Scott recorded this week’s special episode live from the 2025 Aspen Security Forum , where he sat down with a panel of top national security journalists—including co-host emeritus Shane Harris of The Atlantic, Mark Goldberg of the Global Dispatches podcast, and Alex Ward of the Wall Street Journal—to talk about some of the issues that have emerged at and around this year’s Forum, including: “Putting the Ass in Aspen.” Twenty-four hours before the Aspen Security Forum was set to begin, the Defens...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr 5 min
In a live conversation on July 18, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff and Lawfare Contributor Nicholas Bednar to discuss the Supreme Court’s rulings in Trump v. AFGE and McMahon v. New York, which allows for the mass terminations of federal employees, what happened in the hearing this week in the criminal case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, politicization of the Justice Department, and more. Support this show http://supporte...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr 39 min
From December 28, 2022: In the last few weeks, over a dozen U.S. states have banned TikTok from government devices, citing national security concerns. A similar bill was included in the omnibus spending bill, requiring the social media video app to be removed from the devices used by federal agencies. But addressing the concerns over how the Chinese government could coerce TikTok’s parent company to get access to Americans' data raises interesting questions about the existing data protection and...
Jul 20, 2025•46 min
From February 14, 2023: Last month's brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police has once again sparked a national conversation about the causes of and remedies for persistent police misconduct and abuse. To explore this issue, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA School of Law, who is the author of a new book called, “ Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable .” The book argues that police abuse is a result of pervasive pathologies in the legal system tha...
Jul 19, 2025•1 hr 15 min
In this Scaling Laws Academy "class," Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , speaks with Eugene Volokh , a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and long-time professor of law at UCLA, on libel in the AI context. The two dive into Volokh's paper, “ Large Libel Models? Liability for AI Output .” Extra credit for those who give it a full read and explore some of the "homework" below: “ Beyond Section 230: Principles for AI Governance ,” 138 ...
Jul 18, 2025•59 min
Since Jan. 20, 84% of U.S. Agency for International Development grants and contracts have been terminated and 93% of agency staff have been fired. On July 1, the State Department absorbed the remaining staff and grants. On Lawfare Daily , Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey spoke to New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof about the global impact of the Trump administration's dismantling of the USAID and foreign assistance cuts. They discussed what Kristof saw in his...
Jul 17, 2025•38 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Eric Ciaramella to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “With Arms Wide Open.” After years of open skepticism toward Ukraine (and uncharacteristic deference to Russia), it seems President Trump may have turned a page. His rhetoric has grown cooler toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he has proven more willing to provide arms to Ukraine, even over contrary efforts by some of his ad...
Jul 16, 2025•1 hr 18 min
Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sit down with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, Executive Director of the Register of Damage for Ukraine at the Council of Europe and a former legal advisor of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and Patrick W. Pearsall, an international arbitration and disputes partner in the Washington D.C. office of Gibson Dunn and Global Co-Chair of the Geopolitical Strategy and International Law practice who directs the Internati...
Jul 16, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor and Research Director at Lawfare , sits down with David Noll, a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, to discuss his new Lawfare Research Report, “ Civil Contempt Against a Defiant Executive .” They talk about the widespread assumption that the judiciary is powerless if the executive branch chooses to defy court orders, largely because enforcement mechanisms like the U.S. Marshals Service reside within the executive branch. Noll argues that this view is mistaken...
Jul 15, 2025•1 hr 11 min
In a live conversation on July 11, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. AFGE, which allows for the mass terminations of federal employees, what happened in the multiple hearings in the criminal and civil cases involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a nationwide injunction on President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, and more. Support this show http://sup...
Jul 14, 2025•1 hr 47 min
From April 12, 2019: Julian Mortenson, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, is the author of a remarkable new article entitled "Article II Vests Executive Power, Not the Royal Prerogative," forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review and available on SSRN. Recently, Benjamin Wittes spoke with the professor about the article, which Mortenson has been working on for years—as long as the two have known each other. The article explores the history of exactly three words of the U.S. Constitutio...
Jul 13, 2025•51 min
From April 9, 2024: In the early morning on March 26, a Singapore-flagged cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The bridge collapsed, resulting in the death of six of the eight individuals conducting maintenance on the bridge. The incident has disrupted commuter traffic and the transport of hazardous materials, and it has halted shipping traffic at the Port of Baltimore, among other effects. Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck discussed the bridge’s collapse, how authoriti...
Jul 12, 2025•42 min
John Keller, now a partner at Walden, Macht, Haran, & Williams, channeled his experience as the former chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice to talk about bribery with James Pearce, Lawfare Legal Fellow. After explaining the basics of bribery law and whether a current or former president could face a bribery prosecution, Keller analyzed whether three episodes from the first six months of the second Trump administration could plausibly be characterized as bribery:...
Jul 11, 2025•59 min
On July 8, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down for a bonus edition of Lawfare Live with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss Kilmar Abrego Garcia's July 7 hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland. 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.com/lawfare . Hos...
Jul 10, 2025•39 min
Ethan Mollick, Professor of Management and author of the “One Useful Thing” Substack , joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , to analyze the latest research in AI adoption, specifically its use by professionals and educators. The trio also analyze the trajectory of AI development and related, ongoing policy discussion...
Jul 10, 2025•1 hr 6 min
This week, Scott sat down with fellow Senior Editors Molly Reynolds and Alan Rozenshtein to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “One Bill to rule them all, One Bill to find them, One Bill to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” Republicans in Congress narrowly enacted President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” last week, just in advance of the July 4 deadline he had set early in the year. What will its contents mean for elements of Trump’s national security a...
Jul 09, 2025•1 hr 16 min
Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sits down with Ashley Deeks, the Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, to discuss her new book, “ The Double Black Box: National Security, Artificial Intelligence, and the Struggle for Democratic Accountability .” They talk about the core metaphor of the book: the idea that the use of artificial intelligence in the national security space creates a "double black box." The first box is the tradition...
Jul 09, 2025•56 min
Until late May, Michael Feinberg was a senior FBI counterintelligence agent focused on China. All that changed one weekend, when the Deputy FBI Director found out that he was still friends with a former FBI official who had been fired years ago. In his first interview following his essay, “ Goodbye to All That ,” in Lawfare last week. Feinberg sat down with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss his career, his resignation, and the climate inside the Bureau. To receive ad-free podcas...
Jul 08, 2025•53 min
Winnona Bernsen, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative and founder of DistrictCon , joins Lawfare Contributing Editor Justin Sherman to discuss her recently released report " Crash (Exploit) and Burn: Securing the Offensive Cyber Supply Chain to Counter China in Cyberspace ." They discuss the offensive cyber industry, the private sector and individual players, and the government procurement pipelines in the United States and China. They also discuss the strengt...
Jul 07, 2025•40 min
In a live conversation on July 3, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow James Pearce and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss updates in the civil and criminal cases of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a D.C. district court judge's injunction against the Trump administration’s invasion proclamation, attacks on law firms, and more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jul 06, 2025•1 hr 40 min
From February 16, 2024: The EU has finally agreed to its AI Act. Despite the political agreement reached in December 2023, some nations maintained some reservations about the text, making it uncertain whether there was a final agreement or not. They recently reached an agreement on the technical text, moving the process closer to a successful conclusion. The challenge now will be effective implementation. To discuss the act and its implications, Lawfare Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugeni...
Jul 05, 2025•44 min
From November 7, 2023: You probably already know that Rep. Mike Johnson is the new Speaker of the House. What you may not know is that every single one of the issues on his plate is a national security issue, at least in the short term. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds to talk it all through. They talked about Israel aid, Ukraine aid, Taiwan assistance, the border, FISA Section 702, government shutdowns, and mo...
Jul 04, 2025•50 min
Teun Jansenn is a staff member at the European Parliament who works on issues of EU expansion and support for Ukraine. He joined Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about the prospects of Europe's stepping up for Ukraine as the United States backs away. He also talked about why EU enlargement is essential to getting EU governance under control and the role that Ukraine might play in that process. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . Yo...
Jul 03, 2025•52 min
For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviews Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the Naval War College and Columbia University, to discuss the Trump administration's handling of the U.S. military. Cohn discusses the firings of senior military officials, military parades, and the use of the U.S. military at the U.S-Mexico border and in Los Angeles. She also assesses which policies are of genuine concern and which are overstated. To receive ad-free podcasts, becom...
Jul 02, 2025•43 min
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Lindsay Freeman, Director of Technology, Law & Policy at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, to discuss her recent Lawfare article, “War Crimes for Fun and Profit. ” They talk about how and why so-called war influencers linked to private military companies such as the Wagner Group in the Sahel are posting “conflict content” online . They also address why this graphic and gory content, which often amounts...
Jul 01, 2025•44 min
In a live conversation on June 27, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow James Pearce and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling on nationwide injunctions in the birthright citizenship case, the whistleblower complaint about Emil Bove’s actions as deputy attorney general, the disbarment of Kenneth Chesebro, ongoing litigation over the federalization of the California National Guard, and so much more. Support ...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 51 min
From March 19, 2020: What can the president do in a national emergency? What limits what the president can do? What authorizes the president to do all those things he can do in a national emergency? Is the president abusing, misusing, using appropriately, or under-using emergency powers during the coronavirus crisis? And what are the logical end points for how far this could go? For this bonus edition, Benjamin Wittes got on the phone with Steve Vladeck to work through these questions and talk a...
Jun 29, 2025•55 min
From December 5, 2015: The show this week features Natan Sachs , a Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, who recently published an article in Foreign Affairs on anti-solutionism as strategy in the Israel-Palestine conflict. During his conversation with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Ben Wittes, Sachs argues that the apparent absence of a long-term strategy on the Israeli Right for dealing with the Palestinians is actually better described as a belief on the part of the Israeli Right th...
Jun 28, 2025•27 min
Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Eric Ciaramella, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Samuel Charap, Senior Political Scientist at Rand Corporation, to discuss the key issues in the Ukraine-Russia talks. They chat about the national interests of the interested parties, whether a negotiated settlement is possible, and what form a potential agreement may take. They also discuss credible security arrangements for Ukraine to prevent future aggr...
Jun 27, 2025•1 hr 8 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Natalie Orpett, and University of Virginia School of Law professor Ashley Deeks, to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Bracing for Fallout.” In a surprise move, President Trump joined Israel’s military campaign against Iran over the weekend, using a specialized U.S. ordinance to hit Iranian nuclear sites that were beyond Israel’s early reach. It’s unclear to what extent the attack set back Iran...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 18 min
