On today's Scaling Laws episode, Lawfare Senior Editor and Research Director Alan Rozenshtein sits down with Pam Samuelson, the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, to discuss the rapidly evolving legal landscape at the intersection of generative AI and copyright law. They dive into the recent district court rulings in lawsuits brought by authors against AI companies, including Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta . They exp...
Sep 19, 2025•1 hr
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with with Maia Woluchem, the Director of Data & Society’s Trustworthy Infrastructures program, along with one of the program’s researchers, Livia Garofalo, and Joan Mukogosi, an affiliate with the program and a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics. They discuss their recent research trips across Pennsylvania, where they learned about the state’s industrial histories and futures, as well as the immediate and potent...
Sep 18, 2025•44 min
For this week's very special episode on Rational Security 's 10th anniversary, Scott sat down with a slew of co-hosts emeritus, each of whom brought their own topic to discuss. Shane Harris flagged the connections between online radicalization and the young men behind many recent public acts of gun violence, including the alleged perpetrator of the Charlie Kirk killing; Benjamin Wittes insisted we are STILL not talking enough about Russian drone incursions and other forms of gray zone warfare in...
Sep 17, 2025•1 hr 47 min
For today's episode, Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Dan Byman, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace; and Natan Sachs, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, to discuss several recent developments in the Israel-Hamas conflict and the broader region. Together, they discuss Israel's latest offensive in Gaza, its decision to launch airstrikes against Hamas's lea...
Sep 17, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, speaks to Senior Editor Roger Parloff about the cases he has led challenging the validity of Pres. Trump's Alien Enemies Act Proclamation. They discuss the ACLU's recent victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the status of the group's original case, in Washington, D.C., including its attempt to inquire into whether Executive Branch officials defied court orders. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a La...
Sep 16, 2025•48 min
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Michael Feinberg to discuss the Supreme Court staying a lower court order that prevented the firing of Rebecca Slaughter as FTC Commissioner, a federal appeals court upholding E. Jean Carroll’s judgement, Fed. Governor Lisa Cook’s lawsuit challenging President Trump’s attempt to fire her, the...
Sep 15, 2025•1 hr 43 min
From June 3, 2024: Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk about last month’s NATO Youth Summit. Building off of her chapter “NATO, Public Opinion, and the Next Generation: Remaining Relevant, Remaining Strong,” in the 2021 book, “NATO 2030: Towards a New Strategic Concept and Beyond,” Rizzo discusses what NATO thinks of Gen Z and Millennials, the many efforts the Alliance is making to pitch to them it...
Sep 14, 2025•31 min
From September 27, 2022: In just under a week, on October 2, Brazil will hold the first round of its general election, which will determine the country's next president. To talk through all things Brazilian politics, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade of experience living and reporting across Latin America. They discussed the leading candidates, Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, t...
Sep 13, 2025•32 min
Steven Adler, former OpenAI safety researcher, author of Clear-Eyed AI on Substack, and independent AGI-readiness researcher, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Fellow at Lawfare , to assess the current state of AI testing and evaluations. The two walk through Steven’s views on industry efforts to improve model testing and what he thinks regulators ought to know and do when it comes to preventing AI harms. Thanks to Leo Wu for re...
Sep 12, 2025•49 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Natalie Orpett, and Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School Rebecca Ingber, to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Uninvited Aerial Vehicles.” The Polish government is claiming that nineteen armed Russian UAVs penetrated its airspace last night. While Russians are suggesting no attack was intended, Poland has invoked Article IV of the NATO Treaty and worked with allied NATO aircraft to shoot the ...
Sep 11, 2025•1 hr 10 min
Twenty-four years ago today, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, another hit the Pentagon, and another went down in a field in Pennsylvania. It was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in American history. But the men the United States accuses of perpetrating the attacks haven't been held accountable. In fact, they haven't even gone to trial. For today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with John Ryan, a journalist at Lawdragon and author of the book, “ A...
Sep 11, 2025•1 hr 7 min
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack sit down with Adam Chan, the first National Security Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to discuss the FCC’s increasingly important role in U.S. national security policy. Together they discuss the origins of the FCC’s role in national security, how and why it has grown in an era of major power competition, and several of the initiatives they currently have underway. Since r...
Sep 10, 2025•55 min
For today’s episode, Lawfare Contributing Editor Renée DiResta interviews Joan Barata, Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Porto; Laís Martins, journalist at The Intercept Brazil and Fellow at Tech Policy Press; and James Görgen, adviser to Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade, and Services, to discuss the dramatic intersection of tech policy and geopolitical pressure unfolding in Brazil. They discuss the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro for his role in the Janu...
Sep 09, 2025•56 min
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Roger Parloff and Scott Anderson, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Loren Voss, and the Brennan Center's Katherine Yon Ebright to discuss the ongoing activation of National Guard in the District of Columbia, the Trump Administration's lethal strike in the Caribbean, and Harvard University's win over its funding fight in federal court. You can find information on legal challenges to Trump a...
Sep 08, 2025•1 hr 38 min
From March 28, 2024: One of the gravest threats to U.S. national security today—and also one of the newest—is the risk of cyberattacks. They come in many forms, and they can incapacitate companies, institutions, and even the government. To better understand these threats—and how the government is responding to them— Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Lawfare Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack sat down with Brett Leatherman, Deputy Assistant Director for Cyber Operations at the FBI. ...
Sep 07, 2025•54 min
From August 22, 2024: Anastasiia Lapatina is a Kyiv-based Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare . Leopoldo Lopez is a Venezuelan opposition leader living in exile in Madrid, after escaping prison for leading protests against Nicolás Maduro in 2014. Lapatina and Lopez discuss the results of Venezuela’s recent presidential election, ties between Venezuela’s autocrat Nicolás Maduro and other dictatorships, and the path forward for Venezuela after the rigged election. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfa...
Sep 06, 2025•26 min
In a live conversation on Sept. 4, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School Rebecca Ingber to discuss the U.S. strike on an alleged “drug boat” traveling from Venezuela, the president’s authority to use lethal force outside of war, and more. 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:...
Sep 05, 2025•1 hr
Anu Bradford, Professor at Columbia Law School, and Kate Klonick, Senior Editor at Lawfare and Associate Professor at St. John's University School of Law, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , to assess the ongoing, contrasting, and, at times, conflicting regulatory approaches to Big Tech being pursued by the EU and U.S. The trio start with an assessment of the EU’s use of the Brussels Effect, coined by Anu, to ...
Sep 05, 2025•47 min
For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviews Mark Cancian, a Senior Adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to assess the impact and implications of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan. Cancian discusses why China might choose blockade over an outright invasion, how the blockade might affect Taiwan, the risks of escalation, and what the United States and Taiwan must do to make a blockade less likely and less risky. For more, take a look at “ Lights...
Sep 04, 2025•34 min
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower, Tyler McBrien, and Peter Harrell to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Faginomics.” With the recent announcement that the U.S. government would be taking a 10% stake in the company Intel, the Trump administration has ushered in a new era of state-guided industrial policy, fueled by concerns of major power competition, particularly around the race to AI. How does this new policy intersect with i...
Sep 03, 2025•1 hr 20 min
In a live conversation on Sept. 2, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to discuss Sunday’s emergency hearing in L.G.M.L. et al. v. Kristi Noem —in which Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the Trump administration’s plans to send unaccompanied migrant children to Guatemala—Judge Charles Breyer’s ruling in Newsom v. Trump which found that President Trump’s use of the National Guard and...
Sep 03, 2025•56 min
On today’s episode, Molly Reynolds, Contributing Editor at Lawfare and Senior Fellow at Brookings, sits down with Zach Price, Associate Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco, and Phil Wallach, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss pocket rescissions as an approach to cancelling funds previously approved by Congress. They cover whether the practice is legal, how it threatens Congress’s institutional power, and how they fit in with broader efforts by the Trump administr...
Sep 02, 2025•36 min
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Scott Anderson, Lawfare contributor James Pearce, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Loren Voss, and The Atlantic staff writer Quinta Jurecic to discuss the legality of the Trump administration’s cancellation of $4.9 billion in foreign aid funding using a “pocket rescission,” how that impacts ongoing litigation surrounding foreign aid grant cancellations, the expanding role o...
Sep 01, 2025•1 hr 49 min
From August 23, 2024: Richard Albert, William Stamps Farish Professor in Law, Professor of Government, and Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to conduct a comparative analysis of what helps constitutions withstand political pressures. Richard’s extensive study of different means to amend constitutions shapes their conversation about whether the ...
Aug 31, 2025•47 min
From August 28, 2024: On today’s episode, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors, Co-Director of the Africa Security Initiative, and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to help make sense of the recent skirmishes in northern Mali between the junta, separatist groups, Islamists, and Russian mercenaries. They discuss what the recent ambush in Mali portends for Russian and Russian-aligned mercenari...
Aug 30, 2025•39 min
Peter E. Harrell, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , to examine the White House’s announcement that it will take a 10% share of Intel. They dive into the policy rationale for the stake as well as its legality. Peter and Kevin also explore whether this is just the start of such deals given that President Trump recently declared that “there will ...
Aug 29, 2025•48 min
On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Eric Ciaramella, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Lawfare Contributing Editor, to discuss the history of American security commitments abroad and how it can help inform the debate around security guarantees for Ukraine. 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:...
Aug 28, 2025•59 min
This week, Scott sat down with old and new Lawfare colleagues—Benjamin Wittes, Renée DiResta, and Michael Feinberg—to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “An Old Fashioned Anti Raid.” Former Trump National Security Advisor (turned Trump critic) John Bolton got a rude awakening this past week when the FBI conducted a raid at his home, reportedly on the grounds that he is believed to have retained classified information from his time in office. It’s the latest in...
Aug 27, 2025•1 hr 19 min
Matthew Ford, Associate Professor at Swedish Defence University and author of “ War in the Smartphone Age: Conflict, Connectivity, and the Crises at Our Fingertips ,” joins Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss the role of smartphones and related technologies in war, how social media contributes to a collapse of context in the war content we see online, and how smartphones and other devices are reshaping open-source intelligence (OSINT) and open-source investigations (OSINV) vis-a-vis conflicts a...
Aug 27, 2025•59 min
Lawfare Contributor Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Michael O'Hanlon, Director of Foreign Policy Research and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Chairman of the Centre for Defence Strategies in Kyiv, a former Ukrainian Defence Minister, and a nonresident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss ways of defending Ukraine from present and future Russian attacks in the absence of NATO membership. Please see the following policy proposals ...
Aug 26, 2025•55 min
