Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, argued attending the dinner this year could easily work to Biden’s advantage. “It has been such a historic time in presidential history, that a president who wouldn’t come because of his totally adversarial relationship with the press, calling them the enemy of the state, and then COVID hitting,” she said. “This is another good stage, if it’s used properly, for the president himself who is serving and also for the institution.”

On May 27, Paramount Pictures Studios will release its 1980s sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, to U.S. theaters. But long before it even hit the screen, eagle-eyed viewers of the film’s trailer noticed a subtle change to Tom Cruise’s leather flight jacket from the 1986 original: The Taiwanese flag, which had appeared on a patch, had disappeared. In its place was a rectangle with the same blue and red colors but representing no country—presumably a concession to Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan is merely a province of the People’s Republic of China. With support for the film’s production coming from China’s Tencent Pictures, the new Top Gun is a fitting metaphor of how the global entertainment industry is bending over backward to satisfy Beijing, no matter the cost to free speech or democratic values around the world.

Eliot and Eric welcome Charlie Edel, Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss security in the Indo-Pacific, the role of Australia, the AUKUS partnership, John Quincy Adams and U.S. foreign policy—do the “restrainers” read Adams correctly?—and the role of literature in understanding history.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put to the test theories about how cyberattacks fit into conventional war. Contrary to many expectations, cyber operations appear to have played only a limited role in the initial stages of the invasion, prompting competing theories and rampant speculation about why. Although written while the conflict continues, this essay considers how either of two broad explanations for the limited role of cyberattacks to date—that Russia’s attempted cyberattacks were thwarted or that Russia chose not to deploy them widely—challenges conventional wisdom about cybersecurity. The essay concludes by suggesting that one lesson international lawyers should draw from the current conflict is the urgent need to clarify and enforce international rules not just for the rare high-end destructive or widely disruptive cyber operations, but also for lower-level operations that have proven more consistently problematic, both in Ukraine and elsewhere. Clarifying such rules could help to manage escalation risk now and in the future, even if such rules—like the most venerable international law prohibitions that Russia’s invasion has violated—do not necessarily restrain behavior directly.

We went to a few experts. Danielle Citron, at the University of Virginia’s LawTech Center. "I have long been writing about intimate privacy, so the privacy around our most intimate parts of ourselves and our lives."

As the United States continues to be a major contributor to Ukraine’s war effort, Russia has warned the U.S. to back off. This news was first reported by The Washington Post, citing a diplomatic note from Moscow to Washington that said U.S. weapon shipments were “adding fuel” to the conflict in Eastern Europe. As a result, Russia said, the U.S. could be hit with “unpredictable consequences.” Undeterred, President Biden on Thursday announced an additional $800 million military package to be sent Ukraine’s way, including heavy artillery, 144,000 rounds of ammunition and drones. How does this play out? How seriously should the Biden administration take the Russian threats? And what would be the war’s tipping point to force the U.S. and NATO into direct military action? UVA Today caught up with University of Virginia politics professor John Owen to analyze the situation. A Miller Center of Public Affairs senior fellow, Owen has expertise in foreign affairs, American defense and security, and war and terrorism.