The Lawfare Podcast

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, Executi...

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...

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 unf...

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 st...

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  Contr...

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 dictators...

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  Mate...

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 a...

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 U...

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 ma...

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 m...

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 threa...

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 b...

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. Richar...

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 Rus...

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 al...

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  Mate...

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 tha...

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 ar...

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...

In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff, and Lawfare contributor James Pearce to discuss the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at John Bolton’s house, a federal judge ruling that Alina Habba was unlawfully serving as a U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss his in...

From August 1, 2024: Anastasiia Lapatina is a Kyiv-based Ukraine Fellow at  Lawfare . Marcel Plichta is a Fellow at the Centre for Global Law and Governance at the University of St. Andrews, and a former analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense who currently works as an instructor at the Grey Dynamics Intelligence School.  For this episode, Lapatina sat down with Plichta to discuss Ukra...

From May 3, 2024: Over the past several years, governors around the country from both political parties have used their respective National Guards for an increasingly unconventional array of domestic missions, ranging from teaching in public schools to regulating immigration at the southern border. To discuss how this trend may impact the National Guard—and our broader democracy, particularly in t...

For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson sits down with Lawfare Contributing Editor and Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Asaf Lubin and Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Deborah Housen-Couriel to talk over the European Court of Human Rights' recent decision in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia . Together, they discuss how the opin...

Alan Rozenshtein, Research Director at Lawfare , sits down with  Sam Winter-Levy , a Fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace;  Janet Egan , a Senior Fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security; and  Peter Harrell , a Nonresident Fellow at Carnegie and a former...