The Lawfare Podcast

In the summer of 2020, Lawfare ’s editor in chief Benjamin Wittes found out that he had been the subject of intelligence reports compiled by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. It was a bizarre but troubling revelation, and it raised a lot of questions, not only about the propriety of those reports but also about the practice in general. Who else was I&A...

It’s Election Day in the United States—so while you wait for the results to come in, why not listen to a podcast about the other biggest story obsessing the political commentariat right now? We’re talking, of course, about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the billionaire’s dramatic and erratic changes to the platform. In response to Musk’s takeover, a great number of Twitter users have made the...

The government has rested its case in chief in the criminal seditious conspiracy trial of Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and several other members of the Oath Keepers. The trial has been going on for the last several weeks, and Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been in court every day keeping us up to date. Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to talk through it all. Who has...

Although codemaking and codebreaking often receive less attention in the public imagination than swashbuckling HUMINT operations and ingenious spy gadgets, they have changed history. The under-appreciation of cryptography might stem from a combination of the complexity of encryption, the classified nature of much of its technology, and the difficulty of conveying codebreaking effectively in pop cu...

From April 8, 2021: If you’re listening to this podcast, the odds are that you’ve heard a lot about QAnon recently—and you might even have read some alarming reporting about how belief in the conspiracy theory is on the rise. But is it really? This week on Arbiters of Truth , the  Lawfare Podcast ’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jos...

On October 30, Brazilians elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as their next president. Within minutes, world leaders, including President Biden and Secretary Blinken, offered official congratulations. For Lulu supporters, the atmosphere was celebratory but tense, as many wondered if Lulu's opponent, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro—who once said the election would end either in his death, arrest, or victory...

 The Israeli election results are in—sort of—and the early count looks very favorable for former Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and the far-right coalition that he would bring to power. The results are not a hundred percent clear yet, but they're clear enough for Benjamin Wittes to sit down on Twitter Spaces with Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow in...

Last week, Lawfare published a piece by Lawfare ’s legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani called, “ The Case for Designating the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Militias as Foreign Terrorist Organizations .” The article considered whether the Russian-backed militias operating in the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk can be properly designated as FTOs, and whether they should be. Lawfare executive edi...

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has released a trio of long-awaited strategy documents, including the National Security Strategy , the National Defense Strategy , and the Nuclear Posture Review. But how should we read these documents, and what do they actually tell us about how the Biden administration intends to approach the world? To answer these questions, Lawfare senior editor Scott...

The effect of the digital revolution on privacy has been mixed, to say the least, and for intimate privacy—information about our health, sexual activities, and relationships—it's been a downright disaster. Corporations and governments surveil us, former sexual partners post revenge pornography online, and our virtual reality future threatens to take privacy intrusions to a whole new level.  D...

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by China expert and law professor Julian Ku to talk through some of the week's big national security news, including: “Xi Loves Me, Xi Loves Me Not.” At the  Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress  this past weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping was able to not only secure his leadership over the party and country for a third conse...

From August 24, 2020: In recent months, relations between the United States and China seem to have reached a new low as disagreements over trade, tech, human rights and the coronavirus have led the two sides to exchange increasingly harsh rhetoric. Just weeks ago, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went so far as to suggest that the decades-long experiment of U.S. engagement with China had been a mist...

There's been a lot of discussion about whether Donald Trump should be indicted. Lately, that discussion has focused on the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-lago or the Jan. 6 committee's revelations about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But what about his speech on the ellipse on Jan. 6 when he told a crowd of thousands to “fight like hell,” and they went on to attack the Capitol? Is...

Claudia Swain is Lawfare ’s digital strategist—but before coming to Lawfare , she worked at the Federal Railroad Administration, deep in the bureaucracy. She recently wrote an article for Lawfare called, “ The Emerging Cyber Threat to the American Rail Industry ,” which is a bit of a chilling read about the threat that the American rail industry faces as a result of, of all things, new computerize...

This past weekend, the Chinese Communist Party held its 20th National Congress, an event held every five years at which it appoints its senior leadership who in turn holds the reins of China's government. This year, the event focused on one man, Xi Jinping, the current president of China, who secured an unprecedented, third consecutive five-year term as the party’s senior-most official and was abl...

In two weeks, millions of Americans will head to the polls for the 2022 midterm election. During that time, an estimated one million poll workers will help administer the election and ensure the process runs safely and smoothly. Ahead of the midterms, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Rachel Orey, associate director of the Bipartisan Policy Center Elections Project, and Grace Gor...

Last month, the George Washington University Program on Extremism published a report called, “ Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States .” To talk through that report and a recent Lawfare article on the topic, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Ilana Krill, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism, a...

Olivia Troye has worked in the Republican National Committee, the Pentagon, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Department of Homeland Security. But it was her role on the small team directly supporting Vice President Mike Pence that brought her the most challenging experiences of her career while making her all too...

From February 5, 2021: Some countries don't just abuse their citizens within their own borders; increasingly, they target individuals after they have gone abroad. A range of nefarious acts play a role here, and together they make up a phenomenon called transnational repression. Nate Schenkkan, the director of research strategy at Freedom House, and Isabel Linzer, Freedom House's research analyst f...

Recently, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported that the Biden administration had finalized a new policy governing drone strikes used in counterterrorism operations outside war zones. The policy tightens up rules established under the Trump administration—which themselves replaced an earlier guidance set out by President Obama. President Biden’s policy is the latest effort to calibrate Ame...

Senior Editor Roger Parloff joins Managing Editor Tyler McBrien for another quick update on the prosecution’s case in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy trial. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joe Sullivan, Uber's former chief security officer and a former federal prosecutor, was found guilty of obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony. These charges arose from what the Department of Justice characterized as Sullivan's attempted coverup of a 2016 hack of Uber. The Sullivan case has created some consternation in the cybersecurity community. Kellen Dwyer, partner at the law firm...

On October 13, the Jan. 6 committee closed what may be its final public hearing with a dramatic vote: unanimously, the committee members agreed to subpoena former president Donald Trump. So … what happens now? Will Trump actually testify? What happens if he defies the committee—would the Justice Department prosecute him for contempt of Congress?  To talk things through, Lawfare senior editor...

Fulton County DA Fani Willis is closing in on Donald Trump's 2020 election meddling. She could begin issuing indictments as soon as December, CNN reports. In the meantime, she's gotten testimony from a long list of the former president's allies, and she's sought testimony from even more who are still resisting. All of this has America wondering: what the heck is a special purpose grand jury? Why c...

Presidential transitions are the most delicate and hazardous periods in the entire political cycle. Even at the best of times, incoming administrations face a huge task. Each new president must make more than 4,000 political appointments in a short period of time, as well as get up to speed on ongoing policy issues. To discuss the history and the current framework of presidential transitions, Lawf...