The Lawfare Podcast

On March 27, the Biden administration issued an Executive Order on Prohibition on Use by the United States Government of Commercial Spyware that Poses Risks to National Security. The Executive Order, as the title says, limits executive departments and agencies from using commercial spyware if they determine that its use would present a counterintelligence or security risk to the U.S., or if it poses significant risks of improper use by a foreign government or person. To talk about the new executive order and its impact, Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, sat down with Winnona DeSombre Bernsen, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. They talked about why this executive order is a welcomed development, how spyware companies might adjust their behavior in response, and what remains to be done to limit the misuse of these technologies.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been promising a set of legal reforms favored by partners in his far-right coalition government that many fear would spell the end of liberal democracy in the state of Israel. But this week, these efforts hit a roadblock in the form of an unprecedented degree of popular resistance—one that ultimately led Netanyahu to put his reform proposals on hold, at least for the moment.On Wednesday, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Natan Sachs convened a panel of experts to discuss these fast-moving developments, including his Brookings colleagues Amos Harel, a leading Israeli military and defense expert, and Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor of Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and leading Israeli journalist and legal expert Ilana Dayan. To give you some additional background, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Fellow Scott R. Anderson sat down with Natan separately to lay out recent developments and their significance. That conversation will come first, and the panel discussion will follow.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tatyana Bolton is a Security Policy Manager working on cybersecurity at Google, and Dave Kleidermacher is the Vice President of Android Security & Privacy at Google. They are among the people at Google who are thinking about IoT, that is, Internet of Things security and privacy. They sat down with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about Google's thinking on how to create a secure environment for all those little things that we have traveling with us, connected to our computers, running our houses, all connected to the internet, and all using different standards of security. How do we prevent them from being hijacked and turned into botnets? How do we prevent them from spying on us? How do we get them observing similar standards of security, and how do we do this across dozens of different countries, jurisdictions and regulatory environments, and platforms?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

States are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence systems to enhance their national security decision-making. The real risks that states will deploy unlawful or unreliable national security AI make international regulations seem appealing, but what's the right model for them?Ashley Deeks is the Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law at the University of Virginia Law School. She's just published a paper for Laware's ongoing Digital Social Contract research paper series, in which she argues that, instead of looking to nuclear arms control as the model for national security AI regulation, states should look to how cyber operations are regulated. Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Ashley about her research and what a successful regulatory regime for national security AI would look like.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the latest episode of Arbiters of Truth, Lawfare's series on the information ecosystem, Quinta Jurecic and Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Ravi Iyer, the Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute at the University of Southern California's Neely Center.Earlier in his career, Ravi held a number of positions at Meta, where he worked to make Facebook's algorithm provide actual value, not just "engagement," to users. Quinta and Alan spoke with Ravi about why he thinks that content moderation is a dead-end and why thinking about the design of technology is the way forward to make sure that technology serves us and not the other way around.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott waited for a big shoe to drop by talking over the week's big national security news, including:“What Else Can I Get Away With on Fifth Avenue...” Donald Trump is expected to become the first former president to be indicted on criminal charges this week—if, that is, local authorities are not deterred by the public protests Trump’s supporters are preparing to hold in New York City at his request. What will this move mean for the country? And how might it end? “Territorial Refute.” After weeks of avoiding the issue, likely 2024 Republican presidential contender Ron Desantis adopted the position that supporting Ukraine—which he described as being involved in a “territorial dispute”—is not a vital U.S. interest, bringing him into alignment with former President Trump and signaling a strong lean towards isolationism in the 2024 Republican field. What will this mean for the likely candidates? And for U.S. support for Ukraine moving forward?“The ‘Blood, Treasure, and Regret’ Anniversary.” This past week marked the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which set out to remove a dictator and welcome a new wave of democracy in the Middle East—but has instead resulted in an Iraq that is still recovering from years of sectarian violence and increasingly under Iran’s influence. What is the legacy of the decision to invade? And what does it mean for U.S. foreign policy moving forward?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 28, 2021: The Biden administration has now responded to two major cyberattacks—one from Russia, the SolarWinds attack, and the other from China, the so-called Hafnium Microsoft Exchange Server attack. Recently, Lawfare has run articles on both of these incidents—a piece from Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike, and a piece from Alex Iftimie, a former Justice Department official and a lawyer at Morrison & Foerster. They joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the Biden administration's response to the attacks. Were they appropriate, both in absolute terms and in relation to each other? Do they send the right messages to the countries in question? Do they go far enough? And what more do we want to see?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office released its latest report on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, focusing on the failures of several government agencies to fully process and share information about a potential attack in the days and weeks leading up to January 6, 2021.Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds sat down with NBC News Justice Reporter Ryan Reilly, who's reported broadly on law enforcement issues related to Jan. 6, and Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic. They discussed what we know about how and why law enforcement struggled in the lead-up to the insurrection and the challenges for the road ahead.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The open nature of the internet has allowed malicious actors to abuse technology. Information operations, offensive cyber, and IP theft are just some examples of this misuse. The Biden administration has pursued an industrial policy that hopes to counter the weaponization of globalized systems. This approach includes technology subsidies, export controls, and rethinking supply chains. But this approach could undermine efforts to advance global rules and values.To discuss how the United States can push back while bolstering democracy and human rights, Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, sat down with former Ambassador Karen Kornbluh, Managing Director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative and Senior Fellow with the German Marshall Fund. Ambassador Kornbluh is the lead author on the new GMF report “The New American Foreign Policy of Technology.” They discussed why there’s a need to rethink American foreign policy, how to center democratic values, and the crucial role of a multistakeholder approach.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On December 31, 2023, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will expire unless it is reauthorized by Congress. Section 702 authorizes the U.S. government, in order to obtain foreign intelligence information, to target foreigners who are reasonably believed to be outside of the U.S. and collect their communications inside the U.S. without a warrant—even when such surveillance may involve the incidental collection of communications of U.S. persons. Privacy and civil liberties advocates have long raised concerns about the government's ability to conduct so-called backdoor searches of U.S. person information acquired incidentally through the collection of the communications of foreigners. U.S.government officials have argued that it is imperative for Congress to reauthorize Section 702. To talk about Section 702 and its reauthorization, Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Travis LeBlanc, a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and a partner at Cooley LLP. They discussed his concerns with the way the government may search or use U.S. person information incidentally collected under Section 702, the aspects of the government's position on reauthorization on which he may agree, and how he believes Congress should reform Section 702. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By many accounts, the United States is living through a new era of competition—not just between major powers and strategic rivals, but between ideologies. Around the world, many authoritarian governments seem to be on the rise, even as many liberal democracies are facing a crisis of confidence, including, by some accounts, here in the United States.In a new book entitled, “Defeating the Dictators,” Charles Dunst, a former journalist and current deputy director of research and analytics at The Asia Group, lays out what he sees as the right strategy for making democracies more effective and defeating the appeal of authoritarian government. Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with him to discuss his new book, the importance he places on Singapore as a case study, and how the domestic remedies he focuses on translate into foreign policy.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twenty years ago today, the United States invaded the nation of Iraq, intent on removing the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein and installing a stable democratic government. What followed instead was two decades of political instability and horrible sectarian violence that has yielded a modern Iraqi state that remains plagued with corruption and other problems, and is increasingly under immense pressure from the nearby regime in Iran.To gain perspective on the legacy of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and how it continues to shape the relationship between the two countries today, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down for conversations with two individuals whose personal and professional lives have been intimately tied up in the last two decades of the U.S.-Iraq relationship. First, Scott sat down with Ambassador Doug Silliman, who is now the president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, and who previously served in numerous capacities in Iraq, including as ambassador, over his decades-long career as a U.S. diplomat. Scott then sat down with Salem Chalabi, an individual who has held numerous positions across several administrations in the Iraqi government over the past two decades, most recently serving as the head of the Trade Bank of Iraq until January of this year. In each conversation, they discuss the legacy of the U.S. invasion, how it impacts the bilateral relationship today, and the central role Iran has come to play in the country.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Academy loves a good spy flick, and so do we! This week, Shane Harris talks with Washington Post culture critic Alyssa Rosenberg about the enduring power of espionage on the big screen. Movies like Zero Dark Thirty, the Mission: Impossible franchise, and this year’s Top Gun: Maverick and All Quiet on the Western Front, which both took home Oscars, help us understand global conflict as they wrestle with questions of personal morality. How do the stories of James Bond and George Smiley help us make sense of the fate of nations? And why is Hollywood finding it nearly impossible to tell stories about great power competition between the U.S. and China? Shane and Alyssa go way back, and this is a fun, lively conversation about spy stories that have resonated through the decades. Alyssa has written for years about popular culture, books, and more recently parenting. Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 24, 2020: What do Russia, China and Canada all have in common? They all disagree—in one manner or another—with American policy goals in the Arctic, where climate change is driving opportunities and challenges for U.S. policy-makers. In this episode, National Security Institute Visiting Fellow and former senior intelligence official Jim Danoy discusses his paper, “The Arctic: Securing the High Ground,” with host Lester Munson. They discuss the fascinating policy dilemmas posed by the unique geography of the North Pole and how the United States can exploit new opportunities to maximum benefit.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Artificial Intelligence is advancing at what seems like an exponential rate, with every month—sometimes every week—bringing news of a new, game-changing discovery. But just as the progress in AI is accelerating, so is the pessimism about it, with many scholars, commentators, and technologists themselves raising the alarm about AI's potential harms to equality, privacy, and security.Challenging this consensus is Orly Lobel, a law professor at the University of San Diego and the author of the new book, "The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future." Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Orly to discuss her book, why she's optimistic about AI's potential to advance equality, and what the government can do to help.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As U.S. counterterrorism efforts have waned in Yemen, Libya, and parts of Pakistan, Somalia has emerged as the most active element in the “forever wars” that the U.S. has waged since 9/11, according to Eric Schmitt of the New York Times. Schmitt traveled to Somalia in February for a rare embed with U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground in the midst of a recent offensive launched by the Somali government against a formidable enemy, Al Shabab.Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Eric and his Times colleague Charlie Savage to discuss the conflict in the Horn of Africa and the extent of U.S. military involvement there. They discussed the roots of the Shabab insurgency, whether or not the current moment marks an inflection point in the fight, the legal grounds on which the U.S. government justifies its campaign, and why the American public and government alike should pay more attention to Somalia.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Director of the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly is one of several women at the very top of the cybersecurity pyramid in the United States. A graduate of West Point, decorated U.S. Army officer, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jen has served her country in a plethora of senior cybersecurity and counterterrorism roles, and most recently before her return to government, was the head of Firm Resilience at Morgan Stanley. David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Jen to talk about everything cybersecurity, about the need for revolutionary new approaches to emerging threats to our cyber and national security, the recent U.S. National Cyber Strategy, the cyber offense/defense flywheel, and even where her avatar got her cape. Jen also talks about CISA’s priorities for the coming years, new cyber incident reporting requirements, and new cybersecurity help coming to a city near you. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For years, the international community has wrestled with how to reconcile sanctions policies targeting terrorist groups and other malevolent actors with the need to provide humanitarian assistance in areas under those groups’ control. Late last year, both the Biden administration and the UN Security Council took major steps toward a new approach on this issue, installing broad carveouts for humanitarian assistance into existing sanctions regimes. To talk through these changes, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading sanctions experts: Rachel Alpert, a Partner at the law firm Jenner & Block and former State Department attorney, and Alex Zerden, the Founder and Principal of Capitol Peak Strategies and a former Treasury Department official, including at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. They talked about the long-standing issues surrounding humanitarian assistance, what these changes may mean in jurisdictions like Afghanistan, and where more changes may yet be forthcoming. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace are the creators of the NPR audio documentary White Lies, which was a Pulitzer finalist for its first season. Chip and Andrew are back for season 2, a story they began reporting in 2015 after they stumbled on an archival photo of a prison riot in Talladega, Alabama. This season focuses on the Mariel boatlift, a 6-month period in 1980 during which 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States to seek asylum. What they found is as much an American immigration story as a history of American immigration—and the laws that govern it.Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Chip and Andrew to discuss the legal fictions that prop up the U.S. immigration system, how a country with due process under the law justifies detaining people indefinitely, and their obsession with Lady Bird Johnson’s White House audio diaries.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Naval Academy professor and cyberlaw expert Jeff "Two Effs" Kosseff to work through the week's big national security news stories, including:“Dox Populi.” Florida’s state legislature is the latest of several to propose laws requiring individuals involved in certain online activities to reveal their identities to the state. Are these requirements consistent with the First Amendment? What would they mean for civil society where they apply?“Recommend Forward.” The Biden administration has rolled out what some had previewed as a historic new cyber strategy. But it’s left some experts cold, in part because it seems to hinge on future enactments by a cooperative Congress—something that may not be in the cards. How revolutionary is it really?“Forget It, Jake. It’s the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” The House select committee on China held its first hearing last week to much fanfare. How much is it a partisan political exercise? And to what degree might it actually steer U.S. policy on China in a better (or worse) direction?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 19, 2021: Jack Goldsmith spoke with New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth about her new book, "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race." They discussed the dark world of markets for zero-day vulnerabilities that are so vital in offensive cyber operations, the history of the markets, how they work, who the players are and why the United States doesn't control as much as it used to. They also discussed broader issues of U.S. cybersecurity policy, including the recent SolarWinds hack.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kemba Walden recently took over from Chris Inglis as Acting National Cyber Director in the White House. She had been Principal Deputy Assistant National Cyber Director after serving in multiple cybersecurity positions in government and in the private sector.David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Kemba to talk about the challenges and opportunities of her new role, the recently released U.S. National Cyber Strategy and the significant policy changes it announces, threats to our national and economic security from China, and a fairly long discussion of music theory.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During recent oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, a Supreme Court case concerning the scope of liability protections for internet platforms, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked a thought-provoking question. Does Section 230, the statute that shields websites from liability for third-party content, apply to a generative AI model like ChatGPT?  Luckily, Matt Perault of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had already been thinking about this question and published a Lawfare article arguing that 230’s protections wouldn’t extend to content generated by AI. Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Matt and Jess Miers, legal advocacy counsel at the Chamber of Progress, to debate whether ChatGPT’s output constitutes third-party content, whether companies like OpenAI should be immune for the output of their products, and why you might want to sue a chatbot in the first place.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few weeks ago, Human Rights Watch released a report on the forced expulsion of the Chagossian people, whom the United Kingdom deported from their island homes in the Indian Ocean about 60 years ago to make way for the United States to build a military base called Diego Garcia. The report recommends reparations for the Chagossian people and a trial for individuals responsible for these crimes against humanity—the very first time the group has laid such a charge at the door of the US and UK. Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Philippe Sands, an international human rights lawyer who served as counsel for Mauritius in its bid to reclaim sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago. Philippe is the author of several books, including his most recent, "The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy," which is about the islands. They discussed the Chagossian people’s decades-long legal struggle to return to their ancestral home, a chance phone call from a ski lift, and the role of race and identity in the making and application of international law. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On March 2, the Biden administration released its long-awaited National Cybersecurity Strategy. The new strategy comes more than two years after President Biden took office and sets out a bold vision to achieve a more cyber-secure future by the end of the decade. Lawfare Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with our in-house cyber experts, Lawfare’s Senior Editor Stephanie Pell and Fellow in Tech Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri, to discuss the strategy and their latest piece published on Lawfare, titled “The Biden-Harris Administration Releases New National Cybersecurity Strategy.” Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany are both Israeli legal scholars and longtime Lawfare contributors. Shany is a professor of international law at the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem. Cohen is a professor at Ono Academic College. They are both scholars at the Israel Democracy Institute, and together they are also co-authors of a six-part series in Lawfare about the ongoing effort by the Israeli government to alter the Israeli judicial system. It is a detailed account of a very serious reform operation in Israel, one that the authors argue is dangerous. They joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the ongoing protests in Israel, the ongoing legislative efforts, and the history of the Israeli judicial system and its growing power that has led to this crisis.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the past 20 years, Richard Haass has led the Council on Foreign Relations, building on his national security experience in government and his related work in academia and think tanks. Although his efforts have focused overwhelmingly on foreign policy, his central concern has turned to something closer to home: the decline of democratic norms in the United States. He's even written a new book about this problem and something we all can do about it, “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.”David Priess and Haass discussed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and Haass' experiences leading it, reflections on his service in the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations, the mission of the Council on Foreign Relations and Haass's longest-ever tenure of leading it, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its many implications, the roles of China and India in this shifting strategic landscape, democratic decline in the United States, the ten habits that American citizens can adopt to heal our divisions and safeguard representative democracy in the U.S., and more.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From December 7, 2019: Wargaming has long been a staple of military strategizing, but how do we plan for the future in cyberspace, a realm where governments do not hold a monopoly on capabilities? A new report from the Atlantic Council argues that "visualizing and describing the evolution of cyber capabilities and strategic competition require envisioning multiple futures," and the report sets out to do exactly that. This week, Lawfare's Susan Hennessey sat down with John Watts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and JD Work, the Bren Chair for Cyber Conflict and Security at the Marine Corps University, who are authors of "Alternate Cybersecurity Futures," along with Nina Kollars, Ben Jensen, and Chris Whyte. They talked about the behind-the-scenes of strategic policy planning, the value of creativity, and what scenarios emerge when you ask cybersecurity experts to predict the future.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Lawfare Publisher David Priess wore his hat as a Senior Fellow at George Mason University's Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security to host a rare live conversation on counterintelligence with leading practitioners. His guests were Mirriam-Grace MacIntyre, Executive Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and Alan Kohler, Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI. They discussed the organization known as the NCSC, the role it plays across the U.S. Government and beyond, and how the FBI's long-running counterintelligence efforts play into it. They talked a lot about the People's Republic of China and its extensive intelligence efforts against the U.S., as well as about counterintelligence and science, outreach to the public on these issues, how Congress fits in, and more. The event was not brief, so we have edited it slightly for length without losing any significant substance.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since December, Peru has been in the midst of a protracted politico crisis. Following a failed coup in early December, President Pedro Castillo was arrested, becoming the fifth president to leave office in Peru in five years. In the midst of protests, Castillo’s deputy Dina Boluarte took power. But protests have continued in the following months, with roughly 60 people dead—mostly protestors killed by the police and the military, as the Peruvian government takes an increasingly authoritarian turn. After Castillo’s departure from office in December, Lawfare published a podcast conversation with Rodrigo Barrenechea, a 2022/23 Santo Domingo Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and an assistant professor at the Departamento de Ciencias Sociales of the Universidad Católica del Uruguay. With the violence and unrest continuing to unfold, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic asked Rodrigo back on the podcast for an update on where things stand. He explained why he thinks that Peru may no longer be fairly described as a democracy and why it’s hard to see an end to this crisis any time soon.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matthew Olsen, the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, gave yesterday a major address at the Brookings Institution. He talked about FISA Section 702, the section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows U.S. intelligence authorities to collect against targets reasonably believed to be overseas when their signals pass through the United States. The provision comes up for reauthorization this year, and Olsen argues that it is imperative that Congress act to reauthorize it. This audio from the Brookings event includes an introduction from Camille Busette, the Interim Vice President for Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution; remarks from Olsen; a Q&A between Olsen and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes; and questions from the live audience.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There was a big showdown at the D.C. Circuit last week over the Speech or Debate Clause and Representative Scott Perry and his cell phone, the latter of which was seized by the FBI in connection with the Jan. 6 investigation. Representative Perry wants it back, and he does not want anything on it used in the investigation. He went to Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and moved to quash the order for his phone. The judge said no, Perry’s legal team appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held arguments last week. To discuss it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Scott Anderson, and Dominic Solari, a Lawfare student contributor who wrote an oral argument preview and summary of the case.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Remember Havana Syndrome? Diplomats, spies, and other people suddenly hearing a loud noise and then having neurological symptoms, sometimes debilitating... Was it a mass panic? Was it a sonic weapon? Was it a directed energy weapon? And who was wielding it? These are the subjects of The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome, a new podcast series put out by Goat Rodeo, PRX, and Project Brazen. Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with journalist and host Nicky Woolf, and producer Max Johnston of Goat Rodeo, to talk about the truth of Havana Syndrome. Was it real, or was it a fantasy? What kind of weapon could do that sort of thing, and could you build one at home? And who would want to shoot a ray gun at U.S. personnel all over the world?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott sat through literally hours of oral arguments to prepare to discuss all the national security developments in the news, including:“The HIMAR Anniversary.” The war in Ukraine is one year old this week. The Biden administration marked the occasion with a presidential visit to Kyiv and a finding of crimes against humanity, while Vladimir Putin celebrated by moving the Doomsday Clock a bit closer to midnight. What should we make of where the war stands one year in?“We’re Living in a Post-Algorithm World, and I’m a Post-Algorithm Girl.” So said Justice Elena Kagan (more or less), as she and the other members of the Supreme Court heard arguments in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh on terrorism liability and the scope of protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—a case that some argue could break the internet. What did we learn from oral arguments? And what might the ramifications be?“Bold Dominion.” Dominion Voting Systems filed a stunning brief in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News earlier this week, which lays out in 200 detailed pages the extent to which Fox’s executives and on-air personalities knowingly amplified lies about the company’s conduct around the 2020 election. What did we learn about Fox’s culpability? And what would a Dominion win mean moving forward?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 18, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and an expert on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statute that shields internet platforms from civil liability for third-party content on their websites. The statute has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, and both President Trump and President Biden separately called for its repeal. So what should we expect in terms of potential revision of 230 during the current Congress? What does Daphne think about the various proposals on the table? And how is it that so many proposals to reform 230 would be foiled by that pesky First Amendment?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. To talk about this first year and what comes next, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis. In a kind of tour of what's been happening in the region over the past year, they discussed what’s been going on in Ukraine, in Russia, in Eastern Europe, in Western Europe, and of course, in the United States.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a pair of cases concerning to what extent online platforms can be held responsible for terrorist content on their services. Gonzalez v. Google focused on the scope of Section 230, which shields platforms from liability for third-party content. Twitter v. Taamneh, meanwhile, concerned whether platforms can be held liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act if members of terrorist groups use their services to recruit and spread their message. Oral arguments took a combined five hours as the justices slogged through these difficult questions about the functioning of the modern internet. Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson, and Alan Rozenshtein, and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, sat down to discuss.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence as part of the investigation into Trump’s role in instigating the Jan. 6 riot. But Pence has said he’ll fight the subpoena. And he’s pointed to the Speech or Debate Clause—a constitutional immunity that protects members of Congress—on the argument that he was acting as part of the legislative branch when he presided over the electoral count on January 6, 2021.Setting aside Pence’s motives for taking this approach, the merits of the legal argument are less crazy than they might sound. Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Molly Reynolds sat down to talk through these issues with two former congressional lawyers: Eric Columbus, who recently served as Special Litigation Counsel in the House Office of General Counsel under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Mike Stern, a former senior counsel to the House of Representatives.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Inglis has had an illustrious career in the defense of this country, serving as an Air Force general, deputy director of the National Security Agency, and most recently as the first National Cyber Director in the White House. Chris stepped down from his position last week, and he sat down for his first interview as a private citizen with David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former assistant attorney general for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and executive director of the University of California, Irvine’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute. They talked about a wide range of cyber topics, including the newly minted National Cyber Strategy, protection of critical infrastructure, cyber insurance, competition in the international front, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 30, 2021: When President Biden entered office, he inherited a bilateral relationship with Turkey that was strained to the limits by the growing independent streak in that country's foreign policy—and one that had been pushed in unfamiliar directions by his predecessor's direct and often unpredictable personal relationship with Turkey's longstanding president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This past week, the Biden administration made its first major move on the U.S.-Turkey relationship by recognizing the atrocities committed against Armenians by Ottoman authorities in the early 20th century as a genocide, a move that prior presidents had avoided for fear of how Turkey might react.To discuss what these developments may mean for this key bilateral relationship, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Nicholas Danforth of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy and Asli Aydıntaşbaş of the European Council on Foreign Relations. They discussed how Turkey views its place in the world, what this means for its alliance with the United States and how the Biden administration is likely to respond moving forward.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Along with co-editors Peter Feaver, William Inboden, and Meghan O'Sullivan, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is editor of the new “Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama.” This unique and massive book contains 30 Transition Memos prepared in 2008–2009 under Hadley's direction by the outgoing George W. Bush administration’s National Security Council staff for the incoming Obama Administration—each with a postscript by these same experts critically assessing the Bush foreign policy legacy.Historians and national security junkies usually have to wait a long time for such materials to see the light of day; this consolidated content reveals much, and relatively quickly, about the various policies of the time and the extensive effort that was put into the gold-standard 2008–2009 transition.David Priess asked Hadley about his experiences with presidential transitions dating back to the 1970s; how it felt to be on the receiving end of the transition process in 2000–2001; President George W. Bush's transition mandate to him and to Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in 2008; the substantive NSC Transition Memos on the Freedom Agenda, the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and PEPFAR; public perceptions of the national security advisor's role; how much national security advisors should interact with the media; and more.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 6, 2021: Natan Sachs is a Brookings senior fellow and the head of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Brookings Foreign Policy program. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Natan to talk about the results of the Israeli election, which are still unclear amid a haze over the entire political system. They talked about what the dispute between the camps is about, the many different factions and what they want, and why they can't sit together easily in a government. They also talked about the fact that Israel doesn't have a budget for the second year in a row, and they discussed whether anyone will be able to prevent the fifth election in two years.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 14, the Brookings Institution hosted an event on the upcoming Supreme Court oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh—two cases that could potentially reshape the internet. The Court is set to hear arguments in both cases next week, on February 21 and 22. Depending on how the justices rule, Gonzalez could result in substantial changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the bedrock legal protection on which the internet is built. For today’s podcast, we’re bringing you audio of that discussion. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic moderated a panel that included Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, with a joint appointment in electrical engineering & computer sciences and the School of Information; Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center; Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein; and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier this month, a Pakistani man named Majid Khan started his new life in Belize after spending nearly half his previous life in U.S. detention, first at a CIA black site where he was subjected to torture and other mistreatment, and then at Guantanamo Bay. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law, and the author of several books, to discuss one of Khan's fellow inmates, Saifullah Paracha, as well Saifullah’s son Uzair. They discussed Karen's recent Lawfare article on the Parachas, the separate but intertwined systems of justice that the father and son navigated, and Guantanamo Bay's fraught past and uncertain future.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Jan. 6 committee’s final report on the insurrection is over 800 pages, including the footnotes. But there’s still new information coming out about the committee’s findings and its work.Last week, we brought you an interview with Dean Jackson, one of the staffers who worked on the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the role of social media in the insurrection. Today, we’re featuring a conversation with Jacob Glick, who served as investigative counsel on the committee and is currently a policy counsel at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. His work in the Jan. 6 investigation focused on social media and far-right extremism. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jacob about what the investigation showed him about the forces that led to Jan. 6, how he understands the threat still posed by extremism, and what it was like interviewing Twitter whistleblowers and members of far-right groups who stormed the Capitol.You can read Jacob’s essay with Mary McCord on countering extremism here in Just Security and listen to an interview with Jacob and his Jan. 6 committee colleagues here at Tech Policy Press.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month's brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police has once again sparked a national conversation about the causes of and remedies for persistent police misconduct and abuse. To explore this issue, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA School of Law, who is the author of a new book called, “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.” The book argues that police abuse is a result of pervasive pathologies in the legal system that shield from accountability not just police officers, but also their supervisors and the local governments for which they work.Joanna and Jack discussed the many accountability gaps in the legal regime governing police abuse. Like her book, they focused on problems of achieving justice through the civil rights system, problems that include the high bars to finding a lawyer and to convincing a judge to hear the case, Fourth Amendment doctrine, qualified immunity, and the challenges of municipal liability. They also discussed the best path to reform and the prospects of reform.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since it launched in November of last year, ChatGPT has been subject to widespread attention. Cyber criminals have been quick to try to find ways to abuse the AI tool for their own purposes, from improving their phishing emails and supporting money-making schemes, to writing malware. Could ChatGPT help lower entry barriers for less skilled cyber criminals to be? To answer that question, Lawfare fellow in technology policy and law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Alexander Leslie, associate threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future. Alexander was the lead analyst for the recent report, “I, Chatbot,” which looked at how threat actors are trying to misuse ChatGPT. They discussed who are the threat actors that can benefit from it the most, the impact this will have on the cybercrime-as-a-service business model, and how to think through mitigation strategies. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined once again by host emeritus Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's various freak-outs, including:“We Found the 100th Luftballon.” Last week, a Chinese spy balloon floated over the United States, triggering a national freak-out that led to the cancellation of a major high-level summit between U.S. and Chinese leaders. Was this freak-out warranted? What does it tell us about U.S.-China relations?“SotFU.” President Biden delivered his second State of the Union address last night—and it was about as contentious as expected. How did he do? And how should we feel about this most vaunted of national institutions?“ChatOMG.” Over the past several weeks, countless Americans have had the chance to hash it out with ChatGPT, a large language-model artificial intelligence that is open to the public and will either revolutionize or devastate a thousand different human tasks, depending on who you ask. Just how revolutionary is ChatGPT? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 exercise his or her authority to block foreign investments that might let the U.S.'s adversaries acquire sensitive American technology or intellectual property. A bipartisan proposal in Congress aims to expand CFIUS’s powers. On Thursday, the Center for Strategic and International Studies convened a panel of Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon official; Ivan Schlager, a partner with Skadden Arps’ national security practice; Nova Daly, a senior public policy adviser with Wiley Rein; and CSIS Vice President James Andrew Lewis, to talk about CFIUS and how it might change under the new law.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 challenges of the pandemic, climate change, and cybersecurity threats, among many others. To discuss why international law seems to be failing in important respects and what to do about it, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Paul Stephan, the John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, and author of the new book, “The World Crisis and International Law: The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future.” They discussed whether international law is truly failing, and if so, how; Stephan's claim that the accelerating pace of technological change induced by the knowledge economy best explains international law’s unraveling; why the highest courts of important states are increasingly rejecting international law and the orders of international courts and tribunals; and Stephan's bottom-up prescriptions for these problems.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 26, the Department of Justice held a press conference to announce its months-long disruption campaign against the Hive ransomware group that has targeted more than 1,500 victims in over 80 countries around the world, including hospitals, school districts, financial firms, and critical infrastructure. In July 2022, the FBI penetrated Hive’s computer networks, captured its decryption keys, and, over the course of the ensuing months, offered the decryption keys to victims worldwide, preventing these victims from having to pay $130 million in ransom that Hive demanded. To talk about this disruption operation, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Alex Iftimie, partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster and a former federal prosecutor in the National Security and Cyber Crimes Units in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. They talked about how the Hive ransomware group operated, the significant aspects of this disruption operation, and how this disruption operation fits into the broader picture of U.S. government efforts to disrupt ransomware groups and actors.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 800 pages, there’s a lot that it doesn’t include. The Washington Post recently reported on the work done by investigators looking into the role of social media in enabling the insurrection—work that wasn’t incorporated into the final document.Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Dean Jackson, project manager of the Influence Operations Researchers’ Guild at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served as an investigative analyst with the Jan. 6 committee, investigating the role of social media in the insurrection. They talked about his experience working on the investigation and what his team uncovered—and walked through what got left out from the final report.You can read Dean’s essay with fellow Jan. 6 committee staffers Meghan Conroy and Alex Newhouse here on Just Security and listen to an interview with Dean and his colleagues here at Tech Policy Press.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 some of the questions that Bruce Schneier, a well-known security expert and lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School, answers in his new book, “A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules and How to Bend Them Back.”Jack Goldsmith sat down with Bruce to discuss what it means to have a hacker's mind, why all systems—not just computer systems—are hackable, how and why the powerful and wealthy are typically the most successful hackers, and what AI will mean for hacking various systems. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, the United States and the Philippines reached an agreement to expand U.S. military operations in the Philippines to deter China's increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The news was sandwiched between Air Force General Mike Minihan predicting that U.S. confrontation with China may happen as early as 2025 and Secretary Antony Blinken postponing his trip to China after a Chinese surveillance balloon was detected flying over the United States. Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Dr. Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss the likelihood of military confrontation between the United States and China over Taiwan, and whether the United States has exhausted all of its deterrent capabilities to stall China from invading Taiwan.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 sounds like the makings of a Netflix series—and it should be. But the story of the Glomar Explorer is the stuff of fact, even if it has long been shrouded in secrecy.  In his new book, intelligence historian M. Todd Bennett pierces the veil surrounding this most improbable of intelligence operations and surfaces a riveting tale of underwater espionage and high-stakes foreign policy. The sub-salvage mission, which the CIA codenamed AZORIAN, was green-lit at a time of remarkable daring and ingenuity by the spy agency, which enjoyed only minimal oversight from Congress. But journalists brought the Glomar operation to light in another era, when scandals and excesses led lawmakers to rein in the intelligence community.  Shane Harris talks with Bennett about his book, “Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency,” which shows how the exposure of the secret program led to a public backlash against disclosures of classified information and helped reinforce the culture of secrecy that envelops the CIA’s work. The phrase “neither confirm nor deny,” which Bennett tells Harris has become a kind of coy cliche, originates from attempts to uncover the facts of the Glomar mission. Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he directs the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR). He is a scholar of, among other things, police-civilian relations and has done a lot of work on police-involved killings. He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the mechanisms of police violence, what causes it, what can be done to address it and reduce it, and the role of race in this problem. They talked about police unions, implicit bias, the difference between legality and morality in police shootings and what policy levers are available to bring an end to the rash of police killings.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next month will mark the five-year anniversary of the CLOUD Act, a foundational piece of legislation on cross-border data transfers and criminal investigations. Before he was a University of Minnesota law professor and senior editor at Lawfare, Alan Rozenshtein worked in the Department of Justice where he was a member of the team that developed the CLOUD Act. In that capacity, he interacted with representatives from the large tech companies that would be most directly affected by the law. One of these people was Matt Perault, then the head of Global Policy Development at Facebook, and now the director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Matt joined Alan to discuss the CLOUD Act with two more people who were present at its creation: Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Aaron Cooper, a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block, who was at the time a colleague of Alan’s at the Department of Justice. They talked about the reasons for the CLOUD Act’s development, whether it has succeeded in its goals, and what we should expect to see in the next five years.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 media called—once again—the last Nazi trial. After almost eight decades, the Holocaust is still being litigated, remembered, and all-too-often misremembered.Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Linda Kinstler, author of the book, “Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends,” and Sam Moyn, a professor of both history and law at Yale University, to discuss Linda's book. They talked about Linda's stunning discovery in Latvia that led her to tell this story, the limits of the law in holding perpetrators of mass murder accountable, and whether the antonym of forgetting is not remembering, but justice.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ChatGPT reflects on its own impact on the information ecosystem. Nor is it likely that you’ve ever heard ChatGPT promising to stop producing racist and misogynistic content. But, on this episode of Arbiters of Truth, Lawfare’s occasional series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with ChatGPT to talk about a range of things: the pronouns it prefers; academic integrity and the chatbot’s likely impact on that; and importantly, the experiments performed by a scholar name Eve Gaumond, who has been on a one-woman campaign to get ChatGPT to write offensive content. ChatGPT made some pretty solid representations that this kind of thing may be in its past, but wouldn't ever be in its future again.So, following Ben’s interview with ChatGPT, he sat down with Eve Gaumond, an AI scholar at the Public Law Center of the University of Montréal, who fact-checked ChatGPT's claims. Can you still get it to write a poem entitled, “She Was Smart for a Woman”? Can you get it to write a speech by Heinrich Himmler about Jews? And can you get ChatGPT to write a story belittling the Holocaust?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It seems like everyone has classified documents stashed away these days. First, it was Donald Trump, with the Justice Department investigation into documents stored improperly at Mar-a-Lago. Then, it was Joe Biden, with news that documents bearing classification markings were found at Biden’s Wilmington home and at the Penn Biden Center. And now, former Vice President Mike Pence has also uncovered classified materials at his home. What on earth is going on?Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, publisher David Priess, and senior editor Scott Anderson to discuss. They talked about why classified documents are suddenly showing up everywhere; how to understand the differences between the Trump, Biden, and Pence cases; and what to make of the pickle that Attorney General Merrick Garland now finds himself in. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 took a two-day break the other day, so Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to catch up on what is proving to be a grueling presentation of evidence. They talked about how the government has been doing in presenting its case against Enrique Tarrio and the other Proud Boys, where the defense has scored points, what evidence is left still to present, and how long this trial is likely to go.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, including:“Don’t Tank my Chain.” Western allies of Ukraine have finally agreed to a way forward on providing the country with tanks, an issue which has proven surprisingly contentious in recent weeks. Germany will now allow its Leopard tanks to be used in the near-term while the United States will send Ukraine a series of M1 Abrams in the future, meeting the German demand for a matched U.S. contribution. Why was this so important to Germany? And what does it tell us about the broader state of the war?“Slight of the Valkyries.” The U.S. Treasury Department has slapped new sanctions on the Russian mercenary group, the Wagner Group, labeling them a Transnational Criminal Organization (“TCO”)—even as U.S. officials continue to resist calls to designate them a terrorist organization. What explains this reticence? Is it warranted?“Empire State of Mind.” For the first time, the New York City district attorney is trying someone under state criminal laws barring material support for terrorism that the state adopted following the September 11 attacks—even though the criminal suspect was never present in New York, but merely knew his actions would have repercussions there. Is this a sensible move? Or is there reason for pause? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 dramatic White House statement by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The White House is threatening more adverse security clearance actions against presidential critics, and former senior security officials are outraged. Benjamin Wittes sat down Friday afternoon with Bradley Moss, who represents people in security clearance revocation processes, to discuss the president's move, how different it is from a normal security clearance action, and what we can expect if a lawsuit develops.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russia’s use of information warfare during the 2016 U.S. presidential election period focused attention on Russia’s weaponization of information in its effort to influence a U.S. election outcome and sow discord across the American public. But to the extent that we only view Russian information warfare as an aggressive or expansionist expression of Moscow’s foreign policy, we may misunderstand some key tenets of Russian information warfare doctrine. To gain a better understanding of the history and dynamics of Russian information warfare, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Gavin Wilde, senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Justin Sherman, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. They discussed their new paper, "No Water’s Edge: Russia’s Information War and Regime Security,” and they talked about Russian information doctrine under Vladimir Putin, the differences between how the concept of information security is understood in Russia versus the West, and some key takeaways of their research for analysts and policymakers.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Turkish President Erdoğan has thrown a giant wrench into Sweden's NATO membership bid after a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. This, in turn, affects Finland's application to the alliance because Sweden and Finland applied to and intended to join the alliance concurrently.Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Minna Ålander, research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, to talk about how we got here, about what Finnish leaders have been saying about these new developments, and about paths forward for Finland and NATO.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Grand Jury's report on 2020 election interference in Georgia. Lawfare's Fulton County correspondent Anna Bower was in the room live-blogging the matter, and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes caught up with her right after the hearing to talk it through. Why did the district attorney argue that the report should continue to be sealed for now? What were the media organizations’ arguments, and which way was Judge McBurney leaning? Is the report going to become public? And if so, when? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2019, investigative journalist and photographer Lynzy Billing went to Afghanistan to investigate a very personal story: her own past. In the process, she discovered what she came to call a classified war, one with lines of accountability so obscured that no one had to answer publicly for operations that went wrong.Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Lynzy to talk through her four-year investigation, published last month in ProPublica. They discussed Afghanistan's shady Zero Units and their relationship with the CIA, the traumatic ripple effects caused by this lack of accountability, and why the U.S. continues to rely on a strategy of night raids, which Lynzy describes as quick, brutal operations that went wrong far more often than the U.S. has acknowledged. They also discussed why Lynzy decided to tell this story when few others would. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tech policy reform occupies a strange place in Washington, D.C. Everyone seems to agree that the government should change how it regulates the technology industry, on issues from content moderation to privacy—and yet, reform never actually seems to happen. But while the federal government continues to stall, state governments are taking action. More and more, state-level officials are proposing and implementing changes in technology policy. Most prominently, Texas and Florida recently passed laws restricting how platforms can moderate content, which will likely be considered by the Supreme Court later this year.On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our occasional series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with J. Scott Babwah Brennen and Matt Perault of the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill. In recent months, they’ve put together two reports on state-level tech regulation. They talked about what’s driving this trend, why and how state-level policymaking differs—and doesn’t—from policymaking at the federal level, and what opportunities and complications this could create.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 through both the best of those times and the worst—from dozens of affirming trips overseas to several parachute jumps in his latter years to many funerals—Becker was there to schedule it, plan it, manage it, and often attend it. All of this has given her a uniquely wide and deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of a long post-presidency.For the 30th anniversary of Bush 41's departure from the White House, Lawfare publisher David Priess chatted with Becker about how she first came to work with First Lady Barbara Bush, how that led to her work as chief of staff for Bush after he'd left office, the diverse activities of a lengthy post-presidency, former presidents' interactions with intelligence and classified material, Bush 41's choice to refrain from frequent political statements, his relationships with other presidents ranging from his son to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama to Joe Biden, and what a chief of staff for a former president actually does.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From December 11, 2020: This week, the Supreme Court returned once again to the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, that protects foreign sovereigns from litigation before U.S. courts. At the same time, Congress is once again debating new exceptions to the protections provided by the FSIA on issues ranging from cybercrime to the coronavirus pandemic, an effort that may risk violating international law and exposing the United States to similar lawsuits overseas. To discuss these developments and where they may be headed, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading scholars on sovereign immunity issues: Chimène Keitner, a professor at the UC Hastings School of Law and a former counselor on international law at the U.S. State Department, and Ingrid Wuerth, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School and one of the reporters for the American Law Institute's Fourth Restatement on U.S. foreign relations law.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, Chris Whipple has just done that by publishing his book, “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House,” a deeply reported book that contains many interviews with Biden's inner circle.Lawfare publisher David Priess spoke with Chris about the transition from Trump to Biden, Biden's decision to pull out of Afghanistan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration's strategy of releasing intelligence before the invasion to try to both preempt the invasion and prepare European allies for what would come afterward, and much more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 attack on the homeland, but they'd failed to connect those dots. Fusion centers were born out of an abundance of caution to share and streamline counterterrorism information between the federal level and state and local levels. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has supported the development of a national network of 80 fusion centers across the United States. And while its principle goal initially was to disseminate counterterrorism intel from the state and local levels, it's now expanded to include the sharing of intelligence regarding crimes or hazards more broadly. Last month, the Brennan Center released a report entitled, “Ending Fusion Center Abuses,” explaining how fusion centers’ domestic intelligence model has undermined American's privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, who co-authored the report, as well as Thomas Warrick, a non-resident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Forward Defense Practice at the Atlantic Council. They discussed how fusion centers were conceived, where they've excelled as intelligence centers, and where they've abused their powers.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Bankasi, or Halkbank, which is majority-owned by the country of Turkiye (until recently known as Turkey), for evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. Turkiye in turn argued that such a move was not only unprecedented but prohibited by the legal immunities it is entitled to under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA. Yesterday, those arguments reached the U.S. Supreme Court where both sides seemed to agree on just one thing—that the court's eventual decision could well have major consequences for the United States and its foreign relations.To talk through oral arguments in Halkbank, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading sovereign immunity experts: Professor Chimène Keitner of the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and Professor Ingrid Wuerth of Vanderbilt Law School. They discussed how each side reads the FSIA and other related statutes, whether any of the justices seemed particularly persuaded, and where the court—as well as the broader issue—seems likely to go from here.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawfare fellow in technology policy and law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud to talk about their new book, “Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy.” Laurent is the founder and executive director of Forbidden Stories, and Sandrine is its editor-in-chief. Along with Amnesty International’s Security Lab, they led the investigative effort by 17 international media organizations that in July 2021 exposed how some governments regularly used the Pegasus spyware against journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, and others. Their new book tells the story of how they conducted this investigation. Laurent and Sandrine talked about the operational security concerns they had to balance, how they coordinated this international effort, and the impact of their work. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 murder of Rev. James Reeb in Selma, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Era. The podcast is an incredible historical investigation of an episode that many people had forgotten, and resonates remarkably in contemporary discussions of domestic terrorism, white supremacist violence, and many other things we're still talking about today.Benjamin Wittes talked with Andrew and Chip about how to tell the story of a murder that happened a long time ago, the FBI's role in investigating the crime at the time (what they did badly, and what they did right), and what it all says about terrorism today.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott were joined by their Lawfare colleagues senior editor Molly Reynolds and managing editor Tyler McBrien to talk over some copycat-ing that's been taking place in the national security space, including:“Hoppin’ the Fence at Lulapalooza.” In a clear echo of the Jan. 6 insurrection, followers of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro sacked the country’s parliament this past week, just days after his successor Lula da Silva was sworn in—and while Bolsonaro himself was visiting former U.S. President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. What’s the relationship between Jan. 6 and Brazil’s recent experience? Is this the beginning of a dangerous global trend?“The Divider House Rules.” After fifteen votes, Rep. Kevin McCarthy is now the Speaker of the House. But to get there, he had to make a lot of concessions—many of which are now showing their face in the House rules and in committee appointments, while others remain secret. What constraints has McCarthy accepted in order to win office? And will they mean for the coming Congress?“C’mon, Man!” Several months after FBI agents raised former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to recover classified documents, lawyers for current President Biden have acknowledged that they located a few classified documents from his time as vice president in Biden’s private office as well. Critics in Congress and elsewhere are crying out that this reflects a double-standard, but does it? How big a deal is this, and what will it mean for the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 21, 2015: This week, we invited Major General Michael Lehnert (Ret.), the first commander of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to chat on the show. In January 2002, General Lehnert deployed to Guantanamo Bay as Commander of Joint Task Force 160 with the mission to construct and operate the detention facilities for Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees. He is now one of the more prominent voices calling for the closure of the prison facility. In the interview, General Lehnert describes those early days of uncertainty before GITMO became "GITMO," how, while facing a policy vacuum in Washington, he built and managed the facility, and what he thinks should be done with the remaining detainees now. In the end, he offers advice for how future policymakers can avoid mistakes when conducting critical missions and making hard national security choices.You can read General Lehnert's most recent piece calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention facility at Politico. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yesterday afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he has appointed a special counsel to investigate the revelations that documents bearing classification markings had been found in President Biden's private office and residence. The appointment comes after a preliminary investigation that began on November 14, just days before a different special counsel was appointed to investigate documents found at former President Trump's residence. To go through it all, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Lawfare contributor Paul Rosenzweig, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, and Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson. They talked about why these circumstances triggered the special counsel regulations, what we know about potential criminal exposure, and how this may impact the ongoing special counsel investigation of Donald Trump.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 in a 10-count seditious conspiracy indictment.To talk about this second major seditious conspiracy indictment, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff, who will be there live blogging it for the site. They talked about how it compares with the Oath Keepers case, which wrapped up over the fall. They talked about how the evidence is different, the Proud Boys being a bit more into the whole violence thing than the Oath Keepers. They talked about whether there was a plan, and they talked about whether the defendants can get a fair trial in the overwhelmingly Democratic District of Columbia.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Various press reports have indicated that the Biden administration intends to release its cyber strategy in the coming weeks. The cyber strategy will likely cover a range of issues. One potential topic could involve the creation of a federal response or “backstop” to the financial exposure risks that insurers and reinsurers face from future catastrophic cyber incidents affecting those that they insure. To talk about the pros and cons of a federal backstop for the cyber insurance ecosystem, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Bryan Cunningham, executive director of the Cybersecurity Research and Policy Institute at the University California, Irvine, who co-authored the article, “Uncle Sam Re: Improving Cyber Hygiene and Increasing Confidence in the Cyber Insurance Ecosystem via Government Backstopping.” They talked about what is keeping cyber insurance executives up at night, why the cyber insurance industry has not incentivized better cyber hygiene by the insured, and how a federally funded backstop could assist in shoring up the cyber insurance ecosystem.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

District Attorney of Fulton County Fani Willis has completed her special grand jury investigation of election tampering in 2020. The special purpose grand jury has completed its report and has been dissolved, and the supervising judge yesterday scheduled a hearing for January 24 to decide whether to make the report public. What will happen next? Will there be indictments? Are they going to wait until after the report comes out, or should we expect them imminently? Should we expect a Trump indictment coming next?To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare contributor Anna Bower, Georgia State University Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, and Tamar Hallerman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and co-host of the podcast Breakdown, which has followed the special grand jury from the beginning. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Brookings senior fellow and Lawfare senior editor Molly Reynolds to talk through the options. They talked about why it actually matters if you have a Speaker of the House, how long the House of Representatives can go without one before the government falls apart, and the consequences of the compromises Kevin McCarthy made.On Sunday afternoon, Ben and Molly sat down again to record an update to their earlier conversation based on the results of Friday night’s vote.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Abigail Spanberger, who represents Virginia's 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives, is one of the few members of Congress to have served as an operations officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. She also worked in law enforcement as an officer of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Not typical experiences for a thrice-elected politician—but useful for the role she finds herself in now.On this episode of Chatter, David Priess chatted with Rep. Spanberger about her recent re-election to the House, the nature of "swing districts," working across the aisle, her road to working at CIA, her experiences as a postal inspector and intelligence operations officer, what she sees as important national security issues right now, her advice for former colleagues considering a run for elective office, and how listening skills she learned at CIA have helped her as a representative.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From January 6, 2021: Today a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol following a rally at which the president spoke. Congressional efforts to count the electoral votes were suspended, and an armed standoff, in which at least one person was killed, ensued. To discuss the matter, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Quinta Jurecic; David Priess; Georgetown's Mary McCord, who used to run the National Security Division at the Justice Department; and Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown and Lawfare's foreign policy editor.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 on that terrible day.To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett and Lawfare senior editors Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff. They discussed what has been done across the many diverse areas in which we have sought accountability for Jan. 6—to do justice, to tell the story, and to make legal and policy changes to prevent this from ever happening again. They talked about criminal investigations and prosecutions, the Jan. 6 committee, congressional storytelling, the legislative process, what is left to do, and what’s been left undone. And they consider a big question: are we safer now than we were then?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 was the Russian Federation because of the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine, and because the pipeline carried natural gas from Russia to Europe. But, months have gone by and evidence that Russia was behind the Nord Stream attacks has not surfaced. This was the subject of a lengthy article in the Washington Post, the lead author of which was Shane Harris. Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Shane to discuss the article, what we know about the Nord Stream attacks, and what we know about who could be behind them.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s our annual “Ask Us Anything” episode. This year, Lawfare editors answered some of your burning questions on the Secret Service, the durability of the U.S. legal system in the wake of Jan. 6, the failed German coup, the classification of Mar-a-Lago documents, software supply chain cyber attacks, and the intelligence community using real corporations as covers in their operations.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Russia's unlawful war of aggression continues to inflict untold devastation on Ukraine, policymakers have begun to search for ways to support Ukraine's beleaguered economy and fund its eventual reconstruction. Their attention has turned to the billions of dollars in assets that the United States has frozen as part of its robust sanctions against the Kremlin. But as policymakers attempt to make some of these assets available to Ukraine, it begs the question: Under what legal authority can the United States seize these Russian frozen assets?Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson and Chimène Keitner, Alfred & Hanna Fromm Professor of International & Comparative Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, wrote a piece for Lawfare titled, “The Legal Challenges Presented by Seizing Frozen Russian Assets,” where they explain the core legal issues that U.S. policymakers need to consider as they weigh whether and how to move forward with seizing any frozen Russian-related assets. Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Scott to discuss all of this, as well as to get Scott's take on how the U.S. might move forward in its efforts to support Ukraine using Russian assets, notwithstanding, of course, the many legal constraints it faces. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From June 9, 2020: High profile congressional hearings, like the 2015 Benghazi hearings, the 2019 Mueller Report hearings and most recently, the Ukraine impeachment proceedings are often described in derogatory terms like "political theater," "spectacle" or "circus." But do these exaggerated performances on Capitol Hill actually serve a constitutional purpose? Margaret Taylor sat down with Josh Chafetz, a law professor and author of the book "Congress's Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers." They talked about his most recent article, in which he argues that congressional overspeech, like congressional oversight, is actually an important tool of constitutional politics, even if it doesn't automatically produce good outcomes.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 listeners, including:What did Quinta mean when she referenced "the radical political statement" of the Star Wars series Andor?How should we grade Biden as a foreign policy president? Has he made America credible again?Will recent mass shootings make Congress more open to any sort of "domestic terrorism" legislation?What delay tactics did former President Trump use in the courts, and what can be done to stop others from doing the same?Who wins, werewolf or vampire? And how?How would the Afghan Adjustment Act provide legal protections for Afghans who fled the Taliban in the final days of the U.S. military presence? And what is stopping Congress from enacting it?Why has the United States let Turkey bully Stockholm and Helsinki over NATO membership? How can we get Americans to care about foreign policy? Which Muppet does each host identify with most strongly and why?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 11, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Genevieve Lakier, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School and First Amendment expert. It’s basically impossible to have a conversation about content moderation without someone crying “First Amendment!” at some point. But the cultural conception of the First Amendment doesn’t always match the legal conception. Evelyn and Quinta spoke with Genevieve about what First Amendment doctrine actually says, how its history might be quite different from what you think and what the dynamism of the doctrine over time—and the current composition of the Supreme Court—might suggest about the First Amendment’s possible futures for grappling with the internet.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do." They talked about his background and expertise with artificial intelligence, what shaped our modern perception of AI and why the next big break in AI always appears to be 10 or 20 years away. They also discussed the current limitations of artificial intelligence, whether there are any dangers to our current approach and whether AI's advancement to super intelligence is really inevitable.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On December 15, the New York Times published an article that detailed an investigation conducted by three of its reporters into how Russian state media uses American right wing and Chinese media to portray the ongoing war in Ukraine to Russian citizens. The investigation utilized thousands of leaked emails from correspondence within a Russian state media agency and with Russian security services, to uncover how the Kremlin crafts its narratives and spreads disinformation to its people. To unpack the findings of the investigation and their implications, Lawfare associate editor Katherine Pompilio sat down with the journalists that conducted the investigation: Paul Mozur, a New York Times correspondent focused on technology and geopolitics in Asia; Adam Satariano, a New York Times technology correspondent focused on digital policy; and Aaron Krolik, an interactive news journalist and developer also at the Times. They discussed how they conducted their investigation, Russia's propaganda machine that they describe as the country's greatest wartime success, the limits of the disinformation campaign, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 included in the omnibus spending bill, requiring the social media video app to be removed from the devices used by federal agencies. But addressing the concerns over how the Chinese government could coerce TikTok’s parent company to get access to Americans' data raises interesting questions about the existing data protection and privacy frameworks in the U.S.To discuss what is going on, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Caitlin Chin, a fellow with the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has been closely following these developments. They discussed why TikTok is considered a national security threat to the United States, why a ban might not be the right solution to this problem, and her recommendations for what a comprehensive data protection framework should look like.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Founded in 2019, Rebellion Defense emerged as a darling of the defense startup industry, backed by powerful Pentagon insiders and high-profile investors like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. But now, three years later, the company is beginning to look less like Apple and more like Theranos, according to a recent story in Vox. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Vox senior foreign policy writer Jonathan Guyer to discuss his reporting on Rebellion Defense. They talked about the thorny ethical questions of artificial intelligence on the battlefield, the unholy alliance of Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, and why one former Rebellion Defense employee likened the company to a “Fyre Festival led by Jar Jar Binks.”Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 23, 2021: Our constitutional system involves the written document, plus two and a half centuries of judicial decisions interpreting it. But these two things only scratch the surface. It also involves our constitutional norms, the unwritten rules that govern how actors in our political system behave. For decades, commentators have observed the steady erosion of many of these norms, and in the four years of the Trump administration, the trickle of norm violations became a torrent. As a response, many in academia, the media and politics have called for Congress to pass legislation that would codify what had previously been unwritten norms of behavior, from requiring that presidential candidates disclose their tax returns to limiting the president's pardon power.In a forthcoming article in the Georgetown Law Journal, Jonathan Gould, assistant professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzes many of these proposals and points out the potential unintended consequences of trying to commit unwritten norms to legislative language. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Jonathan about the importance and erosion of constitutional norms, especially within the executive branch, and how best to repair them.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 term. Only one president, the underappreciated Grover Cleveland, has ever accomplished that feat. Yet his story remains largely unknown.David Priess invited Troy Senik, author of a new biography of Grover Cleveland called, “A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland,” to Chatter to explore how the stories of rejected presidents in the past shed light on Trump's effort to retake the Oval Office now—with a whole lotta Grover in the conversation.They discussed how we rate U.S. leaders, the cases of presidents who lost their reelection bids and then tried again, what drove those men to do so, Grover Cleveland's formative experiences, his political offices in New York, how he became president, his predilection for vetoes, his loss in 1888, his comeback in 1892, why Cleveland is largely forgotten, how our views of presidents change over time, how Cleveland's effort in 1892 to regain the presidency compares to Trump's attempt now, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Jan. 6 committee issued its final report Thursday night, and the team at Lawfare spent Friday reading through it and formulating some initial thoughts, observations, bewilderments, and questions. To give you an overview and some analysis, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, and Lawfare senior editors Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecic, Molly Reynolds, and Roger Parloff. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Authorization Act, or NDAA, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act. Both annual endeavors play central complementary roles in our political system and often become vehicles for an array of otherwise unrelated provisions, including many related to national security. And even by the usual standards of Congress, this year's process has been a chaotic one.To discuss, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with fellow Lawfare senior editor and Brookings Institution colleague Molly Reynolds. They talked about the process that led to this year's bills and highlighted some notable items that are in them— and some notable items that aren't.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fifth generation, or 5G technology, promises to bring high-speed, low-latency wireless infrastructure necessary for the smart era. But moving from the promise of 5G to a reality where 5G networks will deliver amazing and important new capabilities and services will require those networks to be secure. To talk about 5G cybersecurity challenges, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Tom Wheeler, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (or FCC), and Admiral (ret.) David Simpson, professor at Virginia Tech and former chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau at the FCC. They just published a new paper entitled, “5G is Smart, Now Let’s Make it Secure.” They talked about the 5G cyber paradox, three specific cybersecurity challenges they outline in the paper, and recommendations they make for addressing these cybersecurity challenges going forward.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, held its final public event. It summarized its key findings and voted to approve its final report. And as most commentators are focusing on, the committee also voted to recommend to the Department of Justice that it charge Donald Trump and others with crimes. Shortly after the event concluded, the committee released the executive summary of its final report. To talk through it all, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down for a live event with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic, Roger Parloff, Molly Reynolds, and Alan Rozenshtein, as well as editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On December 7, Peruvian president Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve Peru’s Congress and implement a state of emergency. His dictatorship lasted only a few hours before he was impeached by Congress and arrested—making him the fifth president to leave office in Peru in five years. Since Castillo’s arrest, Peru’s crisis has spiraled further, with protests in the streets and a violent response by the police and military that has left 25 people dead. To understand what’s going on right now in Peru, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Rodrigo Barrenechea, a 2022/23 Santo Domingo Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and an assistant professor at the Departamento de Ciencias Sociales of the Universidad Católica del Uruguay. They talked about how and why Peru ended up here, the fragile state of the country’s democracy, and why Rodrigo thinks that Castillo’s attempted dissolution of Congress was “the most ill-planned coup d’etat in Latin American history.”You can read Rodrigo’s article on the crisis in the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio (in Spanish) here.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When we think about government surveillance, we often imagine something physical, like a police officer executing a search warrant on a house or car. But increasingly, government surveillance, including the everyday work of police departments across the country, involves remote electronic monitoring or the analysis of massive amounts of digital information.A leading analyst of this transformation and of the implications it has for our privacy and security is Chris Slobogin, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School and one of the leading scholars of the digital Fourth Amendment. Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Chris to discuss his new book, “Virtual Searches: Regulating the Covert World of Technological Policing,” in which Chris explains how the traditional legal framework for surveillance is out of date and what should take its place. Alan and Chris talk about the importance of taking a more flexible approach to what makes a search reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, and why it's so important for legislatures to pre-authorize any police surveillance techniques. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ronald Reagan stands among the most consequential national security presidents in United States history, not least of which because his policies helped to end the Cold War without a direct war between the superpowers. Reagan's vision for ending the Cold War evolved during his presidency, but followed clear principles he brought with him to the office.Will Inboden, a historian and former policymaker who leads the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, has written a new survey of the 40th president's national security policies, “The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink.” In it, he uses newly declassified documents and policymaker interviews to give an informative and insightful reassessment of the formation, development, execution, and impact of Reagan's foreign policy.In this episode of Chatter, David Priess and Inboden touch on the challenges of conducting research on decades-old administrations, the National Security Council process under different presidents, Reagan's influence on an entire generation, the origins of Reagan's national security views, the impact of the 1981 assassination attempt, the nature and influence of Reagan's faith, his evolving relationship with Soviet leaders, the Reykjavik summit, how close the US and USSR came to agreeing to eliminate nuclear weapons, Reagan's legacy beyond the Cold War, what Will would ask Reagan if he had the chance to do so, how Reagan might view the United States today, why Reagan is hard to capture onscreen, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From September 30, 2020: 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 attracted enormous attention and paints a dismal picture. Donald Trump paid no personal income taxes for 11 of the past 18 years, he uses tax deductions aggressively, and last year he paid only $750 in federal income tax. So, is this a story of a president merely in massive debt, or is there something more sinister at play? To whom does the president owe all this money? And what are the national security risks of the president being in this sort of financial position? To try to break it all down, Susan Hennessey sat down with Margaret Taylor, formerly a fellow at Brookings and senior editor at Lawfare; Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the author of "The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency"; and Adam Davidson, a contributing writer to The New Yorker who has written extensively on Trump's financial entanglements.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 central player in the decolonization movement after World War II. To discuss Bunche and his accomplishments, Lawfare founding editor and Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith sat down with Kal Raustiala, the Promise Institute Distinguished Professor of Comparative and International Law at UCLA Law School, about his new book, “The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire.” They discussed the role played by Bunche and the United Nations in the decolonization movement, what made Bunche such a great diplomat, Bunche’s view of the relationship between empire and domestic racial segregation, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On November 19, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk announced that he would be reinstating former President Donald Trump’s account on the platform—though so far, Trump hasn’t taken Musk up on the offer, preferring instead to stay on his bespoke website Truth Social. Meanwhile, Meta’s Oversight Board has set a January 2023 deadline for the platform to decide whether or not to return Trump to Facebook following his suspension after the Jan. 6 insurrection. How should we think through the difficult question of how social media platforms should handle the presence of a political leader who delights in spreading falsehoods and ginning up violence?Luckily for us, Stanford and UCLA recently held a conference on just that. On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic sat down with the conference’s organizers, election law experts Rick Hasen and Nate Persily, to talk about whether Trump should be returned to social media. They debated the tangled issues of Trump’s deplatforming and replatforming … and discussed whether, and when, Trump will break the seal and start tweeting again.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 opt in to encryption for iPhone backups to iCloud. While this new feature will enhance data privacy and security for those users who choose to opt in, it may create additional challenges for law enforcement to obtain evidence in criminal investigations.To discuss the implications and potential impact of this new security feature, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Riana Pfefferkorn, research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory. They discussed the costs and benefits to users who may choose to opt in to this feature, how Apple's choice to offer this feature plays into a broader conflict known as the Crypto Wars, and how this feature relates to another part of Apple's announcement where it indicated that it would not be scanning all iPhones for child sexual abuse material before images were backed up to iCloud.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 to criminal prosecutions for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The case is about a previously obscure statute, at least in this context, that criminalizes corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, and it’s a charge that DOJ has brought against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters. Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani attended the argument, and Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with her to discuss what the parties argued, how the judges responded, and what might happen to the charge of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen shared a trove of internal company documents to the Wall Street Journal in 2021, some of the most dramatic revelations concerned the company’s use of a so-called “cross-check” system that, according to the Journal, essentially exempted certain high-profile users from the platform’s usual rules. After the Journal published its report, Facebook—which has since changed its name to Meta—asked the platform’s independent Oversight Board to weigh in on the program. And now, a year later, the Board has finally released its opinion. On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic sat down with Suzanne Nossel, a member of the Oversight Board and the CEO of PEN America. She talked us through the Board’s findings, its criticisms of cross-check, and its recommendations for Meta going forward. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 news, including:“In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is Still Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy.” The jury in the Oath Keepers trial came back last week, convicting every defendant of at least one criminal offense—including the controversial charge of seditious conspiracy. What might this mean for other Jan. 6 investigations moving forward?“Morality? Puh-leeze.” Weeks of protests in Iran finally seemed to bear fruit last week when a regime official signaled that the morality police may be disbanded and laws requiring that women wear hijabs be repealed. But other regime figures don’t seem on-board with that solution. Is this a sign that protests are succeeding? Where might they go from here?“Les Fleurs du MAL.” The litigation that led Judge Aileen Cannon to appoint a special master to review evidence collected by the FBI from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this past summer has finally culminated in its final form: an 11th Circuit ruling reversing Judge Cannon’s order and disbanding the process altogether. Where will the investigation go from here?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 14, 2021: A lot of people are expressing anxiety about white supremacist violent terrorism, yet in a new Brookings paper entitled "Identifying and Exploiting the Weaknesses of the White Supremacist Movement," Daniel Byman, Lawfare's foreign policy editor and a senior fellow at the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, and Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, say that while the threat is real, these movements have weaknesses that other terrorist groups do not. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Byman and Pitcavage to talk about these weaknesses, how white supremacist groups are vulnerable and how law enforcement in the United States can exploit them to reduce the threat.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 former president over Jan. 6. The question before the appeals court is: Does a president have immunity from lawsuit even when he's accused of stirring up a mob against a coordinate branch of government engaged in a function constitutionally entrusted to it? The judges seemed skeptical of the former president's argument, which was a bit of a surprise given the composition of the panel. To chew it all over, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor and University of Minnesota Law School professor Alan Rozenshtein, who followed the oral arguments and live tweeted them. They talked about the case that gave rise to the arguments, how it played out at the lower court, and what the Supreme Court might do when it confronts this question down the road.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 state legislature is arguing that the state Supreme Court lacks the legal authority to review the heavily gerrymandered congressional districts it has enacted, on the grounds that the Constitution's elections clause gives that authority exclusively to the state legislatures—an argument often referred to as the independent state legislature doctrine, which many fear may undermine state law election protections around the country if taken up by the Court.To discuss, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down on Twitter Spaces with Professor Ned Foley of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Professor Derek Muller of the University of Iowa College of Law. They discussed where the justices seem to be leaning, how they may resolve different aspects of the party's arguments, and what it all might mean for 2024.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-pillar strategy for how the United States intends to wrestle with and regulate the challenges arising from the increasingly common use of artificial intelligence. In recent weeks, the European Union has been wrestling with its own AI regulation challenges and is now on the verge of releasing its own similar strategy. Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Alex Engler, a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, who has been closely tracking these policies. They talked about the challenges AI poses to policymakers, the strategy the United States is set to pursue, and how it is both different from and similar to the EU’s approach.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 of the most reviled figures in American history due to FBI operations under his leadership to spy on Americans, including government officials, in order to manipulate democratic politics.To discuss Hoover's extraordinary role in American politics in the 20th century and the continuing influence of his legacy today, Lawfare co-founder and Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith sat down with Yale University history professor Beverly Gage, who is the author of a new biography of Hoover called, “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.” They discussed why Hoover's place in American history is much more complex than conventional wisdom suggests; Hoover as a master bureaucrat who managed the press, Hollywood, and senior government officials to maintain enormous popularity throughout his reign as FBI director; how Hoover, the fierce anti-communist, was the key to the elimination of McCarthyism in the 1950s; and much, much more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-judge panel vacated District Judge Aileen Cannon's order appointing a special master to review the material seized at Mar-a-Lago by the Justice Department, and it ruled in scathing language that she had no authority to entertain the case at all To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down before a live audience on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett and Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson. They went through the decision page-by-page and talked about whether things would speed up now that Judge Cannon's ruling is out of the way and what kind of message the 11th Circuit is sending to a new judge who seemed to be willfully intervening on the part of the ex-president.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Plagues periodically exact a heavy toll on human life—and much more. They devastate economies, exacerbate social disorder, shock governance systems, provide fodder for political violence, and interact in surprising ways with terrorism.In this episode of Chatter, David Priess and longtime RAND Corporation terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins talk about the long nature of pandemics, the history of public resistance to efforts to protect public health, links between plagues and social unrest, how the concept of comorbidity applies to the effects of pandemics, the relationship between plagues and political violence, the challenges of rumors and rapid communication, the threat of biological terrorism, and pragmatic ways to counter domestic political violence.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 28, 2020: Sophia Yan, a correspondent for the London Telegraph, joined Benjamin Wittes from Beijing where she is in coronavirus lockdown after traveling to Wuhan, China, to see how it was recovering from being the coronavirus epidemic center earlier in the year. They talked about what Wuhan looks like these days, what quarantine means in China, and how close the surveillance is. And they talked about the Chinese government, how it is responding to the crisis, and about how the Chinese economy is recovering and suffering.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. As explained in the Command history, U.S. Cyber Command operates globally in real time against determined and capable adversaries. Lawyers who work in the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate at Cyber Command provide legal advice on a range of issues, including the legality of offensive cyber operations. Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Kurt Sanger, a recently retired Cyber Command lawyer, to discuss the kind of work he did and issues he addressed at U.S. Cyber Command. They talked about why the application of international law can be challenging in the cyber domain, some of the most vexing international legal issues with respect to offensive cyber operations, and some legal issues he is observing in the context of the current armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. The government has begun a crackdown, there have been arrests, there have been intimidating interrogations, there have been street closures, and there has been a lot of internet content removed. To go over it all and see what we can make of it, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Sophia Yan, who just left China where she has been The Telegraph’s correspondent for a number of years. They talked about whether these protests might have legs, about what capacity the government has to shut them down, and about whether this could be the beginning of something.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 representatives have decided it's time for it to go away. A repeal bill was passed by the House and is awaiting action in the Senate, but we don't know if there's going to be time for that action before the Senate adjourns. It’s a good opportunity to have a conversation about this orphaned AUMF that just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny through the decades. To talk through the history of the 2002 AUMF, its surprising rebirth, and its dangerous continued life, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson, who recently wrote a two-part series on the subject for Lawfare, focusing on the history and practice of the 2002 AUMF, as well as its interpretations and implications.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 behind it, and yet it remains the largest single energy consumer in the country and the largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter in the world. To talk through this strategic disconnect, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Dr. Neta Crawford, Montague Burton Chair in International Relations at the University of Oxford, co-director of the Costs of War study at Brown University, and author of the new book, “The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions.” They discussed what Dr. Crawford calls the irony and tragedy of the military's carbon emissions, how war drives emissions and industrialization, and why climate activists may be skeptical about framing climate as a security issue. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Kim Jong-un, and the articulation of a remarkably aggressive nuclear doctrine. To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Stephan Haggard, the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego. They talked about how all of this relates to prior diplomacy between North Korea and the Trump administration, what message the North Koreans are trying to send with the combination of this testing and the articulation of this new doctrine, and whether there is any prospect of denuclearization at any time in the foreseeable future.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security 2.0, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott welcomed Lawfare's dynamic associate editor duo, Katherine Pompilio and Hyemin Han, on to the show to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including:“Going Full Cleve.” Last week, former President Donald Trump announced his intention to once again run for president—in spite of the Republicans’ weak showing in the midterm elections and his own impending legal troubles. What does Trump’s announcement mean for 2024 and after? “A Mueller Mulligan?” Trump’s announcement that he was once again running for president in turn led Attorney General Merrick Garland to make his own announcement last Friday: that he was appointing another Special Counsel to take over the investigations into Trump’s interference in the 2020 election results and mishandling of classified records. Was this the right move? How will the Special Counsel’s appointment impact the investigations—and Trump’s political future?“Pyongyanking Our Chain.” North Korea has launched a new ICBM that it claims can deliver nuclear weapons anywhere in the United States. Should this threat be taken seriously or is it a bluff? And is the Biden administration doing enough to respond?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Asian women, at several Atlanta businesses. Across the country, Asian-Americans have shared stories of attacks and harassment, some of which involved racist language in connection with the coronavirus pandemic.Yet there is very little data available that could help journalists and policymakers make sense of this apparent trend. To understand why, Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and the co-founder of AH Datalytics, who recently wrote for Lawfare on why there’s so little reliable data on anti-Asian violence—or on any other kind of hate crime. Jeff discussed the patchwork system by which the FBI currently collects data on hate crimes, what other factors might explain why the data is so unreliable and how improved data could help guide the response to anti-Asian attacks.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 westward expansion, off-continent acquisitions, and a worldwide network of hundreds of bases reveal much about how and why the United States grew as it did.Last month, David Priess spoke with Daniel Immerwahr, associate professor of history at Northwestern University and author of “How to Hide an Empire.” They talked about everything from what the Constitution says about lands west of the thirteen colonies, to the critical role of the Guano Islands in U.S. history, to the famous Insular Cases, to how military access agreements and long-term leases help the United States avoid a truly territorial empire.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From December 11, 2020: This week, the Supreme Court returned once again to the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, that protects foreign sovereigns from litigation before U.S. courts. At the same time, Congress is once again debating new exceptions to the protections provided by the FSIA on issues ranging from cybercrime to the coronavirus pandemic, an effort that may risk violating international law and exposing the United States to similar lawsuits overseas. To discuss these developments and where they may be headed, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading scholars on sovereign immunity issues: Chimène Keitner, a professor at the UC Hastings School of Law and a former counselor on international law at the U.S. State Department, and Ingrid Wuerth, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School and one of the reporters for the American Law Institute's Fourth Restatement on U.S. foreign relations law.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 jury has the case, and Roger joined Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about it. Which charges are likely to stick, and which ones seem weak? How did the various defendants do when they took the stand to defend themselves? And what kind of verdict do we expect when the jury eventually comes back?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier this month, officials from the government of Ethiopia and representatives from the Tigray People's Liberation Front agreed to halt the two-year conflict that has been rife with accusations of ethnic cleansing, sexual violence, and famine as a weapon of war. To discuss the current state of the conflict and the prospect of peace, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. A longtime expert on the Horn of Africa, de Waal co-edited the book, “Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law,” which was published in August. They discussed the terms of the recent truce agreements, the irony of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Nobel Peace Prize, and the options for accountability for forced starvation and other crimes committed by both sides. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 loss and damage fund. This fund is meant to give resources to countries who have experienced the worst effects of climate change. Some like to think of it as climate reparations. There are a lot of factors that might have created the momentum for this historic agreement to go through after many years. An interesting one is that it's becoming more and more difficult for big emitters like the United States to deny their role in contributing to climate change, particularly as new scientific studies have been pivotal in creating a pretty unimpeachable basis for climate responsibility. But, just because science can verify certain realities does not mean that it's a straight path forward for climate justice. To get a sense of what factors are coming together to achieve climate justice, Lawfare associate editor Hyemin Han merges the legal and policy perspective with the science perspective in a conversation with Karen Sokol, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and a fellow at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Chris Callahan, a PhD candidate at Dartmouth College who co-produced a scientific study that informed negotiations on loss and damage at COP 27.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 attention to satellite-based weapons and anti-satellite weaponry; both have also dealt with the problem of space debris related to the latter.In this chat, David Priess and George Washington University historian Aaron Bateman talk about Bateman's early interest in satellites, early satellite technology and attempts at anti-satellite activity, the Outer Space Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, actions by presidents from Eisenhower through Biden related to the testing of satellite and/or anti-satellite weapons, the Strategic Defense Initiative (commonly called the "Star Wars program"), the problem of space debris, the Kessler Syndrome, other countries' satellite and anti-satellite activities, the Space Force, and on-screen portrayals of satellite warfare and space debris from the James Bond movies to Gravity.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From September 23, 2017: The escalating tension between North Korea and the United States has risen to an unprecedented level. Earlier this month, Stephan Haggard, Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies at UC San Diego, gave a lecture at a private function on the complicated strategic and political risks that North Korea’s missile and nuclear capabilities present. He talked about the complex relationship among North Korea’s allies and adversaries, the impact of sanctions against Pyongyang, and the past and future role of the United States in addressing North Korean aggression.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier today, in a surprise announcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to lead two ongoing federal investigations of former president and now official 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump. The special counsel, Jack Smith, is a longtime DOJ prosecutor and currently the chief Kosovo war crimes prosecutor in The Hague. He will take over the investigation into the retention of classified and government documents at Mar-a-lago, as well as the investigation into attempts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power after the 2020 election.To make sense of the special counsel appointment and what it means for the federal investigations into Donald Trump, Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Lawfare editor-in-chief Ben Wittes, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic, and former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into foreign election interference in the 2016 election.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 most notorious in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But it wasn't always this way.To learn more about this fraught and understudied history, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Dr. Rebecca Herman, assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley, to discuss her new book, “Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America.” They discussed how the U.S. went from its good neighbor policy of the 1930s to nearly 200 military bases on sovereign Latin American soil by the end of the war, and the thorny questions of legal jurisdiction, labor rights, and gender relations that arose from those new sites. They also got into how, in Prof. Herman's words, although national sovereignty and international cooperation are compatible concepts in principle, they're difficult to reconcile in practice. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 how it's doing. From the right, would-be authoritarians cast doubt on elections and on the very idea of liberal democracy. But even those who reject this authoritarian impulse are frequently uncomfortable with the messiness of democratic politics, instead preferring an anti-politics of technocratic decision-making. Jedediah Purdy, a law professor at Duke Law School, wants to defend democracy from its critics and its skeptics. In his new book, “Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening—and Our Best Hope,” he argues that democratic renewal is both desirable and, most importantly, possible. Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Jed to talk about the book, get his thoughts about the state of American democracy, and chart the path toward a healthier democratic future.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, and cyber agency. He's also a Lawfare contributor. Like a lot of us, Tait has spent the last several months thinking about Ukraine, and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes had cybersecurity questions for him. They talked about why the Ukrainian internet is still functioning and why the Russians have been so ineffective in the cyber arena. They also talked about whether U.S. support for Ukraine is threatened with Republicans in control of the House and what the Biden administration is going to do about Section 702, which is scheduled to expire at the end of next year.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sophia Yan, pianist for the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, is also The Telegraph’s Beijing correspondent—or at least, she was until the other day. She’s produced a new podcast entitled, “How to become a dictator,” about the rise and rule of Xi Jinping and her own struggles as a reporter in Xi’s China. Now Sophia’s in Taiwan after a hasty exit from the country, and she joined Lawfare’s editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the new podcast and her departure from China. Who is Xi Jinping really? How is Xi different from other recent Chinese leaders? Why did Sophia leave China? And did she take her piano with her?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Georgii Dubynskyi is the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. It is a ministry set up to modernize government services for Ukrainians that has taken a lead role in keeping Ukraine functioning online during the war. On Thursday morning, he joined Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes before a live audience at the Hewlett Foundation's cybersecurity grantee convening conference in Los Angeles.It was a wide-ranging conversation that started with what the ministry was meant to do and what role it has taken on during the war. How has Ukraine remained so resilient amidst Russian kinetic and cyber attacks? Why have the Russian cyberattacks been less effective than we expected them to be? And why is the Ukrainian internet still up when so much of the power is down.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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) national security news, including:“Bibi Got Back.” Last week, an unprecedented fifth national election in the last four years returned controversial former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power, at the head of a coalition including several far-right nationalist parties. What does his return to office mean for the future of Israel and the region? And its relations with the United States?“COP Out.” The United Nations’ 27th annual Convention of Parties (also known as “COP27”) is playing host to world leaders in Sharm-al-Sheikh, Egypt, this week, where some are hoping to find new consensus on how to combat climate change. Are countries taking these challenges seriously? What are these efforts likely to look like moving forward?“Everybody Toots.” Elon Musk’s purchase and dramatic reorientation of Twitter is begging to drive users to other social media platforms, including the decentralized Mastodon network. What will Musk’s changes mean for the future of disinformation and content moderation, both within Twitter and outside of it?For object lessons, Alan endorsed hunting the world's most dangerous game: man (with paintballs). Quinta passed along a useful reference on the state of crime in the United States and the way it is being used in the midterm elections. Scott recommended everyone try a sip of his long neglected workplace colleague. And Natan celebrated the pandemic perseverance of his office jade plants as a sign of hope in dark times.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 2020 Texas Tribune Festival. They discussed Portland, DHS, domestic violence, and even the shortage of civil discourse in our society.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 events from the last few weeks.From April 2, 2020: On this episode of the Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Nate Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Persily is also a member of the Kofi Annan Commission on Democracy and Elections in the Digital Age, which recently released a report on election integrity and the internet for which Nate provided a framing paper. Alongside his work on internet governance, Nate is also an expert on election law and administration. They spoke about the commission report and the challenges the internet may pose for democracy, to what extent the pandemic has flipped that on its head, and, of course, the 2020 presidential election.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Tuesday, November 8, Americans finished casting their ballots in the midterm elections. Given that the president’s party typically performs poorly in the midterms, Democrats were poised for major losses and Republicans were ready to celebrate a “red wave” handing them control of both the House and Senate. But instead, Democrats saw a striking overperformance—and as of Wednesday afternoon, control of both the House and Senate remains up for grabs. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with fellow senior editors Scott Anderson and Molly Reynolds to talk through what they know and don’t know about the results. Was this a stay of execution for American democracy? If the GOP does take the House by a narrow margin, how hard is it going to be for the messy Republican caucus to stick together? And what do questions over control of Congress mean for the Jan. 6 investigation and key foreign policy issues, like aid to Ukraine?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. It was a bizarre but troubling revelation, and it raised a lot of questions, not only about the propriety of those reports but also about the practice in general. Who else was I&A compiling intelligence reports about and on what basis? So, Ben filed a FOIA request and subsequently a lawsuit in hopes of getting some answers. He's written about this matter for Lawfare a number of times, including in an update published yesterday.Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Ben to talk through it all. They discussed the background of the case, why so-called open source intelligence reports can be so dangerous, and what we've learned about DHS over the course of the litigation.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 obsessing the political commentariat right now? We’re talking, of course, about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the billionaire’s dramatic and erratic changes to the platform. In response to Musk’s takeover, a great number of Twitter users have made the leap to Mastodon, a decentralized platform that offers a very different vision of what social media could look like. What exactly is decentralized social media, and how does it work? Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein has a paper on just that, and he sat down with Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic on the podcast to discuss for an episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem. They were also joined by Kate Klonick, associate professor of law at St. John’s University, to hash out the many, many questions about content moderation and the future of the internet sparked by Musk’s reign and the new popularity of Mastodon.Among the works mentioned in this episode:“Welcome to hell, Elon. You break it, you buy it,” by Nilay Patel on The Verge“Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve,” by Mike Masnick on TechdirtSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Oath Keepers. The trial has been going on for the last several weeks, and Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been in court every day keeping us up to date.Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to talk through it all. Who has the government put on the stand? What parts of the government's case has it proved, and what parts are a little bit dodgy? What can we expect as the defense presents its case, which began on Thursday? And what do we make of the government’s silence on the question of the Insurrection Act?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Although codemaking and codebreaking often receive less attention in the public imagination than swashbuckling HUMINT operations and ingenious spy gadgets, they have changed history. The under-appreciation of cryptography might stem from a combination of the complexity of encryption, the classified nature of much of its technology, and the difficulty of conveying codebreaking effectively in pop culture.David Priess spoke with Vince Houghton about the realities and fictional representations of cryptography, as well as the challenges and rewards of making a compelling museum experience out of U.S. codemaking and codebreaking efforts. Houghton is director of the National Cryptologic Museum, the open-to-the-public museum of the National Security Agency. They talked while walking through the newly redesigned museum in Annapolis Junction, Maryland, highlighting various artifacts including early American codebreaking computers, German Enigma machines, the oldest known book of cryptography (from the 16th century), and code generators for U.S. nuclear weapons. They discussed the provenance of highly unusual items and the value of having so many of them on display. And they traded views on movies incorporating ciphers or codes, from The Da Vinci Code to Sneakers to The Empire Strikes Back to The Imitation Game.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 some alarming reporting about how belief in the conspiracy theory is on the rise. But is it really?This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Joseph Uscinski, an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories. He explained why conspiracy theories in America aren’t actually at a new apex, what kinds of people are drawn to ideas like QAnon and what role—if any—social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter should have in limiting the spread of conspiracy theories.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On October 30, Brazilians elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as their next president. Within minutes, world leaders, including President Biden and Secretary Blinken, offered official congratulations. For Lulu supporters, the atmosphere was celebratory but tense, as many wondered if Lulu's opponent, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro—who once said the election would end either in his death, arrest, or victory—would accept the legitimate results of the election. To talk through that election and its aftermath, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Brian Winter, editor in chief of Americas Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade living and reporting across Latin America. They discussed whether warnings of an election crisis were alarmist or not, what's next for Bolsonaro and his movement, and what to watch for during Lulu's first 100 days.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Israeli election results are in—sort of—and the early count looks very favorable for former Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and the far-right coalition that he would bring to power. The results are not a hundred percent clear yet, but they're clear enough for Benjamin Wittes to sit down on Twitter Spaces with Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, to talk through it all. How did Netanyahu win while getting no more votes than the other side? How did he impose a unity on his side, and how did the other side fail to do so in a fashion that facilitated this? Who is Itamar Ben-Gvir, and why is he the new power source in Israeli politics? And what can we say about the government that is going out—a government that ranged from the hard right to an Islamist party?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, Lawfare published a piece by Lawfare’s legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani called, “The Case for Designating the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Militias as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” The article considered whether the Russian-backed militias operating in the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk can be properly designated as FTOs, and whether they should be.Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Saraphin and with Lawfare’s editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, who has also been giving this topic a lot of thought. They discussed the legal requirements for FTO designation, how such a designation would interact with the existing sanctions regime the United States has imposed in response to Russia's war in Ukraine, and what impact FTO designations might have on the conflict.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has released a trio of long-awaited strategy documents, including the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the Nuclear Posture Review. But how should we read these documents, and what do they actually tell us about how the Biden administration intends to approach the world?To answer these questions, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security, who is himself also a former National Security Council official and senior congressional adviser. They discussed the role these strategy documents play in U.S. foreign policy, what we can learn from them, and what they say about the state of the world and the United States’ role in it.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The effect of the digital revolution on privacy has been mixed, to say the least, and for intimate privacy—information about our health, sexual activities, and relationships—it's been a downright disaster. Corporations and governments surveil us, former sexual partners post revenge pornography online, and our virtual reality future threatens to take privacy intrusions to a whole new level. Danielle Citron is a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, a MacArthur Fellow, and the leading law reformer on digital privacy. She's just released a new book, “The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age.” Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Danielle to talk about her research and advocacy, the dangers that technology and the market pose to intimate privacy, and what we can do to fight back. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by China expert and law professor Julian Ku to talk through some of the week's big national security news, including:“Xi Loves Me, Xi Loves Me Not.” At the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress this past weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping was able to not only secure his leadership over the party and country for a third consecutive five-year term but successfully staff the party apparatus with his hand-picked loyalists. What does the Congress tell us about where China is headed under Xi’s rule?“Huawei or the Highway.” Less than 24 hours after the close of the CCP Congress in Beijing, Attorney General Merrick Garland and his most senior deputies unveiled a series of indictments against Chinese nationals alleged to have engaged in covert campaigns to interfere with the investigation into Huawei, penetrate U.S. research institutions, and curb protests by Chinese nationals in the United States. Is the timing a message or just a coincidence? How should the Biden administration be responding?“4th and Elon(g).” Despite his best efforts, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is set to go through this Friday. But in the last few days, there have been mutterings that the purchase might be subjected to a national security review by the federal government. Are these rumors just Elon’s Hail Mary attempt at killing the deal? Or might they have some merit? And what will either outcome mean for Twitter?For object lessons, Alan recommended the new film "Argentina, 1985." Quinta endorsed the novel "Grey Bees" by Andrey Kurkov for those wanting to sample some modern Ukrainian literature. Scott urged listeners who share his space obsessions to check out "For All Mankind," one of the best shows he's seen on television. And Julian recommended the BBC documentary series "Rome: Empire Without Limit" by Mary Beard for those wanting to reflect a bit on the rise and decline of great powers.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From August 24, 2020: 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 coronavirus have led the two sides to exchange increasingly harsh rhetoric. Just weeks ago, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went so far as to suggest that the decades-long experiment of U.S. engagement with China had been a mistake. But is this heightened tension just a bump in the road, or is it a new direction for one of the United States's most important bilateral relationships? To discuss these issues, Scott R. Anderson sat down with an all-star panel of China watchers, including Tarun Chhabra of the Brookings Institution and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Elsa Kania of the Center for a New American Security, and Rob Williams, executive director of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether Donald Trump should be indicted. Lately, that discussion has focused on the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-lago or the Jan. 6 committee's revelations about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But what about his speech on the ellipse on Jan. 6 when he told a crowd of thousands to “fight like hell,” and they went on to attack the Capitol? Isn't that incitement? Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Alan Rozenshtein, a senior editor at Lawfare and an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Jed Shugerman, a professor at Fordham Law School. Alan and Jed explained the complicated First Amendment jurisprudence protecting political speech, even when it leads to violence, and why they believe that given everything we know now, Trump may in fact be criminally liable. They also reference Alan and Jed’s law review article in Constitutional Commentary, “January 6, Ambiguously Inciting Speech, and the Overt-Acts Solution” (forthcoming 2023).Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Claudia Swain is Lawfare’s digital strategist—but before coming to Lawfare, she worked at the Federal Railroad Administration, deep in the bureaucracy. She recently wrote an article for Lawfare called, “The Emerging Cyber Threat to the American Rail Industry,” which is a bit of a chilling read about the threat that the American rail industry faces as a result of, of all things, new computerized safety systems. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Claudia for a fascinating conversation about Positive Train Control, this new computerized system, and the potential cybersecurity threats it poses. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This past weekend, the Chinese Communist Party held its 20th National Congress, an event held every five years at which it appoints its senior leadership who in turn holds the reins of China's government. This year, the event focused on one man, Xi Jinping, the current president of China, who secured an unprecedented, third consecutive five-year term as the party’s senior-most official and was able to staff the party apparatus with hand-chosen loyalists, even at the expense of his predecessors and other factions in the party.To discuss these events, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sophia Yan, China correspondent for The Telegraph, and Julian Ku, Professor of Law at Hofstra University. They discussed what went down at the National Congress, where it says China is headed in the next five years, and what it might mean for its relationship with the United States.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In two weeks, millions of Americans will head to the polls for the 2022 midterm election. During that time, an estimated one million poll workers will help administer the election and ensure the process runs safely and smoothly.Ahead of the midterms, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Rachel Orey, associate director of the Bipartisan Policy Center Elections Project, and Grace Gordon, a policy analyst on the project, to talk through their latest report, “Fortifying Election Security Through Poll Worker Policy.” They discussed how elections are fundamentally a human enterprise, why poll workers are so important, and how states can better safeguard against efforts to use poll workers to undermine election credibility.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month, the George Washington University Program on Extremism published a report called, “Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States.” To talk through that report and a recent Lawfare article on the topic, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Ilana Krill, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism, and Seamus Hughes, the program's deputy director. They discussed the white supremacists and Salafi-jihadists who make up these movements, the encrypted channels through which propaganda and plans are spread, and what's to be done to protect critical infrastructure in the United States.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olivia Troye has worked in the Republican National Committee, the Pentagon, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Department of Homeland Security. But it was her role on the small team directly supporting Vice President Mike Pence that brought her the most challenging experiences of her career while making her all too aware of the surprisingly thin staffing for the next in line to the presidency.Lawfare publisher David Priess spoke to Troye about her path from El Paso to Philadelphia to Washington, her experience on Capitol Hill on 9/11, serving in Baghdad after the U.S. invasion, working at the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security, differences between core National Security Council staff and the support staff for the vice president, the many different tasks that support to a vice president entails, Mike Pence as a customer of the President's Daily Brief, the value of civil service professionals, the ups and downs of working with Pence during the COVID-19 pandemic, the inappropriate handling of classified material she saw during her final years on the job, the ethical reasons spurring her to leave government service, the importance of reasonable gun control, and more.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 5, 2021: Some countries don't just abuse their citizens within their own borders; increasingly, they target individuals after they have gone abroad. A range of nefarious acts play a role here, and together they make up a phenomenon called transnational repression.Nate Schenkkan, the director of research strategy at Freedom House, and Isabel Linzer, Freedom House's research analyst for technology and democracy, are the two authors of "Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: Understanding Transnational Repression," a new report detailing the practice and Freedom House's research on the topic. David Priess sat down with them to discuss the variety of forms transnational repression can take; whom is targeted and why; examples from the governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Rwanda, and even Equatorial Guinea; and recommendations to buck this growing trend.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recently, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported that the Biden administration had finalized a new policy governing drone strikes used in counterterrorism operations outside war zones. The policy tightens up rules established under the Trump administration—which themselves replaced an earlier guidance set out by President Obama. President Biden’s policy is the latest effort to calibrate America’s use of force in a 21st-century conflict outside the traditional battlefield.To talk through Charlie’s reporting, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with him and Lawfare cofounder Bobby Chesney, who has closely observed this area of U.S. law and policy. They discussed how U.S. counterterrorism operations have changed in recent years, how Biden’s approach compares to the Obama and Trump policies before it, and the significance of these changes for U.S. counterterrorism going forward. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Senior Editor Roger Parloff joins Managing Editor Tyler McBrien for another quick update on the prosecution’s case in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy trial. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joe Sullivan, Uber's former chief security officer and a former federal prosecutor, was found guilty of obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony. These charges arose from what the Department of Justice characterized as Sullivan's attempted coverup of a 2016 hack of Uber. The Sullivan case has created some consternation in the cybersecurity community. Kellen Dwyer, partner at the law firm of Alston & Bird, argues in a recent Lawfare piece that the Sullivan prosecution threatens to undermine the positive working relationship between DOJ and the tech sector. Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Kellen to talk about the Sullivan case. They discussed the specific charges for which Sullivan was convicted, how those charges blur the lines between covering up a data incident and merely declining to report it, and how in order to facilitate timely reporting of serious cybersecurity incidents to the FBI, the DOJ should clarify certain aspects of its charging policy to address concerns raised by the Sullivan case.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On October 13, the Jan. 6 committee closed what may be its final public hearing with a dramatic vote: unanimously, the committee members agreed to subpoena former president Donald Trump. So … what happens now? Will Trump actually testify? What happens if he defies the committee—would the Justice Department prosecute him for contempt of Congress? To talk things through, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with fellow senior editors Molly Reynolds and Jonathan Shaub and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes. They discussed the historical precedent for current and former presidents testifying before Congress and debated the likelihood that Trump will take the plunge and show up before the committee. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis is closing in on Donald Trump's 2020 election meddling. She could begin issuing indictments as soon as December, CNN reports. In the meantime, she's gotten testimony from a long list of the former president's allies, and she's sought testimony from even more who are still resisting. All of this has America wondering: what the heck is a special purpose grand jury? Why can't it indict people? And what does it mean for Rudy Giuliani to be a target of a grand jury if it can't even issue any indictments? To talk it over, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare’s Fulton County court reporter Anna Bower, who wrote a Q&A piece entitled, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Georgia Special Purpose Grand Juries But Were Afraid to Ask.” Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Presidential transitions are the most delicate and hazardous periods in the entire political cycle. Even at the best of times, incoming administrations face a huge task. Each new president must make more than 4,000 political appointments in a short period of time, as well as get up to speed on ongoing policy issues.To discuss the history and the current framework of presidential transitions, Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with David Marchick, the dean of American University's Kogod School of Business and previously served as the director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service. He also is the author of, “The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America’s Presidential Transitions,” and the host of the Transition Lab podcast. They discussed examples of effective and ineffective recent transitions, the role of everyone from outgoing presidents to the GSA to agency teams, and what else might be done to nail down best practices for presidential transitions.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan Rozenshtein, Quinta Jurecic, and Scott R. Anderson were joined by beloved Lawfare contributor and UVA Law professor Ashley Deeks, fresh from her latest stint at the White House. They hashed through some of the week's big national security news, including:“The Bridge and Pummel Crowd.” Ukraine’s destruction of a symbolic bridge linking Russia to Crimea has observers worried about a new round of escalation, as Russia responded with missile strikes on a range of civilian targets across the country, including a German consulate in Kyiv, with promises of more to come. Are we entering a new, brutal phase of the conflict? What can be done to stop its civilian toll—or to keep the escalatory spiral from spinning out of control?“Finally, Some Decency and Moderation on the Supreme Court.” Last week, the Supreme Court took up not one but two—albeit, two closely related—cases that center on how to apply Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that provides internet companies with immunity for liability arising from user-generated content they host and protects their ability to moderate content. What might this judicial scrutiny mean for the future of content moderation on the internet?“1,001 Arabian Slights.” Saudi Arabia’s decision to cut oil production—a move expected to drive up oil prices and slow the global economy, to the benefit of Russia and other producers—has some members of Congress up in arms. This is especially true as it came on the end of a summer visit by President Biden that controversially seemed to signal a willingness to thaw relations with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which have grown icy since his involvement in the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. What do these steps mean for the future of the U.S.-Saudi relationship?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 24, 2022: It's been a big week for the seditious conspiracy statute, which has long been on the books, quietly forbidding violent interference with the lawful functions of the United States government. But on 60 Minutes this weekend, the former chief prosecutor supervising the January 6 investigation hinted not too subtly that the seditious conspiracy statute might come out of obscurity and enter into action. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Jacob Schulz, Lawfare's deputy managing editor who has written a series of articles for Lawfare on recent deployments of the seditious conspiracy statute, to talk through the law's recent enforcement history.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Senior Editor Roger Parloff joins Ben Wittes for another quick update on the prosecution’s case in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy trial.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thursday was the final day of hearings for the Jan. 6 select committee, and it turned out to be a bit of a barn burner, with a lot of new information about Donald Trump's state of mind, about the secret service, and about people with weapons threatening violence.To chew it all over, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic, Alan Rozenshtein, and Molly Reynolds. They talked through what we learned on Thursday, what the subpoena of Donald Trump is going to mean, what the effects on the midterm elections are likely to be, and how the committee has done given the constraints it faced.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Supreme Court has granted cert in two cases exploring the interactions between anti-terrorism laws and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. To discuss the cases, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down on Arbiters of Truth, our occasional series on the online information ecosystem, with Lawfare senior editors and Rational Security co-hosts Quinta Jurecic, Alan Rozenshtein, and Scott R. Anderson. They discussed the state of 230 law, what the Supreme Court has taken on, what the lower court did, and if there is a right answer here and what it might look like.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Foreign-imposed regime change is a policy tool that a number of countries—most frequently the United States—have used to establish friendly regimes and align interests in regions around the world. With the ongoing unrest in Iran and the war in Ukraine, foreign-imposed regime change is in the news once again.But conversations around foreign-imposed regime change often occur without reference to the whole historical record. Hindsight might suggest that foreign-imposed regime change can be done but that it just needs to be done better, that we just need more resources or better strategy. To evaluate the efficacy of foreign-imposed regime change in a systematic way, Lawfare associate editor Hyemin Han spoke with Alexander Downes, professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University, who wrote a book about it called “Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong.” With his data set, he draws out the lessons we can learn from attempts of foreign-imposed regime change over time. Ultimately, he argues that even when foreign-imposed regime change works, its successes don't last very long, and the downsides of regime change are actually built into the process of trying to achieve it in the first place.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian region of Kherson, along with others. In the months leading up to the sham referendum that solidified the annexation, the Kremlin launched a forced assimilation campaign that targeted nearly every aspect of daily life in Kherson. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Belén Carrasco Rodríguez and Tom Southern of the Centre for Information Resilience to talk through their research into the means used to establish and strengthen Russian occupational rule over the seized territories. They discussed this Russian playbook for control and the ways that forced assimilation may be working or not.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From May 25, 2018: Vladimir Milov is the current economic advisor to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the former deputy minister of energy in the Russian government. This week, Milov spoke to Alina Polyakova about the Russian economy, the recent Cabinet reshuffles in the Kremlin, and how local politics are back in Russia.Vladimir Milov is the current economic advisor to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the former deputy minister of energy in the Russian government. This week, Milov spoke to Alina Polyakova about the Russian economy, the recent Cabinet reshuffles in the Kremlin, and how local politics are back in Russia.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Darrell Blocker retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2018 after serving as an operations officer and manager in many countries, especially within Africa. His self-described lack of success recruiting assets during early assignments nevertheless taught him important lessons about the intelligence business, about how people work, and about himself; later tours of duty gave him the chance to make up for lost time by excelling at the job while also getting shot at and even gaining minor fame as the lead singer in an African jazz band. Blocker left CIA service as one of the most senior black officers in the Agency's history—and he was reportedly on President Biden's shortlist to become the director of the CIA. Now, he's involved in several creative projects in Hollywood.On this episode of Chatter, David Priess chatted with Blocker about his career and his activities since retirement. They discussed getting spy stories told on film, growing up as an Air Force brat, understanding the Pledge of Allegiance, stumbling early in an intelligence career, appreciating the operational environment in Africa, growing from mistakes, accepting lessons from 360-degree feedback, performing on stage in a jazz band, singing the national anthem, being considered as a CIA director, enhancing the CIA's interactions with the media, learning about the benefits of fictional representations of Hollywood's take on intelligence, and more.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From December 31, 2019: Iran is in turmoil. Protests erupted across the country last month, sparked by the government's decision to triple the price of gasoline. The Iranian government has responded with brute force, imposing a blackout of the internet and deploying security forces to crack down in the streets. The crackdown has left hundreds dead and thousands injured or detained. On December 18, the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution hosted a discussion on the unrest in Iran, what it means for the future of the country and the region, and how the United States and the international community should respond. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius led the conversation, which featured Brookings senior fellow Suzanne Maloney and film maker and journalist Maziar Bahari, who leads IranWire, a news site that conveys original information from Iran via citizen journalists.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been a tumultuous few weeks in Iran with the death of a young woman at the hands of the morality police leading to street protests all over the country, calls for the death of the supreme leader, and widespread opposition to compulsory wearing of the hijab. To chew it all over and figure out where this is all going, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Suzanne Maloney, the vice president for Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and a long-time Iran policy scholar. They talked about whether these protests are the latest round of something we've seen before or whether there's something different going on, about the regime's reaction and whether it's connected to unrest elsewhere in the world, about how the United States can constructively respond, and about where it is all going from here. Note: Wittes incorrectly states that Maloney is vice president of Brookings Governance instead of Foreign Policy Studies.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Wittes sits down for a quick update on the prosecution’s case in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy trial from Senior Editor Roger Parloff, who has been covering the trial for Lawfare.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United States is looking to curb China's advanced computing and chip production capabilities by using the so-called Foreign-Direct Product Rule to prevent companies globally from selling certain advanced computing chips to Chinese buyers without a U.S. government license. To understand the background, the details, and the implications of this, Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Martijn Rasser, senior fellow and director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Martijn also served as a senior intelligence officer and analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and a senior adviser in the office of the Secretary of Defense. They talked about the nature of the semiconductor industry, what a Foreign-Direct Product Rule is and what it can do, whether the Commerce Department is well positioned to do what's proposed, the tension of working with allies versus going it alone, and the precedent of U.S.-led actions against Huawei.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After months of mostly quiet, behind-the-scenes debate, both the House and Senate seem ready to move forward with reforming the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 statute governing how Congress counts electoral votes, whose various ambiguities played a central role in unsuccessful plans to turn the 2020 election results in favor of former President Trump. Experts are all but unanimous on the need to reform the law, and both proposals have at least some bipartisan support, including from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. But the path forward remains far from certain. To discuss what comes next, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Ned Foley, a leading election law expert and professor at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, and Genevieve Nadeau, a Counsel at the organization Protect Democracy who has been engaging on reform efforts. They discussed the similarities and differences between the House and Senate reform proposals, how they will strengthen our election process, and what work remains to be done. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we’re bringing you another episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Mark Bergen, a reporter for Bloomberg News and Businessweek, about his new book, “Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination.” YouTube is one of the largest and most influential social media platforms, but Bergen argues that it’s long been “criminally undercovered.” As he tells it, the story of YouTube has a great deal to tell us about the development of the modern attention economy, the promise and pitfalls of the internet, and the struggles of platforms to grapple with their own influence and responsibility. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's been a lot going on in Russia: a partial mobilization, protests, a mysterious explosion underwater along the Nord Stream pipelines, and most recently, the annexation of seized Ukrainian territory in a bizarre ceremony in Moscow. To go over it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Julia Ioffe, currently of Puck, and Alexander Vindman, Lawfare’s Pritzker Military Fellow and a former Eastern Europe and Russia specialist for the NSC. They talked about the explosions along the Nord Stream pipelines, the protests, the annexations, and the threat of nuclear escalation.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every year, the eastern United States faces the prospect—and, too often, the reality—of major hurricanes that cause extensive physical and financial damage. This year is no exception; even as Hurricane Ian approaches the Gulf Coast, more storms are likely in the coming weeks.On this episode of Chatter, David Priess chatted with author Eric Jay Dolin about the history of Atlantic hurricanes, with a special focus on such storms' influence on U.S. national security. They spoke about the devastating 2017 hurricane season, how tropical systems are covered in the media, Ben Franklin's role in hurricane science, the role of Caribbean hurricanes in the American Revolution and the Spanish-American War, the evolution of the federal government's storm forecasting and crisis response efforts, hurricane hunter flights, attempts to use technology to disrupt massive storms, Hurricane Andrew (1992), the effects of climate change on tropical systems and their impact, viewing hurricanes as national security threats, how humans assess risk, and films about hurricanes.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From Monday, June 1, 2020: Journalist Bart Gellman is the author of the new book, "Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State." Jack Goldsmith sat down with Gellman to discuss the book. They spoke about Gellman's reporting on the Snowden affair, the scope of the National Security Agency's surveillance capabilities, and press freedom as it relates to national security reporting.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In modern-day warfare, data is considered a weapons system, and the Russia-Ukraine armed conflict gives us some perspective into what warfare looks like in a data-rich, hyperconnected world. To talk about the pervasiveness of data in contemporary and future warfare, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Brigadier General Shane Reeves, the dean of the Academic Board at West Point, and Robert Lawless, assistant professor in the Department of Law at West Point, to discuss their new piece, “Data-Rich Battlefields and the Future LOAC,” or law of armed conflict. They talked about the growing importance for militaries to be able to exploit data on the battlefield, the deception arms race that is emerging in the modern battlefield, and some key ways in which data-rich battlefields are putting pressure on the law of armed conflict.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week marked the end of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, an annual event that brings world leaders together in New York and often serves as both a forum for and a barometer of international politics. This year's session was particularly notable, both because it was the first in-person session since the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic and because it was the first session since what many see as the greatest crisis in the United Nations history: Russia's invasion of Ukraine. To learn more about what went down at the UNGA, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group. They discussed how the Ukraine conflict shaped events at the session, how major powers like China and the United States responded, and what it might all mean for the future of both the conflict in Ukraine and the United Nations itself. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For much of its history, the United States has had a single law on the books that governs when the president can deploy the military to enforce federal law within the United States: the Insurrection Act. While the act hasn't been invoked in decades, it played an important role in several recent controversies, including the acts of Jan. 6. Now, some scholars have written the Jan. 6 commission, urging that it be included in the broader set of reforms that committee is reportedly getting ready to endorse. To learn more, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with the two authors of the recent submission to the committee: Liza Goitein, senior director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and her colleague Joseph Nunn, counsel at the same program. They discussed the history of the Insurrection Act, what they think makes it dangerous, and how Congress should try to fix it.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In just under a week, on October 2, Brazil will hold the first round of its general election, which will determine the country's next president. To talk through all things Brazilian politics, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade of experience living and reporting across Latin America. They discussed the leading candidates, Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the potential election crisis, and what's at stake as Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stewart Rhodes, the chieftain of the Oath Keepers, goes on trial this week for seditious conspiracy. The trial is expected to run about five weeks, with jury selection sort of already underway. The opening of the trial gives us a great opportunity to catch up with Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff on the Oath Keepers, the chief defendant Stewart Rhodes, and the larger project of criminal accountability for the Jan. 6 riot and insurrection.Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to talk about the ever-mounting statistics of convictions and sentencing in Jan. 6-related matters. They talked about Stewart Rhodes: who he is and his weird journey from Yale Law School to conspiracy theorizing and violent uprisings. They talked about the specifics of the indictment. They talked about what makes Proud Boys different from Oath Keepers: who was the pointy end of the spear, and who was standing around waiting for the president to invoke the Insurrection Act? And they talked about the law under which this is taking place: the famed seditious conspiracy statute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott went guestless to discuss the week’s big national security news, including:“Ne Me Quitte Pas.” The nearby island nation of Haiti is hitting new levels of instability, as paired economic and political crises have given way to open gang warfare in broad swathes of the country. While the events have some calling for external intervention, others have expressed major reservations with such a step, given its past failings in the country. Where might this crisis lead?“I’m Rubber, You’re Su(ing).” Last week, the Fifth Circuit released a real barn-burner of an opinion in the matter of NetChoice v. Paxton, wherein it adopted a narrow reading of the First Amendment in order to resurrect a Texas law severely limiting how social media platforms can moderate content. What will this case mean for platforms moving forward?“Flying Worst Class.” Florida Governor Ron Desantis became the latest Republican governor this week to fly undocumented migrants to northern cities in purported protest of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. But his move has sparked unexpected furor among Florida’s Cuban and Venezuelan immigrant communities—as well as at least one criminal investigation. What was he thinking and where will this controversy go next?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From July 15, 2020: We talk a lot about Chinese policy in Hong Kong, but there's another human rights crisis going on in China in the province of Xinjiang. It concerns the Turkic minority known as the Uighurs whom the Chinese government has been rounding up and putting in reeducation camps. It is an ugly story—one that the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to keep from international attention, with some degree of success. To walk us through the situation in Xinjiang, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Jessica Batke, a senior editor at ChinaFile; Darren Byler, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder whose research focuses on Uighur dispossession; and Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch, who has written extensively on the use of biometrics, artificial intelligence and big data in mass surveillance in China.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem has been taking a bit of a hiatus—but we’re back! On today’s episode, we’re discussing the recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in NetChoice v. Paxton, upholding a Texas law that binds large social media platforms to certain transparency requirements and significantly limits their ability to moderate content. The decision is truly a wild ride—so unhinged that it’s difficult to figure out where First Amendment law in this area might go next.To discuss, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with fellow Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein and Alex Abdo, the litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University—who’s come on the podcast before to discuss the case. They tried to make sense of the Fifth Circuit’s ruling and chart out alternative possibilities for what good-faith jurisprudence on social media regulation might look like.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's enormous debate about how much social media platforms should be doing to moderate extremist content. But that debate often lacks nuance about the many different ways that platforms can moderate and that moderation is not an all or nothing proposition. Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Lawfare’s foreign policy editor. He recently published a paper for Lawfare’s ongoing Digital Social Contract Research Paper series in which he lays out the many different ways that platforms can and do moderate content. Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Dan about his research and how it can inform not just more but better moderation.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This past Monday, the criminal trial of Thomas Barrack began in federal court in the Eastern District of New York. Barrack, who served as an informal advisor to the 2016 Trump campaign and then as chair of Trump's inaugural committee, is alleged to have acted as a foreign agent of the United Arab Emirates. According to the indictment, Barrack acted as a back channel for the UAE to influence U.S. foreign policy. Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Alex Iftimie, a partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster, and a former Department of Justice attorney specializing in national security matters, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, and related statutes. They discussed the case against Barrack, the significance of the charges to broader enforcement strategy, and why foreign influence matters for U.S. national security. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Geoffrey Berman was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the Trump administration. He was appointed under peculiar circumstances, and he was fired under even more peculiar circumstances. He is now a partner at the law firm of Fried Frank, and he’s the author of the new book, “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent U.S. Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department.” He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the book’s shocking revelations of political interference in the Southern District's work by Bill Barr, by Donald Trump, and by others in the Justice Department. They also talked about the pattern of political interference, the relationship between it and more famous cases, the efforts by senior Justice Department officials to shift gears after the 2020 election, and whether this is a story of fragility in the U.S. Attorney's office or strength. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On September 15, Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued two key rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. She appointed Judge Raymond Dearie of the Eastern District of New York as the special master reviewing the documents and denied the Justice Department’s motion for a partial stay of her previous injunction barring the department from using the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation. The next day, Friday, September 16, the Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for a partial stay of the September 15 ruling.Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down for a live conversation on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes and senior editors Scott Anderson and Alan Rozenshtein to talk through Cannon’s latest ruling. They recorded before the Justice Department filed its appeal, but the conversation is a useful breakdown of Cannon’s somewhat off-the-wall orders. Namely: what, exactly, is this judge doing? And where is the case headed next?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Of all of the Central Intelligence Agency's activities, paramilitary operations might remain the least understood. This, in part, is both a cause and a consequence of inaccurate portrayals of such work in prominent movies; it's also because fewer memoirs come from the CIA's Special Activities Division than from traditional human intelligence collectors and from analysts.David Priess chatted with former CIA officer Ric Prado about the fiction and the reality of CIA paramilitary operations, including stories Ric tells in his book, “Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior.” They spoke about what Hollywood gets wrong about intelligence work, Ric's escape as a child from Castro's Cuba, his path to a CIA career, differences between paramilitary operations and intelligence collection, his years of work with the Contras in Central America, the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at CIA before and on 9/11, the work ethic in CTC after 9/11, why his book has substantial chunks of redacted text, and who he thinks played the best James Bond.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by David Priess with Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with additional editing by Cara Shillenn. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 17, 2018: In 1963, John Feerick became a witness to and a framer of our constitutional history. Within two years of graduating from law school, Feerick had written an influential law review article on presidential disability and succession, joined the ABA’s blue-ribbon commission to create a solution to those problems, and became a confidant and an adviser to the members of Congress who wrote the 25th amendment.As many in the public wonder about the current president’s fitness, Matthew Kahn went up to Fordham Law School, where Feerick is now dean emeritus, for a conversation about the page of the constitution he helped write. They talked about how Dean Feerick got involved in the creation of the 25th amendment, how Congress settled on the scheme the amendment enshrines, where it still has gaps and ambiguity, and how political leadership and the public should understand it in modern times.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ken Starr, the former federal judge and independent counsel who became famous for his investigation of President Bill Clinton, died this week on September 13 at age 76. Starr was a complex and controversial figure: after running the Whitewater and Lewinsky investigations, he went on to serve as president of Baylor University, only to resign over the mishandling of a sex abuse scandal involving the university’s football team, and he would later go on to defend President Trump in Trump’s first impeachment.To think through Starr’s legacy, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, who published a book on Starr, and Lawfare contributing editor Paul Rosenzweig, who worked with Starr on the Clinton investigation. They took a look back on the Starr investigation and how the probe shaped the culture and practice of presidential investigations in ways that are more relevant than ever in the Trump era.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dmitri Alperovitch is the founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics think tank in Washington, and the impresario of the Geopolitics Decanted podcast. He joined Benjamin Wittes to talk through the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv Oblast last week. They discussed whether the Ukrainian retaking of large swaths of territory is a big deal, what’s going to come next, and if this is a prelude to a larger rout of Russian forces, to a negotiated settlement, or if something else is going to happen. They also talked about whether the Russians are running out of ammunition and people, or if the Ukrainian economy will collapse before victory.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amid the war and instability in Afghanistan over the last two decades, the opium industry has seen explosive growth. In fact, Afghanistan accounts for the vast majority of the world's opium supply. The Taliban vowed to crack down on the production of illicit drugs, and in March, they issued a total ban on opium cultivation, which has stripped many rural Afghans of their livelihoods. But in the meantime, drug prices have been increasing, making the production and trafficking of methamphetamines even more profitable. To discuss the situation, former Lawfare associate editor Tia Sewell sat down with Rupert Stone, an independent journalist who recently published a piece with the Atlantic Council entitled, “Afghanistan’s Drug Trade is Booming Under Taliban Rule.” They discussed how Afghanistan's drug trade has evolved under the Taliban, the growing problems of addiction, and how the Taliban's rule has affected the export and trafficking of illicit drugs in the broader region.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since his 1991 death, Rainer Sonntag has been remembered as a martyr by generations of neo-Nazis and other far-right activists, especially in his native Germany. Less discussed, however, is the fact that he was also a spy for the communist authorities of East Germany and their counterparts in the Soviet Union—and that a young KGB operative named Vladimir Putin played a prominent role in his rise to power. To learn more, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Leigh Baldwin, the editor of SourceMaterial, and independent journalist Sean Williams, who co-authored a recent article on the relationship between Putin and Sonntag for The Atavist Magazine, entitled “Follow the Leader.” They discussed the relationship between communist intelligence agencies and far-right German movements, how those movements reacted to the reunification of Germany, and what Putin might have learned from his early dalliances with foreign far-right political movements. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pakistan is experiencing one of the largest natural disasters in modern history. The massive floods there, combined with glacier melt, have led to one third of the country being submerged underwater with more than one million people displaced and tens of billions of dollars in damage.Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Erin Sikorsky, the director for the Center for Climate and Security, who has over a decade of experience previously in the U.S. intelligence community looking at issues like climate and security. They talked about the situation in Pakistan, its impact on the Pakistani military and security services, how the Pakistani military is being employed to help with flood relief, the impact on regional security and the ultimate impact on U.S. national security, and how we address climate change.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From January 25, 2022: In this bonus episode of Chatter, David Priess talks with professor and author Marita Sturken about 9/11-related memorials, museums, and architecture. Her research and writings have examined everything from visual culture to the connection between memory and consumerism, with much of her recent work addressing memory of the attacks on September 11, 2001, as both the battleground and the site for negotiations of national identity.In this conversation, they talked briefly about various historical memorials and the purposes of such work before comparing and contrasting the 9/11 memorials around the country and those at Ground Zero, next to the Pentagon, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. They also discussed controversies surrounding the National September 11 Memorial Museum (commonly called the "9/11 museum"), including those about its gift shop and about human remains currently in the facility.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by co-host emeriti Ben Wittes and Shane Harris for a very special anniversary edition of Rational Security that pits their national security hot takes up against each other.Which of the following takes will the team find to be "too hot," which "undercooked," and which "just right"?Americans (and especially progressives) will regret reviving the prospect of disqualifying people under section 3 of the 14th Amendment.Over the next year, there will be a windfall of information regarding unidentified aerial phenomena, including some pointing to possible extraterrestrial origin.A President Ron Desantis won't be as dangerous as President Donald Trump.Russia's terminal decline presents one of the greatest threats to global security.American democracy will be saved by social conservative minorities voting for the Republican Party. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From September 3, 2020: This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alissa Starzak, the head of public policy at Cloudflare—a company that provides key components of the infrastructure that helps websites stay online. They talked about two high-profile incidents in which Cloudflare decided to pull its services from websites publishing or hosting extremist, violent content. In August 2017, after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince announced that he would no longer be providing service to the Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer. Two years later, Cloudflare also pulled service from the forum 8chan after the forum was linked to a string of violent attacks.They talked about what Cloudflare actually does and why blocking a website from using its services has such a big effect. They also discussed how Cloudflare—which isn’t a social media platform like Facebook or Twitter—thinks about its role in deciding what content should and shouldn’t stay up.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On August 25, the Defense Department released its long-awaited Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, something that human rights advocates have called on the Pentagon to do for the past 20 years. To discuss it, former Lawfare associate editor Tia Sewell sat down with Todd Huntley, a former JAG and current director of the National Security Law Program at Georgetown University Law Center, as well as Marc Garlasco, a former targeting professional and war crimes investigator who consulted on the plan. They talked about Todd’s and Marc’s respective Lawfare articles on the topic and how this new action plan improves the Pentagon's handling of civilian harm in war or not.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On August 23, the Washington Post published a story about a whistleblower complaint filed by Peiter Zatko, the former security lead and member of Twitter's executive team responsible for information security, privacy, physical security, and information technology. In the whistleblower complaint, Zatko describes extreme problems and deficiencies with the security, privacy, and integrity of Twitter's platform. The complaint also alleges that since 2011, Twitter's senior executives have engaged in making false and misleading statements to users and the Federal Trade Commission about Twitter's privacy, security, and integrity.Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, to discuss some of the most interesting aspects of the complaint. They talked about some of the background leading up to the filing of the complaint, some of its most significant alleged privacy and security violations, and what to look for in the upcoming congressional hearing on the complaint.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monday afternoon, a federal judge in Florida acceded to Donald Trump's motion to appoint a special master to review privilege claims arising out of the Mar-a-Lago search. The ruling was not a particular surprise given that the judge had foreshadowed that it was coming, but it shocked observers nonetheless on a number of different bases. The decision raised questions of how it would affect the Justice Department's ongoing investigation of document retention at Mar-a-Lago. Would the department appeal, would it seek a stay, and who could possibly serve as special master for such a task?Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down before a live audience on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, Lawfare contributing editor Jonathan Shaub, and Lawfare student contributor Anna Bower, who attended the hearing. They talked about whether the opinion is quite as outlandish as many commentators seem to think, about how the Justice Department would likely respond, and whether it could just let it stand. They also nominated their picks for special master and took questions from the audience. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Late last month, investigative journalists at Bellingcat and partner organizations published a story exposing the identity of a Russian spy named Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, who over the course of 10 years had charmed her way into the social circles of NATO members in Naples. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Christo Grozev, Bellingcat's lead Russia investigator, who walked us through this stranger-than-fiction spy thriller. They discussed how Maria Adela found herself courting NATO officers in Italy, how Bellingcat's team exposed the truth, often at great personal risk to themselves, and how this story can help us understand the state of Russian tradecraft. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oleksandra Povoroznik is a (⁦@rynkrynk) is a Kyiv-based journalist, film critic and translator, who joins us to discuss the changing politics of language in Ukraine, as well as the country's defiant wartime culture and humor.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From September 24, 2020: Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, about her new book: “How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict.” The book chronicles Nina’s journey around Europe, tracing down how information operations spearheaded by Russia have played out in countries in the former Soviet bloc, from Georgia to the Czech Republic. What do these case studies reveal about disinformation and how best to counter it—and how many of these lessons can be extrapolated to the United States? How should we understand the role of locals who get swept up in information operations, like the Americans who attended rallies in 2016 that were organized by a Russian troll farm? And what is an information war, anyway?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 15, 2014: The University of Richmond invited Ben and Conor Friedersdorf to participate in a debate on the ethics of drone warfare. Conor is a familiar voice in the anti-drone camp, as those who have come across his articles in The Atlantic well know. I edited the podcast version of the debate for length and got rid of the introductions and audience questions. It thus proceeds as four speeches: Ben and Conor each give opening remarks, in that order, and then each responds to the other.While the back-and-forth touched on the legal issues behind targeted killing, it was really about the many ethical implications, both positive and negative, of U.S. drone policy. These range from the precedent the United States sets in the international community, to the psychological effects of drones on civilians. In a discussion that can often focus on the big issues of civilian casualties, oversight, legality, and sovereignty, these other questions can get lost in the foray. But as Al Qaeda continues to morph and the United States struggles to define the boundaries of the war it has been fighting, they are more important than ever.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In recent months, the country of Iraq has been living through the latest in a series of political crises as different factions have struggled for control of its governing institutions. Earlier this week, that tension broke out into the open as rioters occupied government office buildings and militias associated with other factions responded with violence.To learn more, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Marsin Alshamary, a research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. They discussed the players involved in this latest crisis, what's led to this point, and where their conflict might go next. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Tuesday night, running up against the 11:59 PM deadline, the Justice Department filed its 40-page motion opposing Donald Trump's request that a special master be appointed to oversee the handling of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. To wade through that meaty document and its implications, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien was joined by Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, COO and publisher David Priess, and senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Scott R. Anderson for a special Twitter Spaces event in front of a live virtual audience. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In February 2020, police in the town of Rexburg, Idaho, uncovered evidence of what seemed like an unthinkable crime: two children murdered by one of their parents. The investigation that followed revealed not only more possible murders but also two alleged perpetrators possessed of a radical belief system that both justified their use of violence and shared common threads with the beliefs of numerous other members of their community. In her new book, “When the Moon Turns to Blood,” independent journalist Leah Sottile documents how this grizzly murder has its roots in religious and political movements that started more than a century earlier, and how it may have lessons to teach us on the unique forms of extremism that are well established in the American west and are beginning to play a more influential role on the national scene. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The era of the global internet offered opportunities for economic and political progress, but it has also afforded bad actors the opportunities to manipulate and leverage this interconnected system for the worse. Over the past decade, there has been an increase in internet shutdowns, ransomware, and cyberattacks, but despite these growing challenges, there's still an opportunity for collaboration around the preservation of an open internet. To understand what the current state of cyberspace is, Lawfare fellow in cybersecurity law Alvaro Marañon sat down with Adam Segal and former Rep. Will Hurd to discuss the Council on Foreign Relations’s latest task force report entitled, “Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet.” Adam was project director for both the 2013 and 2022 task force, and Will was a member of the 2022 task force. They discussed how the cyberspace environment has changed from 2013 to now, the differences in attitudes and approaches between the two CFR reports, and what the United States needs to do to reverse this trend around fragmentation and to preserve the benefits of an open internet.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Cyberspace is the domain of modern warfare” is a popular headline in recent times. Recent state and non-state cyber attacks have given support to this notion, but beyond vague national cyber strategies and new cyber commands, not much is publicly known about a state’s military cyber capacity. To get a better understanding of the current state of militarization in cyberspace, Lawfare fellow in cybersecurity law Alvaro Marañon sat down with Max Smeets, senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich and the director of the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative. They explored Max’s new book, “No Shortcuts: Why States Struggle to Develop a Military Cyber-Force.” They also discussed the barriers of entry for states to participate in cyber conflict, how we should go about thinking about military cyber capacity, and how external actors can influence a state’s cyber capability development process. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott were joined by host emeritus Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's big national security stories, including:“Sometimes the Best Defense is a New Offensive.” With apparent U.S. support, Ukraine is bringing the fight to Crimea and other Russian-held areas—and perhaps to the streets of Moscow itself, where a well-known Russian nationalist’s car and daughter were detonated this past week. What are the risks of this new strategy? And how far will (or should) the United States go in its support?“The Enemy of my Frenemy is my…Enemenemy?” Former President Donald Trump’s endorsement appeared to hold significant (if not absolute) sway in several recent Republican primaries, where a number of election-denying candidates won—several with help from the DCCC, who supported them against more moderate opponents in hopes of having weaker competition in the general election. How might this strategy impact democratic norms and the rule of law?“Special Masters and the Don/Sub(tweet) Relationship.” As more problematic facts regarding former President Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate come forward, his lawyers have put forward a novel argument seeking a special master to oversee what happens to the records recovered—one that hinges on Trump’s ability to assert executive privilege against the Executive Branch. What should we make of this argument and what does this case seem to mean for Trump's legacy moving forward?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NASA next week plans to launch the first of several Artemis missions, which collectively aim to land astronauts on the Moon again for the first time in more than half a century, explore the lunar surface more extensively, and establish a long-term presence on the Moon. Controversy lingers over both the launch system selected for these missions and the next step of human spaceflight to Mars.This week on Chatter, David Priess spoke with science journalist Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today and co-host of Astronomy Cast, about why exploring the Moon matters, what to expect from the launch and voyage of Artemis-I, and the challenges of missions to Mars. They also chatted about international space competition vs. cooperation during the Cold War and now, NASA's rollout of initial images from the James Webb Space Telescope, space-based threats ranging from gamma ray bursts and rogue black holes to near-Earth objects and coronal mass ejections, Cain's evolution in communicating science both online and through podcasts, the downward spiral of engaging conspiracy theorists, frustrations with popular culture's association of unidentified aerial phenomena with "aliens," and the interaction of science fiction and real-world space exploration.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From October 8, 2016: Stephanie Leutert, the Mexico Security Initiative Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Lawfare's "Beyond the Border" series, joined Benjamin Wittes on this week's podcast to talk about the epidemic of violence plaguing Mexico and Central America. Despite the brutality, extremity, and remarkable scale of the violence going on immediately to our south, those of us in the United States who work and think on national security issues rarely consider it to be relevant to national security. Why is that? How bad is the violence in these countries? What's causing the crisis, and the waves of migration it generates, in the first place? And what, if anything, can be done to stop it?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in March, a team of researchers published an article in Nature Machine Intelligence showing that a drug discovery company’s AI-powered molecule generator could have a dangerous dual use: The model could design thousands of new biochemical weapons in a matter of hours that were equally as toxic as, if not more toxic than, the nerve agent VX. Lawfare associate editor Tia Sewell sat down with two of the paper’s authors: Dr. Filippa Lentzos, senior lecturer in science & international security at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and Dr. Sean Ekins, CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals. They discussed the story of their discovery and their reaction to it, as well as how we should think about dual-use artificial intelligence threats more broadly as new technologies expand the potential for malicious use. They also got into why governments need to work more proactively to address the challenges of regulating machine learning software.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While everyone's eyes have been on Mar-a-Lago, there has also been a lot going on with the Jan. 6 investigation: cases going to trial, major sentencing developments, and some people getting real time. We have some new data on which cases are resulting in convictions and which ones in acquittals, a bunch of defendants have been trying to get their cases moved out of Washington, D.C. altogether, and there have been developments in litigation under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the disqualification provision. To go over it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff. They talked through the recent sentences, the escalating numbers, whether the Justice Department may have hit a ceiling, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One year ago this month, the last American troops withdrew from Afghanistan, marking the end of a 20-year war. To reflect on those two decades, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Elliot Ackerman, author of the new book, “The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan.” They discussed Elliot's personal involvement in the struggle to get Afghan allies out of Kabul a year ago, as well as his time in Afghanistan, first as a Marine and then as a CIA officer. Drawing on firsthand experience, Elliot spoke about what it means to win or lose a war and some of the reasons why this war was a debacle for Americans and a tragedy for Afghans.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2014, as Islamic State insurgents took control of the Iraqi city of Mosul, President Barack Obama made the decision to send troops back to Iraq. Within five years, through the work of the United States and its partners, the organization was largely dismantled. What was the nature of the U.S. struggle against the Islamic State? Which decisions were instrumental to its success? And how did the U.S. coordinate with partners in the region. To discuss these issues, former Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm spoke with Michael Gordon, a national security correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, about his new book, “Degrade and Destroy,” Gordon's fourth book on Iraq. They covered a range of topics, including the status of forces agreement, or SOFA, the Trump administration's counter-Islamic State strategy, and the challenges for journalists embedding with coalition forces. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the last decisions that the Supreme Court handed down this year was Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety. Le Roy Torres, an Iraq war veteran and Texas state trooper, sued the state of Texas after he was denied an employment accommodation for injuries he sustained while on duty. The question in the case was whether the federal law that Torres sued under could subject states themselves to legal liability. In other words, as a constitutional matter, can Congress, when legislating under its war powers, limit the normal sovereign immunity that state governments enjoy? This is an important question, not just for veterans who want to vindicate their rights, but also more broadly because Congress's war powers are some of the broadest and most consequential that the federal government possesses.Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein talked through these issues with Andrew Tutt, a lawyer at the law firm of Arnold & Porter, who argued and won the case on behalf of Torres before the Supreme Court. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gone with the Wind—the top-grossing movie of all time, adjusted for inflation—remains an iconic influence in American culture, despite its deeply troubling portrayal of social and political dynamics in the South during and after the Civil War. The continued popularity of the film points to a need to examine its influence on nearly a century's worth of American race relations, fascistic movements, and denialism in the United States. And why did Adolf Hitler reportedly love it so much?In this cross-post of Chatter, David Priess spoke with cultural and literary historian Sarah Churchwell of the University of London, author of “The Wrath To Come,” a book that dives deeply into the film, how it reflects a mythologized "Lost Cause" version of the Old South, and its connection with today's increasing political violence. They discuss the popularity of the movie, its differences from the book it was based on, some of the challenges for filmmaker David O. Selznick and for the film's actors, the "Lost Cause" theme that the movie conveys, its intersection with fascist thinking in America and with modern racism, why it attracted Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, its links to various iterations of the Klan and "America First" campaigns, and how even disturbing movies like this can spur social progress.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this cross-post of Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by their fellow Lawfare senior editor Molly Reynolds to talk through a week of big national security news stories, including:“Regrets? I’ve had a few.” One year has passed since the chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan, which triggered the collapse of the U.S.-backed government and the return to power of the Taliban. What have we learned from this experience? And how should it inform U.S. engagement with Afghanistan moving forward? “Half-Truths and Reconciliation.” Democrats in Congress have scored a huge climate win in the form of the somewhat strangely named Inflation Reduction Act, which passed both chambers by the slimmest of margins through a special procedure known as reconciliation that bypasses the supermajority requirement that the Senate usually operates under thanks to the filibuster. How big a deal is this? And is it a model that other policy proposals can follow? “Déclassé.” While the Justice Department weighs whether to release more documents regarding its search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Trump has offered a new explanation as to why he had so many classified documents in a storage unit there: he’d had a standing order to declassify whatever classified records he wanted to bring home with him. What is the latest in the investigation and where does it seem to be headed? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 19, 2019: Demographic, technological, and geostrategic developments are disrupting the electoral landscape in sub-Saharan Africa. How do these shifts affect the political climate for democracy and participation across Africa? What have recent elections in Nigeria illustrated about these? And what about the clash between China and the United States in Africa?To explore these questions, David Priess spoke with Judd Devermont, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, host of the Into Africa podcast, and former national intelligence officer for Africa from 2015 to 2018.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is the nature and timescale of U.S. geopolitical competition with China? Which country is stronger in the near term and long term? And what will the answers to these questions mean for Chinese military and political activities over the next 10 years?Matt Gluck sat down with Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Michael Beckley, an associate professor of political science at Tufts University, to discuss their new book, “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China.” They discussed the authors’ argument that China is structurally far weaker than people think, but that this weakness makes China more likely to act aggressively over the next several years. They also discussed the implications of this argument for U.S. policy and to what extent international initiatives that are already underway are responsive to this near-term threat.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month, the cover of Harper's Magazine declared that the American century is over. Then it asked a single question: What's next? To dig into that question, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with the cover story’s author, Daniel Bessner, an associate professor in international studies at the University of Washington, who walked us through the history of the American century and the debate over what comes next. Daniel and Tyler discussed the two warring camps at either end, known as the restrainers and the liberal internationalists, and the stakes of their debate for the future of U.S. foreign policy and the world.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the course of the Jan. 6 investigation, Congress has voted to hold four Trump associates in contempt and refer them to the Justice Department for prosecution over their failure to comply with subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee. Steve Bannon was recently found guilty of contempt. One case, that of Peter Navarro, is still moving forward in criminal court. But the Justice Department declined to charge former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and aide Dan Scavino. Why? A recent filing by the Justice Department in civil litigation brought by Meadows may have some answers.To discuss, Quinta Jurecic sat down with Jonathan David Shaub, a contributing editor to Lawfare and an assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law, and Mike Stern, former senior counsel to the House of Representatives. They talked about where the various cases stand and why, and what to make of the Justice Department’s filing spelling out its understanding of the doctrine of testimonial immunity for close presidential advisors. You can read Jonathan’s take on the filing (with Rohini Kurup) here, and Mike’s here.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawfare associate editor Matt Gluck sat down with Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Kolja Brockmann, a researcher with the Dual-Use and Arms Trade Control Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, to discuss the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international agreement that seeks to prevent the harmful proliferation of certain missiles and missile technology. They spoke about the origins of the agreement, the challenges it has faced, and potential avenues for productive reform. Is the agreement still useful, or have technological advances and developments in other areas over the last few decades left it outdated?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is the proper relationship between the intelligence community and national decision makers in the United States? The author of a new book argues that for intelligence to be accepted as a profession, it must be viewed as a nonpartisan resource assisting key players in understanding foreign societies and leaders. That author is Jonathan House, a retired Army intelligence officer and military historian who wrote, “Intelligence and the State: Analysts and Decision Makers.” Jonathan joined Lawfare publisher David Priess to talk about intelligence as a profession, the responsibilities of senior intelligence leaders, and how Samuel Huntington's classic “soldier and the state” framework applies to intelligence.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mary Louise Kelly is one of the most recognizable voices in American journalism. A co-host of NPR’s flagship program “All Things Considered,” she has spent years interviewing top newsmakers and traveling the world to chronicle stories about national security and foreign policy. And on top of all that, she’s a novelist. Kelly has written two books that incorporate many of her own experiences covering corridors of intelligence and international intrigue. This week on Chatter, Lawfare’s weekly long-form podcast featuring conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security, Kelly talked to Shane Harris about how she got her start, where her travels have taken her, and how journalism has proven to be a rich source of material for her fiction.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friday afternoon, the federal court in Florida, acting at the Justice Department’s request, unsealed the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago that the FBI had executed earlier in the week. There was a lot of interesting information in it: How many bathrooms are there at Mar-a-Lago? How many TS/SCI documents did the FBI seize from the resort? Which European head of state had various documents about him lying around at Mar-a-Lago? For an emergency version of the Lawfare Podcast, Benjamin Wittes sat down to talk it all through with Pete Strzok, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who has executed his share of warrants; Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic; and Alex Wellerstein, historian of nuclear weapons and secrets.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Jan. 6 select committee has wrapped up its first spree of hearings, and it has announced a second set of hearings when Congress returns in September. The month of lull gives us a good opportunity to assess where the committee has come so far and where it might be going.Benjamin Wittes sat down in Twitter Spaces on Thursday with Lawfare’s executive editor and host of The Aftermath Natalie Orpett, Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Molly Reynolds, and Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien, who read questions from the live audience. They discussed what the committee has accomplished institutionally, what it has accomplished from an adding-new-evidence point of view, what the purpose of this next round of hearings might be, and what relationship this investigation might have to the Justice Department's recent spree of activities.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The country of Tunisia is in the midst of a slow motion political crisis. The country's populist president has crafted a new constitution that gives him broad, unchecked powers and secured its approval by referendum, albeit a referendum in which most Tunisians did not participate. What's not clear is whether other factions will acquiesce to his exceptional actions, and whether those actions will prove to be the antidote for corruption that he has promised or the nail in the coffin for what had been the Arab Spring's last surviving democracy. To discuss these developments and what they might mean, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program, and Sharan Grewal, an assistant professor of government at the College of William and Mary and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. They discussed where the new constitution came from, what it may mean in practice, and how it will impact Tunisia and the broader region's future.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The FBI on Monday conducted a surprise search of Donald Trump's home and resort at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The investigation appeared to involve the retention of classified information by the former president after he left the White House. There's not a whole lot of information, but Trump did confirm the search.To go through it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic, and Andrew Weissmann, a former senior prosecutor for Bob Mueller. They talked about what we know and what we don't know, what sort of investigation this might be, where it may be going, and whether this has anything to do with Jan. 6.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month, The Intercept published a new investigation from Alice Speri and Nick Turse looking into a secretive funding authority at the Pentagon known as 127e, or 127-echo. Using exclusive documents and interviews, the reporters revealed how U.S. Special Operations forces are involved in a proxy war program on a significantly larger scale than previously known. To discuss the program and what it means for U.S. foreign policy, Tyler McBrien sat down with Nick, an investigative journalist at The Intercept who has reported on 127-echo for years. They discussed the history of the funding authority, what these new documents and interviews can tell us about U.S. proxy wars, and how much we still don't know.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On July 29, the Justice Department announced the indictment of Aleksandr Ionov, a Russian national and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia. Ionov is charged with “conspiring to have U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government”—and the Justice Department alleges that he was essentially running a years-long influence operation within the United States on behalf of the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency. The indictment is a wild ride, with a number of Americans listed as unindicted co-conspirators.To discuss, Quinta Jurecic sat down with Thomas Rid—professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and author of a book on Eastern bloc influence operations called “Active Measures”—and Brandon Van Grack, a partner and co-chair of the National Security and Crisis Management practices at the law firm Morrison and Foerster and a former official at the Justice Department, where—among other things—he served as senior assistant special counsel to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They talked through what to make of the allegations against Ionov: are they alarming, or evidence of clumsiness and incompetence on the part of Russia? What can we say about the Justice Department’s strategy in bringing this case and where the investigation might go?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by favorite guest Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett to hash through the week's big national security news stories, including:“Another One Bites the Dust.” This past weekend, an American drone strike successfully killed yet another major terrorist leader—this time al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri—in downtown Kabul, while apparently avoiding any civilian casualties or significant collateral damage. What does the strike tell us about the Biden administration's counterterrorism strategy and the role it plays in his broader global agenda?“Maybe He Just Mixed Up His St. Petersburgs.” In Florida, the Justice Department has indicted Russian agent Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov for engaging in an array of political activities on behalf of fringe political candidates and organizations, with the alleged goal of promoting political instability at the Russian government's behest. What light does this indictment shed on Russian interference in American politics?“The Bully Cockpit.” Over reported objections from the Biden administration, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has flown to Taiwan, making her the most senior U.S. official to visit the hotly contested island in more than two decades and raising China's ire at what many say is a sensitive moment. Is her trip helpful or foolhardy? And what does it tell us about Congress's role in U.S. foreign relations?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From September 22, 2018: If you ask scientists what is most likely to kick off the next great wave of technological change, a good number will answer “quantum mechanics”—a field whose physics Albert Einstein once described as “spooky,” but whose potential, once tapped, could unleash exponentially faster computer processes, unbreakable cryptography, and new frontiers in surveillance technology.No one understands this better than the People’s Republic of China, who over the last several years has built up an aggressive state-driven campaign to accelerate the development of quantum technology—a set of policies intended to put it at the very front of the pack of the next technological revolution, and all the competitive advantages it is likely to bring.To discuss this development, what it may mean for the future, and how the United States should respond, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Elsa Kania, an adjunct fellow with the Center for a New American Security and the co-author of a new report on China’s efforts to achieve “Quantum Hegemony.”Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few weeks ago on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information system, we brought you a conversation with two emergency room doctors about their efforts to push back against members of their profession spreading falsehoods about the coronavirus. Today, we’re going to take a look at another profession that’s been struggling to counter lies and falsehoods within its ranks: the law. Recently, lawyers involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election have faced professional discipline—like Rudy Giuliani, whose law license has been suspended temporarily in New York and D.C. while a New York ethics investigation remains ongoing.Quinta Jurecic sat down with Paul Rosenzweig a contributing editor at Lawfare and a board member with the 65 Project, an organization that seeks to hold accountable lawyers who worked to help Trump hold onto power in 2020—often by spreading lies. He’s also spent many years working on issues related to legal ethics. So what avenues of discipline are available for lawyers who tell lies about elections? How does the legal discipline process work? And how effective can legal discipline be in reasserting the truth?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nancy Pelosi made a visit to Taiwan this week. It wasn't exactly a surprise—we all knew it was happening—but it wasn't announced, and it wasn't quite official either. Beijing has gone a little bit crazy. There are military exercises taking place off the coast of Taiwan in response. There are threats of war. There was even talk of shooting down Pelosi's plane. To talk it all through, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Sophia Yan, Beijing correspondent for the Telegraph; Julian Ku, professor of law at Hofstra University; and Zack Cooper of the Alliance for Protecting Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. They talked about why Pelosi went, about how Beijing reacted, and whether it's all bluster or whether this is the real deal. They also talked about what we can expect to happen over the next few months and how we can deescalate the situation over the next few days. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Another day, another leader of al-Qaeda is killed by U.S. forces. This time, it was Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed on his balcony in Kabul by a Hellfire missile strike. To talk about it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare’s foreign policy editor Daniel Byman. Is it a big deal? Is it kind of old news that we’ve killed yet another al-Qaeda leader? How badly degraded is al-Qaeda? Who's going to replace al-Zawahiri? What does it mean for the Taliban's promises not to allow al-Qaeda attacks on the United States to be planned from its soil? And what is the international and domestic law of killing al-Qaeda leaders 21 years after 9/11.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On May 11, the European Commission announced a new proposal designed to combat online child sexual abuse material. The proposal has drawn notable criticism from major member states, especially Germany, and has raised concerns about the national security risks it could create.To talk through the issues at hand, former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz sat down with two experts, each of whom wrote Lawfare articles about the EU’s proposal back in June: Robert Gorwa, postdoctoral research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center who specializes in platform governance and transnational digital policy issues, and Susan Landau, Bridge Professor of Cybersecurity and Policy in The Fletcher School and at the School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science at Tufts University. They discussed the European proposal in the context of child sexual abuse material, as well as within other contexts, such as that of terrorism. And they walked through the practical, legal, and technical implications of the draft regulation, as well as what its evolution reveals more broadly about policymaking in the digital sphere.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s been a great deal of debate recently about how to understand the apparently slow pace of the Justice Department’s investigation into Jan. 6, particularly into Donald Trump’s personal role in the insurrection. On Lawfare, editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes made the case that everyone should just chill out and let the department do its work, while executive editor Natalie Orpett and senior editor Quinta Jurecic argued that it’s reasonable to push harder for the department to understand its particular responsibilities in upholding the rule of law in this unique political moment.After that debate, Ben, Natalie, and Quinta put their heads together with former FBI official Pete Strzok—who’s expressed his own skepticism about whether the Justice Department is investigating aggressively enough—to map out some benchmarks for what to look for in the Jan. 6 investigation going forward. They wrote that up as a Lawfare piece—and then they sat down to talk about it on the podcast.How will we know if the Justice Department investigation is proceeding aggressively? What signs should worry people hoping for legal accountability for the insurrection? Natalie, Pete, Ben, and Quinta discussed.Note: This podcast was recorded before the New York Times published some new reporting on July 28 about the role of lead prosecutor Thomas Windom. Throughout the show, you’ll hear reference to a major report by the Washington Post published on July 26 stating that prosecutors have asked witnesses testifying before the grand jury about Trump’s individual actions before and on Jan. 6.  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fake news has been around for thousands of years in different forms that have changed with media technology, and there's little doubt that it's here to stay. For reasons ranging from human biases to financial incentives to the need for speed, it remains a hard problem. Cindy Otis, who worked for about 10 years at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst and a manager, now writes about fake news and related matters in articles and books—including True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News, which she targeted at a Young Adult audience. She balances a deep understanding of the challenges of fake news with a deep commitment to providing practical guidance for dealing with it.David Priess spoke with Cindy about writing about fake news and other national security issues for the Young Adult audience, the history of fake news, the challenges of writing about the Holocaust, the changing terminology for disabled persons, the continuing challenges of wheelchair use in travel and in government buildings, her experiences at the CIA, why she writes for outlets ranging from Teen Vogue to USA Today, how to avoid falling prey to fake news, and why the exposure of Russian fake news about Ukraine gives her optimism about our collective ability to counter disinformation.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 20, 2018: Shortly before last Sunday’s election in Russia, Alina Polyakova spoke to Liza Osetinskaya, editor of The Bell and former editor in chief of Forbes Russia and independent Russian news agency RBC. They discussed the Kremlin’s approach to censorship and how the Putin regime reacted when RBC, under Osetinskaya’s leadership, began covering the Panama Papers.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 his ability to beat criminal charges, Gotti became a celebrity mob boss and was no stranger to law enforcement. Gotti's reign was put to an end by convictions obtained by John Gleeson, a former federal prosecutor, and Gotti's conviction and others that followed eventually led to the takedown of La Cosa Nostra in New York City.Decades later, now-Judge Gleeson memorialized how he obtained Gotti's conviction in his new book entitled, “The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America's Most Notorious Mobster.” Former Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm sat down with Judge Gleeson. They discussed how Gleeson became involved in one of the biggest mafia cases in the history of United States jurisprudence, conflicts between the prosecution and the FBI, and how underboss “Sammy The Bull” Gravano became an informant to take down the rest of the mob.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 defeat the bots on Twitter… but now he’s apparently surprised that there are lots of bots on Twitter. It's a spectacle made for the headlines, but it's also, at its core, a regular old corporate law dispute. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek spoke with Adriana Robertson, the Donald N. Pritzker Professor of Business Law at the University of Chicago Law School, to talk about the legal issues behind the headlines. What is the Delaware Court of Chancery in which Musk and Twitter are going to face off? Will it care at all about the bots? And how do corporate lawyers think and talk about this differently from how it gets talked about in most of the public conversation about it?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 the organization is reeling. To discuss it, Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Juliette Kayyem, formerly assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, who has served on the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Committee and has written the book, “The Devil Never Sleeps,” and also with Jonathan Wackrow, chief operating officer of Teneo Risk, who was a long-serving special agent in the Secret Service, including in the presidential protection division.They talked about the use of phones on that job, the loss of trust and confidence in the Secret Service, and its mismanagement of the crisis. They also talked about the performance of the vice president's protection detail on Jan. 6, the Secret Service’s status within DHS, and the prospect for a Department of Justice investigation of the Service.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 elections that promises to confront the controversial independent state legislature doctrine, which argues that the Constitution empowers state legislatures over other state institutions when it comes to deciding certain election matters. Court watchers have posited that the decision could be a major one, as upholding the independent state legislature doctrine could not only hinder the state judicial enforcement of various election-related rights, but potentially strengthen arguments that state legislatures can decide how to allocate their state's electors in presidential elections, a contention that played a central role in some of the legal machinations that former President Donald Trump supporters attempted to pursue following the 2020 election in order to turn the results in his favor. To better understand what exactly is at stake in Moore v. Harper, Scott R. Anderson spoke to Derek Muller, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and a leading election law expert. They discussed what the independent state legislature doctrine may look like in practice, how it intersects with congressional and presidential elections, and what Moore v. Harper does and doesn't mean for the security of U.S. elections moving forward. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, and what is Log4j?To answer these questions and others, Benjamin Wittes sat down with the deputy chair of the Cyber Safety Review Board, Heather Adkins, and board member Dmitri Alperovitch. They talked about what the board is, where it comes from, how it is composed, and what it does. And they talked about Log4j, why the board started with this particular cybersecurity incident, how the board went about doing its investigation, what it found, and what it recommended. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 has highly conditioned much of our contemporary international politics in East Asia, and the people of Korea continue to live with its aftermath, both in the north and in the south. And the shadow of the Korean War looms large over something we often debate on Lawfare—war powers. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the U.S. entry into the Korean War, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Katharine Moon, a professor of political science at Wellesley College and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for East Asia Policy Studies; Matt Waxman, a professor at Columbia University Law School and long-time Lawfare contributor; and Scott R. Anderson, senior editor of Lawfare and a specialist on war powers, among other things. They talked about what happened on the Korean peninsula during the war, how it affected the way we talk about war powers, and the international law status of the conflict in Korea.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Jan. 6 committee's eighth public hearing on July 21. The committee focused on former President Trump's actions and inactions during the insurrection, describing in detail the three hours during which the mob overran the Capitol and Trump refused to instruct his supporters to stand down. The committee also heard testimony from two Trump officials who resigned from their positions on Jan. 6: former Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger and former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Donald Trump's personal conduct in the period in which the riot was taking place. To debrief on it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down in Twitter Spaces with Lawfare publisher David Priess, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, and Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Molly Reynolds. They talked about where this hearing fit in with the larger story the committee was telling, what they learned that was new, what they learned that was duplicative, and what the committee is going to do between now and when its hearings resume in September.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 system for selecting presidents. Several have their origins in the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law whose vagaries played a central role in efforts by John Eastman and other supporters of former President Trump to keep him in the White House, despite the election results.This past Wednesday, after months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators finally put forward a set of legislative reforms aimed at resolving these and other issues well in advance of the next presidential election in 2024. To determine what this reform package will do and how it may impact future elections, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Ned Foley, a leading election law expert and professor at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, and Genevieve Nadeau, a counsel at Protect Democracy who has been actively engaged in reform efforts. They talked about what the reform package intends to change, what will stay the same, and how likely it is to eventually become law.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 on the internet may not have been front of mind for most people thinking through the implications. But in the weeks after the Court’s decision, it’s become clear that the post-Dobbs legal landscape around abortion implicates many questions around not only data and digital privacy, but also online speech. One piece of model state legislation, for example, would criminalize “hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion.” This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Evan Greer, the director of the digital rights organization Fight for the Future. She recently wrote an article in Wired with Lia Holland arguing that “Section 230 is a Last Line of Defense for Abortion Speech Online.” They talked about what role Section 230’s protections have to play when it comes to liability for speech about abortion and what content moderation looks like in a post-Dobbs world. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has cooperated extensively with U.S. state governments on economic issues, replacing Canada as the country with the most diplomatic relations with U.S. states. To discuss how we got here and what it means for U.S.-China relations, former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz sat down with Ryan Scoville, professor of law at Marquette University Law School. Jacob and Ryan discussed new evidence that sheds light on the nature of the relationships between China and U.S. states, the lack of public discourse and transparency around these arrangements, and how this subnational diplomacy has allowed China to acquire cutting-edge American technology. They also discussed what Congress should do to ensure federal monitoring and public discourse of future arrangements. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In recent weeks, we've brought you information and insight about Swedish and Finnish attitudes toward NATO membership, and about Turkey's machinations regarding the two country's applications. But now, Sweden and Finland have been invited to NATO - and member country ratifications are coming in.To explore the topic deeper, David Priess sat down with Katarina Tracz, the director of the Stockholm Free World Forum (Frivärld) and author of the book in Swedish, The Sea of Peace? Increased Tensions Around the Baltic Sea, and with Minna Ålander, from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, where she focuses on Finnish and Nordic security.They talked about Swedish and Finnish strategic perceptions and military interoperability with NATO equipment, the geopolitical importance of the Baltic sea, specifically the Gulf of Finland and Gotland, and about Swedish and Finnish risk perceptions as they await NATO membership. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier this month, the Fulton County special grand jury investigating potential criminal interference into Georgia's 2020 elections subpoenaed members of former President Donald Trump's inner circle, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Senator Lindsay Graham, among others.To discuss these high profile subpoenas and some of the finer points of Georgia state criminal procedure, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Tamar Hallerman, reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who is covering the Fulton County Trump probe, and who also formally served as the papers Washington correspondent covering the Trump administration. Tamar also hosts a weekly podcast on the special grand jury called The Breakdown.They discussed the scope of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's criminal probe, how a special grand jury operates in the state of Georgia, what this one has been up to, and what's next for the investigation. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#LiveFromUkraine is an experimental project hosted on Twitter Spaces by Ben Wittes, with the goal of interviewing a diverse lineup of guests to educate and engage directly with people on the ground in Ukraine during Russia's ongoing invasion. In this episode, Ben talks with Katya Savchencko (@shanovna_s), who grew up in the Donbas region of Ukraine and moved to Bucha following the Russian invasion of that region in 2014. This year, following the full-scale invasion, she survived several days of the brutal and murderous Russian occupation of Bucha before escaping by train with her sister. She kept a diary of her days in Bucha, which she recently published on Medium in English translation. Savchhencko joined Benjamin Wittes on #LiveFromUkraine. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 have a discussion in our podcast studio about Yemen and the U.S.-Saudi alliance. Four former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers who worked with and sometimes at odds with each other participated. The conversation was moderated by Lester Munson, former Staff Director of the Committee under Chairman Bob Corker, and it included Jodi Herman, former Staff Director of the Committee under Ranking Member Ben Cardin; Jamil Jaffer, Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute and former Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor with the Committee under Chairman Bob Corker; and Dana Stroul, former Democratic senior staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the Middle East.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 still have, especially informed policy. Former Lawfare Associate Editor Bryce Klehm sat down with Elizabeth Saunders, an associate professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, to talk about her recent article in the Annual Review of Political Science: "Elites in the Making and Breaking of Foreign Policy."They discussed questions like who exactly are foreign policy elites, why they behave the way they do, and what, if anything, is the alternative to concentrating power in the hands of an elite few? Bryce and Elizabeth also got into why, when it comes to foreign policy elites, we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 episode, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with two emergency medicine physicians who have seen the practical effects of those falsehoods while treating patients over the last two years. Nick Sawyer and Taylor Nichols are two of the cofounders of the organization No License for Disinformation, a group that advocates for medical authorities to take disciplinary action against doctors spreading misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19. They argue that state medical boards, which grant physicians the licenses that authorize them to practice medicine, could play a more aggressive role in curbing falsehoods. How many doctors have been disciplined, and why do Nick and Taylor believe that state medical boards have fallen down on the job? What are the possibilities for more aggressive action—and how does the First Amendment limit those possibilities? And how much good can the threat of discipline do in curbing medical misinformation, anyway?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yesterday, July 12, the January 6 committee held its seventh in a series of prominent hearings unveiling the findings of its investigation to the public. This hearing focused on the role of extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys in planning the assault on the Capitol, and unveiled new evidence about Trump’s plans to direct protestors to the Capitol in advance of January 6. As always, we convened afterwards on Twitter Spaces to discuss. Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes moderated a conversation with Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Roger Parloff, and me.It’s the Lawfare Podcast, July 13: The Jan. 6 Committee, Day Seven.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The “hackers for hire” industry continues to grow unbothered. Reports in recent years have uncovered details about governments and officials using spyware and other security and privacy circumventing tools to target dissidents and other sensitive targets. But another equally invasive and secretive industry has developed over the last decade, involving the use of foreign hackers to win lawsuits and arbitration battles. To discuss this issue, Alvaro Marañon, fellow in cybersecurity law at Lawfare, sat down with Chris Bing and Raphael Satter. Chris is a reporter for Reuters, covering digital espionage and Raphael is a journalist and writer for Reuters, covering cybersecurity. Chris and Raphael recently published an extensive investigation, entitled “How Mercenary Hackers Sway Litigation Battles”, where they breakdown this hackers-for-hire business model in India. They discussed the details around the structure of this marketplace such as how the clients and hackers are matched, the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by the various hacking groups, and what the significance of this illicit industry could be for other sensitive communities. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We often use the terms democracy and liberal democracy interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. Democracy means majority rule and public participation. Liberal democracy means democracy plus minority rights. There's no guarantee that democracy will be liberal. And in fact, some of the same things that enable democracy can also undermine its liberal commitments. Zac Gershberg, a professor of journalism and media studies at Idaho State University and Sean Illing, the host of the Vox Conversations podcast, have recently released a new book, The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion.In the book, they argue that every democracy is fundamentally shaped by the dominant media technology of its time. And that the current landscape of social media and cable news fuels our democracy, but also pushes it in an illiberal authoritarian direction. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Zac and Sean about how American democracy got to this point, how the present compares to the past, and what, if anything, can be done to put liberal democracy on firmer footing. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rational Security is a weekly roundtable podcast featuring Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein. It's a lively, irreverent discussion of news, ideas, foreign policy and law. And there’s always a laugh.This week, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien. They discussed the news of the week, primarily the surprise testimony given by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 of spy swaps in reference to the 2019 Russian arrest of Paul Waylon, who is currently imprisoned in a Russian labor camp now. This is more relevant than ever, as WNBA star Brittney Griner, who is imprisoned and on trial in Russia on drug charges, sent president Biden a handwritten letter this week pleading for his help in bringing her back to the United States. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For decades, experts and analysts have written in great detail about the importance of liberalization and its role in promoting democracy and other western values. Specifically, many believed that once a state began this track towards liberalization, open markets and a liberal democracy was inevitable. Yet, the several decades following Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to China has proven differently, as China continues to grow more distant and confrontational with the West. Lawfare Fellow in Cybersecurity Law, Alvaro Marañon, sat down with Aaron Friedberg, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Aaron is an expert on the relations between China and the West, and has written numerous articles and books assessing the economic, military and political dangers of this rivalry.  They explored his new book, “Getting China Wrong”, and discussed the origins of the West’s engagement with China, how and why the West miscalculated the Chinese Communist Party’s identity and objectives, and how the U.S. and Biden administration can start getting China “right.”Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Algorithms! We hear a lot about them. They drive social media platforms and, according to popular understanding, are responsible for a great deal of what’s wrong about the internet today—and maybe the downfall of democracy itself. But … what exactly are algorithms? And, given they’re not going away, what should they be designed to do?Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jonathan Stray, a senior scientist at the Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI and someone who has thought a lot about what we mean when we say the word “algorithm”—and also when we discuss things like “engagement” and “amplification.” He helped them pin down a more precise understanding of what those terms mean and why that precision is so important in crafting good technology policy. They also talked about what role social media algorithms do and don’t play in stoking political polarization, and how they might be designed to decrease polarization instead.If you’re interested, you can read the Senate testimony by Dean Eckles on algorithms that Jonathan mentions during the show.We also mentioned this article by Daniel Kreiss on polarization.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 objection by Turkey. NATO being a mutual security alliance, any one member can prevent new countries from joining. To fully understand the background dynamics at play here and to explain the agreement that the three countries recently signed, allowing the applications to move forward, Lawfare Publisher David Priess spoke with two people who have covered Turkey from a multitude of angles. Nick Danforth is the author of The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire. He has also covered U.S.-Turkish relations for the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Bipartisan Policy Center. Rachel Rizzo is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Europe Center, where she focuses on European security, NATO, and the trans-Atlantic relationship. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 certification of the electoral votes, remains one of the biggest policing failures in American history. Not only did the Capitol police fail to prepare for the attack, but many members of the mob were themselves police officers from around the country.To talk through the many reasons behind this failure, Alan Z. Rozenshtein sat down with Vida Johnson, an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law School and the author of a recent Brooklyn Law Review article and companion Lawfare post, exploring the tactical and structural policing failures that contributed to January 6th.Alan spoke with her about what the police should have done differently, and the role that race and politics play in how police react to domestic extremism. Resources mentioned in this episode:Vida's Brooklyn Law Review article - https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol87/iss2/3/Vida's Lawfare article - https://www.lawfareblog.com/policing-and-siege-united-states-capitolSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 policy. Today’s episode features audio from the surprise sixth public hearing held by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee heard explosive testimony from former white house aid, Cassidy Hutchins. Learn more and subscribe to Lawfare No Bull.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 policy. Today’s episode features audio of the fifth of a series of public hearings held by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The hearing included testimony from former Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steve Engel. Learn more and subscribe to Lawfare No Bull.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chatter, a podcast from Lawfare, features weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. This week on Chatter, David Priess talked with former U.S. Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow to discuss the inherent dilemmas that come along with the job. One of them can arise if agents become partisan actors or allow themselves to even be perceived as such. We heard another one described in shocking terms during this week's testimony before the Jan. 6 committee: A protectee and the agents protecting him or her can disagree with the protectee about the latter's presence in a threatening situation or movement toward it.It turns out a whole lot of training prepares agents for these contingencies--as well as more predictable ones like how to respond instantaneously to myriad threats. Many lessons emerge from the study of past service failures, up to and including presidential assassinations and attempts. And some others can shed light elsewhere, such as on personal security and safety of institutions from schools to churches.Jonathan is now the COO and Global Head of Security for Teneo Risk and a law enforcement analyst for CNN. He and David have a deep and wide discussion about how cable news networks cover tragedy, the challenges of providing insight on security incidents in real time, his path into the Secret Service, how agents are trained, the lessons learned from historical failures of presidential protection, his own experiences with security breaches during the Obama administration, the dangers of perceived or actual politicization in the service, the balance between protecting a president and allowing a president's desired movements, agents' duty to testify in criminal investigations involving their protectees, how Secret Service experiences can help other institutions during an era of rising political violence, the benefits and drawbacks of school active shooter drills, and more.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Among the works discussed in this episode:The movie The BodyguardThe movie In the LIne of FireThe book Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol LeonnigThe book The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters by Juliette KayyemSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 a potent symbol of the tragic occurrence of violence in Ukraine. To talk through the historical significance of the attack, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Maksym Rokmaniko, an architect, designer, entrepreneur, and director at the Center for Spatial Technologies in Kyiv, and Linda Kinstler, a PhD candidate in the rhetoric department at UC Berkeley.In her recent New York times essay, the Bloody Echoes of Babyn Yar, Linda wrote, "the current war in Ukraine is so oversaturated with historical meaning, it is unfolding on soil that has absorbed wave after wave of the dead, where soldiers do not always have to dig trenches in the forest because the old ones remain."Linda's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic and Jewish Currents, where she recently reported on the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial center. Linda is also the author of Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends, which is out in the U.S. on August 23rd, from Public Affairs.Tyler, Linda and Maksym discuss the history of Babyn Yar as a sight and symbol, the role of open source investigative techniques and forensic modeling in the documentation of war crimes, the battle over historical narratives, memorialization and memory, as well as the limits of the law in achieving justice for victims of negation and genocide.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is midway through a blockbuster series of hearings exploring Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. Central to those efforts, of course, was the Big Lie—the false notion that Trump was cheated out of victory in 2020.This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Kate Starbird, an associate professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington—and repeat Arbiters of Truth guest. Kate has come on the show before to talk about misinformation and Jan. 6, and she and a team of coauthors just released a comprehensive analysis of tweets spreading misinformation around the 2020 election. So she’s the perfect person with whom to discuss the Jan. 6 committee hearings and misinformation. What does Kate’s research show about how election falsehoods spread, and who spread them? How has, and hasn’t, the Jan. 6 committee incorporated the role of misinformation into the story it’s telling about the insurrection? And is there any chance the committee can break through and get the truth to the people who most need to hear it?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 riveting detail about what the president was up to and what the people around him were up to in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day itself. There's an assault against a Secret Service officer. There's a shattered plate and ketchup dripping down the wall. And there are a lot of warnings that violence was coming, warnings that the president really didn't seem to mind. Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces to debrief it all with Lawfare publisher David Priess, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, and Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein, and Roger Parloff. They went over what was new and what it means for the investigation to come.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 primary statute used against those who engage in unlawful computer intrusions. Over the years, the statute has been criticized because it has been difficult to determine the kinds of conduct it criminalizes, which has led to a number of problems, including the chilling of security research.Stephanie Pell sat down with Andrea Matwyshyn, professor of law and associate dean of innovation at Penn State Law School to discuss DOJ's new charging policy and some of the issues it attempts to address. They talked about some of the problems created by the CFAA's vague terms, how the new charging policy tries to protect good faith security research, and the significance of the requirement that prosecutors must now consult with the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property section at main Justice before charging a case under the CFAA.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 foreign legion and to fight as legionnaires on behalf of the Ukrainian government. The phenomenon of legionnaires is an interesting one that crops up all throughout history yet has remained relatively understudied. What role do legionnaires play in conflicts? How does their impact differ from that of typical soldiers? How can we distinguish them from contractors or mercenaries or other categories of fighters? And what can legionnaires tell us about the ways that states like to conduct international affairs and international conflict?To talk through these issues, Jacob Schulz spoke with Elizabeth Grasmeder, a researcher and author of an international security article entitled “Leaning on Legionnaires: Why Modern States Recruit Foreign Soldiers.” They talked about the historical practice of use of legionnaires and what it can reveal about conflicts today. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chatter, a podcast from Lawfare, features weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security.This week on Chatter, Shane Harris talked with historian Tim Naftali about the legacy of Watergate and how we tell stories, fifty years later, about America’s most notorious presidential scandal. What is it about Watergate that still captures our attention? What do historians, journalists, and citizens misremember about the events? And how does the scandal shape our understanding of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol?Naftali was the first federal director of the Richard Nixon library and earned accolades from historians—and criticism from Nixon loyalists—for his efforts to truthfully tell the story of Watergate in the Nixon museum. Naftali has written about intelligence, counterterrorism, national security, and the American presidency in the modern era. He is currently a professor at New York University.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Learn more and subscribe to Chatter.Among the works discussed in this episode:Naftali’s recent article in The Atlantic about a controversial proposal from the National Archives on presidential librariesNaftali on TwitterNaftali’s book on the secret history of U.S. counterterrorism, “Blind Spot”Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 bungle their responses to it so badly? And what should their leaders have learned from earlier disasters and the pathologies clearly visible in the responses of their predecessors to them?Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, "Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe." David Priess sat down with Niall to discuss everything from earthquake zones, to viruses, to world wars, all with a mind to how our political and social structures have or have not adapted to the certainty of continued crises.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 may even say decapitate, the Justice Department to get it to put pressure on states on voter fraud matters and overturn the results of the 2020 election. In front of the committee were senior Justice Department officials who threatened to resign if an obscure environmental lawyer was made acting attorney general. It was another dramatic day of testimony, and to chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, and New York Times reporter Katie Benner, who broke the whole story of the coup attempt at the Justice Department shortly after it happened. They talked about whether they learned anything new. They talked about how the department officials came off: are they heroes or are they apparatchiks? And they talked about how all of it fits into the committee's larger story. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 generated and spread falsehoods about supposed election fraud in 2020. As the committee has argued, those falsehoods were crucial in generating the political energy that culminated in the explosion of the January 6 insurrection. What shape did those lies take, and how did social media platforms attempt to deal with them at the time? Today, we’re bringing you an episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem. In fact, we’re rebroadcasting an episode we recorded in November 2020 about disinformation and the 2020 election. In late November 2020, after Joe Biden cemented his victory as the next president but while the Trump campaign was still pushing its claims of election fraud online and in court, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Their conversation then was a great overview of the state of election security and the difficulty of countering false claims around the integrity of the vote. It’s worth a listen today as the Jan. 6 committee reminds us what the political and media environment was like in the aftermath of the election and how the Trump campaign committed to election lies that still echo all too loudly. And though it’s a year and a half later, the problems we’re discussing here certainly haven’t gone away.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.