Overview
Event Details
The wars in Ukraine and Iran have shown that the character of war is changing faster than the institutions that fight it. The Pentagon is buying attack drones by the hundreds of thousands, rewriting Army doctrine around uncrewed systems, and standing up new organizations to field autonomy at scale. Commercial satellites now deliver intelligence and communications that only superpowers possessed a decade ago. The question is no longer whether technology will transform warfighting. It is whether we can educate leaders and build public-private partnerships fast enough to command it.
Few Americans sit closer to that question than Shane Reeves. Join us in person on Thursday, October 8, where General Reeves will be interviewed by Michel Paradis, a partner in the Steptoe's National Security practice. Paradis spent more than a decade as a senior attorney in the Department of Defense, teaches national security law and the law of artificial intelligence at Columbia Law School, and is the author of The Light of Battle, the acclaimed biography of Dwight Eisenhower, the last American to embody the full arc from cadet to general to statesman.
Expect a conversation between two people who know the questions behind the talking points and the hard trade-offs in education, innovation, public-private partnerships, and leadership. We hope to see you there!
Date: Thursday, October 8, 2026
Time: 4:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. EDT
4:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. | Registration and Networking
5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. | Conversation
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. | Cocktail Reception
Location: Steptoe's Washington office (1330 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036)
Speakers:
- Shane Reeves, Brigadier General (Ret.), 29th President of the University of Wyoming and 15th Dean of the United States Military Academy, West Point
A Wyoming native, armor officer, Bronze Star recipient, and one of the nation's leading scholars of the law of armed conflict, Reeves spent five years as the Dean of West Point, where he was responsible for the intellectual formation of 4,400 future officers. In that role he did something no dean had done in the Academy's 200-plus-year history: by his directive, and with the approval of the Secretary of the Army and Congress, West Point created its first aerospace engineering department, a bet that the next generation of ground-force officers must be fluent in flight mechanics, space propulsion, and contested air and space domains. He founded the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare and has written extensively on autonomous weapons, data-rich battlefields, and the legal architecture of future war. In July 2026 he retired from the Army after 30 years to become the 29th President of the University of Wyoming, a land-grant, space-grant, R1 research university in a state that hosts one of America's three strategic missile bases, the Sentinel ICBM recapitalization, and a fast-growing energy and data infrastructure economy.
- Michel Paradis, Partner, Steptoe LLP
Michel Paradis is a seasoned litigator with more than two decades of experience in appellate litigation, technology law, and international and national security law. He has led numerous high-profile cases across state, federal, and foreign courts and has handled every appellate posture, including petitions for review, habeas corpus actions, extraordinary writs, and petitions for certiorari. His deep understanding of appellate strategy, procedural intricacies, standards of review, and jurisdiction makes him a formidable advocate in complex, multi-district and multi-forum litigation. Michel also advises technology companies—from industry leaders to innovative startups—as well as organizations across sectors navigating the legal implications of artificial intelligence. With a doctorate from Oxford University, where he conducted pioneering research on large language models, he brings a rare ability to translate complex legal and technological issues into practical, actionable guidance.
