Rational Security

This week, Scott was joined by his  Lawfare  colleagues Eric Ciaramella and Anastasiia Lapatina, as well as special guest Kyiv Independent reporter Francis Farrell, for an episode committed to one big topic: what Trump’s return to the White House might mean for Ukraine. They tackled the issue in three parts: “What Condition My Attrition Is In.” By most accounts, after more than two years...

This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Reynolds and Alan Rozenshtein, and with University of Houston Law Center Assistant Professor of Law Chris Mirasola, to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Troops, There It Is.” President-elect Donald Trump raised eyebrows this week when he suggested that he intended to declare a national emergency and use U.S....

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower, Eugenia Lostri, and Roger Parloff to discuss the week’s big national security news, including: “Putting the Dismal in Dismissal.” Donald Trump’s election as president for a second time puts the state and federal criminal charges against him—and potentially some of his supporters and co-conspirators—in unprecedented historical territ...

On Tuesday, November 5, former President Trump won the 2024 presidential election, becoming the second president to win a non-consecutive second term. Our team has been hard at work analyzing the fallout, but doing so has left us a little tight on time to record our usual weekly episode. So in lieu of Rational Security this week, we're bringing you a conversation in which Lawfare  Editor-in-C...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Alan Rozenshtein, Benjamin Wittes, and Molly Reynolds to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “An Eye for an Iran.” After weeks of waiting, Israel finally launched the strikes on Iran it had long promised in response to the volley of missiles Iran hit it with earlier this month. Compared to expectations, the strikes we...

This week, Scott was joined by his  Lawfare  colleagues Tyler McBrien and Anna Hickey and special guest Georgetown University professor and CSIS Senior Fellow (as well as  Lawfare  Foreign Policy Editor) Dan Byman to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: “Some Vacancies in Management.” Israeli forces unintentionally hit their number one target last week wh...

This week, Scott sat down with his  Lawfare  colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Anastasiia Lapatina, and Eugenia Lostri to try to make sense of the week’s biggest national security news stories, including: “Kursked.” This week, even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rolls out his “Victory Plan” to Western allies, Russian forces have made progress reclaiming what some have described as a...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Molly Reynolds, Kevin Frazier, and Katherine Pompilio to talk over the week's big national security news stories, including: “The Fourth Law of Robotics is, You Don’t Talk About the First Three Laws of Robotics.” California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047 this past week, a measure that would have imposed the first set of meaningful safety...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Quinta Jurecic, and Tyler McBrien to try to make sense of the week’s biggest national security news stories, including: “Pulling Up the Escalation Ladder.” Israel’s escalating campaign against Hezbollah turned regional yesterday, as Iran launched a salvo of more than 180 ballistic missiles against Israel. While the damage was l...

This week, Scott was joined by Natalie Orpett, Anna Bower, and Matt Gluck to talk over some of the week's big national security news, including: “Some Assembly Required.” On Tuesday, President Biden gave his fourth and final speech as president to the U.N. General Assembly. He used the occasion to reflect on the many foreign policy decisions of his presidency, including the withdrawal from Afghani...

This week, Scott sat down with  Lawfare  team members Alan Rozenshtein, Tyler McBrien, and RatSec newbie Anastasiia "Nastya" Lapatina to talk through the week's national security headlines, including: “A Shot Across the Rubicon.” Reports indicate that President Biden and his U.K. allies may be on the verge of giving Ukraine approval to use their advanced weapons systems to strike deep in...

In the debut episode of RatSec 2.1, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Kevin Frazier, Eugenia Lostri, and Benjamin Wittes to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: “I Have Concepts of a Segment Topic.” On Tuesday, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump faced off in what might end up being the only presidential debate between the two candidates in the 2024 election. What did it...

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott celebrated the third anniversary of Rational Security 2.0 with their  Lawfare  colleagues Molly Reynolds, Natalie Orpett, and Tyler McBrien, who sat in brutal judgment as the three co-hosts pitched them their hottest takes yet, including: Are concerns about judicial ethics overblown? Do ethics require that we open the borders and make whoever wants to b...

This week, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler "Spicy Tyler" McBrien to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including: “Jack Smith Takes a Mulligan on his Big Swing.” A grand jury has re-indicted former President Trump for his actions relating to the Jan. 6 insurrection, after Special Counsel Jack Smith trimmed and massaged the allegations to accom...

This week, Alan and Quinta sat down with Molly Reynolds and Kevin Frazier to talk about the week’s big developments, including: “It can always get worse…” Although President Biden’s replacement by Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket has reenergized the Democrats’ bid to retain the White House, the race is still a tossup, and former President Trump could well reenter th...

This week, the whole gang—Alan, Quinta, and Scott—got back together to discuss the week's big national security news, including: “In Post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine Invade You!” In an ironic reversal, Ukraine invaded Russia this past week, seizing substantial portions of the oblast of Kursk and surprising both Russian forces and Ukrainian allies in what appears to be its most successful military ventu...

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's very big national security news stories, including: “The Waiting Game.” The Middle East is on edge this week as it awaits a possible attack by Iran or Hezbollah on Israel in response to the suspected assassination of senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders last week, including the chairman of H...

This week, Alan and Quinta were joined by Kevin Frazier to talk through some of the week’s biggest national security news, including: “KOSA Nostra.” An overwhelming majority of senators voted to pass the Kids Online Safety Act, also known as KOSA—a bipartisan piece of legislation that would impose new responsibilities on online platforms in looking after their underage users. Despite the 91-3 vote...

This week, Alan and Scott were joined by  Lawfare  teammates Molly Reynolds and Eugenia Lostri to talk over the week’s big national security news, including… “Bye Biden.” President Biden made the historic decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race over the weekend. He swiftly endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris, who now appears poised to become the Democratic candidate at...

This week Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by  Lawfare  Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to talk through one of the most eventful weeks in national security news in recent history, including: “Too Close for Comfort.” Former President Trump narrowly avoided an assassination attempt this past weekend that ultimately left one rally-goer dead and two others critically wounded. While Trump...

This week, Quinta and Scott were joined by  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and  Lawfare  Contributing Editor Eric Ciaramella to talk over all the national security news causing traffic issues in D.C., including: “Ukraine in the Membrane.” NATO is hosting its 75th anniversary summit here in Washington, D.C., this week. But its members’ eyes are uniformly locked on Ukrain...

This week, a Scott-less Alan and Quinta sat down with Lawfare Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier and law school-bound Associate Editor Hyemin Han to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.” Unlike Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden’s underwhelming performance...

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined once again by Lawfare Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: Wiki-plea-ks.” After more than a decade in effective confinement—first at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, then in a British prison—Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is set to plead guilty in a U.S. federal court in Saipan to a single viol...

This week, Quinta and Scott were joined by  Lawfare  Contributing Editor and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Eric Ciaramella to talk over the week’s big national security news, including: “Prime Deliverables, in Two Days or Less.” The Biden administration and its European allies coughed up a number of big wins for Ukraine at a meeting of the G7 and subsequ...

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk through some of the week’s biggest national security news stories, including: “Save the Last Gantz.” Leading opposition figure Benny Gantz has left Israel’s war cabinet over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to establish post-conflict plans for Gaza, raising serious questions about the stabi...