President Trump and Congress should bring letters of marque back. The Constitution permits it. History vindicates it. Modern threats invite it. A letter of marque and reprisal is a government license to a private citizen to target enemies of the state, seize their persons or property, and deliver them to lawful custody, subject to strict rules and judicial oversight. In the age of sail, privateers multiplied national power at low public cost. In the age of ransomware and state protected kleptocrats, they can do so again. Critics will say the practice is archaic, that international law has moved on, that private force is undisciplined. The better view is simpler. The text of our Constitution, the practice of our early Republic, and the nature of today’s threats align. With proper statutory guardrails, letters of marque can be reintroduced for the narrow purpose of targeting narco tyrants and transnational cyber criminals, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the hacker syndicates that daily raid US companies and agencies.
Start with first principles. The US Constitution assigns to Congress the power to grant letters of marque and reprisal, alongside the power to declare war and to make rules about captures on land and water. The placement is telling. The Framers saw marque and reprisal as a calibrated instrument, below full war yet above ordinary law enforcement. It is not executive adventurism. It is a legislative tool, supervised by courts, that allows targeted coercion where ordinary jurisdiction fails. This is not a dusty curiosity in the margins of constitutional text. It is an unused power, like a rarely opened drawer, waiting for a moment that fits. Our moment fits.
Skeptical readers often ask whether letters of marque are a euphemism for piracy. The answer is no. Privateering was an honorable and legal practice in European and American law for centuries. In medieval England, kings licensed subjects to take reprisals against foreign wrongdoers when ordinary remedies were unavailable. By the fourteenth century the language of marque and reprisal was fixed, and by the sixteenth century the practice was routine. Elizabethan sea captains, Drake most famously, raided enemy shipping with legal commissions and brought their prizes to admiralty courts for condemnation and sale. The key was adjudication. A privateer could not keep a prize by brute possession. He had to prove lawful capture to a court applying rules of prize law. That judicial check made privateering a law governed partnership between state and citizen, not a free for all at sea.
The British system matured in the eighteenth century. The High Court of Admiralty issued commissions, required a bond for good behavior, recorded a ship’s tonnage, armament, and crew, and enforced discipline by revoking commissions or forfeiting bonds for abuses. When captured, privateer crews were entitled to prisoner of war treatment, because their commission distinguished them from pirates. This bright line was literal, it could mean the difference between exchange and the gallows. Privateering was therefore a disciplined auxiliary to national power. It harnessed private capital and skill for public ends while spreading risk away from the treasury.
America took the institution and refined it. During the Revolution and again in the War of 1812, Congress authorized privateering, and hundreds of American privateers harried enemy commerce. They brought captured ships into US prize courts, where judges applied law to facts and distributed proceeds under statute. The system worked. It hurt British trade, raised insurance rates in London, and fed vital supplies to a young nation with a tiny navy. After the Civil War, the United States drifted away from privateering, not because it was unlawful, but because the US Navy grew strong enough to do the work directly and because most European powers joined an agreement in 1856 that abolished privateering among signatories. The United States did not join that agreement. We announced that we would respect its principles in practice, but we never surrendered the right our Constitution gives. That is the crucial legal point. The US never abolished letters of marque in domestic law and never bound itself by treaty to do so. The power remains.
What of the moral objection that this is privatized violence? Here clarity helps. Letters of marque are not blank checks. They are individualized commissions, circumscribed by statute and conditioned on bond, that precisely define who may do what to whom, where, and under what rules, with liability and forfeiture for violations. Historically, the law required humane treatment of captured crews and transparent judicial proceedings. Modern legislation can go further. Congress can limit the use of force to capture rather than kill, can confine operations to specific theaters, can prohibit collateral damage by setting risk rules, can require persistent telemetry and after action reporting, and can require US custody of all persons and property seized. In short, Congress can write a twenty first century version of the discipline prize law once supplied.
At this point a reader may wonder whether the Neutrality Act stands in the way. It forbids private expeditions from US soil against foreign states at peace with us. The answer is again straightforward. Neutrality statutes were written to constrain private actors who operate without federal authorization. A letter of marque is the very opposite. It is federal authorization. Once Congress authorizes specific action by commission, the underlying criminal prohibitions no longer apply, because the actors are not neutral adventurers. They are agents by license of the United States. This is why, during the Founding era, privateers were lawful and pirates were not. The badge of legality was public authorization and judicial supervision. That badge is what Congress can supply again, subject to strict conditions and targeted purposes.
Those targeted purposes are now clear. First, Nicolás Maduro. The US has charged him and his inner circle with narcoterrorism, money laundering, and drug trafficking. The US has posted a large monetary reward for his arrest and conviction and for key members of his regime. Rewards are lawful, but they do not authorize any use of force by citizens. That is why letters of marque matter. They convert reward into commission. Congress can pass a Maduro Marque and Reprisal Act that authorizes vetted American teams, subject to bond, oversight, and reporting, to locate, seize, and deliver Maduro and designated lieutenants to US custody for trial on the pending indictments. Those teams would be barred from operating on US soil, required to coordinate with US agencies, and bound to avoid harm to civilians. The point is not to invade Venezuela. The point is to turn a corrupt tyrant’s own networks, rivals, and guards into conduits of justice by placing a legal American bounty hunter behind every chink in the regime’s armor.
Second, cyber privateering. US law makes it illegal for private companies to hack back, even against clear foreign attackers. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, together with related statutes, rightly prevents vigilante cyber strikes that could spiral into escalation. Yet the current legal regime leaves US companies defenseless against agile criminal syndicates and state protected proxies who operate from safe havens. Congress can solve this by issuing cyber letters of marque to licensed firms. The commission would authorize active defense outside US networks against specified adversaries who have already attacked or are attacking US companies or agencies. The commission would define permissible actions, for example beaconing, trace back, deception, infrastructure takedown, data recovery, and counter exfiltration, and would forbid actions likely to cause civilian harm, such as attacks on hospitals or critical infrastructure unrelated to the adversary’s operations. It would require contemporaneous logging, agency notification, and judicial review after the fact. In other words, it would transform illicit hack back into accountable, targeted active defense by commission.
Is this fantasy? Not at all. Congress has seriously considered modern letters of marque more than once. After 9/11, a bill proposed issuing letters against bin Laden and al Qaeda, treating them like the pirates of an earlier age. In 2022, a House bill proposed letters of marque to enable the seizure of sanctioned Russian oligarch assets such as yachts and jets. In 2025, congressional analysis renewed attention to the doctrine’s textual footing and practical adaptation, noting that modern statutes have removed prize money but not Congress’s core power. These efforts fell short of enactment, but they demonstrate that the institution is a live option and that drafting modern controls is straightforward. It is a real policy choice, not a law school hypothetical.
Some will ask whether international law forbids it. The fair answer is that the United States is not bound by the 1856 declaration, and that the ban on privateering is not a universal rule of customary law that binds nonconsenting states to treat letters of marque as void. Nations today condemn mercenaries, but a commissioned privateer historically was not a mercenary. He was a citizen acting under the sovereign’s license, subject to public law. A cyber privateer under a modern commission would occupy the same posture. He would not be a soldier for hire in a foreign war. He would be an agent by license of the United States, subject to bond, supervised by US courts, and liable for excesses. That posture is consistent with the law of state responsibility. The United States would be responsible for the acts it commissions and would be positioned to supervise and correct them. That is not a bug. It is the mechanism of accountability.
Here a practical objection arises. What about escalation, diplomatic fallout, and reprisals. Those concerns are real, but they cut both ways. Maduro’s cartel state floods our hemisphere with cocaine and shelters criminals, and transnational hackers cripple hospitals, freeze pipelines, and steal billions from US companies and citizens every year. The absence of a credible, legal private force multiplies these harms, because the adversaries choose targets precisely where jurisdiction is weak and state capacity is stretched. Letters of marque deter by creating risk on the offender’s side. A tyrant who cannot trust his guards and bagmen becomes more cautious. A hacker who must budget for the loss of his infrastructure and the seizure of his wallet will think twice about waking a licensed adversary with a legal right to strike back. Deterrence is not certainty, but it changes the cost calculus of bad actors at a fraction of the cost of deploying carrier groups or standing up permanent cyber teams in every agency.
We must also be candid about design. Congress should create a small Office of Marque and Reprisal in the Department of Justice, jointly staffed with Defense and State, to vet applicants, set bonds, issue commissions, and oversee operations. The office should require proof of technical capability and responsible plans of operation, along with insurance or surety to cover potential liabilities. It should coordinate with existing bounty programs, such as Rewards for Justice, while making clear that force may be used only under commission. It should ensure that all captured persons are turned over immediately to US custody and that all seized assets undergo judicial condemnation in US courts, with fair distribution of proceeds and full transparency. Finally, it should sunset authorizations unless renewed, to prevent institutional drift.
Some may accuse this proposal of romanticizing the past. The charge fails. The point is not to cosplay as frigate captains. The point is to use a classical tool of American statecraft in a modern format against modern enemies. When the Republic was poor, letters of marque multiplied power while the Navy took shape. Today, the Navy is strong, but some adversaries live on terrain better patrolled by licensed entrepreneurs, smugglers turning state’s evidence, and world class security engineers, incentivized by reward, constrained by law, and proud to serve their country in a limited, disciplined way. The principle is constant. Private initiative, channeled by law, can serve public security.
Will X help, or will it spiral. Not necessarily. The risk of abuse is real if Congress writes sloppily. That is why Congress should start with narrow targets. Begin with Maduro and his indicted circle. Begin with ransomware gangs and state proxies that have already attacked US hospitals, schools, municipalities, and agencies. Set strict rules. Review outcomes quarterly in public reports. Renew only on proof of benefit. If the tool works, widen the aperture. If it does not, let it lapse. Prudence, not maximalism, is the conservative way to test old tools in new conditions.
Finally, a word about constitutional symbolism. The Framers placed letters of marque in the same clause as declarations of war for a reason. They understood that sovereignty includes controlled instruments of force beneath the threshold of war. To abandon that instrument forever, not by amendment but by neglect, is to unilaterally disarm a power that may be precisely tailored to our most common twenty first century harms. Privateering, properly reformed, is not a step toward lawlessness. It is a step away from it, a way to retake the gray zones where criminals and kleptocrats today operate with impunity.
President Trump ran and won on restoring order at home and strength abroad. Congress should join him in reviving a constitutional power that lets citizens share the burden of that order and strength, under law. The enemies of the United States, whether a narco tyrant who poisons our hemisphere or a hacker who bankrupts a hospital, should once again have to look over their shoulders for an American privateer with a lawful commission. The law allows it. Our adversaries deserve it. And the Republic will be safer for it.
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