This week, Scott sat down with Rational Security veterans and Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Molly Reynolds to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “House Odds.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson scored an unlikely win last week, when he kept the narrow (and notoriously fractious) Republican house majority united enough to pass its own continuing resolution to keep the government open—and then successfully got enough Democrats to acquiesce to debate on it for it...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 24 min
For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviewed Steven Heydemann, the Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Smith College, to assess the fast-changing developments in Syria today. Heydemann discusses the surge in communal violence in Syria, the deal between the new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led government and Syria's Kurds, Israel's counterproductive interventions, and U.S. policy toward the new regime in Damascus. To receive ad-free podcasts, be...
Mar 19, 2025•31 min
Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic and co-author (with Ezra Klein) of Abundance , joins Renée DiResta, Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare , and Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the UT Austin School of Law and Contributing Editor at Lawfare , to discuss the theory of Abundance and its feasibility in an age of political discord and institutional distrust. To receive ad-free podcasts...
Mar 18, 2025•47 min
In a live conversation on March 14 , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, sat down with assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky Matt Boaz and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Scott Anderson to discuss legal challenges to the Trump administration’s executive actions, including the detention of permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil, the birthright citizenship executive order, dismantling of USAID, the firing of probationary employees across the federal...
Mar 17, 2025•2 hr 31 min
From December 15, 2020: Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Yaya Fanusie, a former CIA analyst and an expert on the national security implications of cryptocurrencies, who recently published a paper as part of Lawfare 's ongoing Digital Social Contract research paper series, entitled, "Central Bank Digital Currencies: The Threat From Money Launderers and How to Stop Them." They talked about how central banks are exploring digital currencies, how those currencies might in turn be used ...
Mar 16, 2025•40 min
From October 6, 2023: The First Amendment protects speech, but what kind? True speech, sure. But what about false or misleading speech? What if it's harmful? After all, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater—or can you? To answer these questions, Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Senior Editor at Lawfare spoke with Jeff Kosseff, who is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Law in the United States Naval Academy’s Cyber Science De...
Mar 15, 2025•43 min
This episode of the Lawfare Podcas t features Glen Weyl, economist and author at Microsoft Research; Jacob Mchangama, Executive Director of the Future of Free Speech Project at Vanderbilt; and Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall School Neely Center. Together with Renee DiResta, Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and Contributing Editor at Lawfare , they talk about design vs moderation. Conversations about the challenges of social media ...
Mar 14, 2025•52 min
On today’s episode, Van Jackson, Professor of International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, and Michael Brenes, Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at Yale University, join Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk about their new book, “The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy,” in which they make the case for the United States to take a less aggres...
Mar 13, 2025•50 min
This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor and co-host emeritus Alan Rozenshtein and Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Lowering the Bar.” Last week, the Trump administration took aim at two leading law firms—Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie—by repealing lawyers’ security clearances and setting limits on the extent to which government actors can contract with them, on the apparent grounds that they worked f...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Jack Goldsmith sits down with Zachary Price, Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco and author of the new book, “ Constitutional Symmetry: Judging in a Divided Republic ,” which argues for judges to make decisions that work “symmetrically” across major partisan and ideological divides. He explores the implications of this theory in the context of the Trump administration's legal actions, particularly regarding the removal power and the Supreme Court's evolving jurisprudence. The two disc...
Mar 12, 2025•54 min
Carla Reyes, Associate Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law, and Drew Hinkes, a Partner at Winston & Strawn with a practice focused on digital assets and advising financial services clients, join Kevin Frazier, Contributing Editor at Lawfare , to discuss the latest in cryptocurrency policy. The trio review the evolution of crypto-related policy since the Obama era, discuss the veracity of dominant crypto narratives, and explore what’s next from the Trump administration on this comple...
Mar 11, 2025•40 min
In a live conversation on March 7 , Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, sat down with associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School Nick Bednar and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Scott Anderson to discuss legal challenges to the Trump administration’s executive actions, including DOGE attempting to enter the U.S. African Development Foundation, the firing of probationary employees across the executive branch, and more. Support this show http://suppo...
Mar 10, 2025•2 hr 30 min
From March 1, 2022: Over the past week, the United States and its allies have responded to Russia's military invasion of Ukraine with some unprecedented actions of their own—economic sanctions that target Russia in ways that have never been tried before, let alone applied to one of the world's largest economies over just a handful of days. To discuss this revolutionary sanctions strategy and what it may mean moving forward, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two sanctions experts: Julia Friedlander...
Mar 09, 2025•56 min
From February 26, 2024: At a South Carolina campaign rally on Feb. 10, former President Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that while he was president he told “one of the presidents of a big country” in the NATO alliance that he would not protect that country from a Russian invasion if that country didn’t pay. Trump then said, “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat ...
Mar 08, 2025•1 hr
For today's episode, Lawfare general counsel and senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy within Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, to discuss his new book: "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare."They discussed Fishman's own career at the cutting edge of economic statecraft, the evolving toolkit it has come to present U.S. policymakers, the role he thinks it ...
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr 7 min
In the first weeks of the second Trump administration, the Office of Management and Budget abruptly froze trillions of dollars in federal funds—sparking a crisis over impoundment, the executive branch’s assertion of authority to refuse to distribute money appropriated by Congress. Since then, the administration has attempted to withhold further funds disbursed by specific agencies and attempted to dismantle some agencies altogether. Many of these efforts have been blocked by courts. But Congress...
Mar 06, 2025•51 min
This week, Scott was joined by his Lawfare colleagues Molly Reynolds and Quinta Jurecic to work through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Kyiv Calm and Tarry On.” This past Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House for what turned into a disastrous meeting, in which President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance baited him into a heated public argument over Russia’s invasion of his country. In its aftermath, Trump refused to sign the m...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 18 min
For today's episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold, the Managing Director for the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare , to discuss the end of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire and other recent developments relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Together, they discussed how the terms of the ceasefire were changing, recent tensions between Israel and the new Syrian regime over threats to D...
Mar 05, 2025•54 min
Tim Fist, Director of Emerging Technology Policy at the Institute for Future Progress, and Arnab Datta, Director of Infrastructure Policy at IFP and Managing Director of Policy Implementation at Employ America, join Kevin Frazier, a Contributing Editor at Lawfare and adjunct professor at Delaware Law, to dive into the weeds of their thorough report on building America’s AI infrastructure. The duo extensively studied the gulf between the stated goals of America’s AI leaders and the practical hurd...
Mar 04, 2025•42 min
In a live conversation on February 28 , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center Chris Mirasol about the detention of immigrants at Guantanamo Bay, the dismantling of USAID and the foreign aid freeze, the firing of probationary employees across the federal government, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump adminis...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 29 min
From February 21, 2024: The advocacy group Protect Democracy last month issued an updated version of its report entitled, “The Authoritarian Playbook.” The new report is called, “The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025: How an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it.” It is a fascinating compilation of things that Donald Trump has promised to do and how they could likely be expected to affect American democracy if he is elected to a seco...
Mar 02, 2025•52 min
From March 14, 2022: Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has undermined some of the fundamental assumptions underlying the security of Europe through much of the post-World War II era. As a result, several European nations have begun to consider dramatic changes in how they approach national security, both individually and collectively. To better understand how the war in Ukraine is reshaping the European security order, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two of his colleagues from the Brookings ...
Mar 01, 2025•58 min
On today’s episode, the Washington Post's West Africa bureau chief Rachel Chason and freelance journalist John Lechner join Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk about the current state of the Sahel and the many forces that have converged in the region over the past couple of years. They discussed Chason’s new series out in the Post, “Crossroads of Conflict,” which includes six rich portraits of Sahelian actors, including: an Islamist militant , a militia commande...
Feb 28, 2025•48 min
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Kathleen Claussen, an expert in international economic law and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and Lawfare Contributing Editor Peter Harrell, a non-resident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss the ambitious set of tariffs the Trump administration has imposed or threatened over its first month in office. They discussed the tariffs Trump has imposed so far, what see...
Feb 27, 2025•45 min
This week, Scott joined his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Natalie Orpett, and Anastasiia Lapatina for a rare, all-in-person discussion of the week’s big national security news, including: “Chicken Kyiv, Served Cold.” The Trump administration’s vision for a peace settlement in Ukraine is coming into focus—and it’s not the one many Ukrainians and Europeans were hoping for. In negotiations that have largely excluded Ukrainian and European partners—and amidst a barrage of hostile attacks on Uk...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 22 min
On Feb. 24, Fiona Hill (Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe), Constanze Stelzenmüller, (Director at the Center on the United States and Europe; Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe; and Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Trans-Atlantic Relations), Anastasiia Lapatina (Ukraine Fellow, Lawfare ), Tyler McBrien (Managing Editor, Lawfare ), and Benjamin Wittes (Editor-in-Chief, Lawfare ) recorded a live discussion at the Brookings...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology; Courtney Lang, Vice President of Policy for Trust, Data, and Technology at ITI and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center; and Nema Milaninia, a partner on the Special Matters & Government Investigations team at King & Spalding, join Kevin Frazier, Contributing Editor at Lawfare and Adjunct Professor at Delaware Law, to discuss the Paris AI Action Summit and whether it marks a formal pi...
Feb 25, 2025•48 min
In a live conversation on February 21 , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Scott Anderson, and Roger Parloff about the Justice Department moving to drop the criminal case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams and lawsuits challenging executive actions by President Trump and his administration, including the dismantling of USAID, DOGE’s communications with executive agencies, and the attempt to ban transgender service members from th...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 24 min
From September 20, 2023: Economic warfare isn’t a new concept. Protectionist policies, asymmetrical trade agreements, currency wars—those are just a few examples of the economic levers states have long used to control outcomes. But in their new book , two political scientists, Henry Farrell and Abe Newman, argue that a technological innovation spurred on by free market embracers and coopted by the U.S. was an accidental entry point into a new era of economic statecraft—an era whose precise...
Feb 23, 2025•57 min
From June 11, 2021: Daniel Richman and Sarah Seo are professors at Columbia Law School, and they are co-authors of a recent article on Lawfare entitled, "Toward a New Era for Federal and State Oversight of Local Police." Benjamin Wittes sat down with them to discuss the article, the history of the federal-state relationship in law enforcement, how the feds came to play an oversight role with respect to police departments, the limits of that role inherent in the cooperative relationsh...
Feb 22, 2025•53 min
