Contributed ← Joshua Foust

Blame Congress

Jun

2013

I have an op-ed over at National Memo, explaining why we must blame Congress for the NSA’s surveillance. Rather than challenging the administration’s authority to secretly interpret and enact laws, however, Congress instead twice authorized them to keep everything a secret. Last year, Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tried to prohibit ...

Do Drones Work?

May

2013

For the American Prospect, I ask do drones actually accomplish the goal they’re meant to? Taken as a whole, drones seem to be quite good at what they’re supposed to do: disrupting terrorist groups. But that isn’t enough to actually end the threat posed by terror groups. Are the civilian and psychological costs drones incur ...

Why Drone Autonomy Might Actually Be Good for Human Rights

May

2013

Over at Foreign Policy, I have a piece suggesting autonomous drones might actually be good for us. Yet many experts are uncertain whether autonomous attack weapons are necessarily a bad thing, either. “Can we program drones well? I’m not sure if we can trust the software or not,” Samuel Liles, a Purdue professor specializing in ...

The Chechen Connection: The Boston bombers have put the region and U.S.-Russia relations in the spotlight

Apr

2013

Over at The American Prospect, I have a brief article asking if the ethnicity of the Boston bombers will effect U.S.-Russia relations. Russian officials are quick to underscore that they are victims of Chechen terrorism, not causes of it. As if to underscore this point, Ramzan Kadyrovv—the Moscow-approved strongman who currently governs Chechnya–left a comment on ...

Displaced: What happened to the people who fled the terror in Chechnya.

Apr

2013

For Foreign Policy, I explained how Chechnya’s experience of war led to displacement, and that it is eventually what brought the Tsarnaev brothers to America. As a result, many Chechens who fled to Central Asia did not find refuge, just harassment and continued uncertainty. It should not be surprising that thousands moved on, as apparently the Tsarnaev ...

Boston bombing: Media haste makes mistakes

Apr

2013

Over at the Christian Science Monitor, I explained that the rush to be first out the gate with coverage of the manhunt in Boston led to the media making some grievous errors. The rush to report a piece of information first can lead to regrettable errors. Despite claims to have cross-checked information, even reputable news organizations can ...

What the Chechen Connection Might Mean

Apr

2013

The two suspects law enforcement officials named last night in connection to the Boston marathon bombings might come from Chechnya. The police have confronted Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Tamerlan reportedly died in a shootout, while the police continue to pursue Dzhokhar. Is their connection to Chechnya relevant? There’s a lot that we don’t know about ...

Security and Human Rights in Central Asia

Apr

2013

I wrote about the tension between security and human rights in Central Asia for the 19.1 Fall/Winter 2012 issue of the Brown Journal of World Affairs. They have kindly given me permission to reprint the text in full below. Security and Human Rights in Central Asia By Joshua Foust In September of 2011, the United States government ...

Kazakhstan’s Gilded Cage

Apr

2013

For Foreign Policy, I asked why Kazakhstan, which is in the process of oppressing its civil society in a way it never did in the 90s, is getting such good PR. The international respectability has come, too, if a little more slowly. In 2010, Kazahkstan chairedthe Organization for Stability and Cooperation in Europe — the first post-Soviet state ...

PAPER: Oversight for Effectiveness: A Counterterrorism Perspective on the Targeted Killings “White Paper”

Feb

2013

I wrote a paper for the National Security Network on what the OLC White Paper means for oversight and counterterrorism effectiveness. *** In February 2013, a Department of Justice White Paper was leaked, making publicly available for the first time a summary of two legal memos setting out the legal details of the administration’s justification ...