The Lawfare Podcast

Information Disorder During and After the Trump Presidency

21 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

During his inaugural address yesterday, President Biden spoke about the subject of this podcast: disinformation. “There is truth and there are lies,...

Jeff Kosseff on the Fight Against Online Child Pornography

20 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Private entities—in particular, technology giants like internet service providers, email services and social networks—play a vital role in helping...

Dan Hemel and Gerard Magliocca on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment

19 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the wake of the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol, some have called for the invocation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Section 3 disqualifies...

David Kris on the NSA Annex

15 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The NSA this week released a long-awaited update to its signals intelligence policy, which had not been updated since 1988. David Kris, former assista...

Jonathan Zittrain on the Great Deplatforming

14 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Yesterday, January 13, the House of Representatives impeached President Trump a second time for encouraging the violent riot in the Capitol Building o...

Late Impeachments

13 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Jack Goldsmith sat down with Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State University, to talk about an important issue in the news this week: late im...

The Incredible Vanishing President

12 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump is headed for a second impeachment, a whole lot of people have been charged in federal and local courts in Washington, and an even larger...

Jamie Gorelick on Merrick Garland and the Justice Department Team

11 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Jamie Gorelick was the deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno. In that capacity, she hired as her top ai...

Who Let the Barbarians Through the Gates?

08 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The storming of the Capitol on Wednesday was a catastrophic failure of protective law enforcement, as rioters overran Capitol Police barricades and ga...

Emergency Edition: Insurrection at the Capitol

07 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol following a rally at which the president spoke. Congressional efforts to count the electoral votes...

Counting the Electoral Votes

06 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It is electoral count voting day, and members of Congress in a joint session will open and count the electoral votes and declare Joe Biden and Kamala ...

The Role of the Pardon Attorney

05 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Jack Goldsmith sat down with Margaret Love, the United States Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department from 1990 to 1997. They discussed Donald Trump...

Dr. Geoffrey Gresh on 'To Rule Eurasia's Waves'

04 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Vindman sat down with Dr. Geoffrey Gresh to discuss his new book, "To Rule Eurasia's Waves: The New Great Power Competition at Sea." Dr. Gre...

Bye Bye, 2020

30 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It is the last podcast of the year, and we are giving 2020 an appropriate send-off. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare executive editor Susan Henne...

Bob Bauer on the White House Counsel in an Antidemocratic Moment

29 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Bob Bauer is a former White House counsel, and he has been leading the legal response for the Biden campaign and transition to the unprecedented onsla...

Ask Us Anything

28 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's the end of the year, and that means we opened the phones for the annual "Ask Us Anything" edition. You called in with your questions, which we ro...

Conflict in Ethiopia

23 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It’s not something that has gotten a lot of attention amid a busy U.S. news cycle, but much has been happening in Ethiopia over the past two months....

Jane Bambauer and Brian Ray on the Lost Promise of Digital Contact Tracing

22 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technology was touted as a potential savior. In particular, there was a burst of enthusiasm arou...

Government Agencies that Really Listen To You: SIGINT in the UK

21 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been conducting and regulating signals intelligence, SIGINT, since before the United Stat...

Jasmine El-Gamal on What She Lost and Found at Guantanamo

18 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jasmine El-Gamal is a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East program at the Atlantic Council. Between 2008 and 2015, she served as a Middle Ea...

No One Expects the Spanish Disinformation

17 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jaime Longoria, an investigative researc...

It's Over, or Is It?

16 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It is two days after the Electoral College has met in 50 state capitals, voted and given 306 electoral votes to Joe Biden, making him the next preside...

Yaya Fanusie on 'Central Bank Digital Currencies: The Threat From Money Launderers and How to Stop Them'

15 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Yaya Fanusie, a former CIA analyst and an expert on the national security implications of cryptocurrencies, who recentl...

China-Australia Relations and What the U.S. Should Do About It

14 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the first part of this episode, Jordan Schneider, the host of ChinaTalk, sat down with Yun Jiang, a former Australian government official and an ed...

The Past, Present and Future of Sovereign Immunity

11 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week, the Supreme Court returned once again to the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, that protects f...

The Vaccine Misinformation Cometh

10 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Claire Wardle, the co-founder and leader...

General Austin as Secretary of Defense

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

President-elect Joe Biden has selected a new defense secretary, retired general Lloyd Austin, former commander of Central Command. The selection has r...

Kyle Langvardt on Platform Speech and the First Amendment

08 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On Monday, Lawfare released the first paper in its "The Digital Social Contract" paper series. For each paper, Alan Rozenshtein will be doing a podcas...

Cristina Rodríguez and Adam Cox on 'The President and Immigration Law'

07 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jack Goldsmith spoke with Adam Cox and Christina Rodríguez, the authors of "The President and Immigration Law," a new book about the historical rise ...

Lindsay Wiley and Josh Blackman on Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo

04 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In a ruling late in the night, the day before Thanksgiving, the Supreme Court issued a preliminary injunction against Governor Andrew Cuomo of New Yor...

Can Democracies Play Offense on Disinformation?

03 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on platforms and disinformation, Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alina Polyakova and Ambassador Daniel...

An Assassination in Iran

02 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The top Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed, apparently in an Israeli strike. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who has long been the mastermind of the Irania...

Why Businesses Need to Take Espionage Seriously

01 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“American companies are in a bind.” So argue Bill Priestap and Holden Triplett, who have written a series of articles for Lawfare making the case ...

H. R. McMaster on China

30 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jordan Schneider, the host of the ChinaTalk podcast, sat down with H. R. McMaster, President Trump's former national security advisor. They talked abo...

Collaborating to Counter Violent Extremism Online

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on platforms and disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Nick Rasmussen, the ...

Biden's Victory Around the World

24 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We have a new president-elect here in the United States, which means changes to certain U.S. domestic policies and also a different way of doing forei...

A Conversation with Alexander Vindman

23 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Following his appearance on Friday on the Lawfare Podcast, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute...

Alex Vindman Talks Eastern Europe

20 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.) is now the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute, the newest member of the Lawfare team. You've heard hi...

The Most Intense Online Disinformation Event in American History

19 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic are bringing you a conversation with Alex Stamos, t...

Is Trump Creating a Deep State?

18 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the waning days of his administration, the president has attempted to install a political loyalist as General Counsel of the National Security Agen...

Job Openings in Al Qaeda

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The world’s most dangerous job apparently has a vacancy once again. Al Qaeda’s #2 reportedly has been killed in Iran by Israeli forces acting on U...

'Homegrown: ISIS in America'

16 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Islamic State in America is a topic that once garnered front-page headlines, but it has fallen a bit out of public attention in the past year or s...

Kori Schake on What the Heck is Going On at the Pentagon

13 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kori Schake is a long-time Pentagon watcher; she is a former Defense Department, State Department and National Security Council official; and she lead...

Marietje Schaake on Reclaiming Democratic Control of the Internet

12 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Marietje Schaake about how Europe is...

Firings, Transitions and Staffing, Oh My!

10 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Yesterday, President Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, the latest in a string of dismissals. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign is trying to put...

Trump is Defeated

09 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Well, that's it, folks. We have a president elect in Joe Biden. And, we have a president who is now officially a lame duck. To talk through the transi...

Almost Done...

06 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The votes are almost all counted, but they're not quite all counted. We kind of know where the electoral votes are going, but some of them have not go...

We're Almost Done

05 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Benjamin Wittes sat down with an all-Lawfare crew to discuss the election. Scott Anderson, David Priess, Jacob Schulz, Quinta Jurecic and Susan Hennes...

Adam Tooze on World Order, Then and Now

04 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In a conversation completely unrelated to yesterday's election, Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk and Matthew Klein, author of the recent "Trade Wars Are ...

Are We Having a Healthy Election?

03 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this Election Day, we are checking in on how healthy the election actually is. Nathaniel Persily of Stanford Law School and Charles Stewart III of ...

Daniel Byman and Colin Clarke on Violence at the Polls

02 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We're all hoping for a peaceful Election Day tomorrow, but some people are worried about violence at the polls. Two of those people are Dan Byman, sen...

Laura Rosenberger on Foreign Interventions in U.S. Campaigns

30 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Laura Rosenberger is the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She was...

Casey Newton on Four Years of Platform Chaos

29 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Casey Newton, veteran Silicon Vall...

What To Do About Xinjiang

28 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

There is a human rights crisis going on in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The Chinese government has been rounding up minority groups, most notably...

'Tomorrow, the World'

27 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jack Goldsmith sat down with Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is the au...

Congressman Jim Himes on the Intelligence Innovation Race

26 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This month, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and Advanced Research released a report enti...

Foreign Interference... It's Happening

23 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's been a wild couple of days of disinformation in the electoral context. Intelligence community officials are warning about Russian and Iranian eff...

How to Report on Hacks and Disinformation

22 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Alina Polyakova and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Janine Zacharia, the Carlos Kel...

Fear and Loathing at the U.S. Agency for Global Media

21 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

While everyone’s attention has been focused on the coronavirus and the run-up to the 2020 election, a lot has been happening at the U.S. Agency for ...

The Quad with Tanvi Madan and Lavina Lee

20 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most interesting strategic developments in the past few years has been the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad—the growing partnersh...

An October Surprise from the New York Post

19 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On October 14, the New York Post began publishing what it touted as a series of blockbuster articles on emails and photos obtained from a laptop myste...

Ambassador Doug Silliman on the Fate of Embassy Baghdad

16 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The past year has been a difficult one for the U.S. relationship with Iraq, a country that has increasingly found itself caught in the middle of the T...

Maria Ressa on the Weaponization of Social Media

15 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek spoke with Maria Ressa, a Filipino-American journalist and co-fo...

David Priess Accepts the Results of the Presidential Election

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Last Friday, Lawfare's chief operating officer, David Priess, published a piece on the site titled, "The Powerful Norm of Accepting the Results of a P...

Charles Kupchan on 'Isolationism'

13 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many of us think of the history of the United States' interaction with the world as one of relentless expansion, growth and engagement. From the early...

Molly Reynolds and Margaret Taylor Talk Congress

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Congress is capable of moving a Supreme Court justice at record speed, yet it can't get coronavirus relief passed. It has struggled to keep the govern...

Andrew Weissmann on 'Where Law Ends'

09 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Weissmann was the general counsel of the FBI. He was the head of the Justice Department's fraud section and helped run the Enron Task Force. An...

Yochai Benkler on Mass-Media Disinformation Campaigns

08 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard L...

Scott Anderson on State Election Rules

07 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We have an election in less than a month, and a lot of analysts seem to be expecting contested results. Doomsday scenarios are playing out in the page...

John Brennan Remains Undaunted

06 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Starting in January 2017, John Brennan became one of President Trump's most blunt critics among former national security professionals. In the years s...

The President and the Coronavirus

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump is at Walter Reed with the COVID virus. A large number of executive and legislative branch officials have also tested positive. What h...

An Islamic State Hoax?

02 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On September 25, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a Canadian man for faking his involvement in the Islamic State. It’s a strange charge, b...

Everything is On Fire

01 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic talked about how everything is on fire—not ...

Trump's Money and National Security

30 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On Sunday, September 27, the New York Times dropped bombshell new reporting on nearly two decades of Donald Trump's tax return data. The story has att...

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser on 'The Man Who Ran Washington'

29 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

James A. Baker III has been a lawyer, a presidential campaign manager, the White House Chief of Staff for two presidents, the Secretary of the Treasur...

TikTok, WeChat and Trump

28 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's been a wild few weeks with President Trump threatening to shut WeChat and TikTok out of the U.S. market and rip them out of the app stores. There...

Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Lissner on 'An Open World'

25 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Lissner is an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Mira Rapp-Hooper is a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Cen...

Nina Jankowicz on 'How to Lose the Information War'

24 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth miniseries on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fello...

Portland, DHS and the Rule of Law

23 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Bobby Chesney sat down with former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Texas Congressman Chip Roy as part of the 2020 Texas Tribune Festiva...

Detention Questions and the Women of the Islamic State

22 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It’s not something that gets a lot of attention in American news outlets, but there remain large numbers of women and children linked with the Islam...

Elizabeth Neumann and Kathleen Belew on White Power Violence

21 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Neumann served as the assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the Department of Homeland Security. She has recently...

Goldsmith and Bauer on 'After Trump'

18 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

"After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency," a new book published by Lawfare, is a look at the manner in which Donald Trump has disrupted the preside...

Congress's Control Over the Military

17 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, Congress has taken unprecedented steps to push back against the Trump administration's efforts to pull U.S. troops from certain long-...

The Spymasters with Chris Whipple

16 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What is the proper relationship between the CIA director and the president? How should directors handle arguably illegal orders? How important is the ...

Alina Polyakova on the Poisoning of Alexei Navalny

15 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Alexei Navalny is Russia's most prominent dissident, opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader—and the latest such person to be poisoned by the...

Mike Schmidt on Stopping a President

14 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Michael S. Schmidt is a reporter for The New York Times, a reporter who broke a number of key stories during the Russia investigation. He is most rece...

Pete Strzok on 'Compromised'

11 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Strzok served in the FBI from 1996 to 2018 and eventually became the deputy head of the counterintelligence division, where he supervised, among...

Ben Nimmo on the Return of the Internet Research Agency

10 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Alina Polyakova and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Ben Nimmo, the director of investigat...

Cheap Fakes on the Campaign Trail

09 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It was a big week for manipulated video and audio content. In just 36 hours, senior republicans or people associated with the Trump campaign tweeted, ...

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Hatch Act But Were Afraid to Ask

08 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Hatch Act has been in the news a lot recently, between the Republican National Convention's use of the White House grounds and Secretary Pompeo's ...

A Busy Week at the DC Circuit

04 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It was a big week for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals who handed down opinions in two cases involving former presidential White House advisors. The ca...

Alissa Starzak on Cloudflare, Content Moderation and the Internet Stack

03 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alissa Starzak, the head of public polic...

Briefings Schmiefings

02 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe informed Congress that elections security briefings in the run-up to the 2020 election wou...

Election Anxieties and the U.S. Postal Service with Kevin Kosar and Anne Joseph O’Connell

01 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On August 13, President Trump said in a news interview that he opposed supplemental funding for the United States Postal Service because such funding ...

Trade War Powers: Past, Present and Future

31 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this month, the Trump administration re-imposed tariffs on aluminum imports from Canada, signaling a new salvo in the now years-long trade war...

"What’s Going on at Pompeo’s State Department?" with Nahal Toosi and Scott Anderson

28 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In mid-May, President Trump fired the State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. The ouster came as a surprise, and although it is clear that Se...

Emma Llansó on the Most Important Content Moderation Database You’ve Never Heard Of

27 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Emma Llansó, the director of the Free E...

Yemen's Ongoing Tragedy

26 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Yemen is home to the most tragic circumstances imaginable right now—years upon years of war, environmental disasters and severe humanitarian plight,...

Harold Holzer on 'The Presidents vs. the Press'

25 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jack Goldsmith spoke with Harold Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, about his new book, "The President...

The State of the U.S.-China Relationship

24 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In recent months, relations between the United States and China seem to have reached a new low as disagreements over trade, tech, human rights and the...