The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

Twenty years ago today, the United States invaded the nation of Iraq, intent on removing the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein and installing a stable democratic government. What followed instead was two decades of political instability and horrible sectarian violence that has yielded a modern Iraqi state that remains plagued with corruption and other problems, and is increasingly under immense pr...

The Academy loves a good spy flick, and so do we! This week, Shane Harris talks with Washington Post culture critic Alyssa Rosenberg about the enduring power of espionage on the big screen.  Movies like  Zero Dark Thirty , the  Mission: Impossible  franchise, and this year’s  Top Gun: Maverick  and  All Quiet on the Western Front , which both took home Oscars, he...

From February 24, 2020: What do Russia, China and Canada all have in common? They all disagree—in one manner or another—with American policy goals in the Arctic, where climate change is driving opportunities and challenges for U.S. policy-makers. In this episode, National Security Institute Visiting Fellow and former senior intelligence official Jim Danoy discusses his paper, “The Arctic: Securing...

Artificial Intelligence is advancing at what seems like an exponential rate, with every month—sometimes every week—bringing news of a new, game-changing discovery. But just as the progress in AI is accelerating, so is the pessimism about it, with many scholars, commentators, and technologists themselves raising the alarm about AI's potential harms to equality, privacy, and security. Challengi...

As U.S. counterterrorism efforts have waned in Yemen, Libya, and parts of Pakistan, Somalia has emerged as the most active element in the “forever wars” that the U.S. has waged since 9/11, according to Eric Schmitt of the New York Times. Schmitt traveled to Somalia in February for a rare embed with U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground in the midst of a recent offensive launched by the Soma...

As Director of the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly is one of several women at the very top of the cybersecurity pyramid in the United States. A graduate of West Point, decorated U.S. Army officer, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jen has served her country in a plethora of senior cybersecurity and counterterrorism roles, and most recently before her return to gove...

For years, the international community has wrestled with how to reconcile sanctions policies targeting terrorist groups and other malevolent actors with the need to provide humanitarian assistance in areas under those groups’ control. Late last year, both the Biden administration and the UN Security Council took major steps toward a new approach on this issue, installing broad carveouts for humani...

Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace are the creators of the NPR audio documentary White Lies, which was a Pulitzer finalist for its first season. Chip and Andrew are back for season 2, a story they began reporting in 2015 after they stumbled on an archival photo of a prison riot in Talladega, Alabama. This season focuses on the Mariel boatlift, a 6-month period in 1980 during which 125,000 Cubans...

This week on Rational Security , Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Naval Academy professor and cyberlaw expert Jeff "Two Effs" Kosseff to work through the week's big national security news stories, including: “Dox Populi.” Florida’s state legislature is the latest of several to propose laws requiring individuals involved in certain online activities to reveal their identities to the state. Ar...

From March 19, 2021: Jack Goldsmith spoke with New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth about her new  book , "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race." They discussed the dark world of markets for zero-day vulnerabilities that are so vital in offensive cyber operations, the history of the markets, how they work, who the players are and why the United...

Kemba Walden recently took over from Chris Inglis as Acting National Cyber Director in the White House. She had been Principal Deputy Assistant National Cyber Director after serving in multiple cybersecurity positions in government and in the private sector. David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contr...

During recent oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, a Supreme Court case concerning the scope of liability protections for internet platforms, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked a thought-provoking question. Does Section 230, the statute that shields websites from liability for third-party content, apply to a generative AI model like ChatGPT?   Luckily, Matt Perault of the Center...

A few weeks ago, Human Rights Watch  released a report  on the forced expulsion of the Chagossian people, whom the United Kingdom deported from their island homes in the Indian Ocean about 60 years ago to make way for the United States to build a military base called Diego Garcia. The report recommends reparations for the Chagossian people and a trial for individuals responsible for thes...

On March 2, the Biden administration released its long-awaited  National Cybersecurity Strategy . The new strategy comes more than two years after President Biden took office and sets out a bold vision to achieve a more cyber-secure future by the end of the decade. Lawfare Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with our in-house cyber experts, Lawfare ’s Senior Editor Stephanie Pell and Fello...

March Minipod episode! Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic, Alan Rozenshtein, and Scott R. Anderson debate whether to continue to refer to the country led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as Turkey, or to switch to Türkiye, per Erdoğan’s request. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany are both Israeli legal scholars and longtime Lawfare contributors. Shany is a professor of international law at the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem. Cohen is a professor at Ono Academic College. They are both scholars at the Israel Democracy Institute, and together they are also co-authors of a six-part series in Lawfare about the ongoing effort by the Israe...

For the past 20 years, Richard Haass has led the Council on Foreign Relations, building on his national security experience in government and his related work in academia and think tanks. Although his efforts have focused overwhelmingly on foreign policy, his central concern has turned to something closer to home: the decline of democratic norms in the United States. He's even written a new book a...

From December 7, 2019: Wargaming has long been a staple of military strategizing, but how do we plan for the future in cyberspace, a realm where governments do not hold a monopoly on capabilities? A new  report  from the Atlantic Council argues that "visualizing and describing the evolution of cyber capabilities and strategic competition require envisioning multiple futures," and the rep...

This week, Lawfare Publisher David Priess wore his hat as a Senior Fellow at George Mason University's Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security to host a rare live conversation on counterintelligence with leading practitioners. His guests were Mirriam-Grace MacIntyre, Executive Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and Alan Ko...

Since December, Peru has been in the midst of a protracted politico crisis. Following a failed coup in early December, President Pedro Castillo was arrested, becoming the fifth president to leave office in Peru in five years. In the midst of protests, Castillo’s deputy Dina Boluarte took power. But protests have continued in the following months, with roughly 60 people dead—mostly protestors kille...

Matthew Olsen, the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, gave yesterday a major address at the Brookings Institution. He talked about FISA Section 702, the section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows U.S. intelligence authorities to collect against targets reasonably believed to be overseas when their signals pass throu...

There was a big showdown at the D.C. Circuit last week over the Speech or Debate Clause and Representative Scott Perry and his cell phone, the latter of which was seized by the FBI in connection with the Jan. 6 investigation. Representative Perry wants it back, and he does not want anything on it used in the investigation. He went to Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the Dist...

Remember Havana Syndrome? Diplomats, spies, and other people suddenly hearing a loud noise and then having neurological symptoms, sometimes debilitating... Was it a mass panic? Was it a sonic weapon? Was it a directed energy weapon? And who was wielding it?  These are the subjects of The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome , a new podcast series put out by Goat Rodeo, PRX, and Project Brazen. L...

This week on Rational Security , Alan, Quinta, and Scott sat through literally hours of oral arguments to prepare to discuss all the national security developments in the news, including: “The HIMAR Anniversary.” The war in Ukraine is one year old this week. The Biden administration marked the occasion with a presidential visit to Kyiv and a finding of crimes against humanity, while Vladimir Putin...

From March 18, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the  Lawfare Podcast ’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and an expert on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statute that shields internet platforms from civil li...