From April 24, 2023: Evan Gershkovich has been in Russian detention for the last several weeks. He is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and he’s the latest American taken hostage by the Vladimir Putin regime. His good friend Polina Ivanova is a reporter for the Financial Times, a colleague of Evan’s in Russia, and has been an outspoken advocate for his release. She joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes from Berlin to talk about Evan: who he is, why he has been de...
Aug 10, 2024•43 min
On today's episode, Lawfare' s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri speaks with Senior Privacy Engineer at Netflix and former Army Reserve intelligence officer, Lukas Bundonis. They talked about the relationship between law enforcement and tech companies, what that relationship looks like in the U.S. and other countries, and the different ways in which that communication can be politicized. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.pa...
Aug 09, 2024•49 min
This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's very big national security news stories, including: “The Waiting Game.” The Middle East is on edge this week as it awaits a possible attack by Iran or Hezbollah on Israel in response to the suspected assassination of senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders last week, including the chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed while visiting Tehran for the swearing in of...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Last week, three defendants in the 9/11 case at Guantanamo agreed to plead guilty in the military commissions. Two days later, the Secretary of Defense pulled out of the agreements. What happened? Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with General John Baker, who served as the Chief Defense Counsel of the Guantanamo Military Commissions until 2021. They talked about how the 9/11 case got to plea agreements after more than a decade of litigation, why Secretary Austin scuttled them...
Aug 08, 2024•36 min
On today's episode, Lawfare Contributing Editor Justin Sherman speaks with Arun G. Rao, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division's Consumer Protection Branch at the Department of Justice. They discuss DOJ’s consumer protection work, cyber crime and elder fraud, data privacy, and generative AI. You can find out more about Rao’s work at DOJ below: DOJ-Cerebral case DOJ Elder Justice Initiative National Elder Fraud Hotline To receive ad-free podca...
Aug 07, 2024•31 min
On this week’s show, Lawfare’s Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with longtime Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer to discuss his mémoire of political lawyering, “The Unraveling Reflections on Politics Without Ethics and Democracy in Crisis.” Bauer, a longtime Lawfare contributing editor, discusses his career as a litigating street fighter on behalf of Democratic Party causes and some of the regrets he has about party lawyering in an era of rising polarization. Chatter is a production of Lawfare...
Aug 06, 2024•1 hr 18 min
A new film from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines series called “The Night Won’t End” profiles three Palestinian families as they try to survive the war in Gaza. On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien speaks to the documentary’s director, Kavitha Chekuru, along with a few of the journalists and researchers who came together to work on the project, including Emily Tripp, Director at Airwars; Samaneh Moafi, Assistant Director of Research at Forensic Architecture; ...
Aug 06, 2024•54 min
Scott Wiener, California State Senator, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to explore his “Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models” bill, also known as SB 1047. The bill has become a flashpoint in several larger AI debates: AI safety v. AI security, federal regulation or state regulation, model or end-user governance. Senator Wiener and Kevin analyze these topics and forthcoming hurdles...
Aug 05, 2024•34 min
From July 7, 2021: 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...
Aug 04, 2024•53 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on August 1 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 Mark Meadows’ petition for a writ of certiorari in his attempt to remove his Fulton County election interference case to federal court, the briefing schedule in the government’s appe...
Aug 03, 2024•1 hr 12 min
On Thursday, Russia released 16 prisoners in exchange for eight prisoners held in Western countries, including the United States. The prisoners released by the Putin regime included several Americans, most notably Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal and two other journalists, and long-time prisoner Paul Whelan. Shane Harris of the Washington Post, who covered the story, and Lawfare 's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri, joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to di...
Aug 02, 2024•45 min
This week, Alan and Quinta were joined by Kevin Frazier to talk through some of the week’s biggest national security news, including: “KOSA Nostra.” An overwhelming majority of senators voted to pass the Kids Online Safety Act, also known as KOSA—a bipartisan piece of legislation that would impose new responsibilities on online platforms in looking after their underage users. Despite the 91-3 vote in the Senate, KOSA has faced strong opposition from a number of civil rights and internet freedom ...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Anastasiia Lapatina is a Kyiv-based Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare . Marcel Plichta is a Fellow at the Centre for Global Law and Governance at the University of St. Andrews, and a former analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense who currently works as an instructor at the Grey Dynamics Intelligence School. For this episode, Lapatina sat down with Plichta to discuss Ukraine’s ongoing drone campaign against Russia, Ukraine’s choice of targets deep inside Russian territory, and the future of drone warfa...
Aug 01, 2024•38 min
For this episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook to discuss his new book , “The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.” Together, they examined the United States’ long history in the Middle East, how it successfully (and unsuccessfully) pursued its interests there, and what should come next after the failed transformations of the post-9/11 era. To receive ad-f...
Jul 31, 2024•57 min
At the start of every presidential administration, the nominees for more than 1,000 civilian positions require Senate confirmation. A large number of those are in the Department of Defense, with confirmation responsibility going to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). And whether it's a new administration or not, the committee processes dozens of civilian nominations for typical turnover reasons and thousands of military promotions as part of regular order. Arnold Punaro, a...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 20 min
Ryan Calo, Professor of Law at the University of Washington, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss how advances in AI are undermining already insufficient privacy protections. The two dive into Calo's recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Their conversation also covers the novel privacy issues presented by AI and the merits of different regulatory strategies a...
Jul 30, 2024•38 min
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
