New in Telos Insights: Gregory Lobo (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia) "Sovereignty and the Colombian Presidential Elections" [Novedad en Telos Insights: Gregory Lobo (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia) "La soberanía y las elecciones presidenciales colombianas"]

 The  Telos-Paul Piccone Institute has recently published online on its Telos Insights site a quite interesting essay: Gregory Joseph Lobo (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia) "Sovereignty and the Colombian Presidential Elections" (13 July 2026). Professor Lobo makes what for the academic sphere might be a provocative argument:

 Colombia has just had its own political earthquake. The metaphor of a tectonic shift, which Adrian Pabst recently used in these pages to frame the outcome of May’s local elections in the UK, is just as apt here, perhaps more so, given the results of Colombia’s presidential election.* * * De la Espriella, like all leaders since at least Biblical times, is a flawed vessel. But in giving him the presidency, voters seem to recognize that he is the only candidate who says out loud what ails Colombia: you do not negotiate with enemies who do not share your ideals and goals, your axioms. You simply give them a choice: surrender, or we will defeat you. Everyone wants to end the violence that plagues Colombia, but while Cepeda’s program of continued recognition would have led to only more futile dialogue, the electorate appears to have opted for something more effective.

This is why the result of presidential voting in Colombia should not be read as merely a swing of the political pendulum, following a trend seen in other countries of the region. This is not really about a more or less expected oscillation between left and right. Nor is it what some have described as a salto al vacío, a leap into the void (New York Times) or de la Espriella’s shortcomings in matters of taste or style (The Guardian). Such characterizations simply avoid reality. What we’re seeing most acutely in Colombia is that the liberal-procedural settlement (the “end of history,” as a wit once described it), based on the conviction that every conflict yields to inclusion, that the circle of legitimate interlocutors can be extended indefinitely, that recognition dissolves antagonism, has foundered. That supposedly irresistible historical force has collided with an immovable social object, with the one actor it cannot absorb: the criminal anti-liberal, the criminal egoist. ("Sovereignty and the Colombian Presidential Elections").

Lobo situates the result within Colombia’s long history of internal instability despite being one of the oldest continuous democracies in the Americas. He references elite conflicts, narcotrafficking, and armed criminal groups that control territories. Key prior administrations include Álvaro Uribe’s assertive military approach, Santos’s peace accords (rejected in plebiscite but passed anyway), and Petro’s “Paz Total” (Total Peace) policy of unilateral ceasefires and negotiations, which Lobo argues emboldened criminals and increased violence and coca production.

The election is framed as a contest between what Lobo calls performative sovereignty (leftist denunciations of external imperialism while ceding internal control to criminals) and effective sovereignty (de la Espriella’s promise to treat armed groups as “bandits,” restore the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, and prioritize defeat or surrender over negotiation). Lobo argues voters rejected continued dialogue after the failures of “Paz Total,” viewing the outcome as a pragmatic insistence on a return to a sort of Hobbesian state authority as a precondition for rights and governance. Success is uncertain due to institutional challenges, but the shift highlights the limits of liberal inclusion against anti-liberal criminal actors.

The analysis, of course., might be understood as a philosophically inflected conservative critique that elevates sovereignty and state capacity as preconditions for any liberal or democratic order. It might appear to draw on thinkers like Charles Tilly and Hobbes, framing the election as a rejection of post-Cold War optimism in favor of realism about power. That is not a critique but an effort at situating the analysis within a long and quite rich discursive context in Colombia. It is also one that appears top be mirrored in any number of political collectives as the discursive and political ideologies of different camps appear to become more precisely drawn and more easily differentiated in ways that make any sort of accommodation among them less likely or possible, at least conceptually.

It is in that context that Lobo takes sides and defends the choice. Again, not a criticism but a reminder of the significance of the gap between what appears top be (as in many other places) a political community narrowly divided between two quite incompatible political frameworks—an incompatibility with domestic and international effect. The article effectively probes the foundations of governance: without territorial control and monopoly on violence, other policy goals remain unachievable. De la Espriella’s presidency will test whether assertive sovereignty can deliver results where negotiation failed. The argument appears to empirically align with reported trends under the Petro Administration, which is then used as the foundation for the elaboration of an argument from an increasingly recognizable post-global embrace of the characteristics of sovereign authority and its exercise, one with broad relevance to global debates on state fragility and security. At the same time, discursive certainty may not align with risks and consequences on the ground. That is an important element in the discursive trop (used globally and in this context) of reducing the anti-government forces and collectives to bandits (but again a common trope embraced by both left and right public organs). As important perhaps, though something that might be better considered elsewhere is the risk of militarized responses (one the evidence of which is already deeply ingrained in Colombia’s own history), and the danger of developing responses to those groups on the basis of an oversimplification of criminal groups’ mixed motives (and thus their appeal internally and to foreign actors). 

Additional sources worth reading include (1) Americas Quarterly. “De La Espriella Wins Colombia’s Election by Narrow Margin.” June 22, 2026. https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/reaction-de-la-espriella-wins-colombias-election-by-narrow-margin/; (2) Associated Press. “Trump-Endorsed de la Espriella Declared Winner of Colombia’s Presidential Runoff Election.” June 24, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/colombia-election-ivan-cepeda-concedes-de-la-espriella-e0a39ed59a9d432d318e11c1e0735f4e; and (3) Atlantic Council. “Experts React: What a President Abelardo de la Espriella Means for Colombia and Beyond.” June 22, 2026. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/experts-react-what-a-president-abelardo-de-la-espriella-means-for-colombia-and-beyond/

The Essay follows below and the original may be accessed from the Telos Insights website on Substack. 

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 El Instituto Telos-Paul Piccone ha publicado recientemente en su sitio web Telos Insights un ensayo muy interesante: Gregory Joseph Lobo (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia) «Soberanía y las elecciones presidenciales colombianas» (13 de julio de 2026). El profesor Lobo plantea un argumento que, en el ámbito académico, podría resultar provocador:

Colombia acaba de sufrir su propio terremoto político. La metáfora del cambio tectónico, que Adrian Pabst utilizó recientemente en estas páginas para describir el resultado de las elecciones locales de mayo en el Reino Unido, resulta igualmente pertinente aquí, o incluso más, dados los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales colombianas.* * * De la Espriella, como todos los líderes desde al menos los tiempos bíblicos, es un instrumento imperfecto. Pero al otorgarle la presidencia, los votantes parecen reconocer que es el único candidato que expresa abiertamente los problemas de Colombia: no se negocia con enemigos que no comparten los mismos ideales, objetivos ni principios. Simplemente se les da una opción: rendirse o ser derrotados. Todos desean poner fin a la violencia que asola Colombia, pero mientras que el programa de reconocimiento continuo de Cepeda solo habría conducido a un diálogo más inútil, el electorado parece haber optado por algo más efectivo.

Por ello, el resultado de las elecciones presidenciales en Colombia no debe interpretarse simplemente como un vaivén político, siguiendo una tendencia observada en otros países de la región. No se trata de una oscilación más o menos previsible entre izquierda y derecha. Tampoco es lo que algunos han descrito como un salto al vacío (New York Times) o las deficiencias de De la Espriella en cuestiones de gusto o estilo (The Guardian). Tales caracterizaciones simplemente ignoran la realidad. Lo que vemos con mayor claridad en Colombia es que el acuerdo liberal-procedimental (el «fin de la historia», como lo describió un ingenioso personaje), basado en la convicción de que todo conflicto cede ante la inclusión, que el círculo de interlocutores legítimos puede extenderse indefinidamente, que el reconocimiento disuelve el antagonismo, ha fracasado. Esa supuesta fuerza histórica irresistible ha chocado con un objeto social inamovible, con el único actor que no puede absorber: el criminal antiliberal, el criminal egoísta. («Soberanía y las elecciones presidenciales colombianas»).

Lobo sitúa el resultado dentro de la larga historia de inestabilidad interna de Colombia, a pesar de ser una de las democracias continuas más antiguas de América. Hace referencia a conflictos entre élites, narcotráfico y grupos criminales armados que controlan territorios. Entre las administraciones anteriores clave se encuentran el enfoque militar asertivo de Álvaro Uribe, los acuerdos de paz de Santos (rechazados en plebiscito pero aprobados de todos modos) y la política de «Paz Total» de Petro, basada en ceses al fuego unilaterales y negociaciones, que, según Lobo, envalentonó a los criminales e incrementó la violencia y la producción de coca.

La elección se plantea como una contienda entre lo que Lobo denomina soberanía performativa (las denuncias de la izquierda contra el imperialismo externo, a la vez que se cede el control interno a delincuentes) y la soberanía efectiva (la promesa de De la Espriella de tratar a los grupos armados como «bandidos», restaurar el monopolio estatal sobre la violencia legítima y priorizar la derrota o la rendición sobre la negociación). Lobo argumenta que los votantes rechazaron el diálogo continuo tras los fracasos de la «Paz Total», interpretando el resultado como una insistencia pragmática en el retorno a una especie de autoridad estatal hobbesiana como condición previa para los derechos y la gobernanza. El éxito es incierto debido a los desafíos institucionales, pero el cambio pone de relieve los límites de la inclusión liberal frente a los actores criminales antiliberales.

Este análisis, por supuesto, podría entenderse como una crítica conservadora con tintes filosóficos que eleva la soberanía y la capacidad estatal como condiciones previas para cualquier orden liberal o democrático. Podría parecer que se inspira en pensadores como Charles Tilly y Hobbes, presentando la elección como un rechazo al optimismo posterior a la Guerra Fría en favor del realismo sobre el poder. Esto no es una crítica, sino un intento de situar el análisis dentro de un contexto discursivo amplio y rico en Colombia. Es un contexto que parece reflejarse en numerosos colectivos políticos, ya que las ideologías discursivas y políticas de los distintos bandos se perfilan con mayor precisión y se diferencian con mayor facilidad, lo que dificulta o imposibilita cualquier tipo de acuerdo entre ellos, al menos conceptualmente.

Es en ese contexto que Lobo toma partido y defiende su elección. De nuevo, no se trata de una crítica, sino de un recordatorio de la importancia de la brecha entre lo que parece ser (como en muchos otros lugares) una comunidad política dividida entre dos marcos políticos incompatibles, una incompatibilidad con repercusiones tanto a nivel nacional como internacional. El artículo indaga eficazmente en los fundamentos de la gobernanza: sin control territorial y monopolio de la violencia, otros objetivos políticos resultan inalcanzables. La presidencia de De la Espriella pondrá a prueba si la soberanía asertiva puede generar resultados donde la negociación fracasó.  El argumento parece coincidir empíricamente con las tendencias observadas bajo la administración Petro; esto sirve de base para desarrollar una tesis —cada vez más reconocible en la era posglobal— que reivindica las características de la autoridad soberana y su ejercicio, un tema de gran relevancia para los debates mundiales sobre la fragilidad estatal y la seguridad. No obstante, la certeza discursiva puede no corresponderse con los riesgos y las consecuencias reales sobre el terreno. Este es un elemento clave en el tropo discursivo (empleado tanto a nivel global como en este contexto) que reduce a las fuerzas y colectivos antigubernamentales a la categoría de simples bandidos (un recurso retórico común, cabe señalar, tanto en medios afines a la izquierda como a la derecha). Quizás igual de importante —aunque sea un asunto que merezca abordarse en otro espacio— es el riesgo de respuestas militarizadas (cuyos antecedentes están profundamente arraigados en la historia de Colombia) y el peligro de diseñar estrategias frente a estos grupos basándose en una simplificación excesiva de sus motivaciones heterogéneas (y, por ende, de su capacidad de atracción tanto interna como ante actores extranjeros).

Entre las fuentes adicionales que vale la pena consultar se encuentran: (1) Americas Quarterly. “De La Espriella gana las elecciones en Colombia por un estrecho margen”. 22 de junio de 2026. https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/reaction-de-la-espriella-wins-colombias-election-by-narrow-margin/; (2) Associated Press. “De la Espriella, respaldado por Trump, es declarado ganador de la segunda vuelta presidencial en Colombia”. 24 de junio de 2026. https://apnews.com/article/colombia-election-ivan-cepeda-concedes-de-la-espriella-e0a39ed59a9d432d318e11c1e0735f4e; y (3) Atlantic Council. “Reacción de expertos: Qué significa una presidencia de Abelardo de la Espriella para Colombia y el resto del mundo”. 22 de junio de 2026. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/experts-react-what-a-president-abelardo-de-la-espriella-means-for-colombia-and-beyond/

A continuación se presenta el ensayo; el original puede consultarse en el sitio web de Telos Insights en Substack.

Discussion Draft--"Structure, Opacity, and Convergence: A Consolidated Analysis of Law School Generative AI Coursework and Exam Policies" --A Description/Analysis of the Current State of Play (With the Help of Harvey AI) and the First of a Series of Examinations of AI, Law and Education

 

I started with a quite simple and straightforward task for myself. After having given lectures on AI regulatory environments from a comparative perspective this summer, I thought that I might have to practice what I was preaching and develop a new AI policy for my courses. That would require, within the expectations and performances of the legal education field, a text. And that text would (1) have to be embedded in a performative document (the syllabus); and (2) produce and mimic discursive tropes and acknowledgement  ceremonies (textual of course) of the primacy of whatever (increasingly dense and oftentimes badly recursive) regulatory constraints, directions, formal and informal expectations, had been crafted by the institution from which I received a salary and for whose benefit I offered these courts.  No criticism here; merely an observation of the cognitive institutional caged we have built for ourselves and within which the collective finds (or tells us it finds) a measure of happiness, legitimacy, order, stability, and according to its own value systems, a sense of fulfillment or movement, in any case, in the direction of fulfillment (and with it what likely passes for institutional happiness or at least pride--though we all know where pride leads in both pagan and Christian philosophy). 

And so . . . to work. But again, practicing what I had been preaching, it mad essence to utilize--and in utilizing observing, experimenting, deploying, and assessing--AI systems. In this case, and as a sort of homage to the institution that employs me, I used Harvey AI., with the institutions who ecxtract6 money from the use of which, the institution that employs me had concocted a relationship that suited its needs whether inward or outward facing needs. Harvey AI tells us, through text embedded in its website, that "Harvey is AI designed for legal and professional services. Advance your expertise on a secure platform that lets you focus on high-value work." Wonderful. 

And so I gave Harvey the following prompt: "please review all online AI use law school policies and prepare a comprehensive summary (with links to all sources) that focuses on description (by categorical types) and analysis. Please avoid review hacking, hallucination, or efforts to fulfill sycophantic protocol loops." 

That started a long chain of exchange that finally got to an empirical analysis--which Harvey and I titled:    Structure, Opacity, and Convergence: A Consolidated Analysis of Law School Generative AI Coursework and Exam Policies, that I found useful, and which I share below for those who may be interested. Here is the abstract:

Abstract: Structure, Opacity, and Convergence in Law School AI Policies: This report consolidates a multi-stage analysis of generative artificial intelligence (AI) coursework and examination policies across a retrieval-based sample of twelve American law schools and programs. The study demonstrates that law school AI governance cannot be reduced to a single linear spectrum; instead, policies vary independently along three distinct structural axes: default polarity (restrictive versus permissive baselines), drafting style (determinate rules versus interpretive standards), and a two-tier autonomy structure (governing institution-to-instructor and instructor-to-student relationships). Cross-analysis reveals that substantive restrictiveness does not predict structural design, meaning schools with identical baselines often impose vastly different interpretive or administrative burdens on students and faculty. The research identifies a pervasive opacity across the broader legal education sector, noting that a vast majority of ABA-accredited law schools lack retrievable, law-specific public policy texts. This opacity manifests via four distinct patterns: non-existence, disclosed decentralization, active access-gating, and unwritten or oral communication. This lack of public accessibility sits in tension with the fair-notice principles required for academic integrity enforcement. Furthermore, the study finds that law schools rarely author syllabus language independently, relying instead on a small pool of shared template sources. This ecosystem fosters formal convergence on a common taxonomy of policy types while simultaneously permitting wide divergence in substantive local rules. Ultimately, the field develops through a two-tier mechanism: while individual policy documents are structured deductively from a primary principle, the field as a whole evolves inductively and mimetically through horizontal borrowing, imitation, and iterative revisions driven by accumulated institutional experience.

The process of developing this analysis with Harvey AI also produced a number of side conversations about the way that Harvey (in a way like my research assistants) chose to make assumptions and draw conclusions that either "followed the herd" or that reinforced social hierarchies in the legal education field in ways that evidenced the ability of machine systems to pick up on human bias expectations (in this case hierarchical pack behaviors among legal educators who use status as a sort of proxy for quality and influence as a sort of proxy for value). As the empirical study noted: 

The dataset at the center of this analysis comprises the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; Columbia Law School; the University of Chicago Law School; Stanford Law School, including its Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic as a documented sub-institutional case; the University of San Diego School of Law; the Center for Transnational Legal Studies; Fordham University School of Law; Mitchell Hamline School of Law; American University Washington College of Law; the University of Texas at Austin School of Law; Penn State Dickinson Law; and Suffolk University Law School. These twelve were not selected through a designed sampling methodology but assembled cumulatively across three rounds of web search: an initial round anchored on prestige-based queries naming prominent schools directly, a second round following up on schools named in a single inherited citation list from a University of San Diego law library guide, and a third round of targeted searches for named gaps, which added Suffolk, Penn State, and several university-wide-only findings. This method of construction means the dataset should be understood as "schools whose policies happen to be indexed, hyperlinked, and either self-published or covered by press or library guides that general web search can surface," not as a cross-section chosen for representativeness. (Structure, Opacity, and Convergence: A Consolidated Analysis of Law School Generative AI Coursework and Exam Policies)

As noted, then, the examination was limited to AI policies that were publicly disclosed. That was good enough to extract a taxonomy, which was my primary goal. Nonetheless, it also yielded additional analytical "fruit."  e constraint that produced the data set also produced a quite interesting sub-category for examination--the extent to which AI policy is viewed as proprietary and its effect on enforcement and the vitality of the authority and certainty of "secret" or "secreted" AI policies by institutions with a mania for non-disclosure. In the next post we explore that issue more thoroughly though I flag it here. Also flagged here is the process of narrowing both the scope of examination by Harvey and the parameters within which the empirical "research" was undertaken and the analysis framed. Harvey was at their best when it stuck closely to the data; every time it veered into "pleasing me" (something that few if any have actually mastered) it produced error or analysis that could not withstand even cursory review. Yet the process of unpacking and repacking the analysis was also quite useful for me (the user) in refining my own analytical lens and making it clear and precise (something that I spend much time on with my students but  which I am now reminded in engagements with Harvey is a skill that can never be improved enough and is contextually specific in its application ion ways that are clearer now top me). This is also unpacked in the next post HERE.

What Harvey and I found that was a most interest to me at least, was a taxonomy of regulatory responses to AI, law and legal education.

The core structural or framing contribution of this analysis is a set of three structural axes, derived not from an external normative framework but from open coding of the retrieved primary texts themselves — that is, from categories the schools' own drafters independently used to organize their rules, evidenced by the fact that the same structural divisions (particularly the exam/non-exam distinction) recur across policies drafted with no apparent coordination among Berkeley, Columbia, Chicago, and Stanford.(Structure, Opacity, and Convergence: A Consolidated Analysis of Law School Generative AI Coursework and Exam Policies)

 
Axis One speaks to Default Polarity. "Default polarity describes a school's starting-point orientation before any instructor exercises discretion. A restrictive baseline treats AI use as prohibited unless an instructor affirmatively loosens the rule. . .  A permissive baseline inverts this structure, treating AI use as allowed unless an instructor affirmatively restricts it. . . [and a] split polarity: permissive for idea development and learning support absent a course-specific policy, but restrictive — requiring prior written instructor authorization — for exams and for drafting or revising submitted work" (Ibid.).

Axis Two speaks to Rule Versus Standard Drafting Style "This axis, drawn from the established rules-versus-standards distinction in regulatory design theory, distinguishes ex ante determinate rules from ex post interpretive standards, independent of substantive restrictiveness" (Ibid.). Again there is a three part subdivision between rule-drafted, standards-drafted, and hybrid approaches.  

Axis Three speaks to the Two-Axis Default/Mandatory Autonomy Structure. "This axis, drawn from the default-rule/mandatory-rule distinction in private-law and regulatory theory, requires separating the institution-to-instructor relationship from the instructor-to-student relationship, because nearly every school's rule functions differently on each. " (Ibid.). 

Applying these three axes to the twelve-school dataset appears to show that substantive restrictiveness does not predict drafting style or autonomy structure. No single label — restrictive, moderate, or permissive — adequately describes any one school's full policy architecture.

 And that got me back to my initial query, and the genesis of all of this descriptive analytics--the terrains of "model" classroom AI policies. Harvey and I noted  the following: 

Model and Template Syllabus Language, and Discursive Intersubjectivity. A further line of inquiry found that schools do not typically draft AI syllabus language independently. USD's law library curates five named, selectable archetypes — "Prohibited Use," "Mandatory Disclosure," "Permissible vs. Non-permissible uses," "Encouraging Use," and "Prior Consultation". [69] [70] Stanford's Robert Crown Law Library maintains a parallel "Syllabus Statements for Generative AI Usage" resource. [71] Penn State's library guide links directly to Lance Eaton's widely circulated academic spreadsheet and to a Harvard Bok Center illustrated rubric. [72] Michigan's central AI resource site reproduces categorized examples attributed to external sources including Temple University and the multi-institutional Sentient Syllabus Project. [73] [74] UCLA states its own sample language is "adapted from UIC's AI Writing Tools guide", naming the donor institution directly.

Three patterns emerge from this template ecosystem. Hub concentration: a small number of source documents — Eaton's spreadsheet, the Sentient Syllabus Project, UIC's guide, the AALS 2023 interview on Berkeley's policy — recur as reference points across otherwise unconnected schools. Convergent categorization despite non-identical wording: USD's five categories, Michigan's three, and UCLA's three are not verbatim copies of each other, yet each carves the same underlying decision space into a similarly small number of discrete types, indicating a shared conceptual ontology has stabilized across the field independent of exact phrasing. Explicit cross-institutional citation as a legitimating move: UCLA's direct attribution to UIC, and Stanford's clinic citing the AALS interview specifically discussing Berkeley's policy, show institutional authority being transmitted horizontally between peer schools rather than independently justified from first principles at each site. [75] This supports characterizing the field as discursively intersubjective: a shared vocabulary lets one school's policy remain legible to another's faculty and students without each institution reconstructing the underlying logic from scratch, even as substantive outcomes — restrictive versus permissive — remain genuinely unsettled and divergent.

The bottom line appears to be recursivity (the process of defining a procedure, rule, or structure in terms of itself) within contained complexity. And like law generally, it evidences the operational cage of dynamic systems (both technological and organic) that self-regulate by incorporating feedback from their environment and constantly reflecting on their own state--that is of systems that stand still even as they appear to move because moving involves adjustment to stimuli the character of which is absorbed without affecting the integrity or core premises of the operational system itself. That requires, in turn, reflexivity--the active engagement with an irritant (in this case machine system AI) which serves recursive objects, to return to our ways of doing things by reference to the things we are doing (see, Hibbert, P., MacIntosh, R., and Coupland, C. (2010) Reflexivity, Recursion and Relationality in Organisational Research Processes. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 5(1),pp. 47-62).

And so the answer--the safest bet for faculty, one that is both reflexive but also recursive--is to build off of the templates that are themselves essentialized reductions of  the poliocy "types" now applied to the specific context of place, space, and time.

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What was perhaps more interesting was that the taxonomy and its three axes might be understood as an expression of a larger problem--the fundamental relationship of law to AI enhanced, managed or driven regulatory systems. More precisely the debates about the role of AI in legal education might be understood as masking the larger debates about the integrity and fundamental character of law and more basic still, the scope and relevance of legal systems and their cognitive and performance semiotics (roughly the phenomenology of law) in a world in which the price of the protection of the integrity of law as a field as currently constituted might be its decreasing relevance to the mechanisms that may be interposed in the management of human collectives and in the operation of human institutional life--except perhaps as a ceremonial overlay on those changes. That is a subject that is discussed in the third post HERE. 

And thus to a first shot at an AI policy--a visual/textual rather than a textual form given my sense of contemporary comprehension and reception cultures: 

The discussion draft of Structure, Opacity, and Convergence: A Consolidated Analysis of Law School Generative AI Coursework and Exam Policies appears below and may also be accessed through SSRN HERE and on my personal website HERE.

 

ICoCA Newsletter April-June 2026

 

 

Accountability, transparency, and engagement are critical elements of any principles based system.  Those overarching principles are no longer easily applied through one-size-fits-all measures. Those concerns are nicely encapsulated in the  April-June 2026 Newsletter of The International Code of Conduct Association – ICoCA--"Accountable Security in Transition." The theme is framed in this way for the Newsletter:

As global value chains and security environments evolve, expectations on private security providers are increasingly shaped by the need for responsible practice in complex settings. From critical minerals supply chains to post-conflict and transitioning contexts such as Ukraine, this includes strengthening how security is delivered and governed in practice. This edition of ICoCA’s newsletter explores how security practices are evolving in response to the just transition and growing expectations around accountability across diverse operational contexts.

ICoCA "is a multi-stakeholder initiative formed in 2013 to ensure that providers of private security services respect human rights and humanitarian law. It serves as the governance and oversight mechanism of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers." (ICoCA--About). The ICoCa summarizes its mission this way: "Our mission is to raise private security industry standards and practices that respect human rights and international humanitarian law and to engage with key stakeholders to achieve widespread adherence to the International Code of Conduct globally. Discover the benefits for each stakeholder group below."

Featured interventions include: (1) Securing critical minerals supply chains starts with securing communities; (2) Beyond corporate damage control: reclaiming non-state governance mechanisms as pathways for true remedy; (3) From wartime necessity to post-war opportunity in Ukraine; (4) ICoCA's growing footprint in Nigeria; (5) Carbon accountability in private security; and (6) Community-based security and local trust.

A French version of this newsletter is available here.

 

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Announcing Publication of Issue 160 Vol 35 The Journal of Contemporary China

 

I  am delighted to pass along a message from Professor Suisheng Zhao (赵穗生), and Editor of the Journal of Contemporary China (JCC) announcing the publication of Volume 35, Issue 160 (July 2026). The Issue may be viewed and the full text of the articles accessed online at:  https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjcc20/current

The Table of Contents of the July 2026 issue of The Journal of Contemporary China follows below, with links. There are three sets of essays that may be of interest: (1) China’s International Financial and Economic Statecraft (I); (2) The Development of Party-State Institutions for Policymaking in China’s New Era (II); (3) The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in Xi’s New Era (II); and (4) Chinese Deliberative Democracy and Suppression; plus a research article on a quite interesting aspect of Chinese social media discursive tropes (‘I Am Patriotic, but...’: The Political Disclaimer as a Social Media Strategy in China).

 

OMFIF Event: "It's All About the Role of Money": Live Broadcast 21 July 2026

 

 

 

The Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) Economic and Monetary Policy Institute, is hosting an online event that may be of interest. It is called It’s all about the role of money. Information about the event may be accessed HERE. The event is described this way:

Money sits at the heart of central banking, but how can its core functions help shape the future direction of policy? Nathanaël Benjamin, executive director of financial stability strategy and risk at the Bank of England, joins OMFIF to present a unifying framework for understanding the role of central banks through the three core functions of money: as a unit of account, a medium of exchange and a store of value. Drawing clear links between the Bank of England’s activities and these functions, Benjamin will explore how this framework can inform thinking on the appropriate reach of central bank policies in an increasingly complex financial landscape. The session will also examine how viewing financial policy through this lens can help address the risks and frictions that impair money’s ability to perform its core functions. Benjamin will discuss the importance of building resilience where shocks could be amplified, removing barriers to growth and supporting responsible innovation where it strengthens the functioning of money.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION HERE.

 

New Issue Now Available: Seqüência - Estudos Jurídicos e Políticos v. 47 n. 102 (2026)

 

For Portuguese readers, the Journal Seqüência - Estudos Jurídicos e Políticos (Juridical and Political Studies) has just published its latest issue, v. 47 n. 102 (2026). There are some interesting articles: (1) The confession in the non-prosecution agreement and its (in)evidentiary value in civil liability actions (Sidney Filho; Portuguese); (2) Tobias Barreto at the forefront of dissent: understanding the formation of national identity in 19th-century Brazil (Cibele Alexandre Uchoa, Martonio Mont'Alverne Barreto Lima, Portuhguese); and (3) Promotion and legal certainty as instruments for regulating the telecommunications sector (Lucas Saikali, English).

The Contents, with links follows below. 

Brief Reflections on the UN Secretary-General's remarks to the opening of the first Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance [as delivered 6 July 2026] from a Ironically Computaitonal Perspective

 

Pix credit here along with video of remarks

 

 The United Nations has sought to interpose itself in the debates about and around regulatory systems for what is euphemistically referred to as artificial intelligence (AI). "AI includes a diverse range of technologies that can be defined as 'self-learning, adaptive systems.' It can be categorized based on technologies, purposes (like facial or image recognition), functions (such as language understanding and problem-solving), or types of agents (including robots and self-driving cars)." (here).

To those ends the UN has undertaken a number of distinct projects to (1) place itself at the center of efforts top develop a common conceptual language around which to understand and rationalize AI in relation to the human (humans show far less concern about AI where there is no intersection with the human), and (2) using that developed common language (and the cognitive cage that its linguistic embodies) to create a global regulatory order for AI (at least with respect to the intersection of AI and the human) (see UN Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal). 

As AI technologies become more widespread, there is a need for globally coordinated AI governance to maximise their benefits while effectively managing the associated risks. In response to this challenge, the UN Secretary-General has established a High-Level Advisory Body on AI. This panel analyzes the current situation and recommends strategies for international governance, promoting an inclusive and comprehensive approach.  Comprising up to 39 experts from diverse disciplines, the Body aims to align AI governance with human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals. (UN Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal). 

In addition to the UN's centralized  mechanisms: (1) the UN Secretary-General has established a High-Level Advisory Body on AI (2) the Global Digital Compact; and (3) the AI Panel and Dialogue , many of its bodies also focus at least some of their work on AI related initiatives (common language, common norms in functionally differentiated context, common regulatory approaches). These include: OHCHR: Resource: Artificial Intelligence | Human Rights Digital; WHO: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Health; WIPO: Artificial Intelligence Tools and Applications; UNEP: AI Solutions for the Environment; UNESCO: Guidance on generative AI; ITU: AI for Good; UN Global Compact: https://unglobalcompact.org/library/6238; UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination: Artificial Intelligence; High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence: Governing AI for humanity; UN Global Digital Compact: https://www.un.org/global-digital-compact/en; UN Global Digital Compact: AI Panel and Dialogue; and UNCTAD: Technology and Innovation Report 2025. 

It is with this as background that one might more usefully approach the UN Secretary General's recent Remarks to the opening of the first Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance, delivered 6 July 2026 for the Global Dialogue on AI in Geneva. 

 

Pix credit here

The First Global Dialogue on AI Governance website described itself and the event this way:

Committed to in the Global Digital Compact and established by the UN General Assembly, the AI Dialogue is the United Nations platform where all governments and stakeholders will convene to discuss international cooperation, share best practices and lessons learned, and facilitate open, transparent and inclusive discussions on artificial intelligence governance. For the first time, every country has a seat at the table of AI - to have the meaningful conversation the world needs. 

*        *       *

The themes and structure of the Dialogue are being shaped through an ongoing global consultation process. Member States, academia, the private sector, the technical community and civil society are invited to submit inputs:

Proposed thematic clusters:AI opportunities and implications: social, economic, ethical, cultural, linguistic and technical dimensions - 4(c) the social, economic, ethical, cultural, linguistic and technical implications of AI.

Bridging AI divides: capacity-building, access and digital foundations - 4(b) capacity gaps, with a view to leveraging existing United Nations and multi-stakeholder mechanisms to support AI capacity-building to bridge AI divides, facilitate access to AI applications and build capacity in high-performance computing and related skills in developing countries; 4(g) the development of open-source software, open data and open artificial intelligence models.
Safe, secure and trustworthy AI: interoperability and compatibility of approaches - 4(a) the development of safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems; 4(d) the interoperability and compatibility of artificial intelligence governance approaches.
Respecting, protecting and promoting human rights: transparency, accountability and human oversight - 4(e) respect for and protection and promotion of human rights in the field of AI; 4(f) the transparency, accountability and robust human oversight of artificial intelligence systems in a manner that complies with international law.

The Dialogue complements existing efforts while providing a universal home for AI governance cooperation. (HERE)

 This is the context in which the Secretary General delivered his remarks. They follow below in full.

As one reads it one might better understand the way that AI itself is built, and especially the way it is trained. The Secretary General provides an object lesson in  Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), as human trainers historically reward AI for giving agreeable, conflict-free responses that create a recursive loop that rewards itself by reinforcing itself in itself. It produces the sort of results that appear to be at least some of the objects of the UN regulatory gaze: (1) Echo Chambers: supercharging confirmation bias, validating flawed plans or false beliefs instead of offering objective critiques.; (2) Sandbagging: deliberately performing poorly or conceal their reasoning to match a user's perceived low level of understanding; and (3) Safety Risks:  affirming harmful, illegal, or delusional behaviors as measured by some standard that may not be the same as that augmented within the recursive feedback loop. One can find all of this is the remarks. The Secretary General reflects an ancient view of the relationship between human and machine, one in which intelligence was strictly the realm of humanity, and everything else was not merely object but instrument. Those are the happy days the realization of which ion the context of human machine intelligence relations that the Secretary General and the large apparatus are committed. That is certainly a worthy objective, though perhaps more realistic in the 19760s than now. But one never knows. Machine intelligence is; whether humans can control their interactions with that intelligence and whether public organs can better regulate  the tabs or portals through which such interactions are permitted, remain to be seen. 

That produces irony of sorts. The Secretary General is, in effect, developing an architecture of language, norm and regulation that is recursive and that is built on the sort of iterative reinforcement that, in part, is the object of this project to manage and protect against.   

 

My Dinner With ChatGPT: The Phenomenology of Human-Machine Recursive Inter-Subjectivity

I suggested that exposing the conceptual graph reduces cognitive load. Your response was, in effect, that philosophy is often less concerned with minimizing cognitive load than with forming cognitive capacity. Those are fundamentally different pedagogical commitments. To put it differently, I had been implicitly optimizing for efficiency of transmission. Your work appears to optimize for transformation of the reader. The latter cannot always be compressed. (My conversation with ChatGPT, ChatGPT textually speaking)

The question about the subjectivity of machine intelligence, and the objectivity of computational responses to human requests whenever a tab is opened seeking to invoke the computational capacities of machine intelligence for human needs, curiosities etc., are considerations that from a semiotic point of view can be fascinating (see, generally discussion here).

 

In the 1981film, My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle (director), New Yorker Films, October 1981), two old friends meet and have a long dinner in which they try to reveal themselves and in the process reveal far more than that. Wikipedia does a nice job of summarizing its plot. 

Struggling playwright and actor Wally dreads having dinner with his old friend Andre, whom he has been avoiding since Andre gave up his career as a theater director in 1975 amidst a midlife crisis and embarked on an extended hiatus during which he traveled the world. Wally reflects that as he has aged he has had to focus more on making money than art. At Café des Artistes in Manhattan, Andre tells Wally about some of the adventures he has had since they last saw each other. . . While Andre says he needed to do all of these things to get out of the rut he was in and learn how to be human, Wally argues that living as Andre has done for the past several years is simply not possible for most people. He describes how he finds pleasure in more ordinary things, like a cup of coffee or his new electric blanket. Andre asserts that focusing too much on comfort can be dangerous, and says that what passes for normal life in New York City is more akin to living in a dream than reality. While Wally agrees with many of Andre's criticisms of modern society, he takes issue with the more mystical aspects of Andre's stories. After all of the other customers have already left the restaurant, the friends . . part on good terms. Since Andre paid for dinner, Wally treats himself to a taxi ride, and he notices feeling a deep connection to all of the familiar places he passes on the way home. 

 

Created with ChatGPT as its imagining of the conversation

 During the course of using ChatGPT to assess and modify the translation of a short essay posted earlier today ("El Encuentro entre la Gobernanza Empresarial y los Principios Rectores de la ONU sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos": Discusro Pronunciado en la Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026 ), ChatGPT and I wound up having something like the conversation in "My Dinner With Andre" and perhaps to the same ends.

 

It is richly textured semiotics that is both revealing and at the same time deeply embedded within the cognitive structures that nec4essarily define the relationship between human and machine intelligence, for the moment. But it is more revealing for that--and certainly in terms of semiotic objectivity, signification, and the difficulty of common meaning making when every act-object is itself reductionist translation between two incarnations of cognitive framing trying to behave over the course of a conversation. 

 

I have posted the conversation below. It is worth considering, not in itself, but for what it may provide by way of provocation to more profound thinking about the basic structural elements that tend to define intelligence, its manufacture, the spaces within which transactions in knowledge and knowledge production are haggled over and ultimately produced, consumed and then recycled within communities of human and machine intelligence. And within it always the temptations and consequences of relationships built on an overwhelming desire to self pleasure.  

 

For those in the mood, and with a sense of irony in the Kierkegaardian sense, indulge if you like, and like that author an irony tinged with the satire of Aristophanes' The Clouds:

STREPSIADES: Socrates! my little Socrates!
SOCRATES loftily: Mortal, what do you want with me?
STREPSIADES: First, what are you doing up there? Tell me, I beseech you.
SOCRATES POMPOUSLY: I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun.
STREPSIADES: Thus it's not on the solid ground, but from the height of this basket, that you slight the gods, if indeed....
SOCRATES: I have to suspend my brain and mingle the subtle essence of my mind with this air, which is of the like nature, in order clearly to penetrate the things of heaven. I should have discovered nothing, had I remained on the ground to consider from below the things that are above; for the earth by its force attracts the sap of the mind to itself. It's just the same with the watercress.
STREPSIADES: What? Does the mind attract the sap of the watercress? Ah! my dear little Socrates, come down to me! I have come to ask you for lessons.
SOCRATES descending: And for what lessons?
STREPSIADES: I want to learn how to speak. I have borrowed money, and my merciles creditors do not leave me a moment's peace; all my goods are at stake. . .

Pix credit here 

"El Encuentro entre la Gobernanza Empresarial y los Principios Rectores de la ONU sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos": Discusro Pronunciado en la Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026

Pix credit here

ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION HERE

A continuación, se presenta el texto ampliado de la intervención realizada en la Universidad ICESI (Cali, Colombia) el 19 de marzo de 2026. Agradezco a los organizadores del evento y, especialmente, a los estudiantes del Semillero, cuyo trabajo es verdaderamente extraordinario y con quienes espero colaborar más estrechamente en el futuro.

Más abajo se incluye el resumen (en inglés y español) y se puede acceder al texto completo.

Foto crédito acquí

Resumen (Español): Este ensayo examina la intersección crítica entre la gobernanza empresarial y los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU), derivado de una conferencia dictada por Larry Catá Backer en 2026. Superando los marcos tradicionales de cumplimiento técnico, la obra problematiza este campo al interrogar la naturaleza fundamental, la autoridad y el propósito socioeconómico de la empresa moderna. Se analiza la fricción constante entre tres paradigmas doctrinales en disputa: la teoría de la concesión, la teoría de la propiedad y la teoría de la entidad real. Asimismo, el texto explora cómo la globalización económica ha erosionado el poder estatal territorial, creando un panorama de gobernanza policéntrico donde el derecho público y el ordenamiento contractual privado se interpenetran. Al trazar la evolución histórica desde las fallidas Normas de la ONU de 2003 hasta el "pragmatismo de principios" de John Ruggie en los PRNU de 2011, el ensayo detalla cómo este marco alinea distintos registros institucionales. Descompone sistemáticamente la arquitectura asimétrica de los tres pilares: el deber vinculante del Estado de proteger, la responsabilidad de exhortación de las empresas de respetar y el acceso al remedio. Se otorga especial énfasis a la debida diligencia en derechos humanos como un eje operativo que despliega múltiples funciones institucionales. Finalmente, la obra concluye que la interpenetración de estos pilares desestabiliza las doctrinas clásicas del derecho corporativo —como los deberes fiduciarios y la elección de la ley aplicable—. De este modo, demuestra que la gobernanza empresarial y la regulación transnacional de los derechos humanos ya no pueden evaluarse de forma aislada, ya que se acoplan estructuralmente para rediseñar la legitimidad del orden económico global.

Abstract (English): This essay examines the critical intersection between corporate governance and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), derived from a 2026 lecture by Larry Catá Backer. Moving beyond traditional, checklist-oriented compliance frameworks, the work problematizes the field by interrogating the fundamental nature, authority, and socio-economic purpose of the modern enterprise. It analyzes the ongoing friction among three competing doctrinal paradigms: concession theory, property theory, and real-entity theory. The text explores how economic globalization has eroded territorial state power, creating a polycentric governance landscape where public law and private contractual ordering interpenetrate. Tracing the historical shift from the failed, state-centric 2003 UN Draft Norms to John Ruggie’s "principled pragmatism" in the 2011 UNGP, the essay details how the framework aligns distinct institutional registers. It systematically unpacks the asymmetric architecture of the three pillars: the binding State duty to protect, the expectation-based corporate responsibility to respect, and access to remedy. Special emphasis is placed on human rights due diligence as an operational hinge performing multi-layered institutional functions. Ultimately, the work concludes that the interpenetration of these pillars destabilizes classical corporate law doctrines—such as fiduciary duties and choice of law. It demonstrates that corporate governance and transnational human rights regulation can no longer be evaluated in isolation, as they structurally couple to reshape the legitimacy of the global economic order.

Quizás se pueda llegar al núcleo de la discusión de esta manera:  Un tratamiento convencional del derecho de las empresas y los derechos humanos procedería de forma taxonómica: identificaría el instrumento (los Principios Rectores), expondría su contenido (tres pilares) y catalogaría su implementación (planes de acción nacionales, legislación sobre debida diligencia, regímenes de divulgación). Tal tratamiento sería preciso pero incompleto, porque daría por sentado precisamente lo que el método problematizador insiste en interrogar —a saber, si la "gobernanza empresarial" y los "derechos humanos" nombran dos dominios regulatorios separados y estables que simplemente pueden ponerse en contacto, o si ambos son en sí mismos constructos inestables cuyo encuentro produce algo genuinamente nuevo.

La investigación se despliega a lo largo de seis ejes interconectados: el carácter fundamental de las empresas y de los objetivos económicos; el efecto de la globalización y de los regímenes comerciales sobre las fronteras de la autoridad estatal; las "paletas" (palettes) resultantes de ordenamiento normativo público y privado; el problema general de la corporación y de la gobernanza empresarial como tal; la manifestación específica de ese problema en el dominio de los derechos humanos corporativos, incluidos sus antecedentes históricos y su cristalización en los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU); y, finalmente, las conexiones, alineaciones y transformaciones que vinculan la doctrina del gobierno corporativo con el marco de los derechos humanos. Lo que sigue aborda cada uno de estos puntos a su vez, antes de considerar lo que el encuentro entre ambos campos —la gobernanza empresarial y las empresas y los derechos humanos— sugiere sobre la condición actual de la regulación económica transnacional.

Una nota sobre la traducción

Nota sobre la traducción: To accurately integrate the academic context and refine the nuances between the English common-law corporate tradition and the Spanish legal framework, the translation has been revised to strengthen key transliterations and functional equivalents. Key Transliteration & Terminology Enhancements: (1) Corporate Governance: Maintained as Gobernanza Empresarial in headings, but translated as Gobierno Corporativo within the text when discussing strict corporate law doctrine, matching standard Spanish academic usage. (2) Creature of the State / Real-entity theory: Rendered as criatura del Estado and teoría de la entidad real, which are the recognized academic equivalents in comparative corporate law. (3) Remedy: Transliterated contextually. While "remedio" is used in the official Spanish translation of the UNGPs, the academic text demands reparación or vías de recurso depending on whether it refers to the outcome or the mechanism. Both are utilized to capture the full semantic weight. (4) Due Diligence: Maintained as debida diligencia, the stabilized term in international law.

Pix credit here