Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Warning a Rogue Court

Friday, June 12, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats National Preparedness

Comments: 0

President Trump takes a lot of flak for his blunderbuss hostility to international organizations, but he’s aiming for the right target with the new sanctions he threatened Thursday against the International Criminal Court. Someone needs to rein in the ICC and it might as well be Washington.

The order allows the Justice, State and Treasury departments to impose financial sanctions or travel bans on any ICC officials who attempt to prosecute Americans. It expands on a previous round of travel restrictions on some ICC officials introduced last year. The immediate goal is to block an investigation the ICC started in 2017 into supposed war crimes in Afghanistan. That investigation is both vexatious and silly. U.S. officials accused of crimes already are subject to American law, while the ICC somehow thinks the Taliban will care if officials in the Hague prosecute the terrorists for genocide.

The bigger aim of Thursday’s sanctions is to defend American sovereignty, and that of allies such as Israel that are also targeted by the court. The U.S. is not a party to the ICC, and both Republican and Democratic administrations have long worried the court would expose American officials to politicized lawfare investigations.

Sure enough, Attorney General William Barr said Thursday the Administration believes Russia may be exerting undue influence on the court to tie down American officials in a long, costly and pointless Afghanistan prosecution. Mr. Barr also said he’s seen evidence of financial improprieties by court officials. If that’s true, the lack of effective accountability counts as another strike against the court’s legitimacy.

The Trump Administration would perform a public service by releasing whatever evidence it has of alleged wrongdoing at the court. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s order is a vital defense of the constitutional rights of American citizens to have criminal complaints against them adjudicated in impartial, democratically legitimate courts.

Photo: The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. - PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-a-rogue-court-11591919175

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