After more than three years, Chatter is ending its run. In this episode, Shane and David reflect on the diverse range of topics at the frontiers of national security that this podcast has explored—from spy fiction to lessons of history, from climate change to the visual and musical arts, and from sports and culture to the practice of intelligence. Along the way, they refer back to many of the podcast’s brilliant guests while lamenting conversations yet unrealized and specific issues yet una...
Dec 31, 2024•2 hr 38 min
From February 10, 2023: International law has been under significant stress in the last decade as a result of global populism, the rise of China, the war in Ukraine, and the challenges of the pandemic, climate change, and cybersecurity threats, among many others. To discuss why international law seems to be failing in important respects and what to do about it, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Paul Stephan, the John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, and ...
Dec 31, 2024•59 min
Daniel Holz, professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the founding director of the Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab), 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 discuss existential risks, the need for greater awareness and study of those ris...
Dec 30, 2024•37 min
From December 14, 2021: Syria’s decade-long civil war has left the state and economy shells of their former selves. But a new industry is stepping in to fill the void: the manufacture and export of illicit drugs, specifically Captagon, a type of amphetamine that has a growing global market. To better understand Syria’s emerging role in the global Captagon trade, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Caroline Rose of the New Lines Institute, who has been tracking this industry's development for several...
Dec 29, 2024•48 min
From December 13, 2023: You may have heard of Javier Milei, Argentina’s new president, thanks to some of his eccentricities, like his five cloned dogs or his reliance on a chainsaw prop to illustrate the need to cut public expenditure. But Milei was able to harness the dissatisfaction with a system that has left the country with 150% inflation and over 40% of the population under the line of poverty. Now, the self described anarcho-capitalist libertarian will attempt to turn the economy around w...
Dec 28, 2024•55 min
John Bridgeland, Executive Chair & CEO of More Perfect & former Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council & National Service Czar, 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 examine America’s general preparedness for a large-scale conflict and its culture of service (or lack thereof). The two also discuss ongoing efforts to reform and expand military, national, a...
Dec 27, 2024•36 min
At a recent conference co-hosted by Lawfare and the Georgetown Institute for Law and Technology, Fordham law professor Chinny Sharma moderated a conversation on "Old Laws, New Tech: How Traditional Legal Doctrines Tackle AI,” between NYU law professor Catherine Sharkey, Ohio State University law professor Bryan Choi, and NYU and Cornell Tech postdoctoral fellow Kat Geddes. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.co...
Dec 26, 2024•1 hr 14 min
From April 9, 2016: This week on the podcast, we welcome Eric Schwartz , the Dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Schwartz previously served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. In our conversation, he sketches the key aspects of U.S. refugee policy, explaining how it both protects the security of the United States and at times undermines its ability to accept refugees. Schwartz, who believes the Un...
Dec 25, 2024•41 min
Carmen Medina defies simple description. She spent more than 30 years at the CIA, rising to the leadership team of the Directorate of Intelligence, despite her iconoclasticism and vociferous evangelism of new technologies. Since retiring more than a decade ago, she has co-written a book about rebelling within bureaucracy--and advocated the exploration of precognition for intelligence purposes. She joined David Priess for a wide and deep conversation about her analytic and manageri...
Dec 24, 2024•2 hr 48 min
From July 31, 2023: This past week, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a spirited hearing on an unusual topic: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, the more correct term for what are commonly called UFOs, or Unidentified Flying Objects. The witnesses included two military veterans who claimed to have borne eyewitness to UAPs, and an intelligence community whistleblower who claims to have heard secondhand from contacts about a range of g...
Dec 24, 2024•1 hr 3 min
On today's podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Michael Posner, a professor of business and human rights at New York University, about the landmark verdict last month in Al-Shimari v. CACI. The case involved claims against a government contractor for its role in the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq in 2004. It became the first case of its kind to make it to trial—and now a jury has returned a verdict findin...
Dec 23, 2024•52 min
From April 14, 2023: Over the past few years, TikTok has become a uniquely polarizing social media platform. On the one hand, millions of users, especially those in their teens and twenties, love the app. On the other hand, the government is concerned that TikTok's vulnerability to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party makes it a serious national security threat. There's even talk of banning the app altogether. But would that be legal? In particular, does the First Amendment allow the govern...
Dec 22, 2024•47 min
From June 15, 2021: A spree of stories has emerged over the last week or so that the Justice Department under the prior administration obtained phone and email records of several journalists, several members of Congress and staffers, and even family members. It has provoked a mini scandal, calls for investigation, howls of rage and serious questions. To discuss it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, former FBI agent Pete Strzok,&nb...
Dec 21, 2024•49 min
Adam Thierer, Senior Fellow for the Technology & Innovation team at R Street, 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 examine a lengthy, detailed report issued by the Bipartisan House Task Force on AI . Thierer walks through his own analysis of the report and considers some counterarguments to his primary concern that the report did not adequately address the ...
Dec 20, 2024•45 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower and Natalie Orpett and Lawfare Contributing Editor Michel Paradis to talk about the week’s biggest national security news stories, including: “A Justice Delayed Still Has Justice on the Mind.” After weeks of waiting, New York state court judge Justice Juan Merchan has finally become the first judge to apply the Supreme Court’s Trump v. United States immunity decision, holding that incoming President Donald Trump’s convictions under...
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 22 min
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Ashley Deeks, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Kristen Eichensehr, also a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, but currently a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, to discuss their forthcoming law review article, “Frictionless Government and Foreign Relations,” which focuses on the dangers that can arise in moments where there appears to be broad consensus on a particular...
Dec 19, 2024•47 min
In response to the compromise of telecommunication companies by the Chinese hacker group Salt Typhoon, senior officials from the FBI and CISA recommended that American citizens use encrypted messaging apps to minimize the chances of their communications being intercepted. This marks a departure in law enforcement’s position on the use of encrypted communications. Susan Landau, Professor of Cyber Security and Policy in Computer Science at Tufts University, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Pr...
Dec 18, 2024•51 min
Shane Harris makes no secret about his love for the film version of this Cold War submarine thriller, based on the Tom Clancy novel. It’s his favorite movie. So he was delighted to welcome fellow obsessive Katherine Voyles to the podcast. A PhD in English, Voyles writes about national security in culture, as well as the culture of national security. She and Shane talked about why they love the movie, their favorite scenes and characters, and how the story influenced--maybe even created--an entir...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 19 min
CNN correspondent Elle Reeve has spent the last decade reporting on extremism in the United States. Her book , "Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society and Capture American Politics" provides an insider's glimpse into the "insidious"—and underestimated—world of alt-right internet culture that is now at the center of the Republican Party under Donald Trump. Lawfare Associate Editor Katherine Pompilio sat down with Reeve to discuss h...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Sam Manning, Senior Research Fellow at GovAI, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss his research on different options to share AI's benefits at the international level. The two also explore Sam's analysis of the incentives that may steer adoption of different benefits sharing strategies and his plans for future AI research. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporte...
Dec 16, 2024•37 min
From October 19, 2019: It's been a horrible week in northeastern Syria. The U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies after the president had a conversation by phone with Turkish President Erdogan and pulled the plug on the stabilizing U.S. presence in the region. The Turkish government began a major incursion over the border, which has produced significant casualties and major questions about ISIS detainees in Kurdish custody. To talk through it all, we pulled together quite a group. In the first half ...
Dec 15, 2024•59 min
In a live conversation on December 12 , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Middle East Institute Senior Fellow Charles Lister, and Syrian pro-democracy activist Ammar Abdulhamid to discuss Syrian rebels overthrowing the Bashar al-Assad regime, what the current situation on the ground is, what the reactions of foreign government’s has been, and more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hoste...
Dec 14, 2024•1 hr 5 min
At a virtual panel conversation co-hosted by Lawfare and NYU's Center for Technology Policy, center Director Scott Brennen moderated a conversation between Lawfare Senior Editor and University of Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein, University of North Carolina law professor Mary-Rose Papandrea, and Georgetown law professor Anupam Chander, about the recent D.C. Circuit decision upholding the TikTok divestment-or-ban law and what that means for the future ...
Dec 13, 2024•57 min
This week, Scott was joined by his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Eugenia Lostri, and Tyler McBrien to break down the week's big national security news, including: “The Long Road to Damascus.” Syria’s Assad regime collapsed suddenly last week in the face of a rebel offensive, ending thirteen years of revolution. What comes next, however, is anyone’s guess. How will this shift impact regional security? And how is the incoming Trump administration likely to respond? “Pardonez-Moi.” President-...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 15 min
On November 28, Georgia Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that he was suspending Georgia’s accession process to the European Union. In the weeks since, thousands of protestors have demonstrated in the capital city, Tbilisi, and across the country. Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey sat down with Dr. Beka Kobakhidze, Professor and Co-chair of MA Program in Modern History of Georgia at Ilia State University, to discuss the protests, Russia’s growing influe...
Dec 12, 2024•42 min
Ukraine’s defense industry has grown substantially after Russia’s full-scale invasion. But it also suffered from a huge domestic burden—a ban on arms exports, which forced companies to close down or relocate abroad. Ukrainian lawmaker Halyna Yanchenko sits down with Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina to explain why exporting Ukrainian weapons will benefit Ukraine and global security. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.pat...
Dec 11, 2024•27 min
International politics and security expert Dr. Ben Tallis, who now directs the Berlin-based Democratic Strategy Initiative, joined David Priess to discuss the challenges of German grand strategy since 1945, the country's musical culture in the 1950s and 1960s, the origins and evolution of Kraftwerk and its members' effort to reconceptualize German identity, the band's influence on musicians globally, U2 and post-Cold War Europe, how Germany became the most respected country in the world by ...
Dec 10, 2024•1 hr 27 min
Jack Goldsmith sits down with Glenn Fine, the former principal deputy Inspector General of the Department of Defense and former Acting IG of the Department of Defense, and author of the new book , “Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government.” They discuss the history of inspectors general and early constitutional concerns about the role that inspectors general play, Fine’s experiences at both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, the 202...
Dec 10, 2024•52 min
Kevin Xu, founder of Interconnected Capital and author of the Interconnected newsletter , 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 analyze China’s AI ambitions, its current AI capacities, and the likely effect of updated export controls on the nation’s AI efforts. The two pay particular attention to the different AI development strategies being deployed by the U.S....
Dec 09, 2024•42 min
From May 11, 2021: David Ignatius, a columnist for the Washington Post, recently ran a lengthy column about the machinations of Kash Patel in the executive branch during the presidential transition. Patel, a former staffer for Devin Nunes, held a variety of positions in the months before Donald Trump left office, and Donald Trump considered him for a variety of other positions. It's a remarkable story that raises a whole series of questions that Jack Goldsmith has been asking on ...
Dec 08, 2024•47 min
