The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law, we have doubled down on seriousness at a time when others are running away from it. Visit us at www.lawfaremedia.org.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
In today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with his former FBI colleague retired Assistant Special Agent in Charge Derek Pieper to discuss the differences between counterintelligence and counterespionage investigations, the skill sets needed for each, and the dangers of politicizing the cases. 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/...
On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina talks to an expert on Russian foreign policy in the Middle East, Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury College Hanna Notte, about the relationship between Iran and Russia, and how far their cooperation can go in the context of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare...
In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Kate Klonick to Judge Boasberg’s opinion quashing subpoenas to Fed Reserve chair Jerome Powell, Anthropic’s suit challenged the Defense Department’s designation of it as a supply chain risk, Judge Lambert finding that Kari Lake was unlawfully running the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and more. You can find information on legal chall...
From August 30, 2024: Elliot Jones, a Senior Researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to discuss a report he co-authored on the current state of efforts to test AI systems. The pair break down why evaluations, audits, and related assessments have become a key part of AI regulation. They also analyze why it may take some time for those assessments to be as robust as hoped. To receive...
From September 26, 2024: Steve Coll’s latest book, “The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq,” seeks to explain why Saddam Hussein would put his regime at risk over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that didn’t exist. Saddam ultimately lost his regime, and his life, in part because he saw America as an omniscient puppeteer seeking to dominate the Middle East. The United States put thousands of troops in harm’s way in pursuit of a rogue WMD prog...
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and head of its Syria Initiative, to talk about the dramatic developments that have taken place in Syria the past few weeks, which have ultimately led to the impending withdrawal of U.S. troops after more than a decade in country. Together, they discuss the challenges Syria has faced since the fall of the Assad regime, how the new transitional government in Dam...
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Kate Klonick, Molly Roberts, and Troy Edwards to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “MisAnthropic.” On Monday, Anthropic filed a civil complaint in the Northern District of California and a petition for hearing at the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit over the Department of Defense’s designation of the frontier artificial intelligence company as a “supply chain risk.” The litigation capped off weeks of ...
Former Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matt Olsen joins Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the terrorist threat from Iran, the shocking lack of preparedness for Iranian malign activity at both the FBI and the National Security Division, and the pending lapse of the FISA 702 program. 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/lawf...
On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina talks to Fabian Hoffman, a missile expert and author of Missile Matters , and senior Ukrainian drone instructor Pavlo Litovkin about Iran’s shahed drones and what lessons the United States and its allies can learn from Ukraine as they rethink their air defense amidst the war with Iran. 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 don...
Seamus Hughes, a senior research faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center and a contributing editor at Lawfare , and Jacob Ware, the author of “ God, Guns, and Sedition ” and a recent Lawfare foreign policy essay on nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), join Lawfare Associate Editor Peter Beck to discuss the FBI’s new NVE classification, the online terror group 764, challenges counterterrorism professionals face wit...
In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, and Alan Rozenshtein, and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Troy Edwards to discuss the lawsuit challenges the deal for TikTok to be sold to American investors, updates in the litigation over the FBI seizing ballots from Fulton County, contempt hearings against the government in Minnesota, and more. You can find information on legal challenges to Trump admini...
From January 11, 2020: As part of Lawfare 's continuing coverage of the killing of Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani, we are bringing you an edited version of the latest episode of the National Security Law Podcast , in which Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck discuss the legality of the strike and what this means for the future of U.S.-Iranian relations. We edited the podcast down solely to focus solely on the discussion of Soleimani. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material...
From October 2, 2024: Israel has hit Hezbollah very hard over the past few days, killing much of its senior leadership and eroding its capabilities. It has also displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and now has ground forces in Lebanon. Iran has responded with a missile barrage against Israel, to which an Israeli response is widely expected. To discuss the latest events in the expanding war, Lawfare 's Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Firas Maksad of the Middle East Institute,...
Alan Rozenshtein, research director at Lawfare , spoke with Cullen O'Keefe, research director at the Institute for Law & AI, and Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and senior editor at Lawfare , about their paper, "Automated Compliance and the Regulation of AI" (and associated Lawfare article ), which argues that AI systems can automate many regulatory compliance tasks, loosening the trade-off between safety and innovation in AI pol...
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Daniel Byman, and Ari Tabatabai for an in-depth discussion of the U.S. military operations against Iran, including: “Isn’t it Iran-ic.” Trump’s decision to join Israel in removing Ayatollah Khamanei reflects a deep reversal by the president, who has spent years criticizing his predecessors’ own experiences with regime change and other overseas adventurism. What drove Trump to proceed this time, after stopping short twice in t...
Tom Brzozowski, formerly of the Justice Department; Lawfare Public Service Fellow Troy “LT” Edwards; and Steven Monacelli, an investigative correspondent at the Texas Observer, sit down with Lawfare Associate Editor Peter Beck to discuss the ongoing terrorism trial of an alleged Antifa cell in North Texas. The group talks about the events leading up to the trial, practices around domestic terrorism investigations and prosecutions, how the trial is unique to other terror prosecutions, and more. T...
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with three leading scholars from the Georgetown University Law Center—Professor Kathleen Claussen, Professor Marty Lederman, and Visiting Scholar Peter Harrell of the Institute of International Economic Law—to talk through the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking opinion in Learning Resources, Inc v. Trump , which invalidated the array of global tariffs that the Trump administration had imposed using the International Emergency Eco...
In a live conversation on March 2, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editor and Research Director Alan Rozenshtein about the Pentagon's designation of AI company Anthropic as a supply chain risk, the implications of a designation, how other AI companies have reacted, and the legal challenges the designation may face. Read Rozenshtein’s article on the topic, co-authored with Michael Endrias, here . To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at w...
In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, and Alan Rozenshtein, and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Troy Edwards to discuss the superseding indictment in the case against Don Lemon and his co-defendants in Minnesota, the standoff between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, the firing of FBI agents who worked on the classified documents case, and more. You can fin...
At 9 am ET on March 1, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Public Service Fellows Ariane Tabatabai and Troy Edwards Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson to discuss the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's response, and what may happen next. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
From October 8, 2016: Stephanie Leutert, the Mexico Security Initiative Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Lawfare 's "Beyond the Border" series , joined Benjamin Wittes on this week's podcast to talk about the epidemic of violence plaguing Mexico and Central America. Despite the brutality, extremity, and remarkable scale of the violence going on immediately to our south, those of us in the United States who work and think on national security issues rarely consider it...
From February 27, 2025: 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 ...
Lee Kovarsky, an endowed chair professor at the University of Texas School of Law, speaks with Senior Editor Roger Parloff about patronage pardons, the subject of his forthcoming article in the Duke Law Journal. Patronage pardons are pardons a president issues to reward and possibly even induce criminality by political supporters. Kovarsky discusses whether the founders anticipated such pardons, gives examples of such pardons, explores how they differ from ordinary pardons, and ponders whether a...
In a Feb. 26 Lawfare Live , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes and Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower discussed the evidentiary hearing in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia criminal case which focused on the motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution. This episode is a part of Lawfare’s new livestream series, Lawfare Live: The Now. Subscribe to Lawfare on Substack or YouTube to receive an alert for future livestreams. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.co...
This week, Scott was joined by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Roberts, and University of Virginia Professor of Law Paul Stephan to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including: “Textual Healing.” On Friday, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority brought an end to at least the current iteration of President Trump’s controversial tariff policies, ruling that language in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (or IEEPA) authorizing the “regulat...
Loren Voss, Public Service Fellow at Lawfare , sits down with Stuart Casey Maslen, the head of the IHL in Focus project at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. They discuss the Geneva Academy's “ IHL in Focus Report ” covering all the major armed conflicts around the world, the role of new technology such as drones, the threats to IHL compliance and accountability, and the possibility of new treaty rules. Maslen describes the 20+ year degradation of IHL and tren...
Lawfare Public Service Fellow Ariane Tabatabai and Eric Brewer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative join Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes in a discussion of the possibly impending U.S. strike on Iran. Is the United States about to go to war? If so, over what? And with what objectives? Does this relate primarily to Iran's residual nuclear program or the Iranian regime's recent massacres of protestors? What would an American attack on Iran look like? To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfar...
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg is joined by Jason Burke of The Guardian, the author of “ The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists who Hijacked the 1970s .” The two discuss the roots of European and Middle Eastern terrorist organizations from that decade, as well as the response of governments to their attacks and the lingering hold that the milieu still maintains on popular culture. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare . You can also ...
In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Anna Bower, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Troy Edwards, and Lawfare Contributor Peter Harrell to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, a federal judge holding a government attorney in contempt, Fulton County’s suit over the FBI’s seizure of ballots from the 2020 election, and more.. You can find infor...
Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Z. Rozenshtein and Nick Bednar discuss former President Trump's Day 1 executive orders targeting the civil service. They break down the reinstatement of Schedule F, the creation of DOGE, and sweeping changes to remote work and DEI programs, examining their legal vulnerabilities and the constitutional "unitary executive" theory at play. The episode highlights concerns about politicization, employee departures, and the long-term erosion of federal government expertise and program effectiveness.
