The Lawfare Podcast

John Gleeson on ‘The Gotti Wars’

29 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

John Gotti was the boss of the Gambino Crime Family in New York City and one of America's most notorious mobsters. Nicknamed “The Teflon Don” for ...

The Corporate Law Behind Musk v. Twitter

28 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You’ve likely heard that Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter… and that he is now trying to get out of buying Twitter… and that at first he wanted to...

The Secret Service Text Crisis

27 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The United States Secret Service is in the spotlight once again—this time because of deleted texts for the time surrounding January 6, 2021—and th...

Derek Muller on Moore v. Harper and Independent State Legislature Doctrine

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of its past term, the Supreme Court took up the case of Moore v. Harper, a challenge to North Carolina State Supreme Court rulings on elect...

Adkins and Alperovitch Talk About the Cyber Safety Review Board and Log4j

25 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Cyber Safety Review Board issued its first major report this month, which focused on the Log4j disaster. So, what is the Cyber Safety Review Board...

Lawfare Archive: The Forgotten War Remembered

24 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From July 20, 2020: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. Though often called the "Forgotten War," the Korean War h...

Lawfare No Bull: Day Eight of the Jan. 6 Committee Hearings

24 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lawfare No Bull is a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. This episode features audio from the J...

Jan. 6 Hearings, Day Eight Debrief

23 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The final hearing in the spree of hearings the Jan. 6 committee has put on this summer took place Thursday evening during prime time. It focused on Do...

The Senate's Proposal for Electoral Count Act Reform

22 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The false claims of election fraud and other controversies that followed the 2020 election brought to light a number of frailties in the United States...

Online Speech and Section 230 After Dobbs

21 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade, the impact of the decision ...

Ryan Scoville on the Role of Subnational Diplomacy in China’s Pursuit of U.S. Technology

20 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has cooperated extensively with U.S. state governments on economic issues, replacing Canada as the c...

Swedish and Finnish Security Awaiting NATO Membership

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In recent weeks, we've brought you information and insight about Swedish and Finnish attitudes toward NATO membership, and about Turkey's machinations...

What's up with the Fulton County Special Grand Jury

18 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this month, the Fulton County special grand jury investigating potential criminal interference into Georgia's 2020 elections subpoenaed member...

Live From Ukraine: Katya Savchenko Survived Bucha—and Wrote About It

17 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

#LiveFromUkraine is an experimental project hosted on Twitter Spaces by Ben Wittes, with the goal of interviewing a diverse lineup of guests to educat...

Lawfare Archive: An NSI Conversation on Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and U.S. Policy

16 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From April 9, 2019: On this episode of the Lawfare Podcast, our friends at the National Security Institute at George Mason University came over to hav...

Elites in the Making and Breaking of Foreign Policy

15 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Global crises of the last 20 years have led to a backlash against elites of all kinds, but those same crises often lay bare just how much power they s...

When Doctors Spread Disinformation

14 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve talked a lot on this show about how falsehoods about the coronavirus are spread and generated. For this e...

The Jan. 6 Committee, Day Seven

13 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Yesterday, July 12, the January 6 committee held its seventh in a series of prominent hearings unveiling the findings of its investigation to the publ...

How Mercenary Hackers Sway Litigation Battles

12 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The “hackers for hire” industry continues to grow unbothered. Reports in recent years have uncovered details about governments and officials using...

The Paradox of Democracy

11 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We often use the terms democracy and liberal democracy interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. Democracy means majority rule and public parti...

Rational Security: The "Life After Cassidy" edition

10 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rational Security is a weekly roundtable podcast featuring Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein. It's a lively, irreverent discus...

Lawfare Archive: John Sipher on Spy Swaps

09 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From January 8th, 2019: On this episode of the Lawfare podcast, David Priess sat down with John Sipher to discuss the past, present and future history...

Aaron Friedberg on "Getting China Wrong"

08 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, experts and analysts have written in great detail about the importance of liberalization and its role in promoting democracy and other we...

What We Talk About When We Talk About Algorithms

07 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Algorithms! We hear a lot about them. They drive social media platforms and, according to popular understanding, are responsible for a great deal of w...

Turkey, NATO and Alliance Membership

06 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this year, Finland and Sweden applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But both of their applications were held up, due to an o...

How the Police Contributed to the January 6th Insurrection

05 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Many individual police officers acted heroically on January 6th. But the successful attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, seeking to disrupt the c...

Lawfare No Bull: Day 6, House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

04 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and po...

Lawfare No Bull: Day 5, House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

03 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and po...

Chatter: Secret Service Dilemmas and Training with Jon Wackrow

02 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chatter, a podcast from Lawfare, features weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. This week...

Memorializing Babyn Yar after the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When a Russian missile recently struck a TV tower in Kyiv, near Babyn Yar, the site of Nazi mass murders during the Holocaust, some saw the attack as ...

The Jan. 6 Committee Takes On the Big Lie

30 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is midway through a blockbuster series of hearings exploring Donald Trump’s efforts to ove...

The Jan. 6 Committee, Day Six

29 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It was a blockbuster day at the Jan. 6 committee hearings. Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified in riv...

Andrea Matwyshyn and DOJ’s new CFAA Charging Policy

28 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On May 19, the Department of Justice announced a new policy concerning how it will charge cases under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, the p...

All About Legionnaires

27 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

An interesting subplot of the Russian invasion and subsequent war in Ukraine has been the rush of fighters from other countries to join the Ukrainian ...

Chatter: Misremembering Watergate and Jan. 6 with Tim Naftali

26 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chatter, a podcast from Lawfare, features weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security.This week ...

Lawfare Archive: Niall Ferguson on Catastrophes and How to Manage Them

25 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From May 4, 2021: 2020 was a remarkable year in so many ways, not least of which was the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects. Why did so many countries ...

The Jan. 6 Committee Hearings, Day Five

24 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It was Day Five of the House select committee hearings on Jan. 6. This time, the committee was focused on the president's efforts to pressure, and one...

Rebroadcast: The Most Intense Online Disinformation Event in American History

23 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve been watching the hearings convened by the House select committee on Jan. 6, you’ve seen a great deal about how the Trump campaign gener...

The Jan. 6 Committee Hearings, Day Four

22 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Tuesday was day four of the Jan. 6 committee hearings, this time on Donald Trump's efforts to coax, cajole, and threaten state election officials and ...

Byman and Mir Debate al-Qaeda

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Asfandyar Mir of the U.S. Institute of Peace and Daniel Byman of Lawfare, Brookings, and Georgetown, are both analysts of al-Qaeda and terrorist group...

Lawfare No Bull: Day 3, House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

20 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and po...

Lawfare No Bull: Hearing Two: United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

19 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and po...

Lawfare No Bull: United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

18 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re bringing you an episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy....

The Jan. 6 Hearings, Day Three

17 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On Thursday, June 16, the Jan. 6 committee held its third day of public hearings. Afterwards, the Lawfare team convened once again in Twitter Spaces f...

Defamation, Disinformation, and the Depp-Heard Trial

16 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you loaded up the internet or turned on the television somewhere in the United States over the last two months, it’s been impossible to avoid new...

Allies: How America Failed its Partners in Afghanistan

15 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On Monday, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion titled, “Allies: How America failed its partners in Afghanistan.” The event feature...

The Jan. 6 Hearings, Day Two

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Recorded almost immediately after the Jan. 6 committee conducted its second public hearing, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare’...

Roger Parloff Talks Madison Cawthorn, Donald Trump, and Section 3 of the 14th Amendment

13 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been following in a way that just about nobody else has the litigation to keep people off ballots under Sectio...

Chatter: Private Sector Intelligence with Lewis Sage-Passant

12 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When the term "intelligence" comes up regarding an organization, most of us immediately think of government institutions. And there's a good reason fo...

Day One of the Jan. 6 Committee Hearings

11 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On Thursday, the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack held the first in a series of public hearings that they will use to p...

Oleksandra Matviychuk on Documenting Russian War Crimes in Ukraine

10 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Oleksandra Matviychuk is the head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. She founded the organization to work on internal reform in her own cou...

The Supreme Court Blocks the Texas Social Media Law

09 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On May 31, by a five-four vote, the Supreme Court blocked a Texas law from going into effect that would have sharply limited how social media companie...

An Empirical Analysis of Targeted Killing

08 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What does the American public actually know concretely about the effectiveness of U.S. drone strikes? Jack Goldsmith sat down with Mitt Regan, a profe...

Public Choice Theory and American Foreign Policy

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What, if any, theory of international relations best explains U.S. foreign policy outcomes? Why, for example, did President Biden withdraw American fo...

Lindsey Polley on the Vulnerabilities Equities Process

06 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The business of offensive cyber operations and intelligence gathering increasingly requires the military and intelligence community to exploit network...

Chatter: The Secrets of Gay Washington with Jamie Kirchick

05 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Chatter, Shane Harris talks with journalist Jamie Kirchick about his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Kir...

Lawfare Archive: Casey Newton on Four Years of Platform Chaos

04 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From October 29, 2020: On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Casey ...

Are Big Sanctions Coming for a Chinese Tech Company?

03 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In May, news came out that the U.S. government was thinking of putting the Chinese video surveillance company Hikvision on the Treasury Department’s...

Bringing in the Content Moderation Auditors

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As transparency reporting about content moderation enforcement has become standard across the platform industry, there's been growing questions about ...

China’s NFT Plans for Digital Control

01 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, have captured the attention of thousands over the past few weeks and months. This technology's use has encompassed vario...

Klein and Cordero on the Latest FISA Numbers

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A few weeks ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the latest FISA transparency data. It was notable in at least two major ...

Chatter: The Movie "Casablanca" in Myth and Reality with Meredith Hindley

30 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chatter is a podcast hosted by David Priess and Shane Harris that features in-depth discussions with fascinating people at the creative edges of natio...

Rational Security 2.0: The “Walk of Shane” Edition

29 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rational Security is a weekly roundtable podcast featuring Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein. It's a lively, irreverent discus...

Lawfare Archive: Bill Banks on ‘Soldiers on the Homefront’

28 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From November 19, 2016: At this week's Hoover Book Soiree, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Bill Banks, Professor of Law at Syracuse University and the F...

Phil Klay on Citizenship in an Age of Endless Invisible War

27 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Bryce Klehm sat down with Phil Klay, the author of the new book, “Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless Invisible War.” Klay is a win...

Social Media Platforms and the Buffalo Shooting

26 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On May 14, a shooter attacked a supermarket in a historically Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, killing ten people and wounding three. The stre...

Finnish and Swedish Perspectives on NATO Membership

25 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Finland and Sweden have made the historic choice to apply to NATO, but there's a lot of misunderstanding out there about the context for these decisio...

Kristen Eichensehr on the Cyberwar that Wasn't in Ukraine

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For years, Russia has both officially and unofficially used cyber tools to ruthlessly advance its international agenda. For this reason, many expected...

The Collapse of the Afghan Security Forces

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known by its initials as SIGAR, released an interim report last week on the reasons for ...

Rational Security: The “Shameless Self Promotion” Edition

22 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rational Security is Lawfare’s weekly roundtable podcast, featuring Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein. It's a lively and irr...

Lawfare Archive: Elizabeth Neumann and Kathleen Belew on White Power Violence

21 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From September 21, 2020: Elizabeth Neumann served as the assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the Department of Homeland S...

UAPs, UFOs, WTF?

20 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Congress this week held its first public hearing on unidentified flying objects in more than 50 years, as the House Intelligence Committee’s Subcomm...

The Platforms versus Texas in the Supreme Court

19 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On May 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit allowed an aggressive new Texas law regulating social media to go into effect. The law...

Catching Up with the Steve Bannon Contempt Prosecution

18 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In October 2021, the House of Representatives voted to find Trump associate Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress after Bannon refused to comply with a...

Allies

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Bryce Klehm is an associate editor at Lawfare. Max Johnston is a creative producer at Goat Rodeo. Together, they are the creators of Lawfare and Goat ...

Oil Wars in Myth and Reality, with Emily Meierding

16 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the past couple of months, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there have been several claims that Russia was invading its neighbor to seize...

The Aftermath, Episode 3: Congress Responds

15 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For today's episode, the team at Lawfare decided to cross-post the latest episode of The Aftermath, a narrative podcast series from Lawfare and Goat R...

Lawfare Archive: Biden Announces a Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan

14 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From April 16, 2021: On Wednesday, President Biden announced a full withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, ...

A Scandal at the UN

13 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

David Fahrenthold is a reporter who works for the New York Times. In his capacity as a reporter at the Washington Post, he reported on misdeeds within...

When Governments Turn Off the Internet

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Internet blackouts are on the rise. Since 2016, governments around the world have fully or partially shut down access to the internet almost 1000 time...

Dmytro Kuzubov on Doing Journalism in Kharkiv During the War

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dmytro Kuzubov is the editor-in-chief of Lyuk Media in Kharkiv, Ukraine. It is a publication that used to be devoted to the culture and people and und...

Lawfare’s Research on Trusting Technology

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Modern life relies on digital technology, but with that reliance comes vulnerability. How can we trust our technology? How can we be sure that it does...

Sejal Zota on ICE Tracking Technologies

09 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Many individuals seeking asylum or other forms of immigration relief in the U.S. are subject to a program run by Immigration Customs Enforcement, or I...

Lawfare No Bull: Matt Olsen Talks Cyber Threats and the ODNI's Latest Report

08 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today on Lawfare No Bull: On April 29, at the 2022 Verify Conference hosted by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Aspen Institute, journ...

Lawfare Archive: Bruce Riedel on Al Qaeda's Many Faces

07 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From August 5, 2012: Ritika Singh sat down with Bruce Riedel, one of the country’s leading experts on Al Qaeda. Riedel’s long and impressive ...

Ensuring the Continuity of Congress

06 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The COVID-19 pandemic, disputed elections and threats against election officials have brought back into focus a set of questions first raised for many...

Pay Attention to Europe’s Digital Services Act

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

While the U.S. Congress has been doing hearing after hearing with tech executives that include a lot of yelling and not much progress, Europe has been...

Catarina Buchatskiy on The Shadows Project

04 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Catarina Buchatskiy was—until a couple of months ago—a student at Stanford University. For the past couple of years, she has run The Shadows Proje...

Cybersecurity and Ukraine at Verify 2022

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hosted by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Cyber Initiative and Aspen Digital, Verify 2022 brings together journalists and cyber and tech poli...

What the War in Ukraine Means for China’s Global Strategy

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is putting one of its closest partners, China, in a difficult position. Just weeks before the conflict began, ...

Rational Security 2.0: The “In Lieu of Q” Edition

01 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Rational Security, Alan Rozenshtein and Scott R. Anderson were joined by Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett and law profes...

Lawfare Archive: Daniel Byman on Al Qaeda and its Affiliates

30 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From August 22, 2012: This is the second in a series of interviews Ritika Singh is doing with scholars around town who have non-legal expertise that b...

Understanding the Legal Decision that Ended the Mask Mandate and What Comes Next

29 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, a federal district judge in Florida named Kathryn Mizelle struck down the Biden administration's policy requiring that individuals wear mas...

The Professionalization of Content Moderation

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek spoke to Charlotte Willner, who has been working in conte...

Finlandization’s Harsh Realities, with Antti Ruokonen

27 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Finlandization is a troubled concept. It is generally used to describe the attempt by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to hold Finland in a positi...

Vladislav Davidzon with a Dispatch from Odessa

26 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Vladislav Davidzon is a journalist and author. He is a New Yorker, a Parisian and an Odessa resident. He's the author of “From Odessa with Love: Pol...

Emily Hoge on the Strange Evolution of Russian Veterans Organizations

25 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Hoge is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, writing a dissertation on Russian veterans groups from the Afghan war and the...

Chatter: Spy Satire with Alex Finley

24 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Chatter, a podcast hosted by David Priess and Shane Harris that features in-depth discussions with fascinating people at the creati...

Lawfare Archive: Bruce Riedel on the Lessons From Afghanistan

23 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From July 12, 2014: As the election crisis in Afghanistan comes to a head, all eyes—or some of them, anyway—are once again on the future of Afghan...

Ukraine and the Future of National Security Law

22 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this live recording of the Lawfare Live event, “Ukraine and the Future of National Security Law,” Natalie Orpett moderated a panel of experts, ...