Robert (Bobby) Chesney is a co-founder of Lawfare and Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, where he holds the Charles I. Francis Professorship in Law (Source: lawfaremedia.org; lawfaremedia.org). He co-founded Lawfare in 2010 with Benjamin Wittes and Jack Goldsmith (Source: law.utexas.edu). At UT Austin he has directed the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law.
Chesney's scholarship centers on national-security law — including the law of armed conflict, intelligence, and emerging-technology questions — and he co-hosts the National Security Law Podcast. His work and Lawfare's coverage intersect with AI policy where national-security law meets cybersecurity, autonomous weapons, and intelligence applications of AI.
Deep-fakes scholarship
Chesney's most-cited work bearing on AI policy is "Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security," written with Danielle Keats Citron, then of Boston University School of Law. The working paper is dated July 14, 2018 and was posted to SSRN on July 21, 2018 (SSRN abstract 3213954); the article was published at 107 California Law Review 1753 (December 2019), with Chesney as first-named author (Source: papers.ssrn.com; scholarship.law.bu.edu; Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security (Chesney & Citron, California Law Review, 2019)). The published byline identifies him as Bobby Chesney, James Baker Chair at the University of Texas School of Law and co-founder of Lawfare (Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security (Chesney & Citron, California Law Review, 2019)). The article introduced the term liar's dividend for the dynamic in which the existence of convincing fakes lets bad actors deny authentic evidence; the concept is treated at Liar's Dividend. UT Law records the term's continued circulation in press coverage under Chesney's name (Source: law.utexas.edu). Chesney and Citron discussed the paper on the Lawfare Podcast (Source: lawfaremedia.org).
Beyond the liar's dividend, the article argues against a general ban on deep fakes as undesirable and likely unconstitutional after United States v. Alvarez, proposes conditioning Section 230(c)(1) immunity on platforms taking "reasonable steps" against illegal use, and, in a section on coercive responses to foreign deep fakes, surveys military responses, covert action and sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, recommending a new national emergency "specifically tailored to attempts by foreign entities to inject false information into America's political dialogue" (Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security (Chesney & Citron, California Law Review, 2019)). With Citron he also published "Disinformation on Steroids: The Threat of Deep Fakes" (Council on Foreign Relations, October 16, 2018) and "Deep Fakes and the New Disinformation War" (Foreign Affairs, January 2019), and, with Citron and Quinta Jurecic, "About That Pelosi Video: What to Do About 'Cheapfakes' in 2020" (Lawfare, May 19, 2019) (Source: law.virginia.edu).
The paper predates the generative-model wave by several years and was written about manipulated audio and video rather than about large language models, which is the respect in which later citations of it extend rather than apply it.
Relationships
- related: Lawfare — publication he co-founded.
- related: Benjamin Wittes, Jack Goldsmith — Lawfare co-founders.
- supports: Liar's Dividend — co-author of the article that named the dynamic.
- supports: Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security (Chesney & Citron, California Law Review, 2019) — first-named co-author.
- related: Danielle Citron — co-author of the deep-fakes article and related essays.
- related: Synthetic Media / Deepfakes, AI and Misinformation — the policy areas his deep-fakes work anchors.