The Lawfare Podcast

This week, Scott sat down with his colleagues Anna Bower, Chris Mirasola, and Mykhailo Soldatenko to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Wings and a Prayer.” The Ukraine conflict has been the subject of intense shuttle diplomacy over the past week, as President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to a meeting in Alaska last Friday, only for Ukrainian Preside...

Adam Chan, National Security Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and inaugural Director of the FCC’s new Council on National Security, joins  Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss the FCC’s rulemaking on submarine cables and national security. They discuss the FCC’s new submarine cable rules, the role of submarine cables in the U.S. telecommunications supply chain and in the...

In a live conversation on August 18, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko, Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina, and Carnegie Senior Fellow Eric Ciaramella about President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting in Alaska on Aug. 15, Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other European leaders,...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff, and  Lawfare  contributor Chris Mirasola to discuss D.C.’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s  attempts to assume control of the Metropolitan Police Department , litigation over...

From July 31, 2024: For this episode,  Lawfare  General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook to discuss his new  book , “The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.” Together, they examined the United States’ long history in the Middle East, how it successfully (and unsuccess...

From August 14, 2024: Over the past week, Ukrainian forces have launched a major incursion into Russia proper, occupying 1,000 square kilometers in Kursk Oblast, which borders Ukraine. The operation, which caught both Russia and the United States by surprise, is the first major Ukrainian offensive in more than a year. In this episode,  Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down w...

In this episode of Scaling Laws , Dean Ball, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Prof...

On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with a member of the Ukrainian parliament, Anastasiia Radina, to discuss the Ukrainian government’s attack on the country’s independent anti-corruption agencies, which sparked the first country-wide protests since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare&nbs...

This week, a rejuvenated Scott returned from vacation to sit down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Daniel Byman, and Kate Klonick to talk through some of the week’s big national security news, including: “Occupational Hazards.” The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated its intent to occupy Gaza City, the last segment of Gaza not under Israeli military c...

In their new book, “ Command of Commerce: America’s Enduring Economic Power Advantage Over China ,” Steve Brooks and Ben Vagle argue that the United States’ economic advantage over China is much larger than is commonly believed. They contend that if the United States were to cut China off from the U.S. economy and from the economies of U.S. allies, China would suffer significantly more than the Un...

On today’s episode,  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Seth Harp, an investigative reporter, U.S. Army Reserve veteran, and a former Assistant Attorney General for the state of Texas to discuss Harp’s new book, “ The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces .”  They discuss Harp’s experiences reporting on the murder of two special...

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 Peter Harrell to discuss the D.C. Circuit vacating Judge Boasberg’s probable cause of contempt by the Trump administration, where the legal challenges to President Trump’s IEEPA tar...

From August 6, 2024: A new film from  Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines series called “The Night Won’t End”  profiles three Palestinian families as they try to survive the war in Gaza. On today’s episode,  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien speaks to the documentary’s director, Kavitha Chekuru, along with a few of the journalists and researchers who came together to work on the proj...

From June 7, 2023: On January 1, 2023, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as president of Brazil. A week later, insurrectionists in Brazil stormed government buildings, including the president’s palace, the Supreme Federal Court, and the National Congress building to violently disrupt the democratic transition of power and challenge the results of the election. Lula, however, remained undeterr...

Brian Fuller, a member of the Product Policy Team at OpenAI, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , to analyze how large AI labs go about testing their models for compliance with internal requirements and various legal obligations. They also cover the ins and outs of what it means to work in product policy and...

Sam Bresnick, Research Fellow and Andrew W. Marshall Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), joins Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss his recently published report, “ Big Tech in Taiwan: Beyond Semiconductors .” They discuss a previous report Sam coauthored with Georgetown CSET colleagues, “ Which Ties Will Bind? ,” looking at U.S. Big Tech...

Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Oona Hathaway, Yale Law Professor and President-elect of the American Society of International Law, to discuss how the current world events are harming the norm prohibiting the use of force in international relations, why that's troubling, and what to do about it. They chat about the current U.S. administration's policies, recent strikes on I...

On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Minna Ålander, an associate fellow at Chatham House Europe Programme, and Max Bergmann, the Director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss NATO’s historic decision to increase its member state’s defense spending to 5% of their Gross Domestic Produc...

In a  live conversation on  Aug. 1,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Anna Bower,  Lawfare  Legal Fellow James Pearce, and  Lawfare  contributors Michael Feinberg and Renee DiResta to discuss the politicization of the Justice Department, including the attorney general’s misconduct complaint against Jud...

From June 13, 2024: On today’s episode,  Lawfare  General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Gabor Rona, Professor of Practice at Cardozo Law, and Natalie Orpett,  Lawfare ’s Executive Editor, to discuss  their recent  Lawfare  piece  examining whether a state pursuing an armed conflict in compliance with international humanitarian law coul...

From December 27, 2023: The Supreme Court last month heard oral arguments in  United States v. Rahimi , in which the Court will decide the constitutionality of a federal law that criminalizes the possession of firearms by individuals on whom state courts have imposed domestic violence protective orders. This case came to the Court following its June 2022 ruling in  New York State Rifle &...

Renée DiResta, an Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare , and Alan Rozenshtein, an Associate Professor at Minnesota Law, Research Director at Lawfare , and, with the exception of today, co-host on the Scaling Laws podcast, join Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law an...

For today's episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, for another of their regular updates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This time, they discussed the brutal famine afflicting Gaza, how the broader military conflict between Israel and Hamas has contributed to it,...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Natalie Orpett, Kevin Frazier, and Tyler McBrien to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Feeding Frenzy.” The crisis in Gaza has reached a new, desperate stage. Months of a near total blockade on humanitarian assistance has created an imminent risk, if not a reality, of mass starvation among Gazan civilians. A...

Candace Rondeaux, Senior Director of New America’s Future Frontlines program, Director of its Planetary Politics initiative, and professor of practice at Arizona State University joins  Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss her recently published book, " Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos ." They discuss Yevgeny Prigozhin and his founding of...