The Lawfare Podcast

For today's episode, Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Dan Byman, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace; and Natan Sachs, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, to discuss several recent developments in the Israel-Hamas conflict and the broader...

Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, speaks to Senior Editor Roger Parloff about the cases he has led challenging the validity of Pres. Trump's Alien Enemies Act Proclamation. They discuss the ACLU's recent victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the status of the group's original case, in Washington, D.C., including its attempt to inquire i...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff and  Lawfare  Public Service Fellow Michael Feinberg to discuss the Supreme Court staying a lower court order that prevented the firing of Rebecca Slaughter as FTC Commissioner, a f...

From June 3, 2024: Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, joins  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk about last month’s NATO Youth Summit. Building off of her chapter  “NATO, Public Opinion, and the Next Generation: Remaining Relevant, Remaining Strong,”  in the 2021 book, “NATO 2030: Towards a New Strategic Concept and Bey...

From September 27, 2022: In just under a week, on October 2, Brazil will hold the first round of its general election, which will determine the country's next president. To talk through all things Brazilian politics,  Lawfare  managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade of experience living and report...

Steven Adler, former OpenAI safety researcher, author of Clear-Eyed AI on Substack, and independent AGI-readiness researcher, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Fellow at Lawfare , to assess the current state of AI testing and evaluations. The two walk through Steven’s views on industry efforts to improve model testing and what he...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Natalie Orpett, and Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School Rebecca Ingber, to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Uninvited Aerial Vehicles.” The Polish government is claiming that nineteen armed Russian UAVs penetrated its airspace last night. While Russians are suggesting no attack was intended,...

Twenty-four years ago today, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, another hit the Pentagon, and another went down in a field in Pennsylvania. It was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in American history. But the men the United States accuses of perpetrating the attacks haven't been held accountable. In fact, they haven't even gone to trial. For today's podcast, Executi...

For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack sit down with Adam Chan, the first National Security Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to discuss the FCC’s increasingly important role in U.S. national security policy. Together they discuss the origins of the FCC’s role in national security, how and why it has grown in an...

For today’s episode, Lawfare Contributing Editor Renée DiResta interviews Joan Barata, Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Porto; Laís Martins, journalist at The Intercept Brazil and Fellow at Tech Policy Press; and James Görgen, adviser to Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade, and Services, to discuss the dramatic intersection of tech policy and geopolitical pressure unf...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Roger Parloff and Scott Anderson,  Lawfare  Public Service Fellow Loren Voss, and the Brennan Center's Katherine Yon Ebright to discuss the ongoing activation of National Guard in the District of Columbia, the Trump Administration's lethal st...

From March 28, 2024: One of the gravest threats to U.S. national security today—and also one of the newest—is the risk of cyberattacks. They come in many forms, and they can incapacitate companies, institutions, and even the government.  To better understand these threats—and how the government is responding to them­— Lawfare  Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and  Lawfare  Contr...

From August 22, 2024: Anastasiia Lapatina is a Kyiv-based Ukraine Fellow at  Lawfare . Leopoldo Lopez is a Venezuelan opposition leader living in exile in Madrid, after escaping prison for leading protests against Nicolás Maduro in 2014. Lapatina and Lopez discuss the results of Venezuela’s recent presidential election, ties between Venezuela’s autocrat Nicolás Maduro and other dictators...

In a live conversation on Sept. 4, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School Rebecca Ingber to discuss the U.S. strike on an alleged “drug boat” traveling from Venezuela, the president’s authority to use lethal force outside of war, and more. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare  Mate...

Anu Bradford, Professor at Columbia Law School, and Kate Klonick, Senior Editor at Lawfare and Associate Professor at St. John's University School of Law, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , to assess the ongoing, contrasting, and, at times, conflicting regulatory approaches to Big Tech being pursued by the EU a...

For today's episode,  Lawfare  Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviews Mark Cancian, a Senior Adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to assess the impact and implications of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan. Cancian discusses why China might choose blockade over an outright invasion, how the blockade might affect Taiwan, the risks of escalation, and what the U...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower, Tyler McBrien, and Peter Harrell to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Faginomics.” With the recent announcement that the U.S. government would be taking a 10% stake in the company Intel, the Trump administration has ushered in a new era of state-guided industrial policy, fueled by concerns of ma...

In a live conversation on Sept. 2,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, and  Lawfare  Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to discuss Sunday’s emergency hearing in  L.G.M.L. et al. v. Kristi Noem —in which Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the Trump administration’s plans to send unaccompanied m...

On today’s episode, Molly Reynolds, Contributing Editor at Lawfare and Senior Fellow at Brookings, sits down with Zach Price, Associate Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco, and Phil Wallach, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss pocket rescissions as an approach to cancelling funds previously approved by Congress. They cover whether the practice is legal, how it threa...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Anna Bower and Scott Anderson,  Lawfare  contributor James Pearce,  Lawfare  Public Service Fellow Loren Voss, and The Atlantic staff writer Quinta Jurecic to discuss the legality of the Trump administration’s cancellation of $4.9 b...

From August 23, 2024: Richard Albert, William Stamps Farish Professor in Law, Professor of Government, and Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at  Lawfare , to conduct a comparative analysis of what helps constitutions withstand political pressures. Richar...

From August 28, 2024: On today’s episode, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors, Co-Director of the Africa Security Initiative, and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution joins  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to help make sense of the recent skirmishes in northern Mali between the junta, separatist groups, Islamists, and Rus...

Peter E. Harrell, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at  Lawfare , to examine the  White House’s announcement  that it will take a 10% share of Intel. They dive into the policy rationale for the stake as well as its legality. Peter and Kevin al...

On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Eric Ciaramella, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Lawfare Contributing Editor, to discuss the history of American security commitments abroad and how it can help inform the debate around security guarantees for Ukraine. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare  Mate...

This week, Scott sat down with old and new Lawfare colleagues—Benjamin Wittes, Renée DiResta, and Michael Feinberg—to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “An Old Fashioned Anti Raid.” Former Trump National Security Advisor (turned Trump critic) John Bolton got a rude awakening this past week when the FBI conducted a raid at his home, reportedly on the grounds tha...