The Lawfare Podcast
Episodes
The January 6 Insurrection One Year Later
10 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week marked one year since the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill, in which a mob of Trump supporters attacked Congress in an effort to stop the certi...
Lawfare Archive: The Soleimani Strike and Its Fallout
09 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From January 3, 2020: The American drone strike last night that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, is a seismic event i...
The Aftermath, Episode 1: Day Zero, Ground Zero
08 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We're bringing you the first episode of Lawfare’s new narrative series, The Aftermath, which we released this past Thursday on the one-year annivers...
Roger Parloff on the Conspirators
07 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has a piece out on Lawfare, entitled “The Conspirators: The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers on Jan. 6.” It is an e...
Content Moderation After January 6
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One year ago, a violent mob broke into the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the electoral vote, aiming to overturn Joe Biden’s victory and k...
The Soleimani Strike Two Years Later
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Two years ago this week, the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani, was killed in an American strike. At the tim...
Christina Koningisor on Secrecy Creep
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Government secrecy is pervasive when it comes to national security and foreign affairs, and it’s becoming more and more common for state and even lo...
The Annual “Ask Us Anything” Episode
03 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As is our annual tradition, we're bringing you the Lawfare “Ask Us Anything” episode. You, the listeners, sent over your questions, and we, the La...
Lawfare Archive: Afshon Ostovar on Iran's Revolutionary Guard
02 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From February 11, 2020: Afshon Ostovar is the associate chair for research and an assistant professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgr...
Lawfare Archive: A Speech on Sextortion by Mona Sedky
01 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From April 22, 2017: Over the past year, Lawfare has expended a great deal of ink on the problem of sextortion, a form of online sexual...
Lawfare Archive: Missy Cummings on Drones, Drones, Drones
31 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From March 3, 2012: Missy Cummings, Director of the Humans and Automation Laboratory and a professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, sat ...
Rational Security 2.0: The “Choosy Spies Choose JIF” Edition
30 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Lawfare Podcast isn't Lawfare’s only podcast offering. Each week, Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecic, Alan Rozenshtein and a special guest sit do...
Chatter, with Rolling Stone's Noah Shachtman
29 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're giving you something a bit different for today's Lawfare Podcast. It's an episode of Lawfare’s new podcast, Chatter, in which Shane Harris or ...
“The Lazarus Heist” with Jean Lee and Geoff White
28 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Despite being isolated from much of the rest of the international community, North Korea has emerged as an unexpected powerhouse in the realm of cyber...
The Fall of the Soviet Union, with Vladislav Zubok
27 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. To discuss the collapse and its implications, Bryce Klehm sat down ...
Lawfare Archive: Surveillance Reform After Snowden
26 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From October 17, 2015: Last week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted Ben, along with Laura Donohue of Georgetown Law ...
Lawfare Archive: Jonna Mendez on 'The Moscow Rules'
25 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From July 28, 2019: In the 1950s and 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency had a major problem. The streets of Moscow were a virtually impossible ope...
Lawfare Archive: Russia Breaking Bad and the Future of the International Order
24 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From August 23, 2014: News broke yesterday that the Russian military has moved artillery units inside of Ukraine and that Russian troops are ...
Working Toward Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, a group of academics and free expression advocates convened in Santa Clara, California, for a workshop. They emerged with the Santa Cla...
The JFK Assassination Documents, with Gerald Posner and Mark Zaid
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
President Biden recently authorized the release of almost 1,500 documents related to the JFK assassination. But ten times that number still have had t...
Merrick Garland, Ed Levi and the Power of Speech
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Merrick Garland has been getting a lot of criticism these days, and a lot of it is less than entirely fair, or at least it's premature. But Andrew Ken...
The Largest Counterterrorism Investigation in History, with Aki Peritz
20 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2006, al-Qaeda-trained operatives planned and nearly executed an operation to destroy passenger aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean. Because it was di...
Lawfare Archive: Jefferson Powell on ‘Targeting Americans: The Constitutionality of U.S. Drone War’
19 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From May 21, 2016: Four years ago, Anwar al Awlaki—an American citizen—was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen, marking the first targeted...
Lawfare Archive: Bruce Schneier on 'Click Here to Kill Everybody'
18 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From September 18, 2018: Security technologist Bruce Schneier's latest book, "Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected...
Peng Shuai
17 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On November 2, the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai publicly accused on social media a former vice-premier of China of sexual assault. Chinese authoriti...
Free the Data!
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this show, we’ve discussed no end of proposals for how to regulate online platforms. But there’s something many of those proposals are missing:...
The D.C. Circuit Rejects Trump
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last week issued a surprisingly under-discussed opinion in the case of Trump v. Thompson, which involves the product...
Caroline Rose on Syria’s Role in the Captagon Trade
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Syria’s decade-long civil war has left the state and economy shells of their former selves. But a new industry is stepping in to fill the void: the ...
Bart Gellman on Trump's Next Coup
13 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Barton Gellman is a long-time national security reporter for the Washington Post, for The Atlantic and elsewhere. His latest article and Atlantic cove...
Lawfare Archive: Amanda Tyler on “Habeas Corpus in Wartime”
12 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From May 15, 2018: In her new book, "Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay," Amanda Tyler presents a comprehensive acco...
Lawfare Archive: Matt Olsen on the Future of Section 702
11 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From June 3, 2017: With the impending sunset of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in December 2017, debate is heating up over h...
Uncovering a Secret U.S. Airstrike in Syria
10 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On March 18, 2019, the U.S. conducted an airstrike in Baghuz, Syria, as part of its battle against the Islamic State. Two bombs were dropped killing d...
Content Moderation’s Original “Decider”
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We talk a lot about how content moderation involves a lot of hard decisions and trade-offs—but at the end of the day, someone has to make a decision...
Making Sense of the Crisis in Ethiopia
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the past year, the country of Ethiopia has been embroiled in a brutal civil war. At the center of it is Tigray, a region that has played a promine...
COVID and Intelligence with Eric Swalwell, Julie Gerberding and Matt Berrett
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
COVID-19 has shown us all that pandemics aren’t just a public health issue, but a national security one as well. Are America’s national secur...
Trouble Brewing in Ukraine
06 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's a scary time along the Ukrainian-Russian border these days. Russian troops are amassing in alarming numbers, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Ze...
Lawfare Archive: Bob Bauer on Trump and the White House Counsel
05 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From May 27, 2017: Amidst the hurricane of news coming out of the White House in recent weeks, one question has surfaced again and again: why isn't Wh...
Lawfare Archive: A House Divided
04 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From May 6, 2017: Three months into the Trump presidency, where does the relationship between the President and the intelligence community stand? Dona...
Orin Kerr and Asaf Lubin on Apple v. NSO Group
03 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Late last month, Apple sued the Israeli technology firm NSO Group under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That's the federal law that criminalizes com...
How Zoom Thinks About Content Moderation
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with some of the people behind t...
Trump and His Intelligence Briefings with David Priess
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The CIA has opened a window into former president Donald Trump's always interesting and frequently contentious relationship with the intelligence comm...
Cyber Privateering
30 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cybersecurity is the responsibility of everyone. A cyber attack is no longer confined to the digital realm and can have real impact on various industr...
Timothy Frye on ‘Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia’
29 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dominic Cruz Bustillos sat down with Timothy Frye, the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy within the Department of Political ...
Lawfare Archive: HASC Hearing on Outside Perspectives on the AUMF
28 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From February 28, 2015: On Thursday of this week, Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes and Bobby Chesney, along with General Jack Keane, appeared bef...
Lawfare Archive: Adam Segal on ‘The Hacked World Order’
27 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From April 2, 2016: This week, Adam Segal of the Council on Foreign Relations joins Jack Goldsmith at a Hoover Book Soiree for a discus...
The Soviet Perspective on the Nuremberg Trials
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last month marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Nuremberg Trials. To better understand the trials and their legacy, Bryce Klehm sat down with...
Rational Security: The "Nothing To Be Thankful For" Edition
25 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For Thanksgiving, we’re bringing you something a little different—an episode of Rational Security, our light, conversational show about national s...
David Kaye on How We Address the Global Spyware Problem
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On November 3, the Commerce Department added four foreign companies to what is often referred to as the “Entity List,” for engaging in activities ...
Lincoln and the Broken Constitution
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Goldsmith sat down with Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University, to discuss his new book,”The Broken Constit...
Mary Sarotte on ‘Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate’
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Vindman sat down with Dr. Mary Sarotte, the author of the new book, “Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalem...
Lawfare Archive: Avril Haines, Eric Rosenbach, and David Sanger on U.S. Offensive Cyber Operations
21 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From May 28, 2019: From the Washington Post’s February report that U.S. Cyber Command took a Russian disinformation operation offline on the day of ...
Lawfare Archive: The Future of Somalia
20 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From August 9, 2014: Washington was abuzz this week as more than 50 African leaders were in town for the first U.S.-Africa Summit. On August 8, H...
Fiona Hill on ‘There Is Nothing for You Here’
19 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Vindman sat down with Dr. Fiona Hill, the Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy pro...
The Facebook Oversight Board, One Year On
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been roughly a year since the Facebook Oversight Board opened its doors for business—and while you may mostly remember the board from its dec...
Hannah Bloch-Wehba on Police Transparency
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Bloch-Wehba is an associate professor of law at the Texas A&M School of Law. She’s also the author of a recent Lawfare post, entitled “...
Chattering with Shane and David
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lawfare has a new podcast: Chatter! Hosted by none other than David Priess, publisher of Lawfare and the Lawfare Institute's chief operating officer, ...
Roger Parloff on the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Prosecutions
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Roger Parloff is a senior editor at Lawfare and the author of the recent article, “What Do—and Will—the Criminal Prosecutions of the Jan. 6 Capi...
Lawfare Archive: Joel Brenner on America the Vulnerable
14 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From February 20, 2012: Joel Brenner, who served as inspector general of the National Security Agency and as the national counterintelligence exe...
Lawfare Archive: Jameel Jaffer, Bob Litt, and William Banks Debate FISA
13 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From November 22, 2014: Earlier this month, the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security held its “24th Annual Review of the Field of Nat...
Michel Paradis on Majid Khan
12 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Majid Khan pled guilty in a military commission at Guantanamo eight years ago, but he has been back in the news of late. At a sentencing hearing at Gu...
Video Games Cannot Escape the Content Moderation Reckoning
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Content moderation in video games turns out to be just as much of a bummer as content moderation everywhere else, perhaps even more so. This week on A...
Susan Landau and Ross Anderson on the Going Dark Debate and the Risks of Client-Side Scanning
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The “going dark” debate, which concerns how society and the technology industry should address the challenges that law enforcement faces in invest...
America, China and the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Goldsmith sat down with John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science department at the Univ...
Ambassador Doug Silliman on What's Next in U.S.-Iraq Relations
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The complicated relationship between Iraq and the United States is once again approaching a crossroads. Parliamentary elections held in Iraq last mont...
Lawfare Archive: Kenneth Anderson on Living with the UN
07 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From June 7, 2012: We don't review our own books here on Lawfare—not even if we happen to be Lawfare's book review editor. But Benjamin Wi...
Lawfare Archive: The Case For and Against a FISA Advocate
06 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From June 14, 2014: At the 2014 Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, a panel of experts debated the pros and cons of adding outside lawyers...
Abigail Spanberger and Elissa Slotkin from CIA to Congress
05 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Only twice in history have two women who served as CIA officers been elected to Congress. The first time was 2018, and the second was 2020—both of t...
What Is Integrity in Social Media?
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There’s been a lot of news recently about Facebook, and a lot of that news has focused on the frustration of employees assigned to the platform’s ...
The Metaverse and Its Discontents
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Facebook unveiled its new corporate brand—Meta—and its corresponding vision for a new immersive world called the metaverse. The rebrand...
Shane Harris on the ODNI’s Coronavirus Assessment
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has issued a declassified assessment of the origins of the coronavirus, and it’s a bit of a mudd...
Mark Nevitt and Erin Sikorsky on Climate Change and National Security
01 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the Department of Defense, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security and Nationa...
Lawfare Archive: Sue Biniaz on the Trump Administration and International Climate Policy
31 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From March 27, 2019: From 1989 to early 2017, Sue Biniaz was the lead climate lawyer and a climate negotiator at the State Department. She was also a ...
Lawfare Archive: Mary McCord and Jason Blazakis on Criminalizing Domestic Terrorism
30 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From January 5, 2019: The murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville in 2017 and other recent events have drawn in the public discourse to the fact th...
Who Is Éric Zemmour?
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a presidential election coming up in France in April 2022. In a surprise to many, recent polls show that the occupant of second place behind t...
The SEC and the Facebook Papers
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, we’re talking about a subject that doesn’t come up much on the Law...
Somalia, Al-Shabab, and the United States, with Julian Barnes and Emilia Columbo
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In November 2020, a raid against terrorists in Somalia led to the death of an American working for the CIA Special Activities Center. This, after the ...
Katrina Northrop on the Evergrande Debt Crisis
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Evergrande is a massive Chinese real estate company that has found itself with more than $300 billion in liability and no real idea of how to get out ...
Pete Strzok on Declining FISAs and Human Source Handling
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Pete Strzok is a former counter-intelligence official at the FBI. He is the author most recently of an article in Lawfare entitled, “The Sussmann In...
Lawfare Archive: Rep. Adam Schiff on the Role of Congress in Protecting Liberal Democracy
24 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From March 25, 2017: Between leading the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's first open hearing on Russian election interference on Mon...
Lawfare Archive: Paul Lewis on Not Closing Guantanamo
23 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From February 25, 2017: Under the oversight of Paul Lewis, the Department of Defense’s Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure under the Obama administ...
Container Shipping and Supply Chain Delays with Gregg Easterbrook
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ports in many countries are experiencing congestion. For weeks now, there have been reports that there will be delays in many common products, and peo...
Twitter’s Head of Public Policy Explains the Company’s Advice to Regulators
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Nick Pickles...
Everything You Wanted to Know About Executive Privilege But Were Afraid to Ask
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan David Shaub is an assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky. He is a former OLC attorney and the author of a series of recent ...
Carissa Hessick on Jan. 6 Plea Bargains
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Around a hundred people have already pleaded guilty to crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection on the Capitol. What should we make...
Liza Goitein and Bob Loeb on State Secrets
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It has been a decade since the Supreme Court decided on a case involving the state secrets privilege, a common law rule that allows the government to ...
Lawfare Archive: Coronavirus, Federalism and Supply Chains: A Case Study
17 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From April 25, 2020: We've covered this novel coronavirus from many angles, focusing on the disaster response issues that make up part of national sec...
Lawfare Archive: Deterring Russian Cyber Intrusions
16 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From December 24, 2016: Whatever the President-elect might say on the matter, the question of Russian interference in the presidential election is not...
What's Up With the January 6 Investigation?
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The January 6 investigating committee in the House is busily issuing subpoenas, collecting documents and negotiating with witnesses for depositions. I...
Finstas, Falsehoods and the First Amendment
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s recent testimony before Congress has set in motion a renewed cycle of outrage over the company’s practices...
What's Going on in Afghanistan?
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bryce Klehm sat down with Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson, to discuss th...
Martijn Rasser on CIA and Emerging Technology
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, CIA director William Burns issued a statement with a number of organizational changes and other initiatives regarding the CIA. Most media a...
Adam Klein and Benjamin Wittes on FISA
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General released a report on the FBI's mishandling of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance...
Lawfare Archive: Maria Ressa on the Weaponization of Social Media
10 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From October 15, 2020: On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek spoke with Maria Ressa, a Filipino-A...
White House Pressure, the Justice Department and the Election
09 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The majority staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee has issued an interim report, entitled “Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Al...
Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith on Reforming the Presidency
08 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been almost a year since Trump lost the presidency and over nine months since a new administration and a new congressional majority took power. W...
Russia Cracks Down on Social Media
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few weeks, the Russian government has been turning up the heat on tech platforms in an escalation of its long-standing efforts to bring th...
Jessica Davis on Terrorism Financing
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Davis is the author of a new book on terrorism financing called, “Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century.” She's a...
U.S. Prosecutors Indict a Canadian ISIS Propagandist
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the weekend, news broke about U.S. prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia indicting Mohammed Khalifa, a Canadian who traveled to Syria i...
The Saga of Eddie Gallagher and the Navy SEALs
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bryce Klehm sat down with David Philipps, a New York Times correspondent and the author of “Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the N...
Lawfare Archive: Mira Rapp-Hooper and Stephan Haggard on North Korea
03 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From August 5, 2017: The growing threat from North Korea has intensified during the past few weeks after a series of missile tests demonstrated that t...