The Just Security Podcast

This week, world leaders, diplomats, climate activists, journalists, and fossil fuel executives will meet in Dubai for the United Nations’ annual Climate Change Conference. While many discussions will build on last year’s COP, where nations agreed to fund loss and damage from climate change, another focus will be on who is sidelined from the discussions.  The United Arab Emirates has reportedly hi...

Some of the biggest risks to human rights in the twenty-first century come from governments misusing surveillance technology originally designed to combat counterterrorism. These spyware tools are manufactured around the world, including in the United States, the European Union, China, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates.  The technology is difficult to detect and allows access to a target’s comm...

More than two decades after the 9/11 attacks, counterterrorism still dominates most security policies and practices around the world, including at the United Nations. And yet, the problem of terrorism persists around the world – from southwestern Pakistan, to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, to the Sahel. Across the board, nations are failing to address the root causes of extremism.  What mig...

Across the United States, book bans, and attempted book bans, have hit a record high. Driven in part by newly passed state laws, public schools have seen a thirty-three percent increase in banned books.  The vague and subjective language used in these laws leave school boards struggling to figure out exactly what content is prohibited. Some school boards, like the Mason City School District in Iow...

In response to Hamas’ brutal attacks that killed at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and continues with 200 hostages in Hamas control, Israel has imposed a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip. This includes blocking access to electricity, food, and fuel. While Israeli authorities have restored some access to water in southern Gaza the supply remains limited.  For the over 2 million civilians in Gaza,...

The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the U.S. Department of Defense is one of the biggest – and hardest – jobs in Washington. Colin Kahl served in that role for more than two years. From April 2021 to July 2023, he was the principal adviser to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for all matters related to national security and defense policy, oversaw the writing of the 2022 National Defense...

Last week, world leaders arrived in New York for the U.N. General Assembly’s High-Level meetings. They debated the response to Russia’s continued full-scale invasion of Ukraine, made some progress on sustainable development, and considered how to regulate artificial intelligence.   Returning to the show to discuss what we learned from the U.N.’s High-Level week is Richard Gowan. Richard is U.N. Di...

In 2018, the Supreme Court created a revolution in the Fourth Amendment. In Carpenter v. United States , the Court found that the government needed a warrant to obtain data about the cell phone towers to which a person connected when using their phone. That data can reveal the digital breadcrumbs of a person’s life – including where they went and how long they stayed. But cell phone users give tha...

The U.N. General Assembly’s annual meeting is underway in New York. Leaders from around the world will attend the High-Level Week, which begins on September 18. On the agenda are topics ranging from the continuing response Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to slow progress on sustainable development, and the looming regulation of artificial intelligence.  Joining the show to discuss what we...

Two decades ago, leaders from around the world had a moment of reckoning. The images and news reports of genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia were still fresh memories, and many countries recognized they hadn’t done enough to respond or prevent the violence. So diplomats at the United Nations had a bold idea. That countries have a collective responsibility to protect their people from war...

In October 2019, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed during a U.S. military raid on his compound in Syria. Former President Donald Trump called the raid “impeccable,” and the Defense Department said that no civilians were harmed in the operation.  But reporting from NPR determined that two civilians were killed and a third lost his arm from U.S. airstrikes. The Defense Department disagreed...

Former President Donald Trump is now facing his fourth criminal case.  On Monday, August 14, a grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others, including his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, over their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. The indictment charges that the defendants engaged in a sw...

The criminal charges against Donald Trump continue to pile up. On July 27, a superseding indictment was filed in the classified documents case against Trump, adding three additional charges to the 37 originally filed in June. Five days later, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment over the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The superseding indictmen...

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, diplomats, lawyers, and advocates from around the world have pushed for ways to hold Vladimir Putin and other senior leaders accountable for starting the war. Those efforts include creating a court to prosecute the international crime of aggression – the illegal use of force by one country against another.  But 3,000 miles south of th...

Since former President Donald Trump was indicted for retaining sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Lago, the Espionage Act has become a household term. But only a small number of lawyers have seen an Espionage Act trial from the inside. Just Security has assembled an all-star roundtable of experienced federal prosecutors and defense attorneys who have handled high-profile Espionage Act cases. ...

Today, July 12, the leaders of NATO member countries are wrapping up a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. The meeting opened as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ended his opposition to NATO membership for Sweden, and as President Biden said Ukraine still needs to take steps before it can join the Alliance. Biden further said Ukraine shouldn’t be admitted while Russia’s invasion continues because...

On July 4th a federal judge restricted the Biden administration from contacting social media companies about their content moderation policies. The court found that federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, could not flag specific posts to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to encourage them to remove content. Though the order provides excep...

From massive floods, to sweeping hurricanes, to raging wildfires, climate disasters seem constant. Last November, the United Nation’s climate conference, COP 27, grabbed global headlines when countries reached a historic deal to compensate vulnerable countries for loss and damage from climate change. It’s easy to see the scale of that loss and damage. Lives are lost, cultural sites disappear, and...

As the investigations and trials related to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol continue, convictions and sentences have piled up. More than half of those arrested have pleaded guilty, and among those convicted at trial, are leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Though these groups became famous for their roles in the January 6th attack, they were active long before efforts to “St...

On Friday, June 9, a federal court in Florida unsealed an indictment charging former President Donald Trump with willfully retaining national defense information, refusing to return it, and obstructing related investigations. The 38 counts allege that Trump violated the Espionage Act, conspired to obstruct justice, withheld and hid documents, and caused false statements to be made to federal inves...

From Donald Trump to Joe Biden, presidents have made a lot of news for keeping classified documents in their homes and offices. Presidential classification and declassification is a mysterious process that often unfolds away from public view. President Trump even famously claimed that he could declassify a document just by thinking about it. Trump's comments raised an important question: What...

This year, a key U.S. national security law is set to expire. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has many moving parts, but the gist is that it allows the government to collect the communications of foreigners who are abroad, to gain foreign intelligence information, including when those people communicate with Americans inside the United States. And it can do that without a...

This week a U.S. public health measure known as Title 42 came to an end. The U.S. is supposed to allow people fleeing persecution to seek asylum. But Title 42 allowed the Department of Homeland Security to turn away asylum-seekers if detention centers lacked the room to hold them during the asylum vetting process. The policy made it difficult for migrants to even apply for asylum in the first plac...

On May 4, 2023, a jury in Washington, D.C. found four Proud Boys leaders, including former Chairman Enrique Tarrio, guilty of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.  The Proud Boys were the “tip of the spear” in planning and carrying out the January 6th attack. They tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. To help...

As fighting in Sudan enters its third week, rival generals have turned the country’s capital, Khartoum, into a warzone. Mohamed Hamdan, better known as Hemedti, and his paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are fighting with Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, who leads the Sudanese Armed Forces.  For years, Burhan and Hemedti have wrestled for power and control of Sudan. But until now, they’ve been on the same si...