The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

From November 27, 2018: This week, Russia and Ukraine went at it in the Kerch Strait, which separates the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. It's the latest salvo in Russia's secret (not-so-secret) war against Ukraine and its eastern provinces, and it's the latest thing that has the world talking about Vladimir Putin's lawlessness in his back yard. To understand it all, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Ali...

Bryce Klehm sat down with Matthieu Aikins, a Canadian journalist and the author of the new book, “ The Naked Don't Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees .” The book details Matthieu’s undercover journey from Afghanistan to Europe. He made the trip with his translator, Omar, who had been denied a special immigrant visa despite having been a translator for coalition forces in A...

Over the last several weeks, Russian aggression toward Ukraine has escalated dramatically. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Feb. 21 that Russia would recognize the sovereignty of two breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east, Donetsk and Luhansk, whose years-long effort to secede from Ukraine has been engineered by Russia. Russian troops have entered eastern Ukraine as supposed “peacekeeper...

Vladimir Putin has recognized two separatist regions in Ukraine, he has sent Russian troops as so-called peacekeepers to defend them, and all of this seems to be presaging a wider war in Ukraine. The United States and lots of other countries have announced sanctions, and it’s all heating up very fast. To talk it all through, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alex Vindman, Pritzker Military Fellow at L...

Last week, the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security and Lawfare hosted an event with Amy Zegart, a professor at Stanford University and one of the leading academic analysts of the intelligence community, to talk about her new book, “ Spies, Lies, and Algorithms .” David Priess hosted her for this live recording of the podcast, and they talked about intellig...

Happy Presidents' Day! To mark the day, Lawfare publisher David Priess recorded a special episode of Chatter with historian and author Lindsay Chervinsky, who discusses the history of this odd holiday—and the legacy of the first president, George Washington. Chatter is Lawfare ’s weekly long form interview podcast co-hosted by the Washington Post's Shane Harris and Lawfare ’s David Priess, focusin...

From November 1, 2017: Stalin’s 1929 agricultural collectivization policy, which catalyzed the most lethal famine in European history, left millions of Ukrainian peasants dead. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Anne Applebaum recently published a book on this famine and the horrors of Stalin’s agricultural collectivization in Ukraine, revealing the more insidious intent behind the Sovie...

From November 12, 2017: Matters Russia have been prevalent in U.S. politics since news of the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 elections first surfaced. It's time to pay some serious attention to the Russian surveillance apparatus. Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist and co-author of the book, “The Red Web,” brings a unique interpretation of the Kremlin’s actions as an independent re...

Madison Cawthorn is a Republican congressman from North Carolina. His candidacy for reelection is the subject of challenge under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment —the part that says that people who engage in insurrection are disqualified from holding future office under the Constitution. Roger Parloff has written a lengthy article on Lawfare on the Cawthorn case, entitled “ Can Madison Cawthorn Be...

Brandon Silverman is a former Facebook executive and founder of the data analytics tool CrowdTangle. Brandon joined Facebook in 2016 after the company acquired CrowdTangle, a startup designed to provide insight into what content is performing well on Facebook and Instagram, and he left in October 2021, in the midst of a debate over how much information the company should make public about its plat...

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland has been one of the most prominent voices in Congress speaking about Jan. 6 and the aftermath of the insurrection. He has a uniquely personal relationship with the violence that day: he lost his son shortly before the riot, and went on to serve both as an impeachment manager prosecuting the second impeachment of Donald Trump, and as a member of the House select commit...

The Biden administration on Friday notified a court of a novel proposal to dispose of $7 billion in frozen Afghanistan assets, producing some pretty confusing media and a lot of anger. To try to unpack it, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alex Zerden, the founder and principal of Capitol Peak Strategies and the former lead of the Treasury Department's office at the U.S.-Kabul embassy, and Lawfare sen...

Today on Lawfare , we’re publishing a piece by our editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes and Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic that revisits the Mueller report. Why? Because as of today, the statutes of limitations on potential obstruction charges against Donald Trump are beginning to expire. Trump's attorney general declined to prosecute, but we have heard nothing from the current Department of Just...

From January 16, 2016: Last week, we hated on bitcoin. This week we give it some love. This week, Brookings  hosted a discussion on Bitcoin  and the technology that undergirds the currency, specifically focusing on the promise of the distributed-ledger. The panel featured  David Wessel , Michael Barr, Brad Peterson, Barry Silbert, and Margaret Liu, on how the blockchain could r...

From January 9, 2016: This week we have  Nick Weaver  on the show. Nick's a regular  Lawfare  contributor , senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, and as you’ll see, quite the Bitcoin skeptic. Nick walks Ben through what exactly Bitcoin is, answering whether the platform is really a financial opportunity of historic prop...

Over the past few weeks, Canada has been living through its own insurrectionary moment, as a series of trucker convoys have used tractor trailer trucks to occupy much of downtown Ottawa, launch protests in other major Canadian cities, and block points of entry along the country's southern border with the United States. While nominally objecting to Canadian vaccination mandates, particularly as app...

The Joe Rogan Experience is perhaps the most popular podcast in the world—and it’s been at the center of a weeks-long controversy over COVID misinformation and content moderation. After Rogan invited on a guest who told falsehoods about the safety of COVID vaccines, outrage mounted toward Spotify, the podcasting and music streaming company that recently signed an exclusive deal with Roga...

Last month, a court in Germany convicted a senior Assad government official for a crime against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison for activities overseeing detention centers in Syria, where the government interrogated and tortured suspected antigovernment activists. The case was unique, not just for the profile of the defendant, but for the fact that the crime had no nexus to Germany. I...

The House of Representatives last week passed the COMPETES Act, its counterpart to a Senate bill last year on competitiveness with China. What's in the bill? What would it do? How similar is it to the Senate bill? And how close are we to a major piece of China legislation? Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Susan Thornton, a retired U.S. diplomat who is currently a visiting lecturer in...

Last week was scary for historically black colleges and universities, 17 of which received bomb threats that caused disruptions, building closures and class cancellations. The FBI is investigating, but we don't know a lot about what happened. To go over what we do know, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Andy McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI who ran his share of counter-terrorism investigation...

From February 23, 2021: For more than a week now, Texas has been struggling with a massive power outage caused by record low temperatures. Millions have been without power, heat and running water, and at least dozens have been confirmed to have died as a result. All states are confronting extreme weather, but Texas is unique in that its electricity is almost completely independent from the rest of...

From October 28, 2019: President Donald Trump  announced  on Sunday that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, died in a raid conducted by U.S. Special Operation Forces. The president used highly unusual language to describe the raid, including that al-Baghdadi “died like a dog.” He also stated that the U.S. would be “leaving soldiers to secure the oil.” Scott R. Anderso...

Last night, U.S. forces in Northern Syria killed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi who until yesterday was the current leader of ISIS. It was an operation in which at least 13 people, including civilians, were killed, apparently when al-Qurayshi detonated a bomb that destroyed the building they were in.  What are the implications for the future of ISIS, for the future of Syria and for t...

We talk a lot on this show about the responsibility of major tech platforms when it comes to content moderation. But what about problems the platforms can’t—or won’t—fix? Tracy Chou’s solution involves going around platforms entirely and creating tools that give power back to users to control their own experience. She’s the engineer behind Block Party , an app that allows Twitter users to pro...

Last month, the New York Times ran a story about YouTube videos promoting tourism to China and promoting messages sympathetic to the Chinese government. The accounts are a part of a broader network of profiles on Twitter, YouTube and other social media, spreading pro-Beijing narratives. To talk through the story and what to make of the accounts, Jacob Schulz sat down with one of the story's author...