The Lawfare Podcast

Alissa Starzak, head of public policy at Cloudflare, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the promises and perils of AI in the cybersecurity context. Frazier, who interned with Cloudflare while in law school, and Starzak cover the novel threats posed by AI to the integrity of the Internet. The two also discuss...

This week, we’re at the Aspen Security Forum, the annual gathering of national security and foreign policy heavyweights. The conference regularly draws senior government and military officials from the United States and around the world to chew over the big issues of the day, and this time we had a full plate.  It’s not exactly hardship duty escaping to a glamorous mountain paradise. But the...

Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Matt Perault, the Director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sat down with Alexander Macgillivray, known to all as "amac," who was the former Principle Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States in the Biden Administration...

Over the last two weeks, the Russians have bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv, Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán has been on an international peace mission, the NATO summit has taken place in Washington, and Ukrainian forces have continued to struggle to hold territory. To go over a busy few weeks, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Anastasiia Lapatina, Lawfare’ s Kyiv fellow, and...

From April 14, 2020: Nobody has been more aggressive about using the coronavirus crisis to seize power than Hungarian strong man Viktor Orbán. Orbán declared a state of emergency and has been ruling by decree. He has also instigated criminal penalties for spreading false information about the coronavirus, and his Fidesz party has effectively dissolved Parliament. Joining Benjamin Wittes to discuss...

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on July 18 in front of a live audience on  YouTube  and Zoom. Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to  Lawfare  Legal Correspondent and Legal Fellow Anna Bower and  Lawfare  Senior Editor Roger Parloff about Judge Cannon’s order dismissing the classified documents case against Trump, Trump’...

Rebecca Crootof, Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and the inaugural ELSI Visiting Scholar at DARPA, joins Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the weaponization of emerging technologies and her role as the inaugural ELSI Visiting Scholar at DARPA. This conversation explores the possibility of an AI arms race, the value of multidisciplinarity within re...

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...

On today’s episode, Matt Gluck, Research Fellow at  Lawfare , spoke with Michael Beckley, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts, and Arne Westad, the Elihu Professor of History at Yale. They discussed  Beckley’s  and  Westad’s  articles in Foreign Affairs on the best path forward for the U.S.-China strategic relationship—in the economic and military contexts. B...

Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare 's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, talks with with Lennart Maschmeyer, Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, about his new book , “Subversion: From Covert Operations to Cyber Conflict.” The book explores how subversion works and what its strategic value is, and how technological change alters its reach and quality. They talked about the pr...

The Star Wars universe gets a lot of attention for its lightsabers, space battles, and witty droids. But over the decades, a rich lore has developed around its history and politics.  Dr. Chris Kempshall researches and writes at the intersection of real-world history, with a focus on the First World War, and the Star Wars universe. His books include  The History and Politics of Star...

On July 15, Judge Cannon  granted former President Trump’s motion  to dismiss the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith for the alleged mishandling of classified documents. She found that Smith was appointed as a special counsel in violation of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. In a live podcast recording ,  Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Witt...

Mary Ellen Callahan, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary, joins Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss the DHS’s recently released report on the potential of AI to lead to the production of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) threats. Assistant Secretary Callahan shares the origins of the report, its key findings, and DHS’s next steps. This conve...

From March 22, 2014: On March 19, the  Center on the United States and Europe  (CUSE) hosted NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a Statesman’s Forum address on the importance of the transatlantic alliance and how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is evolving to address new common security challenges. As the crisis in Ukraine shows that security in the Euro-Atlant...

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on July 11 in front of a live audience on  YouTube  and Zoom. Lawfare  Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke to  Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes and  Lawfare  Legal Correspondent and Legal Fellow Anna Bower about whether anything has happened in any of the Trump Trials and took audience ques...

Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at  Lawfare , and Molly Reynolds, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Senior Editor at  Lawfare , spoke with Bridget Dooling, Assistant Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Nick Bednar, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minn...

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...

Many Pentagon officials and U.S. lawmakers likely lay awake at night wondering what Chinese leaders think about the use of artificial intelligence in war.   On today’s episode, Sam Bresnick, a Research Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology joins  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to begin to answer that very question and discuss  his new r...

Scott Singer, Co-Founder and Director of the Oxford China Policy Lab, joins Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss AI in the context of ongoing and, arguably, increasing tensions between China and the U.S. This conversation covers potential limits on China’s AI ambitions, the durability of the current bipartisan consensus among U.S. officials on the China question, and the factors...

Joseph Cox is an award-winning investigative journalist and the co-founder of 404 Media. He is also the world’s leading reporter on the FBI's Anom sting operation, a topic he has written about in the new book, Dark Wire: The Incredbile True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever . Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband of Goat...

Jack Goldsmith sat down with Christopher Kirchhoff, a former senior official in the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the co-author with Raj Shah of the new book , “Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War.”  They talked about the origins and aims of the Defense Innovation Unit, how the defense bureaucracy fought it, and DIU’s successes and fai...

Chinny Sharma, Associate Professor at Fordham Law School, and Yonathan Arbel, co-director of the Center for Law and AI Risk and Associate Professor of Law at Alabama Law, join Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare , to discuss open-source AI. This engaging conversation dives into the origins of open source, its meaning in the AI context, and why attempts to regulate open-source AI have drawn...

From December 21, 2019: This week, following a resounding victory by Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party in British elections, Members of Parliament have backed Johnson’s plan to withdraw from the EU by January 31. But before they did that, Benjamin Wittes got on the phone from an undisclosed location with Brookings senior fellow and Brexit expert Amanda Sloat—who was here in the Jungle Studi...

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on July 5 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare  Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke with  Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes, Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about the Supreme Court’s decision in  Trump v. United State...

Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and a Senior Editor at Lawfare ; David Rubenstein, James R. Ahrens Chair in Constitutional Law and Director of the Robert J. Dole Center for Law and Government at Washburn University School of Law; and Dean Ball, Research Fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, join Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell Fellow a...