The fallout from the SolarWinds intrusion took a new turn with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to file a cybersecurity-related enforcement action against the SolarWinds corporation and its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Timothy G. Brown, in October of 2023. But In July, District Court Judge Paul A. Engelmayer dismissed a number of charges in the SEC’s complaint against SolarWinds and Brown. To talk about this significant development in the case, Ste...
Aug 21, 2024•36 min
It’s January 6, 2025. Congress has convened to certify electoral votes in the presidential election. But members of the U.S. military are in revolt, throwing their support behind the losing candidate. The legitimate president huddles in the Situation Room with his top advisers and Cabinet. They have six hours to prevent violent protests from exploding into civil war. That’s the dire scenario imagined in the new documentary “War Game.” Real-world experts--including former elected officials ...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr 4 min
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack sat down with Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Investment Security Paul Rosen to talk through the groundbreaking new national security-related outbound investment regulations his office is preparing at the direction of President Biden. Together, they discussed what concerns motivated the new regulations’ focus on China and emerging technologies, what exact...
Aug 20, 2024•41 min
As part of Lawfare ’s Security by Design Project , Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare ’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, and Justin Sherman, CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, published a new paper , “Security by Design in Practice: Assessing Concepts, Definitions and Approaches.” Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell talked with Eugenia and Justin about the paper’s exploration of the meaning of security by design, scalability solutions and processes for implementing sec...
Aug 19, 2024•53 min
From August 2, 2023: Over the past eighteen months, Ukraine has served as the stage for a proxy battle between superpowers, with the invading Russians on one side and a U.S.-led coalition of Western allies backing Ukraine on the other. As such, it’s the closest thing we’ve yet seen to what many military strategists believe will be the defining challenge of the next strategic era: a near-peer conflict between two or more technologically sophisticated major powers. In this way, the conflict has se...
Aug 18, 2024•59 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on August 15 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 Chutkan’s order granting Jack Smith’s motion for an extension of time, briefs filed in Trump’s appeal to disqualify DA Fani Willis from the Fulton County case, and took audien...
Aug 17, 2024•1 hr 27 min
French politics has had quite a summer. In early June, the French far-right made substantial gains in the European Union Parliament. The same day the results came down, French President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections, saying that the rise of nationalists and demagogues was a danger to France and Europe. It was a shocking and risky move. In the first round of elections, the far-right came in first, but after the second round, they were in third. Much of the media moved on after reporting o...
Aug 16, 2024•59 min
This week, the whole gang—Alan, Quinta, and Scott—got back together to discuss the week's big national security news, including: “In Post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine Invade You!” In an ironic reversal, Ukraine invaded Russia this past week, seizing substantial portions of the oblast of Kursk and surprising both Russian forces and Ukrainian allies in what appears to be its most successful military venture in more than a year. Why did Ukraine take this step? What will it mean in the longer arc of this ...
Aug 15, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Chris Hoofnagle, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College and Professor of Law in Residence at the UC Berkeley School of Law, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , and Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare 's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, to discuss ALL things cybersecurity—its theory, history, and future. Much of their conversation turns on themes expressed in Hoofnagle’s textbook, “ Cybersecurity in Context ,” ...
Aug 15, 2024•38 min
Over the past week, Ukrainian forces have launched a major incursion into Russia proper, occupying 1,000 square kilometers in Kursk Oblast, which borders Ukraine. The operation, which caught both Russia and the United States by surprise, is the first major Ukrainian offensive in more than a year. In this episode, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Lawfare 's Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to discuss the...
Aug 14, 2024•1 hr 13 min
Gina Bennett had a remarkable intelligence career of more than three decades, focusing on counterterrorism even before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and continuing to apply that expertise long after 9/11. She has written a book about how national security and parenting lessons reinforce each other, taught students at Georgetown University, and mentored women entering national security careers. She joined David Priess to talk about her path into and through the intelligence communi...
Aug 13, 2024•1 hr 34 min
Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow, creator of the new podcast series , Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra, Season II. They discuss the ideological aftermath of World War II on the American far right, the rise of Sen. Joe McCarthy, and the rhetorically incredible cast of characters around him. Why do we remember McCarthy merely as a fierce anticommunist demagogue and not as a neo-Nazi? To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfar...
Aug 13, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Katie Moussouris of Luta Security to talk bug bounties. Where do they come from? What is their proper role in cybersecurity? What are they good for, and most importantly, what are they not good for? Moussouris was among the hackers who first did bug bounties at scale—for Microsoft, and then for the Pentagon. Now she helps companies set up bug bounty programs and is dismayed by how they are being used. To receive ad-free podcasts,...
Aug 12, 2024•49 min
This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on August 8 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 what Judge Chutkan has been up to in D.C., state-level prosecutions of fake electors, and took audience questions from Lawfare material supporters. Support this show http...
Aug 11, 2024•1 hr 22 min
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
