The Lawfare Podcast

It's a scary time along the Ukrainian-Russian border these days. Russian troops are amassing in alarming numbers, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared recently that there had been a coup planned against him by Russian-aligned forces. How bad is it? Is it going to be another war? Is an incursion imminent? To go over all the questions, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Lt....

From May 27, 2017: Amidst the hurricane of news coming out of the White House in recent weeks, one question has surfaced again and again: why isn't White House Counsel Don McGahn stopping Donald Trump from doing all this? This week on the podcast, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Bob Bauer, former White House Counsel for Barack Obama, to talk about the Office of the White House Counsel and how Presid...

From May 6, 2017: Three months into the Trump presidency, where does the relationship between the President and the intelligence community stand? Donald Trump is no longer quite so regularly combative in his tweets and public comments about the various intelligence agencies, but the White House-intelligence community relationship is still far from normal under this very unusual presidency. Here to...

Late last month, Apple sued the Israeli technology firm NSO Group under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That's the federal law that criminalizes computer hacking and provides a civil cause of action for hacking victims. NSO Group is primarily known for its Pegasus spyware software, which it provides to many governments for their law enforcement and national security investigations. Apple is suin...

This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with some of the people behind the app that, by this point in the pandemic, you’re probably sick of: Zoom. Quinta and Evelyn sat down with Josh Kallmer, Zoom’s head of global public policy and government relations, and Josh Parecki, Zoom’s associate general counsel and head of trus...

The CIA has opened a window into former president Donald Trump's always interesting and frequently contentious relationship with the intelligence community. A newly published history confirms a lot of what we already knew about Trump's preferences—like that he didn't actually read his daily top secret briefing—but it also shows Trump as privately more appreciative of career intelligence profession...

Cybersecurity is the responsibility of everyone. A cyber attack is no longer confined to the digital realm and can have real impact on various industries like food, gas and medicine. But despite these challenges, there is an opportunity for a new whole-of-society approach to defend against the mounting cyber threats emanating from places like Russia, China and North Korea. One approach advocates t...

Dominic Cruz Bustillos sat down with Timothy Frye, the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy within the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, editor of “Post-Soviet Affairs” and co-director of the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Professor Frye is the author of the new book, “ Wea...

From February 28, 2015: On Thursday of this week,  Lawfare’s  Benjamin Wittes and Bobby Chesney, along with General Jack Keane, appeared before the House Armed Services Committee to provide  “Outside Perspectives on the President’s Proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” The hearing grappled with a number of difficult a...

From April 2, 2016: This week,  Adam Segal  of the Council on Foreign Relations joins   Jack Goldsmith at a Hoover Book Soiree for a discussion of his new book, “ The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age . ”  Segal begins at what he calls “year Zero”—sometime between June 2012 and June 2013—explaining that the events in...

Last month marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Nuremberg Trials. To better understand the trials and their legacy, Bryce Klehm sat down with Francine Hirsch, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Hirsch is the author of the book, “ Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II ....

For Thanksgiving, we’re bringing you something a little different—an episode of Rational Security, our light, conversational show about national security and related topics. This week, Alan, Quinta and Scott were joined by special guest, Quinta's co-host of the Arbiters of Truth series on the  Lawfare  podcast feed  Evelyn Douek ! They sat down to discuss: —“Getting Rittenhouse...

On November 3, the Commerce Department added four foreign companies to what is often referred to as the “Entity List,” for engaging in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. One of those additions was the Israeli company NSO Group, which sells software—often called spyware—that once remotely installed on a phone can steal things like...

Jack Goldsmith sat down with Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University, to discuss his new book,” The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America .” They discussed the evolution of Lincoln's constitutional thought on slavery, compromise and war, from the time he was a young man through his most difficult of presidencies. Was Lincoln a great...

Alexander Vindman sat down with Dr. Mary Sarotte, the author of the new book, “ Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate ,” to discuss the 1990s and NATO expansion. They discussed how respective decisions by America, Russia and the European Union impacted NATO expansion and today’s geopolitical environment.  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare...

From May 28, 2019: From the Washington Post’s February report that U.S. Cyber Command took a Russian disinformation operation offline on the day of the 2018 midterms to fight election interference, to the Pentagon’s announcement last year that it would take more active measures to challenge adversaries in cyberspace, recent news about cyber operations suggests they are playing an increasingly impo...

From August 9, 2014: Washington was abuzz this week as more than 50 African leaders were in town for the first U.S.-Africa Summit. On August 8, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the President of Somalia, spoke at Brookings on the future of his country. In his talk, President Mohamud addresses the challenges to democracy that Somalia faces, and how Somalia, the African Union, and other international part...

Alexander Vindman sat down with Dr. Fiona Hill, the Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and the author of the new book, “ There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century .” They talked about Russia's military buildup along Ukraine, immigration and opportunities in the 21st century. Suppo...

It’s been roughly a year since the Facebook Oversight Board opened its doors for business—and while you may mostly remember the board from its decision on Donald Trump’s suspension from Facebook, but there’s been a lot going on since then. So we thought it was a good time to check in on how this experiment in platform governance is faring. In October, the Board released its first transparency repo...

Hannah Bloch-Wehba is an associate professor of law at the Texas A&M School of Law. She’s also the author of a recent Lawfare post, entitled “ Alternative Channels for Police Transparency .” She sat down with Jacob Schulz to talk about her Lawfare piece, the law review article that inspired it, trends in police transparency and what to do about it. What are the different sources that inhibit p...

Lawfare has a new podcast: Chatter ! Hosted by none other than David Priess, publisher of Lawfare and the Lawfare Institute's chief operating officer, and Shane Harris, intelligence reporter from the Washington Post, Chatter focuses on culture, science and national security issues through long-form interviews with cool people. They joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about what they're doing with the s...

Roger Parloff is a senior editor at Lawfare and the author of the recent article, “ What Do—and Will—the Criminal Prosecutions of the Jan. 6 Capitol Rioters Tell Us? ” It is a deep dive on the demographics, the charges and the adjudications of the Capitol riot cases so far. Roger sat down with Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare Live to talk about who the Capitol rioters were, why some of them have been al...

From February 20, 2012: Joel Brenner, who served as inspector general of the National Security Agency and as the national counterintelligence executive in the DNI's office, joined Jack Goldsmith to discuss his new book,  America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare . Benjamin Wittes reviewed the book  here . Support this show http://s...

From November 22, 2014: Earlier this month, the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security held its “ 24th Annual Review of the Field of National Security Law CLE Conference .” As part of the conference, the group held a particularly strong panel discussion on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—featuring Bob Litt, general counsel to the DNI, Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU, and Bill Bank...

Majid Khan pled guilty in a military commission at Guantanamo eight years ago, but he has been back in the news of late. At a sentencing hearing at Guantanamo recently, he gave graphic testimony about his torture and treatment at the hands of the CIA and the military. He also took responsibility and showed remorse for his own conduct. His speech in the military commission was sufficiently moving t...