The Lawfare Podcast
Episodes
Lawfare Archive: The Future of CFIUS
11 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From June 2, 2018: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) plays an essential role in advising the president on how to exerci...
The World Crisis and International Law
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
International law has been under significant stress in the last decade as a result of global populism, the rise of China, the war in Ukraine, and the ...
Alex Iftimie on the DOJ Disruption of the Hive Ransomware Group
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On January 26, the Department of Justice held a press conference to announce its months-long disruption campaign against the Hive ransomware group tha...
A Jan. 6 Committee Staffer on Social Media and the Insurrection
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Jan. 6 Committee released its final report on December 22, 2022—the capstone of a year and half of investigative work. But while the report is 8...
The Hacker's Mind
07 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How does computer hacking work? When is it good, and when is it bad? And what does it have to teach us about law, politics, and inequality? These are ...
It's Not Too Late to Deter China From Invading Taiwan
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the United States and the Philippines reached an agreement to expand U.S. military operations in the Philippines to deter China's increasin...
Chatter: M. Todd Bennett on the Secretive Story of the Glomar Explorer
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A sunken Soviet submarine. A secret CIA plan to lift it from the bottom of the ocean with a giant claw. And reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. It so...
Lawfare Archive: Rashawn Ray on Police Violence
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From June 3, 2020: Dr. Rashawn Ray is a David M. Rubenstein fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He's also an associate professo...
The CLOUD Act Five Years Later
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Next month will mark the five-year anniversary of the CLOUD Act, a foundational piece of legislation on cross-border data transfers and criminal inves...
“Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends,” with Linda Kinstler and Sam Moyn
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last December, a German court convicted a 97-year-old former Nazi camp secretary of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people in what the me...
ChatGPT Tells All
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
You've likely heard of ChatGPT, the chatbot from OpenAI. But you’ve likely never heard an interview with ChatGPT, much less an interview in which Ch...
Even More Classified Documents
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It seems like everyone has classified documents stashed away these days. First, it was Donald Trump, with the Justice Department investigation into do...
Roger Parloff with a Proud Boys Trial Update
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the last several days, Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been in court covering the Proud Boys trial on a live blog on Lawfare. The trial to...
Rational Security: The “M1 Abrams Accords” Edition
29 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Rational Security, Quinta and Scott were joined by special guest Michel Paradis to talk over the week's big national security news, inclu...
Lawfare Archive: Brad Moss on Presidential Power and Security Clearances
28 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From August 18, 2018: The President of the United States this week stripped the former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance in a dramat...
Gavin Wilde and Justin Sherman on Russia’s Information War and Regime Security
27 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Russia’s use of information warfare during the 2016 U.S. presidential election period focused attention on Russia’s weaponization of information i...
Finland’s NATO Bid, Interrupted
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Turkish President Erdoğan has thrown a giant wrench into Sweden's NATO membership bid after a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. This,...
Anna Bower on Judge McBurney's Deliberations
25 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County held a hearing on Tuesday to decide whether or not to release the Fulton County Special G...
Lynzy Billing on Afghanistan's Zero Unit Night Raids
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2019, investigative journalist and photographer Lynzy Billing went to Afghanistan to investigate a very personal story: her own past. In the proces...
When States Make Tech Policy
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tech policy reform occupies a strange place in Washington, D.C. Everyone seems to agree that the government should change how it regulates the technol...
Chatter: A Post-Presidency Done Right with Jean Becker
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For almost 25 years, until his death in November 2018, former president George H. W. Bush's chief of staff was Jean Becker. For event after event thro...
Lawfare Archive: The Past, Present and Future of Sovereign Immunity
21 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From December 11, 2020: This week, the Supreme Court returned once again to the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, ...
Biden's National Security Presidency So Far with Chris Whipple
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We have just ended Biden's first two years as president, and it's a great time to reflect back on the wild national security ride we’ve had. In fact...
Lifting the Veil on Fusion Centers
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of September 11, 2001, federal law enforcement agencies were caught flatfooted when they realized that they'd had the intel to prevent the...
Halkbank Hits the Supreme Court
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2019, the U.S. government took a step that it had never taken before. It brought criminal charges against a foreign state-owned bank, Turkiye Halk ...
How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy
17 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lawfare fellow in technology policy and law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud to talk about their new book, “Pegasus:...
Lawfare Archive: Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace on White Lies
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From August 17, 2019: Andrew Beck Grace and Chip Brantley are the creators of the NPR podcast audio documentary White Lies, which deals with the ...
Rational Security: The “Sincerest Form of Flattery” Edition
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Rational Security, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott were joined by their Lawfare colleagues senior editor Molly Reynolds and managi...
Lawfare Archive: General Michael Lehnert on Closing GITMO
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From March 21, 2015: This week, we invited Major General Michael Lehnert (Ret.), the first commander of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo...
Another Special Counsel and More Classified Documents
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Yesterday afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he has appointed a special counsel to investigate the revelations that documents ...
Boys Be Not Proud, with Roger Parloff
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's Proud Boys Trial Day at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, DC, when five leaders of the right wing paramilitary gang go on trial ...
Bryan Cunningham on a Federally Funded Backstop for the Cyber Insurance Ecosystem
11 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Various press reports have indicated that the Biden administration intends to release its cyber strategy in the coming weeks. The cyber strategy will ...
A Very Special Grand Jury Report
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
District Attorney of Fulton County Fani Willis has completed her special grand jury investigation of election tampering in 2020. The special purpose g...
Burning Down the House with Molly Reynolds
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Friday evening, we had no idea if Kevin McCarthy was going to be elected speaker or not, so Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with B...
Chatter: CIA, Congress, and the Art of Listening with Abigail Spanberger
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Abigail Spanberger, who represents Virginia's 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives, is one of the few members of Congress to hav...
Lawfare Archive: Insurrection at the Capitol
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From January 6, 2021: Today a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol following a rally at which the president spoke. Congressional efforts to cou...
A January 6 Anniversary
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s January 6—the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. There has been a lot of activity in those two years to account for what happened...
Shane Harris on the Nord Stream 2 Bombing
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It was a few months ago that something went boom under the sea and the Nord Stream 2 pipelines were severely damaged. Everyone assumed the perpetrator...
Lawfare’s Annual “Ask Us Anything”
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s our annual “Ask Us Anything” episode. This year, Lawfare editors answered some of your burning questions on the Secret Service, the durabil...
Can the United States Seize Russian Frozen Assets to Aid Ukraine?
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As Russia's unlawful war of aggression continues to inflict untold devastation on Ukraine, policymakers have begun to search for ways to support Ukrai...
Lawfare Archive: Congressional Overspeech with Josh Chafetz
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From June 9, 2020: High profile congressional hearings, like the 2015 Benghazi hearings, the 2019 Mueller Report hearings and most recently, the Ukrai...
Rational Security: The “Toodle 2020-Two Doo” Edition
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For their end-of-the-year episode of Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott took on a number of hard-hitting questions posed by you, the list...
Lawfare Archive: Content Moderation and the First Amendment for Dummies
31 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From March 11, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek ...
Lawfare Archive: The Myth of Artificial Intelligence
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From March 31, 2021: Alvaro Marañon sat down with Erik Larson, a computer scientist, tech entrepreneur and author of the new book, "The Myth of ...
An Investigation into Russian State Media and Disinformation
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On December 15, the New York Times published an article that detailed an investigation conducted by three of its reporters into how Russian state medi...
Why is Everyone Banning TikTok?
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few weeks, over a dozen U.S. states have banned TikTok from government devices, citing national security concerns. A similar bill was incl...
The Dangerous Mess at a Defense Tech Startup
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Founded in 2019, Rebellion Defense emerged as a darling of the defense startup industry, backed by powerful Pentagon insiders and high-profile investo...
Lawfare Archive: Jonathan Gould on Codifying Constitutional Norms
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From March 23, 2021: Our constitutional system involves the written document, plus two and a half centuries of judicial decisions interpreting it. But...
Chatter: Presidents Who Lose and Run Again with Troy Senik
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump is trying to do something rare—very rare—in American history: lose a presidential election, run again, and get elected to a second te...
Emergency Edition: The Jan. 6 Committee's Final Report
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Jan. 6 committee issued its final report Thursday night, and the team at Lawfare spent Friday reading through it and formulating some initial thou...
What to Make of the 2023 NDAA and Consolidated Appropriations Act
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few weeks, Congress has slowly brought two of its biggest pieces of annual omnibus legislation to the finish line: the National Defense ...
Tom Wheeler and Dave Simpson on Making 5G Secure
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Fifth generation, or 5G technology, promises to bring high-speed, low-latency wireless infrastructure necessary for the smart era. But moving from the...
The Beginning of the End of the Jan. 6 Committee
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday afternoon, the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, better known as the Jan. 6 committee, h...
The Political Crisis in Peru
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On December 7, Peruvian president Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve Peru’s Congress and implement a state of emergency. His dictatorship lasted o...
Chris Slobogin on Virtual Searches
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When we think about government surveillance, we often imagine something physical, like a police officer executing a search warrant on a house or car. ...
Chatter: Reassessing Reagan's Foreign Policy with Will Inboden
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ronald Reagan stands among the most consequential national security presidents in United States history, not least of which because his policies helpe...
Lawfare Archive: Trump's Money and National Security
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From September 30, 2020: On Sunday, September 27, the New York Times dropped bombshell new reporting on nearly two decades of Donald Trump's...
Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ralph Bunche, one of the most prominent Black Americans of the 20th century, was a legendary diplomat, who from his perch at the United Nations was a ...
Rick Hasen and Nate Persily on Replatforming Trump on Social Media
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On November 19, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk announced that he would be reinstating former President Donald Trump’s account on the platform—tho...
Riana Pfefferkorn on End-to-End Encryption for iPhone Backups to iCloud
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Apple made an announcement about some new security features it would be offering to users. One of those features involves users' ability to...
“Corrupt Obstruction” Before the D.C. Circuit
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday, the D.C. Circuit heard oral argument in the case United States v Fischer—one of the most important cases we've seen in a while relating t...
A Member of Meta’s Oversight Board Discusses the Board’s New Decision
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen shared a trove of internal company documents to the Wall Street Journal in 2021, some of the most dramatic ...
Rational Security 2.0: The “Dork at 4pm” Edition
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Rational Security 2.0, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were reunited after a few weeks apart to talk through the week's big national security new...
Lawfare Archive: Identifying and Exploiting the Weaknesses of White Supremacist Groups
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From April 14, 2021: A lot of people are expressing anxiety about white supremacist violent terrorism, yet in a new Brookings paper entitled "Identify...
Alan Rozenshtein Says the Slope Isn’t That Slippery
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday heard oral arguments in the case of Blassingame v. Trump, an appeal from a civil lawsuit against the form...
Dissecting the Oral Arguments in Moore v. Harper
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what may be the biggest case of the term: Moore v. Harper. In that case, North Carolina’s st...
Regulating AI with Alex Engler
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this fall, the Biden administration released what it called a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” a policy document that lays out a five...
J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
J. Edgar Hoover served as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years, from 1924 until 1972. Since his death, Hoover has become one o...
An 11th Circuit Mar-a-Lago Debrief
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Thursday afternoon, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in the amusingly captioned case Trump v. United States of America. The three-...
Chatter: Pandemics and Political Violence with Brian Michael Jenkins
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plagues periodically exact a heavy toll on human life—and much more. They devastate economies, exacerbate social disorder, shock governance systems,...
Lawfare Archive: Sophia Yan Reports from Quarantine in Beijing
03 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From April 28, 2020: Sophia Yan, a correspondent for the London Telegraph, joined Benjamin Wittes from Beijing where she is in coronavirus lockdown af...
Kurt Sanger on Cyber Conflict and the Law
02 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
U.S. Cyber Command was established on May 21, 2010, and is the second youngest unified combatant command after U.S. Space Command in the United States...
Sophia Yan on the China Protests
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Protests have broken out in China over the zero-Covid policy, over lockdowns, and even over the rule of newly appointed third-term leader Xi Jinping. ...
Scott R. Anderson on the Past, the Present, and the Future of the 2002 AUMF
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The 2002 Iraq AUMF authorized the invasion of Iraq and a variety of U.S. military activities since then, and a large bipartisan group of senators and ...
Neta Crawford on the Pentagon, Climate Change, and War
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The United States military was one of the first institutions in government to acknowledge the threat posed by climate change, as well as the science b...
Stephan Haggard on What’s Going on in North Korea
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's been an eventful several weeks on the Korean Peninsula, with a spree of missile tests, the sudden display of a daughter of North Korean leader Ki...
Rational Security 2.0: The “Get Off My Lawn” Edition
27 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Rational Security 2.0, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott welcomed Lawfare's dynamic associate editor duo, Katherine Pompilio an...
Lawfare Archive: Why is Government Hate Crimes Data So Terrible?
26 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From March 30, 2021: Anti-Asian violence in the United States seems to be on the rise. On March 16, a shooter killed eight people, six of whom were As...
Lawfare Archive: Law, Policy and Empire with Daniel Immerwahr
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From May 2, 2020: Most of us don’t think of United States history as an imperial history, but the facts are there. The law and policy surrounding we...
Lawfare Archive: The Past, Present and Future of Sovereign Immunity
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From December 11, 2020: This week, the Supreme Court returned once again to the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, ...
Roger Parloff with Oath Keeper Closing Arguments
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For the last 29 days, Roger Parloff, Lawfare senior editor, has been sitting in on the Oath Keeper trial in Washington. The trial is now done, the jur...
Alex de Waal on the Conflict in Ethiopia and Tigray
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this month, officials from the government of Ethiopia and representatives from the Tigray People's Liberation Front agreed to halt the two-yea...
Karen Sokol and Chris Callahan on Climate Justice: The Interplay of Science, Law, and Policy
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the weekend, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 27, went into overtime as nations came to an historic agreement to establish a ...
Chatter: Satellites, Space Debris, and Hollywood with Aaron Bateman
20 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Satellites have held a special place in military planning and in spy fiction alike for more than half a century. Both domains ended up devoting much a...
Lawfare Archive: Stephan Haggard on North Korea and the Tactical Divide
19 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From September 23, 2017: The escalating tension between North Korea and the United States has risen to an unprecedented level. Earlier this month, Ste...
Emergency Edition: Another Special Counsel Investigation of Donald Trump
19 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier today, in a surprise announcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to lead two ongoing federal investigations of ...
Rebecca Herman on ‘Cooperating with the Colossus’
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the U.S. military maintains around 800 bases in installations around the world with around 75 of those in Latin America, including perhaps its ...
Jed Purdy on Democratic Renewal
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
American democracy might look healthier in light of last week's midterms, but there's still a lot of skepticism across the political spectrum about ho...
Matt Tait on Cybersecurity in Ukraine
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Tait is a cybersecurity expert who has worked both in the private sector and for the British government at GCHQ, the UK's intelligence, security,...
Sophia Yan Explains How to Become a Dictator
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sophia Yan, pianist for the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, is also The Telegraph’s Beijing correspondent—or at least, she was until the ot...
Georgii Dubynskyi on Ukraine’s Cybersecurity
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Georgii Dubynskyi is the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. It is a ministry set up to modernize government services for Ukrainians...
Rational Security 2.0: The “Needle is BACK” Edition
13 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Brookings Institution Middle East expert Natan Sachs to talk over the week's big (non-U.S. election)...
Lawfare Archive: Portland, DHS, and the Rule of Law
12 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From September 23, 2020: Bobby Chesney sat down with former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Texas Congressman Chip Roy as part of the 2...
Lawfare Archive: Nate Persily Asks Whether Democracy Can Survive the Internet
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Due to the Veterans Day holiday, our team is taking a break and bringing you a Lawfare Archive episode that we think you’ll find timely given some e...
The Midterms . . . So Far
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Tuesday, November 8, Americans finished casting their ballots in the midterm elections. Given that the president’s party typically performs poorl...
Why Did DHS Compile an Intelligence Report about Lawfare’s Editor in Chief?
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 2020, Lawfare’s editor in chief Benjamin Wittes found out that he had been the subject of intelligence reports compiled by the Depa...
Decentralized Social Media and the Great Twitter Exodus
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s Election Day in the United States—so while you wait for the results to come in, why not listen to a podcast about the other biggest story obs...
The Government Rests; Roger Parloff Does Not
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The government has rested its case in chief in the criminal seditious conspiracy trial of Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and several other members of the Oa...
Chatter: Cryptography in History and in the Movies with Vince Houghton
06 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Although codemaking and codebreaking often receive less attention in the public imagination than swashbuckling HUMINT operations and ingenious spy gad...
Lawfare Archive: The Truth About Conspiracy Theories
05 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From April 8, 2021: If you’re listening to this podcast, the odds are that you’ve heard a lot about QAnon recently—and you might even have read ...