This week, Scott was joined by his Lawfare colleagues Tyler McBrien and Anna Hickey and special guest Georgetown University professor and CSIS Senior Fellow (as well as Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor) Dan Byman to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: “Some Vacancies in Management.” Israeli forces unintentionally hit their number one target last week when an Israeli military patrol in Gaza stumbled across and killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is widely believed to be the...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Eugenia Lostri, Senior Editor at Lawfare , sits down with Sam Kessler, Deputy Managing Editor for Tech and Protocols at CoinDesk, to talk about his recent investigation into how North Korean IT workers are infiltrating the crypto industry. They talked about the red flags that companies should be looking out for, why the crypto industry is particularly vulnerable, and the connection between these workers and the North Korean hacking arm. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supp...
Oct 24, 2024•42 min
Mark Chinen, Professor at Seattle University School of Law, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss his recent work on international human rights law as a framework for AI governance. Professor Chinen explores the potential of IHRL to address AI-related challenges, the implications of recent developments like the Council of Europe AI treaty, and the intersection of philosophy, divinity, and AI governance. To re...
Oct 23, 2024•41 min
Professor Sanford Levinson has written extensively about the fragility of the Constitution. A likely contested election, AI, and ongoing gridlock makes his long-stemming concerns all the more relevant. In this episode of Chatter, Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, sat down with Sandy, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law to explore how Sandy's thinking about the need for a wholesale revision of the Constitution has evolved, whether or not the Supreme Court is t...
Oct 22, 2024•1 hr 9 min
For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sarah Yerkes, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Sabina Henneberg, the Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Peace, to discuss recent elections in Tunisia, which saw increasingly authoritarian President Kais Saied returned to office with a purported 91% of the vote. They discussed the elections' lack of credibility, how they have been received by U.S. and other foreign of...
Oct 22, 2024•42 min
The journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian begins her new book, “ The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World ,” in her hometown: Geneva, Switzerland. She writes, “I began this book about the world on a lifelong hunch: there was something strange about the place where I grew up…I am, and will always be, a part of this world apart—a place defined by a certain placelessness.” It turns out that Geneva is just one entrepôt of many on the hidden globe, which Abrahamian describes as a network of “spaces...
Oct 21, 2024•44 min
From July 7, 2022: The United States Secret Service has many important missions, the most public of which is protecting the president of the United States. And in this mission, its motto is "Zero Fail." There is no window for them to let their guard down when it comes to protecting the commander-in-chief. And yet, the past several decades of the Secret Service's protection have seen gaps, mistakes and exposures of some fundamental problems within the Secret Service itself. Carol Leonnig is a Pul...
Oct 20, 2024•53 min
This episode of “Lawfare Live: National Security and the 2024 Election” was recorded on October 15 in front of a live audience on Youtube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic, Eugenia Lostri, and Alan Rozenshtein, Lawfare Tarbell Fellowin Artificial Intelligence Kevin Frazier, and Associate Professor of Law at St. John's University Law School Kate Klonick. They discussed former President Trump and Vice President Harris’s positions on va...
Oct 19, 2024•1 hr 33 min
Following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to the Ukrainian Parliament outlining his victory plan, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They talked about the components of the plan, the reaction from the United States and other allies, and what the plan says about the state of Ukraine's war effort. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material...
Oct 18, 2024•43 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Anastasiia Lapatina, and Eugenia Lostri to try to make sense of the week’s biggest national security news stories, including: “Kursked.” This week, even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rolls out his “Victory Plan” to Western allies, Russian forces have made progress reclaiming what some have described as a key part of that plan: the region of Kursk within Russia, which Ukrainian forces seized earlier this year. How ...
Oct 17, 2024•1 hr 13 min
Jonathan Zittrain, Faculty Director of the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to dive into his recent Atlantic article , “We Need to Control AI Agents Now.” The pair discuss what distinguishes AI agents from current generative AI tools and explore the sources of Jonathan’s concerns. They also talk about potential ways of realizing the control desired by Zittrain. For those eager t...
Oct 17, 2024•48 min
In early September, the U.S. Justice Department released a trove of information about the Russian influence campaign known as “Doppelganger”—a Kremlin-backed effort that created faux versions of familiar news websites and seeding them with fake material. Just a few weeks later, the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that it had received a tranche of hacked materials from inside the Doppelganger operation. Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced Inter...
Oct 16, 2024•55 min
The Earth's oceans differ from its land areas in many ways, including the historically powerful norm of "freedom of the seas." David Priess hosted David Bosco, Executive Associate Dean and Professor at Indiana University's Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, for a discussion about the origins and core principles of the freedom of the seas concept, Hugo Grotius, the practice of maritime commerce from ancient times until now, the three mile "cannon-shot" rule of territorial ...
Oct 15, 2024•1 hr 14 min
What are the antitrust implications of AI systems? At a recent conference co-hosted by Lawfare and the Georgetown Institute for Law and Technology, Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with David Lawrence, the Policy Director at the the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division to talk about how competition law applies to the makers and users of AI models. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You can also support Lawfare by mak...
Oct 15, 2024•57 min
From March 8, 2023: 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 o...
Oct 14, 2024•53 min
From September 14, 2023: It’s been another brutal summer with seemingly constant natural disasters precipitated by climate change. The United States and other countries have rightfully begun thinking of climate change as a security issue. But extreme weather is not the only challenge we must contend with. There’s also the problem of climate change’s victims, many of whom are forced to leave their homes. Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Erin Sikorsky, Director of the Center f...
Oct 13, 2024•36 min
This episode of “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on Oct. 10 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke with Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff. They discussed Jack’s recent op-ed in the New York Times —in which he argued that the Justice Department’s recent filing in the Jan. 6 case is in tension with department policy, and that the department should publicly justif...
Oct 12, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Following the devastation of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, rumors and conspiracy theories about the disaster quickly began spreading online—some of them outrageous and bizarre, and some of them legitimate efforts to make sense of a confusing and frightening situation. With Hurricane Milton moving through Florida, the confusion seems unlikely to let up anytime soon. The volume of rumors circulating “is absolutely the worst I have ever seen,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told r...
Oct 11, 2024•37 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Molly Reynolds, Kevin Frazier, and Katherine Pompilio to talk over the week's big national security news stories, including: “The Fourth Law of Robotics is, You Don’t Talk About the First Three Laws of Robotics.” California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047 this past week, a measure that would have imposed the first set of meaningful safety regulations on the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI)—measures industry leaders said were o...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Tyler McBrien, Managing Editor of Lawfare , sat down with Lisa Luksch, a curator at the Architekturmuseum der TUM; Anjli Parrin, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago; and Brad Samuels, a founding partner at SITU and the Director of SITU Research. They talked about a new exhibition, “ Visual Investigations: Between Advocacy, Journalism, and Law ,” which opens on Oct. 10 at the Architekturmuseum der TUM in Munich. The exhib...
Oct 10, 2024•42 min
For today’s episode, Loyaan Egal, the Chief of the Enforcement Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Morrison Foerster partner Brandon Van Grack to discuss the FCC’s growing but often underappreciated role in advancing U.S. national security. They covered how the FCC’s mandate intersects with U.S. national security concerns, how the FCC is tackling cutting-edge issues ...
Oct 09, 2024•54 min
Stoicism is having a moment.The ancient philosophy--which posits that you can’t control events, but you can control how you respond to them--has lately been embraced by self-help gurus and tech bros. But Nancy Sherman writes that the tenets of Stoicism have long found a receptive audience in “the military mind.” Whether they know it or not, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are guided by many of the principles espoused by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Sherman, a professor at Georgetown Uni...
Oct 08, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Jake Effoduh, Assistant Professor at Lincoln Alexander School of Law, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to share his research on the Global South’s perspective on AI. Jake has carved a unique and important research agenda looking into how AI advances are impacting the pursuit and realization of human rights in Africa. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You c...
Oct 08, 2024•42 min
Kyle Cheney, Senior Legal Affairs Reporter for Politico, discusses his recent Politico article on the legal and political landmines threatening the criminal prosecutions of rioters involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff sat down with Kyle to discuss a serious legal challenge to the key misdemeanor charge leveled in more than 90 percent of Jan. 6 cases, a troubling ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declaring most so-called “geofencing” ...
Oct 07, 2024•27 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on October 3 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Senior Editor Scott Anderson spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s immunity motion in the Jan 6 case against former President Trump, what it means for the future of the case and of course took audience questions. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hosted on Acast. See ac...
Oct 06, 2024•1 hr 20 min
From October 11, 2023: This past Saturday, the terrorist group Hamas launched an unprecedented raid from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel that left more than 1000 people – most of them Israeli civilians, many of them women, children, and the elderly – brutally murdered. Dozens more were taken as hostages back into Gaza. A shocked Israel has in turn responded with missile attacks into Gaza that have killed more than 800 Palestinians there, and is planning a broader offensive there. And as peop...
Oct 05, 2024•1 hr
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently vetoed SB 1047, the controversial AI safety bill passed by the California legislature. Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with St. Thomas University College of Law Assistant Professor Kevin Frazier and George Mason University Mercatus Research Fellow Dean Ball to discuss what was in the bill, why Newsom vetoed it, and where AI safety policing goes from here. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/...
Oct 04, 2024•48 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Quinta Jurecic, and Tyler McBrien to try to make sense of the week’s biggest national security news stories, including: “Pulling Up the Escalation Ladder.” Israel’s escalating campaign against Hezbollah turned regional yesterday, as Iran launched a salvo of more than 180 ballistic missiles against Israel. While the damage was limited, both Israel and the United States have promised consequences. What strategies are Israel, Ir...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 28 min
For today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Gowan, the U.N. Director for the International Crisis Group, to review what went down at the recent U.N. General Assembly High-Level Week. They discussed how the national leaders who gathered in New York for the meetings responded to the ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan; how strategic competition between China, Russia, and the United States shaped the proceedings; and what it can t...
Oct 03, 2024•50 min
Israel has hit Hezbollah very hard over the past few days, killing much of its senior leadership and eroding its capabilities. It has also displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and now has ground forces in Lebanon. Iran has responded with a missile barrage against Israel, to which an Israeli response is widely expected. To discuss the latest events in the expanding war, Lawfare 's Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Firas Maksad of the Middle East Institute, Natan Sachs of the Br...
Oct 02, 2024•55 min