The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

It’s January 6—the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. There has been a lot of activity in those two years to account for what happened on that terrible day. To go over it all,  Lawfare  editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  executive editor Natalie Orpett and  Lawfare  senior editors Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff. T...

It was a few months ago that something went boom under the sea and the Nord Stream 2 pipelines were severely damaged. Everyone assumed the perpetrator was the Russian Federation because of the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine, and because the pipeline carried natural gas from Russia to Europe. But, months have gone by and evidence that Russia was behind the Nord Stream attacks has not surfaced....

It’s our annual “Ask Us Anything” episode. This year, Lawfare editors answered some of your burning questions on the Secret Service, the durability of the U.S. legal system in the wake of Jan. 6, the failed German coup, the classification of Mar-a-Lago documents, software supply chain cyber attacks, and the intelligence community using real corporations as covers in their operations. Hosted on Aca...

As Russia's unlawful war of aggression continues to inflict untold devastation on Ukraine, policymakers have begun to search for ways to support Ukraine's beleaguered economy and fund its eventual reconstruction. Their attention has turned to the billions of dollars in assets that the United States has frozen as part of its robust sanctions against the Kremlin. But as policymakers attempt to make...

From June 9, 2020: High profile congressional hearings, like the 2015 Benghazi hearings, the 2019 Mueller Report hearings and most recently, the Ukraine impeachment proceedings are often described in derogatory terms like "political theater," "spectacle" or "circus." But do these exaggerated performances on Capitol Hill actually serve a constitutional purpose? Margaret Taylor sat down with Josh Ch...

For their end-of-the-year episode of Rational Security , Alan, Quinta, and Scott took on a number of hard-hitting questions posed by you, the listeners, including: What did Quinta mean when she referenced "the radical political statement" of the Star Wars series Andor? How should we grade Biden as a foreign policy president? Has he made America credible again? Will recent mass shootings make...

From March 11, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth , the  Lawfare Podcast ’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Genevieve Lakier, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School and First Amendment expert. It’s basically impossible to have a conversation about content moderation without someone crying “First Amendm...

From March 31, 2021: Alvaro Marañon sat down with Erik Larson, a computer scientist, tech entrepreneur and author of the  new book , "The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do." They talked about his background and expertise with artificial intelligence, what shaped our modern perception of AI and why the next big break in AI always appears to be 10 or 20 ye...

On December 15, the New York Times published an article that detailed an investigation conducted by three of its reporters into how Russian state media uses American right wing and Chinese media to portray the ongoing war in Ukraine to Russian citizens. The investigation utilized thousands of leaked emails from correspondence within a Russian state media agency and with Russian security services,...

In the last few weeks, over a dozen U.S. states have banned TikTok from government devices, citing national security concerns. A similar bill was included in the omnibus spending bill, requiring the social media video app to be removed from the devices used by federal agencies. But addressing the concerns over how the Chinese government could coerce TikTok’s parent company to get access to America...

Founded in 2019, Rebellion Defense emerged as a darling of the defense startup industry, backed by powerful Pentagon insiders and high-profile investors like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. But now, three years later, the company is beginning to look less like Apple and more like Theranos, according to a recent story in Vox .  Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Vox senior for...

From March 23, 2021: Our constitutional system involves the written document, plus two and a half centuries of judicial decisions interpreting it. But these two things only scratch the surface. It also involves our constitutional norms, the unwritten rules that govern how actors in our political system behave. For decades, commentators have observed the steady erosion of many of these norms, and i...

Donald Trump is trying to do something rare—very rare—in American history: lose a presidential election, run again, and get elected to a second term. Only one president, the underappreciated Grover Cleveland, has ever accomplished that feat. Yet his story remains largely unknown. David Priess invited Troy Senik, author of a new biography of Grover Cleveland called, “ A Man of Iron: The Turbul...

The Jan. 6 committee issued its final report Thursday night, and the team at Lawfare spent Friday reading through it and formulating some initial thoughts, observations, bewilderments, and questions. To give you an overview and some analysis, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, and Lawfare senior editors Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecic,...

Over the past few weeks, Congress has slowly brought two of its biggest pieces of annual omnibus legislation to the finish line: the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act. Both annual endeavors play central complementary roles in our political system and often become vehicles for an array of otherwise unrelated provisions, including many related to na...

Fifth generation, or 5G technology, promises to bring high-speed, low-latency wireless infrastructure necessary for the smart era. But moving from the promise of 5G to a reality where 5G networks will deliver amazing and important new capabilities and services will require those networks to be secure. To talk about 5G cybersecurity challenges, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Tom...

On Monday afternoon, the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, better known as the Jan. 6 committee, held its final public event. It summarized its key findings and voted to approve its final report. And as most commentators are focusing on, the committee also voted to recommend to the Department of Justice that it charge Donald Trump and others with...

On December 7, Peruvian president Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve Peru’s Congress and implement a state of emergency. His dictatorship lasted only a few hours before he was impeached by Congress and arrested—making him the fifth president to leave office in Peru in five years. Since Castillo’s arrest, Peru’s crisis has spiraled further, with protests in the streets and a violent response by t...

When we think about government surveillance, we often imagine something physical, like a police officer executing a search warrant on a house or car. But increasingly, government surveillance, including the everyday work of police departments across the country, involves remote electronic monitoring or the analysis of massive amounts of digital information. A leading analyst of this transformation...

Ronald Reagan stands among the most consequential national security presidents in United States history, not least of which because his policies helped to end the Cold War without a direct war between the superpowers. Reagan's vision for ending the Cold War evolved during his presidency, but followed clear principles he brought with him to the office. Will Inboden, a historian and former policymak...

From September 30, 2020: On Sunday, September 27, the New York Times dropped  bombshell new reporting  on nearly two decades of Donald Trump's tax return data. The story has attracted enormous attention and paints a dismal picture. Donald Trump paid no personal income taxes for 11 of the past 18 years, he uses tax deductions aggressively, and last year he paid only $750 in federal income...

Ralph Bunche, one of the most prominent Black Americans of the 20th century, was a legendary diplomat, who from his perch at the United Nations was a central player in the decolonization movement after World War II. To discuss Bunche and his accomplishments, Lawfare founding editor and Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith sat down with Kal Raustiala, the Promise Institute Distinguished Professor o...

On November 19, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk announced that he would be reinstating former President Donald Trump’s account on the platform—though so far, Trump hasn’t taken Musk up on the offer, preferring instead to stay on his bespoke website Truth Social. Meanwhile, Meta’s Oversight Board has set a January 2023 deadline for the platform to decide whether or not to return Trump to Facebook fol...

Last week, Apple made an announcement about some new security features it would be offering to users. One of those features involves users' ability to opt in to encryption for iPhone backups to iCloud. While this new feature will enhance data privacy and security for those users who choose to opt in, it may create additional challenges for law enforcement to obtain evidence in criminal investigati...

On Monday, the D.C. Circuit heard oral argument in the case United States v Fischer —one of the most important cases we've seen in a while relating to criminal prosecutions for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The case is about a previously obscure statute, at least in this context, that criminalizes corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, and it’s a charge that DOJ has brought against hun...