From August 12, 2020: President Trump recently issued executive orders aimed at banning TikTok and WeChat from operating in the United States. To discuss the sanction, Bobby Chesney sat down with Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, an associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a faculty affiliate with the Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the Clements Center for National Security at UT; and Dr. Ronald Deibert, a professor of pol...
Oct 09, 2023•55 min
This week on Rational Security , Alan, Quinta, and Scott were once again joined by Congress guru Molly Reynolds to discuss the week’s big national security news, including: “Master of the House, Doling out the Harm, Ready with a Handshake and a Face Palm.” Over the weekend, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy narrowly avoided a government shutdown. But this week it cost him his speakership, as Democrats joined a bloc of far-right Republicans to vote in favor of a motion to vacate the office. Wha...
Oct 08, 2023•1 hr 9 min
It's another episode of “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” our weekly live stream on YouTube—and on Zoom for Material Supporters. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, and Legal Fellow Anna Bower to talk about all kinds of things on a whirlwind tour around four different courts. The talked about what’s going on in the New York civil case, what’s with all of these gag orders and gag order req...
Oct 07, 2023•1 hr 17 min
From December 23, 2017: As the year is coming to a close, Congress has now missed the deadline for reauthorizing FISA Section 702. Molly Reynolds, a Brookings fellow in Governance Studies and expert on Congress, joined Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey for a conversation on the failure to reauthorize and what happens next. They discussed the politics of Section 702, the influence of this year's overall legislative agenda, and what to expect in 2018 for the crucial intelligence apparatus. Suppo...
Oct 07, 2023•42 min
The First Amendment protects speech, but what kind? True speech, sure. But what about false or misleading speech? What if it's harmful? After all, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater—or can you? To answer these questions, Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Senior Editor at Lawfare spoke with Jeff Kosseff, who is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Law in the United States Naval Academy’s Cyber Science Department and a Contributing Editor at L...
Oct 06, 2023•43 min
This week on Chatter, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Ben Wittes sat down with author and journalist Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution. In a wide-ranging conversation, they spoke about Jonathan's numerous books, his start in journalism, and his focus on liberalism, Madisonian Pluralism, and religion within democratic institutions. 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 mus...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 6 min
Today, we’re bringing you an episode of Arbiters of Truth , our series on the information ecosystem. And we’re discussing the hot topic of the moment: artificial intelligence. There are a lot of less-than-informed takes out there about AI and whether it’s going to kill us all—so we’re glad to be able to share an interview that hopefully cuts through some of that noise. Janet Haven is the Executive Director of the nonprofit Data and Society and a member of the National Artificial Intelligence Adv...
Oct 05, 2023•46 min
It's been an eventful few days in Fulton County with a flurry of orders, a flurry of briefings, the former president deciding he wasn't going to seek removal to federal court, waiting for the 11th Circuit to rule on other people's removals, and other removals being denied—there’s just been a lot going on. To catch up, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower. They talked about whether we’ll really see this case going to trial on October 23, about bail...
Oct 04, 2023•45 min
If you’ve been following the news out of Congress recently, you’ve probably been focusing on the narrowly averted government shutdown and the indictment of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez—and, perhaps, the House Republicans’ decision to begin an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. But there have also been some notable updates when it comes to the continuing fallout from Jan. 6. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unsealed an opinion limiting the ability of the speci...
Oct 03, 2023•56 min
Russia’s war against Ukraine is the most documented conflict in history. In every part of Ukraine from which Russian forces have retreated, Ukrainian officials and civil society groups have found shocking evidence of mass atrocities and war crimes: torture, rape, summary executions, forced disappearances, looting, and the destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage sites. The Ukrainian government is working around the clock to seek justice for the victims, even as the war rages on. In this specia...
Oct 02, 2023•56 min
This week on Rational Security , Alan, Quinta, and Scott reunited to discuss the week’s big national security news, including: “Do as I Menendsez, Not as I Menendo.” New Jersey Senator and, until recently, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee Bob Menendez was indicted alongside his wife last week, on charges that they accepted money from Egyptian businessmen in exchange for information and favors arising from Menendez’s official duties. How serious are these charges? Where will the...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 6 min
It's another episode of Lawfare 's live Thursday show, “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” a tour around four courts. This week, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower and Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson and Roger Parloff. They talked about what's going on in Fulton County, about that judgment against Donald Trump and the Trump Organization in the civil case in New York, about Tanya Chutkan’s refusal to recuse herself, and about CIPA, CIPA, ...
Sep 30, 2023•1 hr 10 min
From December 9, 2020: President-elect Joe Biden has selected a new defense secretary, retired general Lloyd Austin, former commander of Central Command. The selection has received somewhat mixed reviews, and to discuss why, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Brookings senior fellow Mike O'Hanlon, a defense policy analyst, and Kori Schake, the head of defense and foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute. They talked about why people are upset about General Austin's nomination, his backgrou...
Sep 30, 2023•37 min
The Cyber Safety Review Board was created by a Biden administration Executive Order entitled, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.” The Board reviews major cyber events and makes concrete recommendations that can drive improvements within the private and public sectors. Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Robert Silvers, Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans at the Department of Homeland Security and Chair of the Cyber Safety Review Board, to discuss the Board’s missio...
Sep 29, 2023•41 min
As humanity builds settlements beyond Earth, myriad ethical issues will arise--many in a different way than they do terrestrially. Astrophysicist and space communicator Erika Nesvold has devoted extensive thought and research to how to ethically govern space settlements, most notably on her podcast Making New Worlds and in her book Off-Earth. In a conversation that pairs well with Shane Harris's March 2022 Chatter discussion with astrobiologist Lucianne Walkowicz about ethical space exploration,...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 31 min
Next month, Kenneth Chesebro—the alleged architect of the fake electors plot—is set to be tried in Fulton County, Georgia, on racketeering and other charges. This week, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes and Lawfare Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower sat down with Chesebro’s defense attorneys, Scott Grubman, Manny Arora, and Robert Wilson. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discussed why Chesebro demanded a speedy trial, debated the merits of several pending motions, and cha...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 9 min
On September 19, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, Kenneth Wainstein, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution on the current threat environment and the role of the Department of Homeland Security's Intelligence and Analysis Office (I&A) in confronting it. Following the speech, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes and Wainstein sat down for a Q&A, both between them and with the live audience at Falk Auditorium at the Brookings Inst...
Sep 27, 2023•1 hr 17 min
On August 21, the Human Rights Watch released a report detailing systematic abuses of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers at the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border. Researchers interviewed dozens of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers and found that Saudi border guards had used explosive weapons on them and shot migrants at close range. Lawfare ’s Associate Editor of Communications Anna Hickey sat down with Joey Shea, a researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch who...
Sep 26, 2023•28 min
For the past several months, Ukraine has been engaged in a grinding counteroffensive aimed at retaking lost territory from Russian invaders. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky joined President Biden for the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York to make the case for continued support of Ukraine's efforts—a message they then repeated to members of Congress concerning whether to move forward a much-needed aid package. To discuss the state of the Ukraine offensive and where it sit...
Sep 25, 2023•48 min
This week on Rational Security , Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare colleagues Eric Ciaramella and Saraphin Dhanani, the latter for her last episode of RatSec before departing Lawfare , to break down the week’s big national security news stories, including: “UNGA UNGA Party.” President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy made back-to-back addresses to the U.N. General Assembly, which is gathered in New York for its annual summit this week. What should we make of their statement...
Sep 24, 2023•1 hr 5 min
This past Thursday, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson hosted “ Trump’s Trials and Tribulations ,” Lawfare ’s weekly live video chat about developments in the many ongoing trials circulating around former President Trump. He was joined by Lawfare ’s two leading court reporters, Senior Editor Roger Parloff and Legal Fellow Anna Bower, both of whom have been closely following developments in courthouses around the country, both from afar and sometimes up close and personal. They talked about ...
Sep 23, 2023•57 min
From May 25, 2019: Our friends from the National Security Institute at George Mason University stopped by earlier this week to discuss U.S.-China relations. Lester Munson, Jodi Herman, Jamil Jaffer, and Dana Stroul, former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers who collaborated and sometimes competed with one another on the Committee, had a lively discussion about Huawei, cyber and tech security, the South China sea, and Uighur internment. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfar...
Sep 23, 2023•51 min
It is commonplace for American leaders to describe their fiercest foreign adversaries as irrational, crazy, delusional, or illogical. In their new book, “ How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy ,” political scientists John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Sebastian Rosato of the University of Notre Dame argue that these claims and many similar ones are often wrong because they're based on a flawed understanding of state rationality in international affairs. Jack Goldsmit...
Sep 22, 2023•1 hr 11 min
The British royal family and UK intelligence operations have been linked since Queen Victoria's time, involving everything from personal protection to matters of international intrigue to concerns about blackmail. Professor and author Rory Cormac, who has conducted extensive research on the British intelligence services, has recently added to his corpus of writings in the field with a book about the modern royal-intelligence intersection: Crown, Cloak, and Dagger , co-authored with Richard Aldri...
Sep 21, 2023•1 hr 15 min
Democratic backsliding, a term that American political scientists usually use to describe the process by which other countries transition to autocracy, has come home. Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index, which attempts to track the health of democracies around the world, recently demoted the United States from a score of 90 in 2015 to 83 in 2021, lower than every established democracy in Western Europe. How did American democracy fall so far behind, and more importantly, what can we do about it...
Sep 21, 2023•51 min
Economic warfare isn’t a new concept. Protectionist policies, asymmetrical trade agreements, currency wars—those are just a few examples of the economic levers states have long used to control outcomes. But in their new book , two political scientists, Henry Farrell and Abe Newman, argue that a technological innovation spurred on by free market embracers and coopted by the U.S. was an accidental entry point into a new era of economic statecraft—an era whose precise contours and rules are still b...
Sep 20, 2023•56 min
This week, the UN General Assembly will meet in New York to discuss, among other things, international cooperation to improve global cyber security challenges. This meeting builds on national and international commitments and initiatives that have already been made this past year. One such initiative is cyber-secure nations banding together to provide aid to cyber-risk nations. Lawfare Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare 's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, who...
Sep 19, 2023•42 min
Some time soon, former President Donald Trump is expected to file a motion in U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s courtroom to dismiss the Jan. 6 case against him based on some theory of presidential immunity. In a recent piece for Lawfare , our very own Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani and Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes write, “The bottom line is that this defense is a bit of a moon shot for Trump, but it’s not a crazy moon shot.” Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Saraphin and B...
Sep 18, 2023•40 min
This week on Rational Security , with Scott traveling, Quinta and Alan were joined by Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Reynolds to break down the week’s big national security news stories, including: “What is Impeachment, Really?” Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has announced an impeachment inquiry against President Biden seemingly with the goal of finding something to impeach him over. Will this do anything to hold back the right flank of McCarthy’s caucus from coming for McCarthy’s speakership?...
Sep 17, 2023•1 hr
It's another episode of “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” our weekly video conversation with Lawfare editors and writers on the ongoing Trump trials. On Thursday afternoon, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff and Lawfare Legal Fellows Saraphin Dhanani and Anna Bower. They talked about what's going on in Mar-a-Lago, what's going on in Fulton County, and what’s going on in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s courthouse in Washington. Will Judge Chutkan recu...
Sep 16, 2023•1 hr 25 min
