The Lawfare Podcast

Matthew Ford, Associate Professor at Swedish Defence University and author of “ War in the Smartphone Age: Conflict, Connectivity, and the Crises at Our Fingertips ,” joins Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss the role of smartphones and related technologies in war, how social media contributes to a collapse of context in the war content we see online, and how smartphones and other devices ar...

Lawfare Contributor Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Michael O'Hanlon, Director of Foreign Policy Research and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Chairman of the Centre for Defence Strategies in Kyiv, a former Ukrainian Defence Minister, and a nonresident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss ways of defending Ukraine from present...

In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff, and Lawfare contributor James Pearce to discuss the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at John Bolton’s house, a federal judge ruling that Alina Habba was unlawfully serving as a U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss his in...

From August 1, 2024: Anastasiia Lapatina is a Kyiv-based Ukraine Fellow at  Lawfare . Marcel Plichta is a Fellow at the Centre for Global Law and Governance at the University of St. Andrews, and a former analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense who currently works as an instructor at the Grey Dynamics Intelligence School.  For this episode, Lapatina sat down with Plichta to discuss Ukra...

From May 3, 2024: Over the past several years, governors around the country from both political parties have used their respective National Guards for an increasingly unconventional array of domestic missions, ranging from teaching in public schools to regulating immigration at the southern border. To discuss how this trend may impact the National Guard—and our broader democracy, particularly in t...

For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson sits down with Lawfare Contributing Editor and Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Asaf Lubin and Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Deborah Housen-Couriel to talk over the European Court of Human Rights' recent decision in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia . Together, they discuss how the opin...

Alan Rozenshtein, Research Director at Lawfare , sits down with  Sam Winter-Levy , a Fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace;  Janet Egan , a Senior Fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security; and  Peter Harrell , a Nonresident Fellow at Carnegie and a former...

This week, Scott sat down with his colleagues Anna Bower, Chris Mirasola, and Mykhailo Soldatenko to talk through the week’s big national security news, including: “Wings and a Prayer.” The Ukraine conflict has been the subject of intense shuttle diplomacy over the past week, as President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to a meeting in Alaska last Friday, only for Ukrainian Preside...

Adam Chan, National Security Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and inaugural Director of the FCC’s new Council on National Security, joins  Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss the FCC’s rulemaking on submarine cables and national security. They discuss the FCC’s new submarine cable rules, the role of submarine cables in the U.S. telecommunications supply chain and in the...

In a live conversation on August 18, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko, Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina, and Carnegie Senior Fellow Eric Ciaramella about President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting in Alaska on Aug. 15, Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other European leaders,...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff, and  Lawfare  contributor Chris Mirasola to discuss D.C.’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s  attempts to assume control of the Metropolitan Police Department , litigation over...

From July 31, 2024: For this episode,  Lawfare  General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook to discuss his new  book , “The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.” Together, they examined the United States’ long history in the Middle East, how it successfully (and unsuccess...

From August 14, 2024: Over the past week, Ukrainian forces have launched a major incursion into Russia proper, occupying 1,000 square kilometers in Kursk Oblast, which borders Ukraine. The operation, which caught both Russia and the United States by surprise, is the first major Ukrainian offensive in more than a year. In this episode,  Lawfare  Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down w...

In this episode of Scaling Laws , Dean Ball, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Prof...

On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with a member of the Ukrainian parliament, Anastasiia Radina, to discuss the Ukrainian government’s attack on the country’s independent anti-corruption agencies, which sparked the first country-wide protests since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare&nbs...

This week, a rejuvenated Scott returned from vacation to sit down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Daniel Byman, and Kate Klonick to talk through some of the week’s big national security news, including: “Occupational Hazards.” The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated its intent to occupy Gaza City, the last segment of Gaza not under Israeli military c...

In their new book, “ Command of Commerce: America’s Enduring Economic Power Advantage Over China ,” Steve Brooks and Ben Vagle argue that the United States’ economic advantage over China is much larger than is commonly believed. They contend that if the United States were to cut China off from the U.S. economy and from the economies of U.S. allies, China would suffer significantly more than the Un...

On today’s episode,  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Seth Harp, an investigative reporter, U.S. Army Reserve veteran, and a former Assistant Attorney General for the state of Texas to discuss Harp’s new book, “ The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces .”  They discuss Harp’s experiences reporting on the murder of two special...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff, and  Lawfare  contributor Peter Harrell to discuss the D.C. Circuit vacating Judge Boasberg’s probable cause of contempt by the Trump administration, where the legal challenges to President Trump’s IEEPA tar...

From August 6, 2024: A new film from  Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines series called “The Night Won’t End”  profiles three Palestinian families as they try to survive the war in Gaza. On today’s episode,  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien speaks to the documentary’s director, Kavitha Chekuru, along with a few of the journalists and researchers who came together to work on the proj...

From June 7, 2023: On January 1, 2023, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as president of Brazil. A week later, insurrectionists in Brazil stormed government buildings, including the president’s palace, the Supreme Federal Court, and the National Congress building to violently disrupt the democratic transition of power and challenge the results of the election. Lula, however, remained undeterr...

Brian Fuller, a member of the Product Policy Team at OpenAI, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare , to analyze how large AI labs go about testing their models for compliance with internal requirements and various legal obligations. They also cover the ins and outs of what it means to work in product policy and...

Sam Bresnick, Research Fellow and Andrew W. Marshall Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), joins Lawfare ’s Justin Sherman to discuss his recently published report, “ Big Tech in Taiwan: Beyond Semiconductors .” They discuss a previous report Sam coauthored with Georgetown CSET colleagues, “ Which Ties Will Bind? ,” looking at U.S. Big Tech...

Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Oona Hathaway, Yale Law Professor and President-elect of the American Society of International Law, to discuss how the current world events are harming the norm prohibiting the use of force in international relations, why that's troubling, and what to do about it. They chat about the current U.S. administration's policies, recent strikes on I...

On today’s episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Minna Ålander, an associate fellow at Chatham House Europe Programme, and Max Bergmann, the Director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss NATO’s historic decision to increase its member state’s defense spending to 5% of their Gross Domestic Produc...