Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes and Legal Fellow Anna Bower to discuss their recent Lawfare article, “ What’s Going On in Footnote 3? ” The article looks at a very specific issue buried in the Supreme Court's recent decision in Trump v. United States , or “the presidential immunity case”: what evidence the prosecution can use—and what it can't—to prove its case. Natalie, Ben, and Anna talked about what footnote 3 says,...
Jul 29, 2024•47 min
From July 1, 2020: As the United States continues to suffer from the effects of the coronavirus, the controversy surrounding China's alleged role in the pandemic has continued to grow. In recent weeks, it has even entered the U.S. courts, as private plaintiffs have brought claims against the Chinese government and related institutions for allegedly contributing to the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, members of Congress have introduced legislation aimed at making such litigation even easier to pu...
Jul 28, 2024•56 min
From February 15, 2014: Last November, 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. Ritika Singh 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...
Jul 27, 2024•54 min
Cullen O’Keefe, Research Director at the Institute for Law and AI, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss a novel AI governance framework. The two analyze Cullen’s recent Lawfare essay in which he details how regulation of AI supply chains by the U.S. and its allies could promote the safe development of AI. Their conversation also explores the feasibility of this and related governance proposals am...
Jul 26, 2024•43 min
This week, Alan and Scott sat down with Lawfare Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds and Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri to talk through another week of big national security news, including: “Bye Biden.” President Biden made the historic decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race over the weekend. He swiftly endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris, who now appears poised to become the Democratic candidate at the party’s convention next month. How might Harris be different...
Jul 25, 2024•1 hr 18 min
In the runup to Jan. 6, lies and falsehoods about the supposed theft of the 2020 election ran wild on Twitter. Following the insurrection, the company took action—abruptly banning 70,000 users who had promoted misinformation on the platform. But was this mass deplatforming actually effective in reducing the spread of untruths? According to a paper recently published in Nature , the answer is yes. Two of the authors, David Lazer of Northeastern University and Kevin Esterling of the Universi...
Jul 25, 2024•50 min
Alissa Starzak, head of public policy at Cloudflare, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the promises and perils of AI in the cybersecurity context. Frazier, who interned with Cloudflare while in law school, and Starzak cover the novel threats posed by AI to the integrity of the Internet. The two also discuss privacy laws, AI governance, and recent Supreme Court decisions. To receive ad-free podcasts, becom...
Jul 24, 2024•46 min
This week, we’re at the Aspen Security Forum, the annual gathering of national security and foreign policy heavyweights. The conference regularly draws senior government and military officials from the United States and around the world to chew over the big issues of the day, and this time we had a full plate. It’s not exactly hardship duty escaping to a glamorous mountain paradise. But the real world hardly felt far away. Questions linger about the November elections and the security fail...
Jul 23, 2024•50 min
Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Matt Perault, the Director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sat down with Alexander Macgillivray, known to all as "amac," who was the former Principle Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States in the Biden Administration and General Counsel at Twitter. amac recently wrote a piece for Lawfare about making AI...
Jul 23, 2024•40 min
Over the last two weeks, the Russians have bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv, Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán has been on an international peace mission, the NATO summit has taken place in Washington, and Ukrainian forces have continued to struggle to hold territory. To go over a busy few weeks, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Anastasiia Lapatina, Lawfare’ s Kyiv fellow, and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. To receive ad-free podcasts, bec...
Jul 22, 2024•49 min
From April 14, 2020: Nobody has been more aggressive about using the coronavirus crisis to seize power than Hungarian strong man Viktor Orbán. Orbán declared a state of emergency and has been ruling by decree. He has also instigated criminal penalties for spreading false information about the coronavirus, and his Fidesz party has effectively dissolved Parliament. Joining Benjamin Wittes to discuss the decline of Hungarian democracy is András Pap, a Hungarian scholar of constitutional law and a p...
Jul 21, 2024•47 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on July 18 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 Roger Parloff about Judge Cannon’s order dismissing the classified documents case against Trump, Trump’s motion to vacate the New York conviction, and took audience questions from Lawfare mat...
Jul 20, 2024•1 hr 28 min
Rebecca Crootof, Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and the inaugural ELSI Visiting Scholar at DARPA, joins Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the weaponization of emerging technologies and her role as the inaugural ELSI Visiting Scholar at DARPA. This conversation explores the possibility of an AI arms race, the value of multidisciplinarity within research institutions, and means to establish guardrails around novel uses of technology. To receive a...
Jul 19, 2024•46 min
This week Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to talk through one of the most eventful weeks in national security news in recent history, including: “Too Close for Comfort.” Former President Trump narrowly avoided an assassination attempt this past weekend that ultimately left one rally-goer dead and two others critically wounded. While Trump and President Biden both made calls for national unity, several of Trump’s close allies were quick t...
Jul 18, 2024•1 hr 11 min
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
