The Lawfare Podcast

Janet Egan, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and Lennart Heim, an AI researcher at RAND, join Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to analyze the interim final rule on AI diffusion announced by the Bureau of Industry and Security on January 13, 2025. This fourth-quarter effort by the Biden Administration to shape AI policy may have major ramifications on the g...

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 R...

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 ce...

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...

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...

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,...

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, d...

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 act...

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...

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...

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 fro...

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 th...

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,...

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 t...

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 att...

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 re...

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...

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 d...

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...

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 &...

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...

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 St...

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 Fel...

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 Car...

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 pover...