Jack Goldsmith sits down with Orin Kerr, a Professor at Stanford Law School, to discuss his new book , “The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World.” They talk about how Kerr became interested in these issues, the history and physicality assumptions of the Fourth Amendment, and how and why the digital world is different. They also discuss how the courts are interpreting the Fourth Amendment in a digital age, as well as Kerr’s Equilibrium-Adjustment Theory, the core the...
Jan 09, 2025•55 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Molly Reynolds and Kevin Frazier to discuss the week’s big national security news, including: “Mike Drop (Almost).” While we are still two weeks away from having a new president, the 119th Congress is already underway. But there are signs of tension in the Republican majority controlling both chambers, with House Republicans (under pressure from former President Trump and adviser Elon Musk) having killed a leadership-negotiated compromise fun...
Jan 08, 2025•1 hr 6 min
Lawfare Senior Editor Eugenia Lostri sat down with Winnona DeSombre Bernsen, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and founder of the hacker conference DistrictCon, and Nina Alli, Executive Director of the Biohacking Village, to talk about their recent report, “ It Takes a Village: Spotlighting Practitioner Driven-Cybersecurity Successes and Future Opportunities .” The report collects the insights of seven cybersecurity villages and outlines the value they can bring to security researc...
Jan 08, 2025•44 min
Jessica Pishko, an independent journalist and lawyer who writes about the criminal legal system with a focus on the political power of law enforcement officials, joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to discuss her new book , “The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.” Pishko discussed the roots of the constitutional sheriffs movement, broke down several myths and realities of the office, and explained the immense appeal sheriffs have...
Jan 07, 2025•52 min
On today’s podcast, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds is joined by Quinta Jurecic, a Fellow at Brookings and Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Ryan Reilly, Justice Reporter at NBC News, to discuss a long-awaited report on Jan. 6 from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, as well as a new report from House Republicans focusing on the pipe bombs planted outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees as part of the violence that day. They explore what...
Jan 06, 2025•58 min
From January 5, 2023: It was a few months ago that something went boom under the sea and the Nord Stream 2 pipelines were severely damaged. Everyone assumed the perpetrator was the Russian Federation because of the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine, and because the pipeline carried natural gas from Russia to Europe. But, months have gone by and evidence that Russia was behind the Nord Stream attacks has not surfaced. This was the subject of a lengthy article in the Washington Post , the ...
Jan 05, 2025•41 min
From April 8, 2022: Last week on Lawfare Live , Jacob Schulz sat down with Andrew Mines, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mines helps lead the Program on Extremism's efforts to keep track of criminal charges resulting from the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill siege. They talked about the U.S military’s efforts to counter extremism within its ranks. Mines is the recent author of a Lawfare piece on the subject, and they talked through the history ...
Jan 04, 2025•49 min
On today's podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett is joined by Brian Hoxie to get an update on the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA). The legislation was passed in 2021 in response to reports that the Chinese government was committing major human rights abuses against its Uyghur population, including disappearances and forced labor. Three years later, where do things stand? Hoxie is the director of the Forced Labor Division at U.S. Customs and Border Protection's O...
Jan 03, 2025•34 min
It's time for Lawfare 's annual "Ask Us Anything" podcast. You called in with your questions, and Lawfare contributors have answers! Benjamin Wittes, Kevin Frazier, Quinta Jurecic, Eugenia Lostri, Alan Rozenshtein, Scott R. Anderson, Natalie Orpett, Amelia Wilson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff addressed questions on everything from presidential pardons to the risks of AI to the domestic deployment of the military. Thank you for your questions. And as always, thank you for liste...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 16 min
For the podcast’s annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-hosts emeritus Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including: How will the collapse of the Assad regime impact the region? And can the United States help create a secular, democratic Syria? How is the pending TikTok ban even enforceable (if it is)? What national security story from 2024 deserved more attention? Won’t the Fifth Circuit’s recent Tornado Cash opinion simpl...
Jan 01, 2025•1 hr 15 min
From August 8, 2023: Just weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the life sentence of a Yemeni national serving out his time at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. He had appealed this life sentence, in part on the grounds that his conviction was based on evidence obtained by torture. Meanwhile, at the Guantanamo military commissions, another detainee tried to appeal charges against him on the basis that torture-obtained evidence was used in his...
Jan 01, 2025•49 min
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•1 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•1 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
