The Lawfare Podcast - podcast cover

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institutewww.lawfareblog.com

The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law, we have doubled down on seriousness at a time when others are running away from it. Visit us at www.lawfareblog.com.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

Chatter: Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, and the Cold War, with Mark Pomar

Mark Pomar served as assistant director of the Russian Service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, director of the USSR Division at the Voice of America, executive director of the Board for International Broadcasting. He joined David Priess to talk about the origins of US government-funded international broadcasting, differences between RFE/RL and VOA, tensions between strategists and purists over the radios' content, the impacts of detente and of Reagan's more hawkish approach, KGB in...

Oct 29, 20241 hr 11 min

Lawfare Daily: David Kris on Data Proxies for Clients of Cloud Service Providers

Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at Lawfare , sits down with David Kris, founder of Culper Partners and the former Assistant Attorney General for National Security in the Obama administration, to talk about a new paper that David has published as part of Lawfare 's ongoing Digital Social Contract series, entitled " A Data Proxy for Clients of Cloud Service Providers .” Kris argues that cloud storage offers significant benefits for ...

Oct 29, 202448 min

Lawfare Daily: Aram Gavoor on the Biden Administration’s AI National Security Memo

Aram Gavoor, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at GW Law, joins Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to summarize and analyze the first-ever national security memo on AI. The two also discuss what this memo means for AI policy going forward, given the impending election. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare  Material Supporter at  www.patreon.com/lawfare . You ...

Oct 28, 202445 min

Lawfare Archive: India’s Democracy Under Modi

From April 10, 2023: On March 23, 2023, an Indian court found Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s principal opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, guilty of defaming the Prime Minister and the Modi surname. He was sentenced to two years in prison and expelled from Parliament in what journalists and pro-democracy groups view as yet another inflection point of democratic decline under Modi’s leadership.  To understand the challenges facing Indian society and the current deterioration of India’s democrac...

Oct 27, 20241 hr 7 min

Lawfare Daily: Trump Trials and Tribulations Weekly Round-up (October 24, 2024)

This episode of “Lawfare Live: “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations” was recorded on October 24 in front of a live audience on  Youtube  and Zoom. Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to  Lawfare  Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff about the recently released redacted appendices in the Jan. 6 case, where the various state-level fake elector cases stand, and more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priv...

Oct 26, 20241 hr 25 min

Lawfare Daily: Hunter Marston on the South China Sea

Hunter Marston, PhD candidate at the Australian National University and Southeast Asia Associate at 9DashLine, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to explore the economic and geopolitical significance of the South China Sea. Hunter leans on his extensive knowledge of Southeast Asian politics and history to paint a comprehensive picture of why the next Administration should pay close attention to this geographical hotb...

Oct 25, 202434 min

Rational Security: The “Socialist Realism at its Finest” Edition

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 w...

Oct 24, 20241 hr 15 min

Lawfare Daily: Sam Kessler on How North Korean IT Workers Infiltrate U.S. Tech Companies

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&nbsp...

Oct 24, 202442 min

Lawfare Daily: Mark Chinen on International Human Rights Law as a Framework for AI Governance

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, 202441 min

Chatter: Constitutional Fragility with Sandy Levinson

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, 20241 hr 9 min

Lawfare Daily: Recent Elections and the State of Democracy in Tunisia

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, 202442 min

Lawfare Daily: A Trip Around the ‘Hidden Globe’ with Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

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 ne...

Oct 21, 202444 min

Lawfare Archive: Carol Leonnig on the United States Secret Service and What to Do About It

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, 202453 min

Lawfare Daily: National Security and the 2024 Election, Tech Policy

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 a...

Oct 19, 20241 hr 33 min

Lawfare Daily: Zelensky’s Victory Plan, with Anastasiia Lapatina and Eric Ciaramella

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&nb...

Oct 18, 202443 min

Rational Security: The "A Rabbi, the Pope, and an Argentinian Lawyer Walk Into a Bar" Edition

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 thi...

Oct 17, 20241 hr 13 min

Lawfare Daily: Jonathan Zittrain on Controlling AI Agents

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 e...

Oct 17, 202448 min

Lawfare Daily: Making Sense of the Doppelganger Disinformation Operation, with Thomas Rid

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...

Oct 16, 202455 min

Chatter: Freedom of the Seas, with David Bosco

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 "can...

Oct 15, 20241 hr 14 min

Lawfare Daily: AI and Antitrust Law with David Lawrence

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 c...

Oct 15, 202457 min

Lawfare Archive: Philippe Sands on Britain’s Last Colony

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 a...

Oct 14, 202453 min

Lawfare Archive: Climate Migration and National Security

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 ...

Oct 13, 202436 min

Lawfare Daily: Trump Trials and Tribulations Weekly Round-up (October 10, 2024)

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 t...

Oct 12, 20241 hr 10 min

Lawfare Daily: Lies and Rumors After Hurricanes Helene and Milton

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  ...

Oct 11, 202437 min

Rational Security: The “No, the Other Stormy” Edition

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, 20241 hr 9 min

Lawfare Daily: A New Exhibition on Visual Investigation with Lisa Luksch, Anjli Parrin, and Brad Samuels

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 de...

Oct 10, 202442 min

Lawfare Daily: How the FCC is Tackling National Security with Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal

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 i...

Oct 09, 202454 min

Chatter: Stoicism and the Military with Prof. Nancy Sherman

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 Georgeto...

Oct 08, 20241 hr 15 min

Lawfare Daily: Jake Effoduh on AI and the Global South

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&n...

Oct 08, 202442 min

Lawfare Daily: Legal Threats to the Jan. 6 Convictions with Kyle Cheney

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, 202427 min
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast