In a live conversation on January 15 , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Scott Anderson about the second day of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet. They discussed the hearings for Pam Bondi’s nomination to be attorney general, John Ratcliffe’s nomination to be CIA director, and Marco Rubio’s nomination to be secretary of state, and...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Roger Parloff, Renée DiResta, and Tyler McBrien to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “The Art of the Heel.” As President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration nears, the various legal cases against him are gradually winding down to their inevitable end. But Trump is not letting them go quietly: instead, he has fought certain final steps tooth and nail, ranging from the (mostly meaningless) sentencing in his New York c...
Jan 15, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a live conversation on January 14 , Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower about the confirmation hearing of Pete Hegseth by the Senate Armed Services committee on his expected nomination to be secretary of defense, the first confirmation hearing for one of President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominations in his second term. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/...
Jan 15, 2025•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast For today’s episode, Jennifer Gellie, the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section ("CES") in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, sits down with Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Morrison Foerster partner Brandon Van Grack to discuss new proposed regulations her office has issued for implementing the Foreign Agents Registration Act ("FARA"). They cover how the role ...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a live conversation on January 10 , Lawfare Tarbell Fellow in Artificial Intelligence Kevin Frazier talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein and Senior Staff Attorney at the Knight Institute Ramya Krishnan about the Supreme Court oral arguments over the legislation passed by Congress that bans TikTok unless its parent company ByteDance divests from the app, the arguments made by the different sides, and their predictions about how the Court might rule. To...
Jan 13, 2025•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode of “Lawfare Live: Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on January 10 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Quinta Jurecic and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien about the sentencing of Donald Trump in the New York hush money case, what the prosecution, defense, and Justice Merchan said in court, and the litigation over the release of Special Counsel Ja...
Jan 12, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast From May 12, 2023: Earlier this year, Brian Fishman published a fantastic paper with Brookings thinking through how technology platforms grapple with terrorism and extremism, and how any reform to Section 230 must allow those platforms space to continue doing that work. That’s the short description, but the paper is really about so much more—about how the work of content moderation actually takes place, how contemporary analyses of the harms of social media fail to address the histor...
Jan 11, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Melissa Stewart, an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa’s William S. Richardson School of Law, joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to discuss the International Court of Justice’s forthcoming advisory opinion on obligations of states in respect of climate change. Stewart discusses how we got here, the unprecedented level of participation from states and international organizations in written submissions and oral proceedings, and the main arguments ...
Jan 10, 2025•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jack Goldsmith sits down with Orin Kerr, a Professor at Stanford Law School, to discuss his new book , “The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World.” They talk about how Kerr became interested in these issues, the history and physicality assumptions of the Fourth Amendment, and how and why the digital world is different. They also discuss how the courts are interpreting the Fourth Amendment in a digital age, as well as Kerr’s Equilibrium-Adjustment Theory, the core the...
Jan 09, 2025•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Molly Reynolds and Kevin Frazier to discuss the week’s big national security news, including: “Mike Drop (Almost).” While we are still two weeks away from having a new president, the 119th Congress is already underway. But there are signs of tension in the Republican majority controlling both chambers, with House Republicans (under pressure from former President Trump and adviser Elon Musk) having killed a leadership-negotiated compromise fun...
Jan 08, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lawfare Senior Editor Eugenia Lostri sat down with Winnona DeSombre Bernsen, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and founder of the hacker conference DistrictCon, and Nina Alli, Executive Director of the Biohacking Village, to talk about their recent report, “ It Takes a Village: Spotlighting Practitioner Driven-Cybersecurity Successes and Future Opportunities .” The report collects the insights of seven cybersecurity villages and outlines the value they can bring to security researc...
Jan 08, 2025•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jessica Pishko, an independent journalist and lawyer who writes about the criminal legal system with a focus on the political power of law enforcement officials, joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to discuss her new book , “The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.” Pishko discussed the roots of the constitutional sheriffs movement, broke down several myths and realities of the office, and explained the immense appeal sheriffs have...
Jan 07, 2025•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast On today’s podcast, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds is joined by Quinta Jurecic, a Fellow at Brookings and Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Ryan Reilly, Justice Reporter at NBC News, to discuss a long-awaited report on Jan. 6 from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, as well as a new report from House Republicans focusing on the pipe bombs planted outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees as part of the violence that day. They explore what...
Jan 06, 2025•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast From January 5, 2023: It was a few months ago that something went boom under the sea and the Nord Stream 2 pipelines were severely damaged. Everyone assumed the perpetrator was the Russian Federation because of the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine, and because the pipeline carried natural gas from Russia to Europe. But, months have gone by and evidence that Russia was behind the Nord Stream attacks has not surfaced. This was the subject of a lengthy article in the Washington Post , the ...
Jan 05, 2025•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast From April 8, 2022: Last week on Lawfare Live , Jacob Schulz sat down with Andrew Mines, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mines helps lead the Program on Extremism's efforts to keep track of criminal charges resulting from the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill siege. They talked about the U.S military’s efforts to counter extremism within its ranks. Mines is the recent author of a Lawfare piece on the subject, and they talked through the history ...
Jan 04, 2025•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast On today's podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett is joined by Brian Hoxie to get an update on the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA). The legislation was passed in 2021 in response to reports that the Chinese government was committing major human rights abuses against its Uyghur population, including disappearances and forced labor. Three years later, where do things stand? Hoxie is the director of the Forced Labor Division at U.S. Customs and Border Protection's O...
Jan 03, 2025•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's time for Lawfare 's annual "Ask Us Anything" podcast. You called in with your questions, and Lawfare contributors have answers! Benjamin Wittes, Kevin Frazier, Quinta Jurecic, Eugenia Lostri, Alan Rozenshtein, Scott R. Anderson, Natalie Orpett, Amelia Wilson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff addressed questions on everything from presidential pardons to the risks of AI to the domestic deployment of the military. Thank you for your questions. And as always, thank you for liste...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the podcast’s annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-hosts emeritus Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including: How will the collapse of the Assad regime impact the region? And can the United States help create a secular, democratic Syria? How is the pending TikTok ban even enforceable (if it is)? What national security story from 2024 deserved more attention? Won’t the Fifth Circuit’s recent Tornado Cash opinion simpl...
Jan 01, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast From August 8, 2023: Just weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the life sentence of a Yemeni national serving out his time at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. He had appealed this life sentence, in part on the grounds that his conviction was based on evidence obtained by torture. Meanwhile, at the Guantanamo military commissions, another detainee tried to appeal charges against him on the basis that torture-obtained evidence was used in his...
Jan 01, 2025•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast After more than three years, Chatter is ending its run. In this episode, Shane and David reflect on the diverse range of topics at the frontiers of national security that this podcast has explored—from spy fiction to lessons of history, from climate change to the visual and musical arts, and from sports and culture to the practice of intelligence. Along the way, they refer back to many of the podcast’s brilliant guests while lamenting conversations yet unrealized and specific issues yet una...
Dec 31, 2024•2 hr 38 min•Transcript available on Metacast From February 10, 2023: International law has been under significant stress in the last decade as a result of global populism, the rise of China, the war in Ukraine, and the challenges of the pandemic, climate change, and cybersecurity threats, among many others. To discuss why international law seems to be failing in important respects and what to do about it, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Paul Stephan, the John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, and ...
Dec 31, 2024•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Daniel Holz, professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the founding director of the Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab), joins Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss existential risks, the need for greater awareness and study of those ris...
Dec 30, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast From December 14, 2021: Syria’s decade-long civil war has left the state and economy shells of their former selves. But a new industry is stepping in to fill the void: the manufacture and export of illicit drugs, specifically Captagon, a type of amphetamine that has a growing global market. To better understand Syria’s emerging role in the global Captagon trade, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Caroline Rose of the New Lines Institute, who has been tracking this industry's development for several...
Dec 29, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast From December 13, 2023: You may have heard of Javier Milei, Argentina’s new president, thanks to some of his eccentricities, like his five cloned dogs or his reliance on a chainsaw prop to illustrate the need to cut public expenditure. But Milei was able to harness the dissatisfaction with a system that has left the country with 150% inflation and over 40% of the population under the line of poverty. Now, the self described anarcho-capitalist libertarian will attempt to turn the economy around w...
Dec 28, 2024•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast John Bridgeland, Executive Chair & CEO of More Perfect & former Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council & National Service Czar, joins Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to examine America’s general preparedness for a large-scale conflict and its culture of service (or lack thereof). The two also discuss ongoing efforts to reform and expand military, national, a...
Dec 27, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast At a recent conference co-hosted by Lawfare and the Georgetown Institute for Law and Technology, Fordham law professor Chinny Sharma moderated a conversation on "Old Laws, New Tech: How Traditional Legal Doctrines Tackle AI,” between NYU law professor Catherine Sharkey, Ohio State University law professor Bryan Choi, and NYU and Cornell Tech postdoctoral fellow Kat Geddes. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.co...
Dec 26, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast From April 9, 2016: This week on the podcast, we welcome Eric Schwartz , the Dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Schwartz previously served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. In our conversation, he sketches the key aspects of U.S. refugee policy, explaining how it both protects the security of the United States and at times undermines its ability to accept refugees. Schwartz, who believes the Un...
Dec 25, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Carmen Medina defies simple description. She spent more than 30 years at the CIA, rising to the leadership team of the Directorate of Intelligence, despite her iconoclasticism and vociferous evangelism of new technologies. Since retiring more than a decade ago, she has co-written a book about rebelling within bureaucracy--and advocated the exploration of precognition for intelligence purposes. She joined David Priess for a wide and deep conversation about her analytic and manageri...
Dec 24, 2024•2 hr 48 min•Transcript available on Metacast From July 31, 2023: This past week, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a spirited hearing on an unusual topic: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, the more correct term for what are commonly called UFOs, or Unidentified Flying Objects. The witnesses included two military veterans who claimed to have borne eyewitness to UAPs, and an intelligence community whistleblower who claims to have heard secondhand from contacts about a range of g...
Dec 24, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast On today's podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Michael Posner, a professor of business and human rights at New York University, about the landmark verdict last month in Al-Shimari v. CACI. The case involved claims against a government contractor for its role in the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq in 2004. It became the first case of its kind to make it to trial—and now a jury has returned a verdict findin...
Dec 23, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
