While significant progress has been made in terms of facilitating greater access to and use of financial services among underserved populations, barriers to financial inclusion remain. The global dialogue surrounding the financial inclusion gender gap (referring to the disproportionate exclusion of women from access to and usage of formal financial services) has intensified as key stakeholders—including financial service providers, regulatory bodies, policymakers, civil society entities, and consumers—explore how best to engage prospective women customers in ways that meet the needs of both consumers and providers situated within different market contexts.

As part of the consultation process for the second annual Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) report and scorecard, to be published in late summer 2016, the FDIP team held a roundtable in March 2016 to facilitate dialogue and knowledge-sharing regarding the issue of gender disparities in access to and usage of formal financial services. The first FDIP report and scorecard, published in August 2015, are available here.

The roundtable provided an opportunity for participants to discuss the legal, policy, and cultural drivers of the gender gap, highlight examples of enabling approaches in countries that have made strides in reducing the gender gap, and identify action steps for governments, financial service providers, and consumers in terms of promoting greater equity within the financial landscape. Before diving into the key themes and action items explored at the roundtable, below is some background on the nature and implications of the gender gap.

What is the financial inclusion gender gap, and why does it matter?

From 2011 to 2014, the percentage of women in developing economies with formal financial accounts increased by 13 percentage points, according to the World Bank’s Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) database. In relative terms, these gains were comparable to those among men in developing economies during the same time period—but in absolute terms, there remains considerable room for growth, as half of women in developing economies still did not have formal financial accounts as of 2014.

While there is good reason to celebrate the tremendous gains made across the financial inclusion landscape in recent years, significant opportunity for expanding access to and usage of financial services among women remains. Globally, the financial inclusion gender gap remained at seven percentage points between 2011 and 2014, and in developing economies the gap was even higher, at nine percentage points.

The FDIP focus countries reflect this global trend. Of the 21 FDIP focus countries examined within the 2015 FDIP Report and Scorecard, only four (Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, and South Africa) exhibited either gender parity or a greater percentage of women than men who reported using mobile money within the previous 12 months or holding an account at a bank or another type of financial institution.

The gender gap is of course not the only global disparity in terms of access to and usage of financial services—for example, rural and low-income populations are often underserved by formal financial service providers compared with their more urban and wealthier counterparts. (You can learn more about financial inclusion among these underserved groups across different economic, political, and geographic contexts in the 2015 FDIP Report and Scorecard.) Indeed, in 2014 the gap between account ownership among the poorest 40 percent of households in developing economies and the richest 60 percent of households in developing economies was about five percentage points higher than the gender gap in developing economies.

However, as noted by the Global Findex, the global financial inclusion gender gap remained essentially static from 2011 to 2014, while the financial inclusion income gap was reduced by several percentage points. Additionally, the increase in ownership of formal accounts among the poorest 40 percent of households in developing economies was slightly higher proportionately than the increase in ownership of formal accounts among women in developing economies over the same period. In short, the gender gap is particularly noteworthy for its persistence over time and for the broad scope of the underserved population it represents.

Investing in women and girls should be a shared priority across public and private sector stakeholders given the economic and civic implications of female participation in the formal financial ecosystem. From a micro perspective, having convenient access to a suite of quality financial services enables women to invest in themselves, in their families, and in their communities by saving for the future, paying for educational and health expenses, putting money toward small businesses, and engaging in other productive financial activities. Participants at the roundtable noted that a less tangible—but no less valuable—outcome of facilitating access to and usage of formal financial services among women is the sense of empowerment many women feel when they are equipped with greater control of their finances.

For businesses, reaching an untapped segment of the market with products and services that individual customers find useful would augment providers’ revenue. From a macroeconomic perspective, women’s economic empowerment has increasingly been regarded as “contributing to sustained inclusive and equitable economic growth, and sustainable development,” as noted in a recent study by the Global Banking Alliance for Women in partnership with Data2X and the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank.

If women’s participation in the financial ecosystem is so advantageous, why hasn’t the gender gap improved?

A number of legal, policy, and cultural restrictions have constrained access to and usage of financial services among women. A few examples of these constraints are described below; additional information on access and usage barriers is available in the 2015 FDIP Report.

• Legal, regulatory, and policy barriers: The World Bank Group’s Women, Business, and the Law project has examined data regarding legal and regulatory restrictions on entrepreneurship and employment among women since 2009. The project’s 2016 report found that about 90 percent of the 173 economies covered in the study had at least one law impeding women’s economic opportunities. For example, in some countries women are not permitted to open a bank account or are required to provide specific permission or additional documentation that is burdensome (or even impossible) to obtain. Restrictions on whether property is titled in a women’s name can also impede access to finance since titled land is often a preferred form of collateral among banks. Moreover, women are less likely than men to have the identification documents needed to open formal financial accounts. Among adults without an account at a financial institution as of 2014, 17 percent of women stated that a lack of necessary documentation was a barrier to their use of an account. Promoting a unique, universal identification system can facilitate access to formal labor markets and formal financial services.
• Cultural barriers: One example of a cultural constraint on usage of financial services among women is that many women may be more comfortable utilizing formal financial services when they can interact with a female point of contact, which is often not a readily available option.  
• Technological barriers: Digital financial services such as mobile money can help mitigate financial access barriers, in part by enabling women to more easily open accounts and to complete transactions through their phones without visiting a “brick and mortar” store. However, the gender gap in mobile phone ownership and usage must be addressed to fully take advantage of the benefits of digital financial services. The GSMA’s 2015 report noted that the most frequently cited barrier to mobile phone ownership and usage was cost, and cultural dynamics in which men prohibit women from owning or using a phone also contribute to the gap. Incongruous policies in some markets such as more stringent registration processes for SIMs and mobile money accounts than for bank accounts can also inhibit adoption of digital financial services.

What are examples of initiatives to facilitate greater financial inclusion among women?

Participants highlighted several examples of initiatives that were designed to promote women’s financial inclusion. For example, Diamond Bank in Nigeria and Women’s World Banking developed a savings product called a BETA account that could be opened over the phone with no minimum balance and no fees. The product was designed to be affordable and convenient for individuals engaging in frequent deposits, with agents visiting customers’ businesses to facilitate transactions. Other add-on products are being built around this basic product to provide more opportunities for individuals to use the financial services most useful to them. While the product was developed for women, it is available to both men and women.

Also in Nigeria, MasterCard and UN Women have partnered on an initiative that aims to educate women on the benefits of a national identification program and enroll half a million Nigerian women in this program so that they receive identification cards that include electronic payments functionality.

What can be done to advance gender equity within the financial ecosystem?

One of the central questions discussed during the roundtable was how to reconcile the sometimes diverging mandates of businesses, public sector actors, and the development community in order to foster a sustainable financial and economic ecosystem. In short, businesses must generate profits to be sustainable, while development community and public sector entities often focus on longer-term micro- and macro-economic growth and development. The challenge with these potentially competing time horizons is that initiatives involving a complex network of participants (such as those to cultivate women’s financial participation) may take time to scale. Moreover, some of the major factors contributing to the financial inclusion gender gap (such as lower financial literacy levels among women) will require a long-term approach to fully address.

The good news is that serving women customers ultimately meets the complementary objectives of benefiting providers by expanding their customer base and benefiting consumers by enabling them to use financial services to improve their lives and invest in their communities. Thus, leveraging data to present the business case to providers (see point 1 below) and promoting dialogue across public and private sector representatives (see point 2 below) will enable different players in the financial ecosystem to identify the best approaches to closing the gender gap in ways that are sustainable for consumers and providers.

While the list below is certainly not exhaustive, it highlights several pathways for promoting women’s financial inclusion.

1. Generate data to better serve customers and attract providers: While we delineate the gender gap in terms of men and women, women (like all customer segments) are not monolithic. Thus, the intent of demand- and supply-side data collection should be to inform the development and delivery of a suite of products and services that target customer segments and to make a business case for offering those products and services. Many financial institutions have historically refrained from collecting data disaggregated by sex because doing so was perceived as discriminatory and/or ineffective given the issue of duplicability in reporting. Government leadership on collecting sex-disaggregated data can help ameliorate this issue. An in-depth look at the process of collecting and analyzing sex-disaggregated data is provided in the recent case study on Chile published by the Global Banking Alliance for Women, Data2X, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank.
2. Promote inward and outward-facing stakeholder collaboration: Financial service providers and non-government entities active within the financial services landscape should find champions of women’s economic empowerment within their organizations to help build strategies for reaching women customers with appropriate products and services. Representatives from both the public and private sectors should work together to facilitate dialogue and collaboration across relevant stakeholders such as telecommunications providers, formal and informal financial institutions, public sector representatives, and consumers. This objective should be reflected in countries’ national financial inclusion strategies where possible.
3. Engage in client-centric design: Providers should deploy relevant data to evaluate customers’ needs and reflect those needs in product design, provision, and promotion. By thinking about the customer experience of access and usage holistically, providers will have the potential to sustainably amplify adoption of financial services.
4. Invest in financial education and financial capability among women and girls: Many women feel that they do not have enough money to hold an account with a formal financial institution, as evidenced by the 2014 Global Findex results noting that 57 percent of women without an account at a financial institution cited having insufficient funds as a barrier to account ownership. Financial inclusion stakeholders should aim to familiarize prospective female customers with appropriate, affordable financial services and promote sound financial behaviors that will help spur greater financial inclusion.
5. Adapt anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism requirements to reflect perceived risks: Enabling risk-based “know your customer” (KYC) processes such as the tiered KYC approach applied in the Diamond Bank example above or in other countries such as Mexico reduces access barriers to formal financial accounts. For more information on KYC processes among different countries, please see the 2015 FDIP Report and Scorecard.
6. Formalize informal financial entities as appropriate: According to the 2014 Global Findex, about 160 million unbanked adults in developing economies saved through informal savings clubs or a non-family member. Vetting and formalizing certain informal providers to ensure adequate consumer protection while preserving services that are familiar and accessible to customers could advance women’s financial inclusion.
7. Leverage digital financial tools to facilitate greater access to and usage of formal financial services:
• Digital platforms can help reduce disparities in access to identification documents. For example, an initiative in Tanzania allows health workers to deliver birth certificates using a mobile phone. Birth certificates facilitate access to healthcare, education, and other important government services, including government-to-person payments.
• Digital financial services such as mobile money can provide greater privacy, convenience, and security to customers who have been disproportionately excluded from the formal financial system. For more information on developing enabling infrastructure and policy environments to support mobile money access and usage, please refer to the 2015 FDIP Report.
• Using “big data” generated by and about consumers on digital platforms helps providers better evaluate the creditworthiness of individuals who may previously have been excluded from the formal financial system due to a lack of or minimal credit history. Since women often lack credit history, these innovative measures to assess credit risk and collateral issues can contribute to women’s economic empowerment by facilitating access to credit. As with all financial services, these “big data, small credit” propositions should be coupled with adequate consumer protection and privacy mechanisms.

Editor’s Note: Brookings will hold an event and live webcast on Thursday, August 4 to discuss the findings of the forthcoming 2016 Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) Report. Follow the conversation on Twitter using #FinancialInclusion.

The 2016 Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) Report, the second annual report produced by the FDIP team, assesses national commitment to and progress toward financial inclusion through traditional and digital mechanisms in 26 countries.  

As in the 2015 report, the FDIP team analyzed four key dimensions of financial inclusion: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and adoption of formal financial services. The 2016 report amplifies the geographic diversity of the FDIP country sample by adding five new countries and features descriptions of the financial inclusion landscape in all 26 countries.

The 2016 FDIP Report finds that significant progress has been made toward advancing financial inclusion in many countries, and robust commitment to strengthening the digital financial services ecosystem is evident across diverse geographic, political, and economic contexts.

On August 4, the Center for Technology Innovation will discuss the key findings of the 2016 FDIP Report and host a conversation with public sector representatives about key trends, opportunities, and obstacles regarding financial inclusion in their respective countries and around the world.

Below we provide some context regarding the role of financial inclusion within the global drive for sustainable development.

What is financial inclusion?

The common themes that emerge from many definitions of financial inclusion are the ability to access formal financial services and to utilize those services in a way that promotes financial health.

For example, the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion defines financial inclusion as a “state in which everyone who can use them has access to a range of quality financial services at affordable prices, with convenience, dignity, and consumer protections, delivered by a range of providers in a stable, competitive market to financially capable clients.”

In short, financial inclusion in itself is not the end goal, but instead serves as a key mechanism for advancing the well-being of individuals, families, and communities. At the macroeconomic level, financial inclusion provides opportunities to advance economic growth, reduce income inequality, and combat poverty.

For the purposes of FDIP, we primarily focus on individuals’ access to and usage of affordable, secure, basic financial services and products, such as person-to-person payments and savings accounts. However, we also recognize the important role that more extensive financial services (e.g., microinsurance and microcredit) can play in enabling individuals to plan for the future and absorb financial shocks. Where possible, we highlight examples of a broad suite of financial services within the country profiles of the 2016 report.

To learn more about the 2016 FDIP Report, please register to attend the launch event in-person or watch the live webcast.

Event Information

Cutting-edge technology has led to medical breakthroughs, the information age, and space exploration, among many other innovations. The growing ubiquity of advanced technology, however, means that almost anyone can harness its power to threaten national, international, and individual security. In their new book, The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones—Confronting a New Age of Threat (Basic Books, 2015), Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum explore the potential dangers of modern technology when acquired by hostile groups or individuals.

On March 11, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted a book event to discuss the new threats to national security and the developing framework for confronting the technology-enabled threats of the 21^st century. In order to manage the challenges and risks associated with advanced technology, governments, organizations, and citizens must reconsider the intersection of security, privacy, and liberty. What does this mean for domestic and international surveillance? How will the government protect its citizens in an age of technology proliferation?

After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

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• Confronting national security threats in the technology age

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20150311_national_security_technology_transcript

Good afternoon Chair Ayotte, Ranking Member Cantwell, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today on the important topic of domestic unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

I am a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies and the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. I am also a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and a professor at UCLA, where I hold appointments in the Electrical Engineering Department and the Department of Public Policy. The views I am expressing here are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of the Brookings Institution, Stanford University or the University of California.

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President Obama's announcement last month that earlier this year a “U.S. counterterrorism operation” had killed two hostages, including an American citizen, has become a fresh occasion for questioning the rationales for continuing attacks from unmanned aerial vehicles aimed at presumed, suspected, or even confirmed terrorists. This questioning is desirable, although not mainly for hostage-related reasons connected to this incident. Sometimes an incident has a sufficient element of controversy to stoke debate even though what most needs to be debated is not an issue specific to the incident itself. More fundamental issues about the entire drone program need more attention than they are getting.

The plight of hostages held by terrorists has a long and sometimes tragic history, almost all of which has had nothing to do with drones. Hostage-taking has been an attractive terrorist tool for so long partly because of the inherent advantages that the hostage-holders always will have over counterterrorist forces. Those advantages include not only the ability to conceal the location of hostages—evidently a successful concealment in the case of the hostages mentioned in the president's announcement—but also the ability of terrorists to kill the hostages themselves and to do so quickly enough to make any rescue operation extraordinarily difficult. Even states highly skilled at such operations, most notably Israel, have for this reason suffered failed rescue attempts.

It is not obvious what the net effect of operations with armed drones is likely to be on the fate of other current or future hostages. The incident in Pakistan demonstrates one of the direct negative possibilities. Possibly an offsetting consideration is that fearing aerial attack and being kept on the run may make, for some terrorists, the taking of hostages less attractive and the management of their custody more difficult. But a hostage known to be in the same location as a terrorist may have the attraction to the latter of serving as a human shield.

The drone program overall has had both pluses and minuses, as anyone who is either a confirmed supporter or opponent of the program should admit. There is no question that a significant number of certified bad guys have been removed as a direct and immediate consequence of the attacks. But offsetting, and probably more than offsetting, that result are the anger and resentment from collateral casualties and damage and the stimulus to radicalization that the anger and resentment provide. There is a good chance that the aerial strikes have created more new terrorists bent on exacting revenge on the United States than the number of old terrorists the strikes have killed.

This possibility is all the more disturbing in light of what appears to be a significant discrepancy between the official U.S. posture regarding collateral casualties and the picture that comes from nonofficial sources of reporting and expertise. The public is at a disadvantage in trying to judge this subject and to assess who is right and who is wrong, but what has been pointed out by respected specialists such as Micah Zenko is enough to raise serious doubt about official versions both of the efforts made to avoid casualties among innocents and of how many innocents have become victims of the strikes.

The geographic areas in which the drone strikes are most feasible and most common are not necessarily the same places from which future terrorist attacks against the United States are most likely to originate. The core Al-Qaeda group, which has been the primary target and concern in northwest Pakistan, is but a shadow of its former self and not the threat it once was. Defenders of the drone strikes are entitled to claim that this development is in large part due to the strikes. But that leaves the question: why keep doing it now?

The principal explanation, as recognized in the relevant government circles, for the drone program has been that it is the only way to reach terrorists who cannot be reached by other tools or methods. It has been seen as the only counterterrorist game that could be played in some places. That still leaves more fundamental questions about the motivations for playing the game.

Policy-makers do not use a counterterrorist tool just because the tool is nifty—although that may be a contributing factor regarding the drones—but rather because they feel obligated to use every available tool to strike at terrorists as long as there are any terrorists against whom to strike. In the back of their minds is the thought of the next Big One, or maybe even a not so big terrorist attack on U.S. soil, occurring on their watch after not having done everything they could to prevent it, or doing what would later be seen in hindsight as having had the chance to prevent it.

The principal driver of such thoughts is the American public's zero tolerance attitude toward terrorism, in which every terrorist attack is seen as a preventable tragedy that should have been prevented, without fully factoring in the costs and risks of prevention or of attempted prevention. Presidents and the people who work for them will continue to fire missiles from drones and to do some other risky, costly, or even counterproductive things in the cause of counterterrorism because of the prospect of getting politically pilloried for not being seen to make the maximum effort on behalf of that cause.

This piece was originally published by The National Interest.

Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in Foreign Policy.

The killing of Nasir al-Wuhayshi, reportedly via U.S. drone strike, is not just another notch in the belt of America’s long campaign against al-Qaida and its allies. Wuhayshi was one of al-Qaida’s top remaining leaders, and he is the highest-level death the organization has suffered since Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. Wuhayshi headed al-Qaida’s most active affiliate, the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and was the designated successor of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. His killing adds one more element of uncertainty to the turbulence in Yemen and may set AQAP on a new path. Which path, however, remains an open question.

Wuhayshi helped transform AQAP from a fractious organization on the edge of defeat to one that menaces both Yemen and the United States. A decade ago, Yemen’s jihadi movement seemed near defeat. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Yemeni government rounded up jihadis and imprisoned Wuhayshi, and it was Saudi Arabia, not Yemen, that was the focus of jihadis in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2003, al-Qaida sponsored the original AQAP’s uprising against the Saudi government. Several years later, most of AQAP’s Saudi members were dead or in jail, and its remnants had fled to Yemen. There, they mixed with Yemeni jihadis, including important figures like Wuhayshi, who had escaped from Yemen’s jails in 2006. In 2009, two regional Islamist groups merged and formally anointed themselves AQAP, basing their operations in Yemen and trying to unseat the government. As Osama bin Laden’s former secretary, Wuhayshi became the group’s leader and embraced al-Qaida’s emphasis on attacking Western targets.

The group made fitful progress, at times taking territory but often losing it quickly after alienating locals and proving vulnerable to government counterattacks. But when the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh fell in 2012 during the Arab Spring, AQAP tried to step into the void. Saleh’s successor, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, pursued AQAP vigorously, but his weak government was unable to score any lasting successes.

In addition to its prowess in Yemen, AQAP has long been al-Qaida’s most active affiliate when it comes to taking on the West. The organization was behind the 2009 Christmas Day attempt to down a U.S. airliner over Detroit, a near-miss only foiled by the bomber’s incompetence and the quick thinking of the plane’s passengers. AQAP tried again in 2010, this time attempting to down U.S. cargo planes. The organization also attacked Western targets in Yemen, and puts out Inspire, a stylish English-language online publication that is one of al-Qaida’s more effective attempts to influence Western jihadis.

These AQAP efforts to attack the United States and the West, in general, led to a greater U.S. focus on Yemen and more drone attacks there. In 2011, the United States killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and AQAP member who helped lead the terrorist group’s campaign against targets in the United States and Europe. Awlaki has continued to inspire terrorists after his death, with Boston Marathon plotters downloading his sermons before their attack. Awlaki also inspired the Fort Hood shooter in 2009 and the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office in 2015.

Wuhayshi’s death, however, comes as Yemen is falling apart. Earlier this year, Hadi’s government fell to the Houthi rebels, Yemeni Shiites who oppose both Yemen’s traditional order and the Sunni fanatics of AQAP who see Shiites as apostates. Alarmed by Houthi ties to Iran, Saudi Arabia has led an intervention in Yemen on Hadi’s behalf, bombing the Houthis and trying to reverse their gains. AQAP seems to be flourishing amid the chaos, as its enemies turn on one another.

But with Wuhayshi’s death, AQAP may find it difficult to further exploit the Yemeni civil war. Personal connections, reputation, and charisma play a bigger role in leadership in the jihadi cause than do formal rank, and it is not clear if Qasim al-Raimi, the designated new leader, can retain the support of the AQAP rank and file. There is always a chance, of course, that Raimi proves an even more effective leader than Wuhayshi, and some observers see him as “more dangerous and aggressive.” (Lest we forget: In 1992, the Israelis killed Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Abbas al-Musawi, one of the group’s most competent leaders. Musawi was replaced by Hassan Nasrallah, who has proven one of the most effective terrorist and guerrilla leaders in modern times.)

The bad news is that Raimi and AQAP may seek revenge, both out of genuine anger and to score points within the jihadi community. Al-Qaida’s chief bomb-maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, may still be out there and has likely passed his sophisticated techniques on to others in Yemen.

The bad news is that Raimi and AQAP may seek revenge, both out of genuine anger and to score points within the jihadi community.

Over time, however, Wuhayshi’s death may push AQAP to focus even more on Yemen and less on the West. His close, personal ties to the al-Qaidacore may have been part of why AQAP was a steadfast ally of Zawahiri in his power struggle with the Islamic State. The opportunities and risks in the civil war are both tempting and frightening for AQAP. On the one hand, by taking up arms against the hated Shiites, AQAP can position itself as the defender of Yemen’s Sunnis, a strategy that has worked well for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. AQAP might gain more recruits and local support, while drawing foreign fighters and money from Sunnis eager to find yet another Shiite-Iran axis to oppose. Not surprisingly, AQAP has stepped up its operations against the Houthis in recent months.

AQAP also has an opportunity to govern. And the bad news for the West is that it has learned from its own many mistakes on this front. In the past when AQAP made gains, it tried to impose a strict version of Islamic law that alienated local communities. Now when its fighters seize territory, theywork with local tribal figures and other elites, avoiding the most controversial measures and trying to portray themselves as guardians, not overlords.

Wuhayshi’s death also comes at a time when the broader jihadi movement is split between backers of al-Qaida and supporters of the Islamic State, a struggle in which AQAP has long played an important role. As al-Qaida’s most active anti-Western affiliate, AQAP was important to Zawahiri’s claim that he was leading the struggle against the United States. Its strength in Yemen, moreover, also expanded al-Qaida’s presence and prestige to an important part of the Arab world. Islamic State supporters have already conducted attacks in Yemen, and the death of Wuhayshi offers them a chance to expand their influence there. The core leadership of AQAP is not likely to join the Islamic State, but some of its cells and supporters could break off if Raimi proves a weak leader.

For now, Wuhayshi’s death means the United States has another point in the struggle against the jihadi movement. In the long term, successful disruption is more likely if the United States and its allies can keep the pressure on AQAP, forcing its leaders to go on the run and hindering their ability to communicate — particularly difficult challenges for a group in transition under new leadership. Wuhayshi’s death also comes on the heels of the deaths of several other AQAP members, including its top ideologue and spokesman. Having to hide also makes it difficult for the group to govern, as its exposed leaders run the risk of being killed. But AQAP has lost many leaders before, yet remains a force to be reckoned with. So at best, this should be seen as winning a battle, not the war.

Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared on Lawfare.

The United States began to use drones in Yemen in 2002 to kill individuals affiliated with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its predecessor organizations and disrupt its operations there and abroad. Since then, over 200 strikes have killed over a thousand Yemenis, tens of children, and at least a handful of U.S. citizens – one of whom was a deliberate target. The program has drawn widespread condemnation from human rights organizations and some UN bodies, yet it remains in place because the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama view it as a success, as both have publicly stated.

Criticism of the program often takes the form of debates about which legal regime is relevant to judging a state’s use of targeted killings, which critics call “extra-judicial executions” or simply “assassinations.” While dissent has been strongest in academic and human rights communities, some scholars have echoed the arguments made by states that the imperatives of self-defense permit states to carry out such killings as legitimate acts of war. The Lawfare consensus seems in favor of these strikes.

I share the views of the moral and legal dissenters and hesitate to move beyond those debates because I don’t want to suggest that I accept the program’s legality. 

But I do want to engage those who do view the program as working — after all, if the U.S. administration did not believe it was working, it wouldn’t need to justify it legally. But by what metrics should we consider judging its success?

Perhaps the most obvious metric is whether AQAP leaders are actually being killed and, even more, whether their deaths substantially disrupted the group’s activities in Yemen or its ability to pursue objectives outside of Yemen. For advocates of this metric, the program has been successful in the short term — individuals killed – even if the longer-term impact is less clear because new leaders seem to step in with regularity.

Yet the success in taking out AQAP’s leadership is overstated. The numbers of AQAP members and supporters officially reported as killed are questionable, and probably grossly exaggerated. This is because the U.S. administration considers all adult males in the vicinity of the strikes to be combatants, not civilians, unless their civilian status can be established subsequently. Full investigations are neither desirable nor pragmatic for the U.S. government – particularly now that Yemen is the site of a civil and regional war. Even more troubling is that at times the U.S. may not even be certain of its primary targets. It frequently uses language that is so conditional that there seems to be more than a bit of guessing about the identities of those being targeted.

But I would like to focus on different metric: the longer-term impact of the drone strikes on the legitimacy and attractiveness of al-Qaida’s message in Yemen and its ability to recruit among Yemenis themselves. Drone strikes are widely reported in local media and online and are a regular topic of discussion at weekly qat chewing sessions across the country. Cell phone calls spike after drone strikes, which are also widely reported on Twitter and Facebook. The strikes are wildly unpopular, with attitudes toward the United States increasingly negative. An Arab Barometer survey carried out in 2007 found that 73.5 percent of Yemenis believed that U.S. involvement in the region justified attacks on Americans everywhere.

The narrative that the West, and especially the United States, fears the Muslim world is powerful and pervasive in the region. The U.S. intervenes regularly in regional politics and is a steadfast ally of Israel. It supports Saudi Arabia and numerous other authoritarian regimes that allow it to establish permanent U.S. military bases on Arab land. It cares more about oil and Israel than it does about the hundreds of millions in the region suffering under repressive regimes and lacking the most basic human securities. These ideas about the American role in Middle East affairs – many of them true – are among those in wide circulation in the region.

Al-Qaida has since 1998 advanced the argument that Muslims need to take up arms against the United States and its allied regimes in the region. Yet al-Qaida’s message largely fell on deaf ears in Yemen for many years. Yes, it did attract some followers, mostly those disappointed to have missed the chance to fight as mujahidin in Afghanistan. But al-Qaida’s narrative of attacking the foreign enemy at home did not resonate widely. The movement remained isolated for many years, garnering only limited sympathy from the local communities in which they sought refuge. 

 The dual effect of U.S. acceleration in drone strikes since 2010 and of their continued use during the “transitional” period that was intended to usher in more accountable governance has shown Yemenis how consistently their leaders will cede sovereignty and citizens’ security to the United States. While Yemenis may recognize that AQAP does target the United States, the hundreds of drone strikes are viewed as an excessive response. The weak sovereignty of the Yemeni state is then treated as the “problem” that has allowed AQAP to expand, even as state sovereignty has been directly undermined by U.S. policy – both under President Ali Abdullah Salih and during the transition. American “security” is placed above Yemeni security, with Yemeni sovereignty violated repeatedly in service of that cause. Regardless of what those in Washington view as valid and legitimate responses to “terrorist” threats, the reality for Yemenis is that the United States uses drone strikes regularly to run roughshod over Yemeni sovereignty in an effort to stop a handful of attacks – most of them failed – against U.S. targets. The fact that corrupt Yemeni leaders consent to the attacks makes little difference to public opinion.

Regardless of what those in Washington view as valid and legitimate responses to “terrorist” threats, the reality for Yemenis is that the United States uses drone strikes regularly to run roughshod over Yemeni sovereignty in an effort to stop a handful of attacks – most of them failed – against U.S. targets.

The United States cut aid to Yemen in 1990 when the newly united Yemeni state, which had just rotated into the Arab seat on the UN Security Council, voted against authorization for a U.S.-led coalition to reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Yemen suffered a tremendous economic blow, as the United States joined Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in unilaterally severing aid to what was then and still is the poorest Arab nation. But with the rise of jihadi activism on the Arabian Peninsula over the next decade, and particularly after the bombing of USS Cole in 2000, Salih welcomed the return of U.S. aid to Yemen. This included a strong security dimension as the United States began tracking those suspected of involvement in the Cole attacks and other al-Qaida activities. Conspicuous caravans of FBI agents became a topic of local conversations, so the return of a U.S. presence in Yemen was also more visible than it had been previously. Salih claimed to have had advance knowledge of every drone strike.

Saudi Arabia has meddled in Yemen at least since the fall of the northern Mutawakkilite monarchy in the late 1960s. The Saudi intervention that began with air strikes in March of this year and escalated to ground troops is thus only the latest — and most egregious — of the kingdom’s efforts to affect Yemen politics. This background is necessary to understand that if Yemen is a “failed state,” despite scholarly protestations otherwise, it is at least in part due to decades of external actors violating Yemeni sovereignty with near impunity. The drone program, like the Saudi-led war, is merely a recent and overt example.

I lived in Yemen for several years spread over the period from 1994-1999. During that time, the optimism about the democratic opening of 1990 gave way to increasing frustrations as Salih solidified his control over united Yemen. He defeated the southern leadership in the 1994 war and curtailed the freedoms and pluralism that marked the early unification period, but open public debate has always been vibrant. Travel throughout Yemen was easy at that time, the only obstacle being the need to hire an all-terrain vehicle and driver who knew the many poorly marked roads.

The Yemenis I met cut across social classes and regions, but were overwhelmingly welcoming and friendly toward Americans. In my research on Islamist political parties in Yemen and Jordan, I talked to hundreds of self-described Islamists. I spoke to people in the larger cities, the smaller towns, and in rural areas. We spent long hours talking about Islam and debating the contemporary political problems facing Yemen, the United States, and the world. In 1995 we spoke extensively about race and class in America as Yemenis watched the O.J. Simpson trial on CNN International. I often marveled at the knowledge Yemenis had of the U.S. political system; I wondered if most Americans had comparable knowledge of any other country at all. I was welcomed into homes and shared holidays with families.

What strikes me now is how most Islamists saw jihadi groups as having no place in Yemeni politics. There were jihadis in Yemen, of course, primarily the “Afghan Arabs” who had returned from fighting abroad in Afghanistan and other theaters of jihad and faced difficulties reassimilating. Islamists donning mustaches complained about Taliban proclamations that adult male Muslims must sport a beard at least a fist long. They also complained of the Saudi-sponsored “scientific institutes” that taught the super-conservative Wahhabi take on Islam. Salih had even enjoined these extremists to launch deadly attacks against Southern socialists in the first years after unification. Most of the individuals influenced by these trends eventually found their way into al-Qaida circles.

But they were relatively few. Al-Qaida found little success in attracting Yemenis who were not already drawn to jihadi ideas. The al-Qaida recruiting pitch of attacking foreign powers inside of Yemen simply rang hollow. Even the 2000 attack upon USS Cole — a warship docked in Aden — was not widely viewed as the legitimate targeting of a foreign military power intervening in Yemeni politics. Al-Qaida had to resort to extremist tactics precisely because its ideas did not attract a following significant enough to spark a popular mobilization.

For al-Qaida, the drone program is a gift from the heavens. Its recruiting narrative exploits common misperceptions of American omnipotence, offering an alternative route to justice and empowerment. Regardless of American perceptions about the legitimacy or efficacy of the attacks, what Yemeni could now deny that the United States is waging an undeclared war on Yemen?

Most recently, this narrative of direct U.S. intervention has been further substantiated by U.S. material and intelligence support for the Saudi-led military campaign aimed at the return to power of the unpopular and exiled-President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Photographs of spent U.S.-made cluster bombs are widely circulated. Nor have drone attacks ceased; alongside the often indiscriminate Saudi-led bombing, American drones continue their campaign of targeted assassination. 

One might think that the Saudi attacks would not help al-Qaida, but it is contributing to al-Qaida’s growth in Yemen. The indiscriminate targeting of the Saudi-led campaign undermines any sense of security, let alone Yemeni sovereignty. And AQAP-controlled areas like the port of Mukalla are not being targeted by Saudi or Gulf troops at all. The United States aims to take up the job of targeting AQAP while the Saudi-led (and U.S.-backed) forces focus on defeating the Houthis and restoring Hadi to power. But the overall situation is one in which those multiple interventions in Yemen are creating an environment in which al-Qaida is beginning to appeal in ways it never had before.

For al-Qaida, the drone program is a gift from the heavens. Its recruiting narrative exploits common misperceptions of American omnipotence, offering an alternative route to justice and empowerment.

For these reasons, the U.S. use of drones to kill even carefully identified AQAP leaders in Yemen is counterproductive: it gives resonance to the claims of the very group it seeks to destroy. It provides evidence that al-Qaida’s claims and strategies are justified and that Yemenis cannot count on the state to protect them from threats foreign and domestic.

U.S. officials have argued that the drone program has not been used as a recruiting device for al-Qaida. But it is hard to ignore the evidence to the contrary, from counterinsurgency experts who have worked for the U.S. government to Yemeni voices like Farea Muslimi.

It’s not just that drone strikes make al-Qaida recruiting easier, true as that probably is, but that they broaden the social space in which al-Qaida can function. America does not need to win the “hearts and minds” of Yemenis in the service of some grand U.S. project in the region. But if America wants to weaken al-Qaida in Yemen, it needs at a minimum to stop pursuing policies that are bound to enrage and embitter Yemenis who might otherwise be neutral. 

There is an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. The U.S. military — let alone its drones — is not the only tool on which the United States can rely. But when the measure of success is as narrow as the killing of a specific person, the tool gets used with increasing frequency. Indeed, drone strikes have significantly expanded under the Obama administration.

It is crucial to see the bigger picture, the one in which long-time Yemeni friends tell me of growing anti-U.S. sentiment where there was previously very little. Public opinion toward America has clearly deteriorated over the past decade, and to reverse it may take much longer. But the use of drones to kill people deemed enemies of the United States, along with the Saudi-led war against the Houthis, is expanding the spaces in which al-Qaida is able to function.  

Good morning and welcome to the "future." At approximately 4:29 p.m. Hill Valley time on Oct. 21, Doc Brown and Marty McFly arrive at the present day. For many millennials especially, the 1985 film series Back to the Future represented the far-flung fantastical future that many dreamed would come. But how does the Reagan-era vision of a future where we don't need roads compare to our daily lives today?

Sadly, you probably came to work today on the same street you may have trodden as a child back in 1985 without a hover board. But our future is still pretty fantastic, and many of the outlandish futuristic devices you saw in the 1989 film Back to the Future II are closer than you think—or already here. Here are three predictions that the film made that today might actually turn the head of an ‘80s time traveler

Drone proliferation

When Doc Brown and Marty McFly arrived in 2015, the sky was filled with more flying cars than the drones that sometimes dot our skies, but the film did point to some potential uses for unmanned remote flying devices. In the future, the film envisioned drones for walking the dog and even remote photography drones reporting on the day's news. While drones today don't exactly fill these roles, that future is perhaps closer than you think.

"Private actors will soon operate drones in equal if not greater numbers than the government," Brookings Fellow Wells Bennett wrote in a report on civilian use of drones last year. Amazon has tested drones to aid in home and business delivery. CNN has been given clearance by the government to explore the use of drones for reporting. Even law enforcement and public safety officials have used drones to aid in policing and fighting fires.

The widespread use of drones in daily life is probably still part of our future rather than our present in 2015, but regulations for this future are being written today. Federal regulators just this week announced that recreational drones will need to be registered. Last year as part of our project on civilian robotics, Gregory McNeal offered his own suggestions for federal and state regulators on how best to tackle civilian drone regulations.

Cybernetic humans and wearable technology

In the 1989 film, Marty faces off against his son's cybernetic bully, Griff Tannen. The bullies of the present don't exactly resemble Griff or Locutus of Borg, but cybernetics is closer than you think—even resting in your palm right now.

Taking a walk through Hill Valley in the real 2015, a time traveler might see several pedestrians immersed in their smartphones or glancing at notifications on their wearable devices. In our homes, virtual reality is becoming more prominent as well. Systems like Oculus and Google Cardboard resemble very closely the remote television visors worn by Marty's kids in the future.

"The proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude that [cell phones] were an important feature of human anatomy," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2014 opinion referencing the cybernetic future we are living today. Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong acknowledge in their report on the emerging cyborg future that the connection we have with technology is becoming more personal. While surveillance laws of the past might make distinctions between human tissue and the devices we use in our daily lives, Wittes and Chong argue that perhaps the separation between the human being and technology in some cases is no longer there—and the law should adapt to acknowledge this.

Flying cars and the transportation of the future

The most-often panned prediction of the film is admittedly the most disappointing—there are no flying cars in our future. This has been a fantasy for even Baby Boomers who were thrilled by the Jetsons' view of the 21st Century. Flying cars do exist in a limited form, but they are more accurately described as ultra-portable planes that require a pilot’s license to fly. However, the future of transportation is even better than Marty or Doc Brown ever realized; they just needed to travel a few more years in the future to see it happen.

Driverless cars have the potential to be the biggest seismic shift in transportation that many of us will experience in our lifetime. Numerous automotive makers and even Google are preparing for the autonomous future. Imagine your vehicle circling the parking lot to pick you up after a film; traversing rush hour traffic to deliver your daughter to softball practice; even serving as designated driver on Friday night after drinks at the bar.

The future seems like a fantasy, but liability concerns about whom to sue when an automated vehicle gets in a fender bender—or worse—clouds this would-be future.

"While liability will always be important with respect to motor vehicle operation, automation will dramatically increase safety on the highways by reducing both the number and severity of accidents," writes John Villasenor in his report on how to tackle liability in the driverless era. Despite many reservations about driverless cars, Villasenor argues that current liability law frameworks would be well equipped to address concerns.

Of course, whether the DeLorean Motor Company will come out of mothballs and produce a driverless DeLorean remains to be seen.

Discuss the future's impact on the modern workforce

At least according to Robert Zemeckis, we've arrived in the future. Not that you’re here, join us at 2 p.m. Oct. 26 when we'll discuss one of the important consequences of all of this technological automation: its impact on the workforce and the availability of social benefits.

Technically, all of the Star Wars films occur a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but there are countless gadgets featured in the films that human beings in this galaxy can find here on Earth. Here are a handful of gadgets you will see this weekend when the seventh Star Wars film, "The Force Awakens," blasts into theaters.

Drone surveillance

The evil Galactic Empire has long employed drones and machines to do their dirty work. Way back when the empire was just a glint in Darth Sidious' eyes, his merciless apprentice Darth Maul used autonomous drones to search the desert landscape of Tatooine for fugitive Jedi. Later, when Darth Vader tirelessly searched the galaxy for Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance, he sent similar autonomous drones to countless worlds such as the ice planet Hoth.

Sure, the Empire may call them droids, but on the planet Earth these instruments are essentially remote drones you might see flying in cities or around your neighborhood. In the U.S. the use of unmanned drones to aid law enforcement is on the cutting edge of technology and sparks a spirited debate among privacy advocates. Should fear law enforcement as we would a Sith lord and thus burden them with a warrant-based, technology-centric approach to drone surveillance that might curtail the beneficial use of drones?

Gregory McNeal wrote last year in a Brookings report that a property rights-centric approach with limits on surveillance would best appease privacy advocates and law enforcement, enabling drones to protect privacy in ways even manned surveillance can't achieve. By crafting simple, duration based surveillance legislation, law enforcement would only be permitted to surveil a person for a limited amount of time. Additionally, data retention guidelines could limit the amount of time that surveillance would be accessible to law enforcement.

"Legislators should reject alarmist calls that suggest we are on the verge of an Orwellian police state," McNeal writes, as privacy advocates almost always invoke the the novel 1984 when technology makes surveillance more widespread and pervasive.

As McNeal points out, the police state is hardly as nefarious as Darth Vader, so sensible legislation may be enough in this case to keep law enforcement from falling to the dark side.

Holography

In the first Star Wars film, Princess Leia recorded a short holographic message for Obi-Wan Kenobi asking for his help delivering the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance. The droid R2-D2 recorded the message almost as succinctly as many of use record short videos on our cell phone. But when can we expect to send and receive holographic messages ourselves?

Barring some laughable election night hologram shenanigans on CNN, there have been some notable uses of holography in this galaxy. In 2012, the late rapper Tupac Shakur took the stage at the Coachella Festival with contemporaries Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. At the 2014 Billboard Music Awards, Michael Jackson performed on stage—five years after his death. These holograms were made possible by artful projections and reflections, creating convincing illusions suitable only for crowded concert halls. The technology is especially popular in South Korea where K-Pop performers regularly "perform" at virtual concerts to adoring fans.

But a bona fide hologram? Researchers at Swinburne University this year used lasers and a specialized graphene mesh to project 3D objects in the air very much like you would see in Star Wars. As TIME Magazine reported, "It’s not quite Princess Leia-quality, and researchers say it has a long way to go before commercialization, but it’s a step."

BB-8 Droid

Since the first teaser for the new Star Wars films, fans have had questions about the new droid character BB-8. Rather than resort to computer animation to bring the droid to life, director J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm designers sought to produce a live prop that could portray the droid on film.

The filmmakers demoed the droid on stage at Comic Con to the roar of audience applause and delight—"It was the first official confirmation that BB-8 was not a CG creation, but rather, a practical effect."

The use of practical effects in "The Force Awakens" is a return-to-form for the filmmakers who have shunned the special effects and digital artistry of the Star Wars prequel trilogies and instead embraced the kinds of practical effects and puppetry that made the original trilogy so beloved.

The droid BB-8 even has a cousin here on Earth—the robotic ball toy Sphero. Inventors Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson have adapted their smartphone-controlled spherical toy into a BB-8 toy that performs many of the same practical effects the screen version of BB-8 does in "The Force Awakens."

As the new sequel trilogy continues, filmmakers are sure to wow audiences with amazing technologies—some we may even recognize from planet Earth.

An American drone strike that killed leader of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour may seem like a fillip for the United States’ ally, the embattled government of Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani. But as Vanda Felbab-Brown writes in a new op-ed for The New York Times, it is unlikely to improve Kabul’s immediate national security problems—and may create more difficulties than it solves.

The White House has argued that because Mansour became opposed to peace talks with the Afghan government, removing him became necessary to facilitate new talks. Yet, as Vanda writes in the op-ed, “the notion that the United States can drone-strike its way through the leadership of the Afghan Taliban until it finds an acceptable interlocutor seems optimistic, at best.”

[T]he notion that the United States can drone-strike its way through the leadership of the Afghan Taliban until it finds an acceptable interlocutor seems optimistic, at best.

Mullah Mansour's death does not inevitably translate into substantial weakening of the Taliban's operational capacity or a reprieve from what is shaping up to be a bloody summer in Afghanistan. Any fragmentation of the Taliban to come does not ipso facto imply stronger Afghan security forces or a reduction of violent conflict. Even if Mansour's demise eventually turns out to be an inflection point in the conflict and the Taliban does seriously fragment, such an outcome may only add complexity to the conflict. A lot of other factors, including crucially Afghan politics, influence the capacity of the Afghan security forces and their battlefield performance.

Nor will Mansour’s death motivate the Taliban to start negotiating. That did not happen when it was revealed last July’s the group’s previous leader and founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had died in 2013. To the contrary, the Taliban’s subsequent military push has been its strongest in a decade—with its most violent faction, the Haqqani network, striking the heart of Kabul. Mansour had empowered the violent Haqqanis following Omar’s death as a means to reconsolidate the Taliban, and their continued presence portends future violence. Mansour's successor, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s former minister of justice who loved to issue execution orders, is unlikely to be in a position to negotiate (if he even wants to) for a considerable time as he seeks to gain control and create legitimacy within the movement.

The United States has sent a strong signal to Pakistan, which continues to deny the presence of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network within its borders. Motivated by a fear of provoking the groups against itself, Pakistan continues to show no willingness to take them on, despite the conditions on U.S. aid.

Disrupting the group’s leadership by drone-strike decapitation is tempting militarily. But it can be too blunt an instrument, since negotiations and reconciliation ultimately depend on political processes. In decapitation targeting, the U.S. leadership must think critically about whether the likely successor will be better or worse for the counterinsurgency endgame.