The Lawfare Podcast

Israel’s military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre has raised deep concern from international legal observers and the general public. The IDF’s tactics have been described as “disproportionate,” and not taking sufficient care to avoid killing civilians or damaging civilian infrastructure, as the law of armed conflict requires. When it comes to incidental casualties in particular, Mark Lattimer,...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard a great deal over the last year about generative AI and how it’s going to reshape various aspects of our society. That includes elections. With one year until the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we thought it would be a good time to step back and take a look at how generative AI might and might not make a difference when it comes to th...

Last month, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, President Biden announced that his administration would ask Congress for “an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense,” totaling $14.3 billion. Such a package would supplement the defense aid Israel already receives from the U.S.  According to Jonathan Guyer in Vox , “Israel has received about $3 billion annually, adjusted for i...

Tiana Epps-Johnson is the Executive Director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, an organization which provides technical and financial assistance to election workers nationwide. If this sounds like it should be uncontroversial, hang on to your hats, folks. It is anything but.  After her work in 2020 to help election workers conduct the presidential election under horrendously difficult CO...

From November 7, 2015: Last week, George Washington University and the CIA co-hosted an event entitled  Ethos and Profession of Intelligence . As part of the conference, Kenneth Wainstein moderated a conversation between CIA General Counsel Caroline Krass, Orin Kerr, and Benjamin Wittes on  Bridging 20th Century Law and 21st Century Intelligence , a panel which we now present i...

From May 19, 2018: The past week saw the culmination of a major shift in U.S. policy as the United States formally opened its embassy in Jerusalem. Yet ongoing protests along the border with the Gaza Strip and the Israeli government’s harsh response have provided a sharp contrast to the hopeful rhetoric surrounding the embassy’s opening ceremony. On Friday,  Lawfare  senior editor Scott...

In the past few weeks, there have been several notable developments in lawsuits seeking to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 election under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a case against Trump but invited the petitioners to refile once Trump won the GOP nomination. A court in Michigan rejected a challenge to Trump's eligibility on the grounds that Congres...

From October 22, 2016: This week, Samuel Moyn, Professor of Law and History at Harvard University, closed out a one-day conference on  “The Next President's Fight Against Terror”  at New America with a talk on “How Warfare Became Both More Humane and Harder to End.” He argues that we’ve moved toward a focus on ending war crimes and similar abuses, rather than a focus on preventing w...

Sixty years ago today in Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John Kennedy. For almost as long, various (often contradictory) conspiracy theories about that day have been circulating. Gerald Posner used overwhelming evidence and logic to dismantle these theories in his classic book Case Closed , first published in 1993 and re-issued with updates in the three decades since the...

The great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is best known for films such as “The Thin Blue Line” and “The Fog of War.” His latest film, “The Pigeon Tunnel,” is about the great espionage novelist John le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell.  Jack Goldsmith recently sat down with Morris to talk about “The Pigeon Tunnel.” They discussed le Carré’s complex and contradictory attitu...

At the end of the Cold War, there was no question that the United States was the most powerful country in the world—militarily, economically, and technologically. International relations scholars call this system, where one country is more powerful than all others, a unipolar one. But most analysts now argue that America’s decline over the last two decades coupled with a simultaneous Chinese rise,...

Over the past few weeks, the country of Pakistan has pursued an aggressive wave of deportations targeting thousands of Afghan refugees, some of whom have been in Pakistan for generations. Many fear that this move will add to the already precarious and humanitarian situation facing Afghanistan. But the Taliban regime, for one, has reacted in a way few expected. To talk through these refugee removal...

This week on Rational Security , Quinta and Scott were jointed by  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk over some of the week's big national security news, including: “The Day After.” As the war in Gaza enters a new phase, discussions are increasingly shifting to focus on how Israel will handle a post-Hamas Gaza Strip—and what long-term impact the conflict will have on the West...

It's another episode of “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” the last one before Thanksgiving, when we will take a week off. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down before a live audience of Lawfare Material Supporters with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff and Legal Fellow Anna Bower. They talked about the latest developments in Mar-a-Lago, where Judge Cannon has issued a cryptic order....

From September 7, 2019: This summer has been a tumultuous one inside the U.S. State Department. In August, the department’s Office of the Inspector General handed down a scathing report alleging political manipulation and abusive practices inside the department’s International Organization bureau—only one of a series of similar allegations. At the same time, a number of career State Department off...

The United States has long set restrictions on the export of certain sensitive goods and technologies, particularly to strategic rivals. But over the past several years, we have seen first the Trump and now the Biden administrations use the legal authorities behind these export controls in new and innovative ways, for purposes ranging from limiting China’s access to key emerging technologies to st...

In October 1983, Maurice Bishop, the revolutionary leader and prime minister of Grenada, was executed alongside seven others amid a power struggle in the island nation. Ever since, a mystery has persisted: What happened to their bodies? The whereabouts of Bishop’s remains is unknown, and for the past two years, Washington Post journalists have been trying to find them.  Martine Powers hosts t...

On November 6, researchers at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy issued a  report  on “Data Brokers and the Sale of Data on U.S. Military Personnel” that illuminates the national security risks arising from the sale of these data. Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with the three of the report’s authors: Justin Sherman, a Senior Fellow at the Sanford School of P...

The use of deepfakes—a form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning to create manipulated or generated images, video, and audio—is on the rise. In 2022, the U.S. military took a nearly unprecedented step by declaring its interest in deepfake technology for offensive purposes. But the Defense Department’s exploration of this technology poses privacy and ethics risks, especially with respe...

Three weeks ago, an amazing new book came out about the prosecutions stemming from the Capitol Siege of Jan. 6, 2021. It’s called " Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System ." Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff sat down with the book’s author, Ryan J. Reilly, who is also the Justice Reporter at NBC News. They discussed who the Sedition Hunters are, how R...

In August, the U.S. Africa Command, aka AFRICOM, reported that it had killed 13 al-Shabaab fighters in southern Somalia. Though the U.S. government said that it did not kill any civilians this time around, several past airstrikes have claimed innocent lives. In one notable example from March 2018, U.S. drone operators killed a 22-year-old mother, Lul Dahir Mohamed, and her 4-year-old daughter, Mar...

This week on Rational Security , Quinta and Scott bade a temporary farewell to Alan and spent one last afternoon (for a few months, anyway) digging into the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Ceasefire or Misfire?” We are now one month into Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip. As civilian casualties continue to mount and Israel’s ground operations get underway, there a...

It's another edition of “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” recorded on Nov. 9 before a live audience of Lawfare Material Supporters. To talk through this week of Trump’s trials, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with special guest Adam Klasfeld of The Messenger, Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower, and Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Alan Rozenshtein. They talked about the Tru...

From March 2, 2019: It's hard to open a newspaper or turn on the television without hearing about the dysfunction and partisan polarization affecting members of Congress. But what about their staffs, and what does that mean for national security? This week, Margaret Taylor sat down with seemingly unlikely partners: Luke Murry, National Security Advisor to Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McC...

From November 8, 2014: Last month, Jack gave a talk at the Hoover Institution on President Obama's war powers legacy. It's a remarkable address: hard-hitting, clear, and sure to discomfort Obama's defenders on war powers issues. In essence, Jack argues that Obama has gone way beyond President Bush in the aggressiveness of his approach vis a vis Congress to initiating overseas conflict.  Suppo...