On today’s episode, Matt Gluck, Research Fellow at Lawfare , spoke with Michael Beckley, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts, and Arne Westad, the Elihu Professor of History at Yale. They discussed Beckley’s and Westad’s articles in Foreign Affairs on the best path forward for the U.S.-China strategic relationship—in the economic and military contexts. Beckley argues that in the short term, the U.S. should focus on winning its security competition with...
Jul 18, 2024•56 min
Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare 's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, talks with with Lennart Maschmeyer, Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, about his new book , “Subversion: From Covert Operations to Cyber Conflict.” The book explores how subversion works and what its strategic value is, and how technological change alters its reach and quality. They talked about the promise of subversion as an instrument of power, the tradeoffs required for covert operations, and how...
Jul 17, 2024•47 min
The Star Wars universe gets a lot of attention for its lightsabers, space battles, and witty droids. But over the decades, a rich lore has developed around its history and politics. Dr. Chris Kempshall researches and writes at the intersection of real-world history, with a focus on the First World War, and the Star Wars universe. His books include The History and Politics of Star Wars , which analyzes various aspects of Star Wars compared to our world, and Star Wars: The R...
Jul 16, 2024•2 hr 3 min
On July 15, Judge Cannon granted former President Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith for the alleged mishandling of classified documents. She found that Smith was appointed as a special counsel in violation of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. In a live podcast recording , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, Legal Fellow and Courts Correspond...
Jul 16, 2024•57 min
Mary Ellen Callahan, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary, joins Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the DHS’s recently released report on the potential of AI to lead to the production of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) threats. Assistant Secretary Callahan shares the origins of the report, its key findings, and DHS’s next steps. This conversation also explores pre-existing enforcement gaps in biological and chemical regulations and ongoi...
Jul 15, 2024•40 min
From March 22, 2014: On March 19, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) hosted NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a Statesman’s Forum address on the importance of the transatlantic alliance and how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is evolving to address new common security challenges. As the crisis in Ukraine shows that security in the Euro-Atlantic area cannot be taken for granted, the secretary-general discussed NATO’s essential role in an unp...
Jul 14, 2024•1 hr 6 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on July 11 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke to Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes and Lawfare Legal Correspondent and Legal Fellow Anna Bower about whether anything has happened in any of the Trump Trials and took audience questions from Lawfare material supporters. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/law...
Jul 13, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Molly Reynolds, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Senior Editor at Lawfare , spoke with Bridget Dooling, Assistant Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Nick Bednar, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, about the Supreme Court's recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Rai...
Jul 12, 2024•52 min
This week, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Lawfare Contributing Editor Eric Ciaramella to talk over all the national security news causing traffic issues in D.C., including: “Ukraine in the Membrane.” NATO is hosting its 75th anniversary summit here in Washington, D.C., this week. But its members’ eyes are uniformly locked on Ukraine, whose (eventual) membership several will voice support for this week—even as others worry about w...
Jul 11, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Many Pentagon officials and U.S. lawmakers likely lay awake at night wondering what Chinese leaders think about the use of artificial intelligence in war. On today’s episode, Sam Bresnick, a Research Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to begin to answer that very question and discuss his new report , “China’s Military AI Roadblocks: PRC Perspectives on Technological Challenges to Intelligent...
Jul 11, 2024•37 min
Scott Singer, Co-Founder and Director of the Oxford China Policy Lab, joins Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss AI in the context of ongoing and, arguably, increasing tensions between China and the U.S. This conversation covers potential limits on China’s AI ambitions, the durability of the current bipartisan consensus among U.S. officials on the China question, and the factors that may accelerate the race to artificial general intelligence between China and the U.S. To recei...
Jul 10, 2024•41 min
Joseph Cox is an award-winning investigative journalist and the co-founder of 404 Media. He is also the world’s leading reporter on the FBI's Anom sting operation, a topic he has written about in the new book, Dark Wire: The Incredbile True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever . Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. See acast...
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Jack Goldsmith sat down with Christopher Kirchhoff, a former senior official in the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the co-author with Raj Shah of the new book , “Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War.” They talked about the origins and aims of the Defense Innovation Unit, how the defense bureaucracy fought it, and DIU’s successes and failures. They also discussed the pathologies of defense procurement, the relationship between technolo...
Jul 09, 2024•59 min
Chinny Sharma, Associate Professor at Fordham Law School, and Yonathan Arbel, co-director of the Center for Law and AI Risk and Associate Professor of Law at Alabama Law, join Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss open-source AI. This engaging conversation dives into the origins of open source, its meaning in the AI context, and why attempts to regulate open-source AI have drawn passionate responses from across the AI community. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfa...
Jul 08, 2024•52 min
From December 21, 2019: This week, following a resounding victory by Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party in British elections, Members of Parliament have backed Johnson’s plan to withdraw from the EU by January 31. But before they did that, Benjamin Wittes got on the phone from an undisclosed location with Brookings senior fellow and Brexit expert Amanda Sloat—who was here in the Jungle Studio—to discuss Britain’s recent election, what it means for Brexit, and what it might portend for the ...
Jul 07, 2024•36 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on July 5 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes, Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States and the decision’s implications for the other cases against former President Donald Trump. A...
Jul 07, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and a Senior Editor at Lawfare ; David Rubenstein, James R. Ahrens Chair in Constitutional Law and Director of the Robert J. Dole Center for Law and Government at Washburn University School of Law; and Dean Ball, Research Fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, join Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss a novel and wide-reaching AI bill, SB 1047, pending before the California Sta...
Jul 05, 2024•46 min
This week, a Scott-less Alan and Quinta sat down with Lawfare Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier and law school-bound Associate Editor Hyemin Han to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.” Unlike Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden’s underwhelming performance at the first (and perhaps only) presidential debate has put his party in a panic about his chances ...
Jul 04, 2024•1 hr 10 min
From March 22, 2021: Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and Alan Rozenshtein, a Lawfare senior editor and professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, to talk about the group of cases that have been filed in connection with the January 6 riot and insurrection. They talked about the database that Hughes is building and maintaining of cases, defendants and charges filed in...
Jul 04, 2024•52 min
Anupam Chander, Scott Ginsburg Professor of Law and Technology at Georgetown Law; Kyle Langvhardt, Assistant Professor at the Nebraska College of Law; and Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor at Lawfare and Associate Professor at Minnesota Law, join Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the Supreme Court's decision in Moody v. NetChoice. The conversation dives into the weeds of a complex opinion th...
Jul 03, 2024•53 min
As the Second World War started, an unsung cadre of US librarians and other information management professionals was making its way to Europe to acquire printed material that could help American analysts understand international threats. As the war went on, the mission of these experts expanded to also include an unprecedented effort to locate, preserve, and ultimately decide what to do with millions of printed items of Nazi propaganda--and with the books and documents that G...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 12 min
It’s the decision we’ve all been waiting for: on the very last day of the Supreme Court’s 2023 term, the Court handed down its ruling in Trump v. United States, concerning the former president’s potential immunity from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Rather than resolving the issue clearly, a 6-3 conservative majority found that presidents enjoy some immunity from criminal prosecution in some circumstances—a ruling that will likely create significant probl...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 5 min
On June 28, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Fischer v. U.S. , narrowing the interpretation of an obstruction statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), used by the Department of Justice to charge over 300 Jan. 6 defendants, including former President Trump. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff about the decision, what happens to the Jan. 6 defendants charged with § 1512(c)(2), and how this ru...
Jul 01, 2024•51 min
From April 1, 2021: This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast ’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Issie Lapowsky, a senior reporter at the tech journalism publication Protocol. They discussed last week’s hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee with the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter—the first time the companies had been called to testify on the Hill after the Capitol riot, which focused public attentio...
Jun 30, 2024•54 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on June 27 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Legal Correspondent and Legal Fellow Anna Bower and Lawfare Senior Editor about the Monday and Tuesday hearings in the classified documents case, the Georgia Court of Appeals pausing all trial proceedings in Fulton County, and more. And of course, they took audience questions ...
Jun 29, 2024•1 hr 28 min
On June 26, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Murthy v. Missouri —the “jawboning” case, concerning a First Amendment challenge to the government practice of pressuring social media companies to moderate content on their platforms. But instead of providing a clear answer one way or the other, the Court tossed out the case on standing. What now? Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes discussed the case with Kate Klonick of St. Johns University School of Law and Matt Perault, Director ...
Jun 28, 2024•42 min
This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined once again by Lawfare Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: Wiki-plea-ks.” After more than a decade in effective confinement—first at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, then in a British prison—Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is set to plead guilty in a U.S. federal court in Saipan to a single violation of the Espionage Act for his role in securing and publishing troves of classified U.S. diploma...
Jun 27, 2024•1 hr 5 min
For today's episode, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes speaks with Katsiaryna Shmatsina, a Belarusian political analyst and think tanker currently on trial for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government. Shmatsina discusses the charges against her, the trial process, and the broader political situation in Belarus. She delves into the history of the Lukashenko regime, its ties with Russia, and the repression of opposition voices. The conversation also covers the 2020 election and the su...
Jun 27, 2024•1 hr
On June 10, the jury reached a verdict in the federal trial against Chiquita Banana. It found that the company had financed a paramilitary group in Colombia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in the deaths of eight men, and it awarded the victims' families $38 million in damages. It's the culmination of a 17-year-long multi-district litigation that had faced significant procedural, evidentiary, and legal challenges. And it may represent a new frontier in the fight to hold corporations ...
Jun 26, 2024•47 min
Libertarianism doesn’t fit easily on the traditional left-right spectrum of American politics. The philosophy upholds personal liberty as a core value. What does it have to say about matters of foreign policy and national security, which encompass ideas about self-defense but also protection of the state? Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with Shane Harris to discuss the libertarian view on war and diplomacy, how it approaches the question of nation-state conflicts, and the differenc...
Jun 25, 2024•1 hr 17 min
