i only read, i only mentioned the title of the law review article. Wage war isto the power to wage war successfully. That is a pretty. Owerful notion this insight is entrusted to the constitution by immense power. The power of the draft, for one. The power to send it citizens outside the country to fight. To do what is ever necessary to win a war. The power to wage war successfully continues to echo in the ongoing legal debate of president ial war powers. During and after wartime. Talk,gnificance of this in 1917, is especially consequential when one considers that the congress after 9 11, gave president george w. Bush, the power to go to war, the power to go to war in essence successfully against stateless terrorism without a clear and later we 16 years are still operating under this congressional authorization. Bringing up many questions, amongst the most significant is, when do congressional war authorizations end . If ever . I dont want to make this introduction any longer winded than it already is but this evening, i should have said will everyone please turn over, luis usually says this, any object that make sounds, i dont want to make this any longer when did then is but this evening we are fortunate to have, and i say this with all due consideration, two master teachers. 2 master law professors discussing this article. Who ive spoken of the four and a good friend of the New York Historical society bbitt, one of the nations leading constitutional theorists. Classes now called to order. Our Legal Education is in your hands. God help us. [applause] [no audio] in the 20th century, the u. S. Supreme court has generally declined to precisely define the contours of the power to make war. Usually on the grounds, this is a political question. The absence of some definitive decision, how do we decide that the contours of this awesome power are . What do you say . Let me begin by saying what a pleasure it is to be here with people who are most influenced my thinking about constitutional war powers are now Charles Evans hughes and philip bobbitt. There is essential insight that runs through both of their work. Almost 100 years ago Charles Evans hughes gives this famous address where he is articulating what the constitution means about war powers and how they are allocated. The key line that grows from that speech is the idea that the power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully. That the constitution and out of the United States of america, the government as a whole with the power to defend itself and defend itself successfully. He also says, in this, very poetic conclusion, the constitution marches. Think, means by that, i is very similar to what i see as an essential insight of your work. You really cant understand the u. S. Constitution, constitutional law of war powers, without putting them in the context of military strategy. Without understanding, at any given time and in any given era, how wars are fought, how the United States is defending itself, how it is using military force to achieve strategic ends including basic defense. To me it is no surprise, the meaning of the constitution, the contours of president ial war powers in particular, have developed and evolved over time. Everybody issure up to speed on basics, the text of the constitution lays out, a few basic allocations of power. Some of which you are probably familiar with. Article one, congress is given thepower of the purse and power to raise and support an army and navy, also the power to declare war. Is president in article 2 designated commander in chief and chief executive. The text alone does not really answer much. Those terms have multiple meanings and they still leave open very Big Questions like, in the absence of a declaration of war, what can the president do . Use military force . The text alone does not get you far. Another technique that we as lawyers often use him a this is one of the things you refer to, we look to judicial doctrine. What have the courts told us the law means . This is an area, constitutional war powers, where courts for the most part have said, it is up to you, meaning the political branches, to work it out among yourselves. There are important cases from the socalled quads i war with france during the john adams administrationm important civil war cases, for the most part the courts have not answer the tough questions in this area. The answer therefore to what is law, has to be derived from looking at the patterns of practice among the political bridges of government. And how, the president , those practices and expectations have changed over time. That strikes me as a very wise answer, because, while we are all accustomed to case law and president , developing doctrine for the courts, we dont pay much attention to the fact that there are doctrinal developments in congress and with respect to the executive. That doctrine will change as the militarys strategic and diplomatic challenges change. One way to keep up with those challenges is to see how our governments practice their war power. Over the past 2 centuries. One thing i know most of your thinking about, whatever happened to the war powers act . This was a resolution out of the vietnamwatergate era. It was supposed to provide congress a check on the president. A reporting check and a termination check, by a sub group of congress that would give the president a cease and desist if they chose. What is the status now . It is called the war powers resolution. It is a joint resolution which is a kind of statute, passed by both houses and signed into law. Let me put it in historical context. To understand how significant this 1973 act by congress was, one needs to understand what had happened between the 1780s or 1790s and the vietnam war. In the early republic, it was mostly the case that congress did exercise quite a bit of control over military adventures abroad. There was very little that the president could do in practice, without having congressional backing, or that the president would do without having congressional backing. Context is important here. Youre talking about a time in the early republic where the United States didnt have a large, standing these time army or navy. Peace time army or navy. Our biggest defense was the atlantic ocean, which we hoped would give us time in the event of war clouds coming, to mobilize military forces, probably from militias. Inwas an article of faith american strategic doctrine that we were going to avoid socalled, and tangling of glingnces entan alliances. It was thought that the way to keep the United States out of wars, was to avoid binding ourselves to these fighting european powers. A lot ofld war ii, those contextual factors, those basic assumptions get turned on their head. After world war ii, instead of having almost no peace time army, we have a permanent large Peacetime Army because of air power, missiles, we can no longer depend on oceans to protect us. Issuing alliances, the best way to keep out of wars was to line up and engage in a network of alliances with our nato allies, our Southeast Asian allies, our individual partners in northeast asia. Most important event there, is the korean war. The largest war the united in withoutengaged any congressional authorization, any explicit authorization. The anon is this the anon is vietnam is a traumatic event. Up until then the United States had found itself after every war, arguable exception of the civil war, in a stronger position than it was before. Vietnam tested that. My own interpretation, notwithstanding the fact that congress had given president johnson authorization to engage in major escalation of that war, congress decided at the end of that war in 1973, we need to try to bring things back to an earlier era, where the president cannot engage in military adventurism without congressional authorization. Passed,powers act was which does a couple of things. It requires engaging in military operations abroad, the president must report them quickly to congress. More important, the war powers resolution stipulates, if the president engages in military action abroad, in military hostility, that after 60 days, if congress has not explicitly authorized the military operations, the president needs to bring the troops home. This was an attempt by congress to reestablish its primary role in authorizing and limiting the use of military force abroad. Nixon vetoed it. , congressare example overrides that veto. Since that time, i think the war powers resolution has been largely watered down. It is no surprise that the executive branch might try to water down this attempt at the straitjacket congress has put on it. More interesting, in my mind, is congress has been complicit in that watering down. I think congress, for the most part, is kind of happy with the situation in which the president has quite a bit of discretion to use military force, and congress can sit back and decide on if they want to authorize or not. They can sit back and wait. They can authorize, unauthoriz e, or just sit back and wait. I think that the result has been that the excrement of the war powers resolution has not proven very effective in either constraining the president s power and using military force or in trying to generate genuine deliberation in trying to determine when the use of force is appropriate. Prof. Bobbitt i have a footnote on what professor waxman was saying about korea. The secretary of state for president truman took the view that the u. N. Security council with the soviets boycotting that session, so they did not veto it, and there was otherwise a unanimous vote, was sufficient authority for the president to act. He did not rely on the commander in chiefs authority. He relied on the passage that has a president faithfully execute the laws. These laws include our treaties. One of the treaties was the u. N. Charter. President johnson, by contrast, thought that truman had made a mistake. And that he could remedy this by , in gulfthe congress this case, the of tonkin he later said that he thought if they were with me on the takeoff, they would be with me on the landing. So i forgot about the parachute. [laughter] when i write about these matters, i take the position that there are at least four ways in which we can go to war constitutionally. One is if there is a sudden or imminent attack on us. The second way is by decoration rather which has been rarely used. The third way is by statute. And the fourth way is by treaty. Would you agree with that rough sketch . Prof. Waxman i would agree with that rough sketch, but i would fourach of those 42 toaster at how much the world and american grand strategy has evolved since the early republic and why, therefore some of the allocation of powers among the branches have changed. You said one way in which the United States legally goes to war, constitutionally goes to war, is by declaration. We naturally arrive at this as part of the list. Article one of the constitution gives congress the power to declare war. Of as you said, declarations war have fallen out of fashion. The United States only declared war five times. We have been involved in way more than five wars, but we are only gone to war five times. As far as i know, no country has declared war since the end of world war ii. It has sort of gone out of fashion, as a matter of International Law. Instead, i think a good substitute is a second way you mentioned, which is by statute or resolution. Congress can authorize the president to use military force. We have talked about some examples already. The gulf of tonkin resolution, a very broad authorization of use of force after 1964, that johnson obtains from congress. In 2001, immediately after the 9 11 attacks, president george w. Bush receives from congress a to useoad authorization force against al qaeda and its allies abroad. Of war hasaration been replaced by this practice of force authorization. And those force authorizations are often very broad in scope. They are often phrased not just as the United States is at war here is the x, but threat that the United States is facing, and the president is all necessaryuse and appropriate force or some such language in order to eradicate the threat. The third example you gave is an attack, or an imminent attack. Even the framers although this is not written in the constitution, there is a lot of evidence that the drafters of the constitution recognized that if the United States were actually attacked, the president would be fully empowered to repe l the attack. The more interesting question comes now in the era of Nuclear Weapons. Imminent attack. How do we think about, how do we ofide when the threat nuclear war, or nuclear attack, is sufficiently imminent . President mething kennedy wrestled with in the cuban missile crisis. Something the Bush Administration wrestled with after 9 11. Something the administration now is dealing with in regards to north korea. Finally, going to war i treaty. This goes back to a point i made earlier. That a basic assumption among the drafters of the constitution , the early president s, was we were not going to have many, if any, mutual defense pacts. They were dangerous. They would pull us unnecessarily into dangerous and costly wars. Thatsee them argument has been turned on its head. We have organized our Foreign Policy since world war ii that we ought to bind ourselves to these alliance relationships. Because that is what helps keep the peace. Prof. Bobbitt a good friend of yale has written a opeds andped essays attacking the use of military force in iraq in 2003 and earlier, against al qaeda, the forces that attacked new york and washington. They say this is the basis for going against Islamic State and the haqqani network. Action against associated forces in somalia, niger, and other places. His view is this is a direct violation and the president is proceeding unlawfully, relying on these authorizations of use of military force. He says how can it be that the aumf, in the wake of 9 11, can be used against the Islamic State, which did not exist when the towers were attacked . How can it be used against forces that finds itself at odds publiclyaeda an hour acknowledged to be so . What is your view . Prof. Waxman i disagree with the professor on this. I start by going back to my earlier point. Military ation of the authorization of use of military force is written broadly to authorize the president to go after and defend against al qaeda and its allies. That has been interpreted, over the last 16 years it is a law still on the books. And the operative language is only 60 words long, but it is the basis of our military operation, perhaps the longest war in history. Depending on how you count. But it has been interpreted expansively in multiple directions. It has been interpreted expansively geographically. Of Course Congress meant, at a time, that the United States could use force in afghanistan. But congress probably did not expect that we would be using force in yemen, somalia, north knowa, because we did not al qaeda was going to spread in all of those directions. The resolution has also been expansively interpreted to include a lot of other groups that are only loosely, if at all, still tied to al qaeda. And that is the much more controversial interpretation. I am critical of that interpretation. That the 2001 aumf applies to the Islamic State, which did not even exist in 2001. That seems counterintuitive. I do agree that is quite a stretch. It was a stretch that the Obama Administration made and the Trump Administration has continued. But i will say this, having worked inside the executive branch. It is not a surprising interpretation. I would not expect other president s or other administrations to make a different legal decision with the choice it faced. And the challenge has been how a you get Congress Congress that is hyper polarized and dysfunctional how do you get it to produce a more updated, adaptive, and, perhaps, better tailored new authorization new authorization for use of military force. This is something colleagues and i have been writing about, ideas on how congress may rewrite the 2001 authorization. Because i fully agree with the at some level. That it is inappropriate, both as a matter of policy and of principle that the president continues to rely on that of use ofuthorization military force to do but i am a pragmatist when i try to think of a solution. Right now, the challenge is how do we work with congress is order to come up with a formula that this congress can actually pass, because we do have needs for continuing military operations against the Islamic State. Prof. Bobbitt that may show some of the similarity between issues that arise from war powers and issues that arise from so many other constitutional zones of controversy. Many of you, when you were on undergraduates or perhaps graduate school, everyone in this room has heard of the doctrine of separation of powers. It is often attributed to james madison. That really is not a system we have. A system ofve separated powers. Our system is one of shared and linked powers. Theres almost nothing one of the branches can do. Anytime the branch operates minorly, it has to get the buyin of at least one, but usually both, branches. When that cooperation freezes up, you tend to get exaggerated allocations of claims of power within the other branches. I wanted to ask you what you thought the relationship was of the war power to targeted killing. Aumf, doesed a new that mean the existing practice of lethal drone shrikes have led to judicial acts of killing . Prof. Waxman in war, people get killed. It is part of war. So is capture and detention of enemy fighters. So i begin from the proposition septembereast since of 2001, and perhaps earlier at least since the september 11 attacks, the u. S. Has been engaged in a war with al qaeda and its allies. Not war on terror in a retail rhetorical or metaphorical sense, but in a legal sense. Engaged in Armed Conflict with al qaeda. , as it naturally follows from that, that the president the power to engage in lethal targeting. That is a legal conclusion and a policy conclusion that i draw. And would defend. It is not to say i am entirely comfortable with it. This is a war that is different from other wars, and a number of ways. One of the ways in which it is different is that it is geographically quite dispersed. It is also different in that the enemy does not fight in uniforms. There is much more opportunity for misidentification or Collateral Damage because of the way in which the enemy is engaged in this war. Defend legally, and as a matter of policy, targeted killing as part of the ongoing war against al qaeda and its allies. But it is a particular tool that. As to be carefully regulated and here is an area where i would like to see Congress Also role. G an oversight you raised an important point earlier, which is that the different branches of government are endowed with different overlapping powers. I was critical of commerce before because of its dysfunction in coming forward and being able to pass much legislation at all, let alone an updated force authorization. But we should not fall into the trap of not thinking that unless congress is passing statute, it is not exercising its power. There are other ways in which congress exercises control, that it shapes defense strategy, shapes the conduct of war come including that possibility, the mere threat of legislation. Using its oversight powers, including hearings, including the political power. Oft even individual Members Congress or the senate are able to exert, by virtue of their office. Prof. Bobbitt one question that troubles people, in addition to targeted killing i do not think it is unique to the carter administration, but one of the anxieties about this administration is the degree to which the president has the authority to begin a war with Nuclear Weapons. Immediacy of attack, the , allsity for deterrence play into a centralization of authority. Without that, it is hard to see how deterrents could work. We do not want a world in which the president can mystically push a button. I do not think we live in that world. I think that the idea that a president could start a war on a a whole series of conscientious officials in the chain of command will say, well, all right, and just carry out some strike is fanciful. I know you have given some thought to this recently. With one of another one of colombias real star columb ias real stars in this area. Prof. Waxman nothing illustrates better just how far American Military power has evolved since the drafting of the constitution than the creation of Nuclear Weapons. We have gone from a world, in the 1790s, where the president of the United States did not really have an army or navy at all at his disposal without first going to congress and saying, on a given location, build me one. Or localize, call up militias. In the early republic, there was not that much opportunity for the president to make war without congress ok. Just didhe president not have the resources at his disposal. Now the president has the power to destroy the world instantaneously at his fingertips not quite literally, but figuratively. His figurative fingertips. It is certainly the case that i think the actions and words and tweets all trump have given many of us who studied Nuclear Strategy some pause about the developed overat the course of decades to regulate how Nuclear Weapons might be used in an actual crisis. My own view first of all, i is anwith you that it oversupplied myth that the president just carries around a button you open up the football, the briefcase, and you punch in the codes, and instantaneously things happen because there are other human beings involved. A and they can act as circuit breakers. Todays world, though, with the proliferation of weapons of mass distraction and Nuclear Weapons, and the possibility that the president may decide to use Nuclear Weapons to engage in the first use of Nuclear Weapons when not absolutely necessary, i think this is an appropriate time to take a look at the legal regime, the legal regulation governing the use the president ial use of Nuclear Weapons and the processes by which they may be used. As you say, that professor of and iia university recently published a proposal on this. This is one among several possible ideas. Our idea is that unless the United States is under direct attack, the first use of Nuclear Weapons by the president would require a certification by the secretary of defense that that order is valid and a certification from the attorney general that that order is legal. And part of that logic is we try to make sure that there is better deliberation. That the key advisors are going to be brought in. Of the time, that is probably how it is going to work anyway. But i am worried about that 1 and want to plan for it. Ifalso want to make sure that an order does come down from the president , and military officers are asked to carry out that order, they have something more than the president s sayso, at least under certain circumstances, to depend on in making that judgment about whether they are actually going to engage in that launch. Like i said, this is a low probability. But the magnitude is so great that we ought to think about how we get it exactly right. Prof. Bobbitt i think you may finally have found an area in which we disagree. This really gives me some pause. We all have to rethink. There was a story some of you probably heard. , the worstent nixon hours with his troubles with watergate, may have contemplated some provocative military act. Jimured, the dense schlesinger, the then secretary efense and the president says i have had it. Scocroft says, i beg your pardon . The president says i have had it. I want to attack moscow. Scocroft says, long range weapons . Yes, i decided to use the whole thing, the bombers, everything, to just obliterate the soviet union. Can you get back to me on that . [laughter] scocroft says, yes, sir. I will. Who do you think he calls . Does he call the Strategic Air command . Does he call, perhaps the , secretary of defense . No. He calls mrs. Nixon. He says, what in the hell is going on over there . Has he been drinking . Should we send a doctor over . He does not call the generals to launch an attack. We have to separate two very different scenarios. One one is one in which there really is an imminent attack. And if that is right, there are thousands of people monitoring. They are watching radar screens, watching satellite feeds, watching realtime intel reports. Minimizing the number. I am maximizing it. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, in many countries doing this. If an attack is made on us or our allies, many people will know it and alert us to that. In that case, timely action is important. But it is only in the context in have gone overy this information. That is in contrast with the party story i told about president nixon. That the president , on a whim, without the consensus of thousands of people, suddenly decides, for some absurd reason, to start a war. If we had time like that, that i think it is quite fanciful to say that along chain of command will say yes, sir, absolutely. We weret even know angry at taiwan, but if you say so that is unlikely. And though i take the point about precautionary principle, i do not think it is constitutional. To insert the secretary of defense into this. Prof. Waxman i think it is constitutional. I think it is wise to it is wise in two ways. First of all, you and i may just weagree about how much faith place on the system working the way we want it to. As i say, i agree with you that most of the time it is going to work well. But i would like to formalize that the proper deliberative sure that to make they will work well. There is a flipside problem, which is i am not sure in which a system where the president in an order and informal process of a divisor is calling each other, should we follow this order or not . Is very good for president ial authority and military relations either. That were that to happen, i think that leaves the president s authority significantly diminished. And so i want to try to come up with and this is really the thatbehind the proposal the professor and i were working on. We really want to deal with both problems, constraining the president s authority to use military weapons in certain scenarios, but also ensuring the integrity of that process. Prof. Bobbitt sounds very highminded and hard to disagree with. [laughter] we have some questions from the field i would like to address. I would like to begin with this one. Give it that modern warfare is so reliant on technology and specialized training, what would it take for a president or administration to reinstate a draft . Is that even a possibility in the 21st century, or is the draft a thing of the past . Prof. Waxman that is a great question. It is one i happen to have been reading a lot about because of this piece i wrote on i wrote. 1917 out that, in the genesis of this Research Project and article was charles narrowlyhes, having lost the president ial election at the heart of the First World War gives this famous address, the key thesis of which is the power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully. What i wanted to understand was what was he worried about defending . What would be controversial actions of the u. S. Government that he was trying to defend . Big controversies was a National Draft, or a Selective Service system, as part of construed conscription. Up until world war i, when the upholds aurt National Draft, the idea of a National Draft was actually constitutionally controversial. I sometimes ask my students, what do you think the argument was . They say slavery, the 13th amendment . It is not that. Going all the way back to the colonies, individual colonies and states had drafts. The constitutional argument was a federalism one. The idea was states have the constitutional power to conscript their citizens. But the National Government does not. And if the National Government conscripts all of the best, ablebodied men, it of this eviscerates the states militia power. It was an argument that was a very persuasive in the war of 1812. I think it helped talk secretary of war monroe added advocating a draft. It was one there a controversial during the civil war. But it was one that, in world day is thatwins the a draft was, in fact, constitutional. And the reason why i think the Supreme Court upholds it about they is a point evolution in military strategy. Is that the United States went to war in world war i, the great war, with a big advantage of having watched the europeans bleed each other dry for three years and understood that Industrial Age warfare required mobilizing the entire domestic economy and required mobilizing and then deploying armies of millions of men. And doing so without distracting economicting domestic reduction. The reason i tell that story is that i think the idea of a draft has come historically, been constitutionally controversial and has loomed quite large in the evolution and constitutional war powers. Bringing that forward to today, i think the likelihood that congress would bring back a draft is none. I can think of few things that would have as big an impact on the president ial use of military force abroad than conscription. I think it would dramatically change the politics of support for president ial military action abroad if the risks of that action were distributed among the entire population. You hear proposals that we reinstitute a draft for this reason for reasons of equity, for reasons of spreading the risk, for reasons of concentrating the mind of the public that, right now, is willing to let a professional force do it. I am skeptical of this for the simple reason that that is not the kind of wars we are going to be fighting. The wars that constricted the men in the civil war and in world war ii, gave very lightly trained civilians rifles and sent them out in huge formations. They would be against each other on relatively static lines. Now, we fight wars on a much more technological basis. We do not want seamen peeling potatoes. They are too expensive. We can buy them from mcdonalds, frozen. We do not want a young man with six months training going out with a rifle. They are cannon fodder. A couple of years ago, we passed the Tipping Point where we now train more pilots to fly drones than we do to fly aircraft or helicopters. Our problem is getting highly trained people and retaining them. Once we have poured all this money to getting this person trained, they want to go to the private sector. If we drafted a significant part of the age cohort to give the benefits you and the congressman are talking about, we would have no idea what to do with them. Prof. Waxman can i just add to that . I think it depends on what kind of wars you think were going to be waging or we need to prepare to wage in the future. Our good friend Jack Goldsmith at harvard and i, wrote about this in an article called the legal legacy of light print warfare. We argued that, especially during the Obama Administration, the United States had really moved toward a strategy along the lines you describe, relying on secret special forces units, Cyber Attacks. These are methods of warfare that allow the United States to fight from a distance, putting relatively few, not non, e, american troops in harms way. The danger of that of it is less likely to focus political attention on what is going on. You are more likely to have less political accountability, less likely to have congress engaged in serious discussions with the executive branch about are we waging war correctly . It is interesting that if one looks at the last year, we talked about updating a authorization for the use of military force or the war for the war against isis. Probably, the event that in recent memory, focused congresss attention the most was the deaths of a handful of soldiers in niger. Most people did not know we had operations there. Who wouldve thought that would be the focus of congressional hearings and inquiries into do we have the right legislative framework for counterterrorism issues . A take away from that is even in this light footprint warfare, there are u. S. Troops in harms way and there are going to be these events that may focus political attention. This has to be the last question. Do we have time for one more question . Someone says, how does america declare cyber war . In the changing technological landscape, what is the difference between Cyber Espionage and cyber war . How should the u. S. Respond to a foreign cyber attack . Sanctions, physical force . I am glad you get to answer that. Prof. Waxman this is the trillion dollar question and i should say, this was the subject of some congressional testimony that i gave earlier this year, before the Senate Armed Services committee. The main question that chairman mccain was asking is when is a cyber attack and act of war . Being a law professor, my answer began it is complicated. That is not a good answer. That is a good answer as a professor but it does not get you very far with senator mccain but it is complicated and this is one of the big legal questions, both as a matter of constitutional law and International Law, of our time, to figure out, how do we take a law of warfare, with constitutional war powers and International Law regulating the use of military force abroad and adapt it to new technologies, in this case, Cyber Attacks . This is not an unfamiliar problem. We have had to adapt to other new technologies, submarines, airpower, Nuclear Weapons. Cyber attacks are especially difficult because you are dealing with grave harms that can be inflicted with digital ones and zeros rather than with bombs. I think the United States is right in taking the position that some Cyber Attacks could be so destructive, even though they are conducted with malicious computer code, as to amount to an active for act of war that would trigger our right of selfdefense and the president s authority to use military selfdefense abroad. Where we draw that line is tricky and i do not think we will draw it until we have a real world catastrophic event that forces us to take that response and defend it. Many people think that a declaration of war is or is required to be the trigger for commencing war. Typically, declarations of war occur in recognizing a state of war already exists. Maybe, we are already in a state of cyber war. Thank you. [applause] weekend, onhis American History tv, tonight on time,m. Eastern lectures and history, colonial america before the revolution. Nobody else has to be bothered. A big surprise. More outrage, more anger, and more fear. Announcer sunday at 4 p. M. Healers learns techniques to sustain himself in the jungle. He knows what alternatives they say special forces man in action. Adjust or died. And at six on artifacts. A preview of artifacts. Lee who are americas first professional diplomats, conducted these first treaties. The most france favored trading nation status and the french were excited about being able to get into that economic trading war with Great Britain after the war was over. The treaty would remain in effect for several years. American history tv, every weekend, on cspan3. Next on American History tv, historian Robert Watson talks about his book the ghost ship of brooklyn, an untold story of the American Revolution. He describes how the british use the hms jersey as a floating jail for thousands of american prisoners during the revolutionary war. The museum of the American Revolution in philadelphia hosted this 50 minute event