From April 22, 2021: Jack Goldsmith sat down with Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, and Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levy Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss their new book, " National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On ." They discussed the holding and legacy of the Pentagon Papers case, as well as some of the many challenges of applying the Pentagon Papers regime in the modern digital ...
Mar 29, 2025•53 min
For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviewed Natan Sachs, the Director of the Middle East Program of the Brookings Institution, to discuss Israel's turbulent domestic situation and the renewal of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. Sachs explains Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political tactics, the controversies over the budget, judicial reform and the resulting protests, and the sacking of figures like Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. Sachs als...
Mar 28, 2025•39 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Roger Parloff to talk through the week of the most Rational Security -esque of national security news stories ever, including: “Oopsec.” In a strong contender for the most ridiculous national security story of the year, senior Trump administration officials appear to have planned a series of airstrikes in Yemen that took place earlier this month through the social messaging app Signal—and they appear to have included...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr 33 min
In a live recording on March 26 , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Shane Harris of The Atlantic to discuss the decision to release the text messages sent by Trump administration officials in the Houthi PC Small Group Signal group chat which accidentally included The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, testimony given in Congress by officials who were in the chat, and what accountability may look like. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Ma...
Mar 27, 2025•45 min
Shane Harris of The Atlantic joins Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about war planning on Signal, the Trump administration’s remarkable security lapse, and the testimony of the country’s intelligence chiefs that came in its wake. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute . Support this show ht...
Mar 26, 2025•40 min
Tom Kent ran Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is a longtime Russia watcher. He talks to Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes about President Trump’s executive order dismantling Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute . Support this show http://supporter.acast.c...
Mar 25, 2025•42 min
On March 21, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff to discuss the status of the civil litigation against President Trump’s executive actions, including DOGE’s incursions on the U.S. Institute of Peace, the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and the firing of probationary employees. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 29 min
From March 21, 2023: By many accounts, the United States is living through a new era of competition—not just between major powers and strategic rivals, but between ideologies. Around the world, many authoritarian governments seem to be on the rise, even as many liberal democracies are facing a crisis of confidence, including, by some accounts, here in the United States. In a new book entitled, “ Defeating the Dictators ,” Charles Dunst, a former journalist and current deputy director of res...
Mar 23, 2025•56 min
From May 9, 2023: Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of exception as its President Nayib Bukele seeks to crack down on the country’s powerful gangs. Bukele, who once described himself on Twitter as the “world’s coolest dictator,” has engaged in a prolonged attack on El Salvador’s democratic institutions. And the crackdown has resulted in a range of human rights abuses. At the same time, Bukele really does seem to have been successful in curbing gang violence, and his popularity...
Mar 22, 2025•1 hr 6 min
For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviewed Gregory Johnsen, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C. Johnsen explains the rationale of the Trump administration's decision to bomb Yemen but argues that it will have little effect on the Houthis. Indeed, Johnsen contends that the Houthis are spoiling for a fight with the United States and Israel, believing that this will generate support within Yemen that will help them...
Mar 21, 2025•22 min
Dan Hendrycks, Director of the Center for AI Safety, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the UT Austin School of Law and Contributing Editor at Lawfare , to discuss his recent paper (co-authored with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang), “ Superintelligence Strategy .” To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation ...
Mar 20, 2025•41 min
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•1 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•1 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
