The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

From March 19, 2019: Demographic, technological, and geostrategic developments are disrupting the electoral landscape in sub-Saharan Africa. How do these shifts affect the political climate for democracy and participation across Africa? What have recent elections in Nigeria illustrated about these? And what about the clash between China and the United States in Africa? To explore these questions,...

What is the nature and timescale of U.S. geopolitical competition with China? Which country is stronger in the near term and long term? And what will the answers to these questions mean for Chinese military and political activities over the next 10 years? Matt Gluck sat down with Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced In...

Last month, the cover of Harper's Magazine declared that the American century is over. Then it asked a single question: What's next?  To dig into that question, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with the cover story’s author, Daniel Bessner, an associate professor in international studies at the University of Washington, who walked us through the history of the American century a...

In the course of the Jan. 6 investigation, Congress has voted to hold four Trump associates in contempt and refer them to the Justice Department for prosecution over their failure to comply with subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee. Steve Bannon was recently found guilty of contempt. One case, that of Peter Navarro, is still moving forward in criminal court. But the Justice Department declined to c...

Lawfare associate editor Matt Gluck sat down with Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Kolja Brockmann, a researcher with the Dual-Use and Arms Trade Control Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, to discuss the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international agreement that seeks to preven...

What is the proper relationship between the intelligence community and national decision makers in the United States? The author of a new book argues that for intelligence to be accepted as a profession, it must be viewed as a nonpartisan resource assisting key players in understanding foreign societies and leaders. That author is Jonathan House, a retired Army intelligence officer and military hi...

Mary Louise Kelly is one of the most recognizable voices in American journalism. A co-host of NPR’s flagship program “All Things Considered,” she has spent years interviewing top newsmakers and traveling the world to chronicle stories about national security and foreign policy. And on top of all that, she’s a novelist. Kelly has written two books that incorporate many of her own experiences coveri...

Friday afternoon, the federal court in Florida, acting at the Justice Department’s request, unsealed the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago that the FBI had executed earlier in the week. There was a lot of interesting information in it: How many bathrooms are there at Mar-a-Lago? How many TS/SCI documents did the FBI seize from the resort? Which European head of state had various documents about him ly...

The Jan. 6 select committee has wrapped up its first spree of hearings, and it has announced a second set of hearings when Congress returns in September. The month of lull gives us a good opportunity to assess where the committee has come so far and where it might be going. Benjamin Wittes sat down in Twitter Spaces on Thursday with Lawfare ’s executive editor and host of The Aftermath Natalie Orp...

The country of Tunisia is in the midst of a slow motion political crisis. The country's populist president has crafted a new constitution that gives him broad, unchecked powers and secured its approval by referendum, albeit a referendum in which most Tunisians did not participate. What's not clear is whether other factions will acquiesce to his exceptional actions, and whether those actions will p...

The FBI on Monday conducted a surprise search of Donald Trump's home and resort at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The investigation appeared to involve the retention of classified information by the former president after he left the White House. There's not a whole lot of information, but Trump did confirm the search. To go through it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior ed...

Last month, The Intercept published a new investigation from Alice Speri and Nick Turse looking into a secretive funding authority at the Pentagon known as 127e, or 127-echo. Using exclusive documents and interviews, the reporters revealed how U.S. Special Operations forces are involved in a proxy war program on a significantly larger scale than previously known.  To discuss the program and w...

On July 29, the Justice Department announced the indictment of Aleksandr Ionov, a Russian national and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia. Ionov is charged with “conspiring to have U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government”—and the Justice Department alleges that he was essentially running a years-long influence operation within the United States on behalf o...

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by favorite guest  Lawfare  executive editor Natalie Orpett to hash through the week's big national security news stories, including: “Another One Bites the Dust.” This past weekend, an American drone strike  successfully killed yet another major terrorist leader —this time al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri—in...

From September 22, 2018: If you ask scientists what is most likely to kick off the next great wave of technological change, a good number will answer “quantum mechanics”—a field whose physics Albert Einstein once described as “spooky,” but whose potential, once tapped, could unleash exponentially faster computer processes, unbreakable cryptography, and new frontiers in surveillance technology. No...

A few weeks ago on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information system, we brought you a conversation with two emergency room doctors about their efforts to push back against members of their profession spreading falsehoods about the coronavirus. Today, we’re going to take a look at another profession that’s been struggling to counter lies and falsehoods within its ranks: the law. Recen...

Nancy Pelosi made a visit to Taiwan this week. It wasn't exactly a surprise—we all knew it was happening—but it wasn't announced, and it wasn't quite official either. Beijing has gone a little bit crazy. There are military exercises taking place off the coast of Taiwan in response. There are threats of war. There was even talk of shooting down Pelosi's plane.  To talk it all through, Benjamin...

Another day, another leader of al-Qaeda is killed by U.S. forces. This time, it was Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed on his balcony in Kabul by a Hellfire missile strike. To talk about it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare ’s foreign policy editor Daniel Byman. Is it a big deal? Is it kind of old news that we’ve killed yet another al-Qaeda leader? How b...

On May 11, the European Commission announced a new proposal designed to combat online child sexual abuse material. The proposal has drawn notable criticism from major member states, especially Germany, and has raised concerns about the national security risks it could create. To talk through the issues at hand, former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz sat down with two experts, each of whom wro...

There’s been a great deal of debate recently about how to understand the apparently slow pace of the Justice Department’s investigation into Jan. 6, particularly into Donald Trump’s personal role in the insurrection. On Lawfare , editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes  made the case  that everyone should just chill out and let the department do its work, while executive editor Natalie Orpett an...

Fake news has been around for thousands of years in different forms that have changed with media technology, and there's little doubt that it's here to stay. For reasons ranging from human biases to financial incentives to the need for speed, it remains a hard problem. Cindy Otis, who worked for about 10 years at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst and a manager, now writes about fake ne...

From March 20, 2018: Shortly before last Sunday’s election in Russia, Alina Polyakova spoke to Liza Osetinskaya, editor of  The Bell  and former editor in chief of Forbes Russia and independent Russian news agency RBC. They discussed the Kremlin’s approach to censorship and how the Putin regime reacted when RBC, under Osetinskaya’s leadership, began covering the Panama Papers. Hosted on...

John Gotti was the boss of the Gambino Crime Family in New York City and one of America's most notorious mobsters. Nicknamed “The Teflon Don” for his ability to beat criminal charges, Gotti became a celebrity mob boss and was no stranger to law enforcement. Gotti's reign was put to an end by convictions obtained by John Gleeson, a former federal prosecutor, and Gotti's conviction and others that f...

You’ve likely heard that Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter… and that he is now trying to get out of buying Twitter… and that at first he wanted to defeat the bots on Twitter… but now he’s apparently surprised that there are lots of bots on Twitter. It's a spectacle made for the headlines, but it's also, at its core, a regular old corporate law dispute.  This week on Arbiters of Truth , our seri...

The United States Secret Service is in the spotlight once again—this time because of deleted texts for the time surrounding January 6, 2021—and the organization is reeling. To discuss it, Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Juliette Kayyem, formerly assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, who has served on the DHS Homeland Security Advisor...