Stay ConnectedThe Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law, we have doubled down on seriousness at a time when others are running away from it. Visit us at www.lawfareblog.com.
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The open nature of the internet has allowed malicious actors to abuse technology. Information operations, offensive cyber, and IP theft are just some examples of this misuse. The Biden administration has pursued an industrial policy that hopes to counter the weaponization of globalized systems. This approach includes technology subsidies, export controls, and rethinking supply chains. But this approach could undermine efforts to advance global rules and values.
To discuss how the United States can push back while bolstering democracy and human rights, Eugenia Lostri, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, sat down with former Ambassador Karen Kornbluh, Managing Director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative and Senior Fellow with the German Marshall Fund. Ambassador Kornbluh is the lead author on the new GMF report “The New American Foreign Policy of Technology.” They discussed why there’s a need to rethink American foreign policy, how to center democratic values, and the crucial role of a multistakeholder approach.
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On December 31, 2023, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will expire unless it is reauthorized by Congress. Section 702 authorizes the U.S. government, in order to obtain foreign intelligence information, to target foreigners who are reasonably believed to be outside of the U.S. and collect their communications inside the U.S. without a warrant—even when such surveillance may involve the incidental collection of communications of U.S. persons. Privacy and civil liberties advocates have long raised concerns about the government's ability to conduct so-called backdoor searches of U.S. person information acquired incidentally through the collection of the communications of foreigners. U.S.government officials have argued that it is imperative for Congress to reauthorize Section 702.
To talk about Section 702 and its reauthorization, Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Travis LeBlanc, a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and a partner at Cooley LLP. They discussed his concerns with the way the government may search or use U.S. person information incidentally collected under Section 702, the aspects of the government's position on reauthorization on which he may agree, and how he believes Congress should reform Section 702.
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By many accounts, the United States is living through a new era of competition—not just between major powers and strategic rivals, but between ideologies. Around the world, many authoritarian governments seem to be on the rise, even as many liberal democracies are facing a crisis of confidence, including, by some accounts, here in the United States.
In a new book entitled, “Defeating the Dictators,” Charles Dunst, a former journalist and current deputy director of research and analytics at The Asia Group, lays out what he sees as the right strategy for making democracies more effective and defeating the appeal of authoritarian government. Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with him to discuss his new book, the importance he places on Singapore as a case study, and how the domestic remedies he focuses on translate into foreign policy.
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Twenty years ago today, the United States invaded the nation of Iraq, intent on removing the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein and installing a stable democratic government. What followed instead was two decades of political instability and horrible sectarian violence that has yielded a modern Iraqi state that remains plagued with corruption and other problems, and is increasingly under immense pressure from the nearby regime in Iran.
To gain perspective on the legacy of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and how it continues to shape the relationship between the two countries today, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down for conversations with two individuals whose personal and professional lives have been intimately tied up in the last two decades of the U.S.-Iraq relationship. First, Scott sat down with Ambassador Doug Silliman, who is now the president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, and who previously served in numerous capacities in Iraq, including as ambassador, over his decades-long career as a U.S. diplomat. Scott then sat down with Salem Chalabi, an individual who has held numerous positions across several administrations in the Iraqi government over the past two decades, most recently serving as the head of the Trade Bank of Iraq until January of this year. In each conversation, they discuss the legacy of the U.S. invasion, how it impacts the bilateral relationship today, and the central role Iran has come to play in the country.
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The Academy loves a good spy flick, and so do we! This week, Shane Harris talks with Washington Post culture critic Alyssa Rosenberg about the enduring power of espionage on the big screen.
Movies like Zero Dark Thirty, the Mission: Impossible franchise, and this year’s Top Gun: Maverick and All Quiet on the Western Front, which both took home Oscars, help us understand global conflict as they wrestle with questions of personal morality. How do the stories of James Bond and George Smiley help us make sense of the fate of nations? And why is Hollywood finding it nearly impossible to tell stories about great power competition between the U.S. and China?
Shane and Alyssa go way back, and this is a fun, lively conversation about spy stories that have resonated through the decades. Alyssa has written for years about popular culture, books, and more recently parenting.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From February 24, 2020: What do Russia, China and Canada all have in common? They all disagree—in one manner or another—with American policy goals in the Arctic, where climate change is driving opportunities and challenges for U.S. policy-makers. In this episode, National Security Institute Visiting Fellow and former senior intelligence official Jim Danoy discusses his paper, “The Arctic: Securing the High Ground,” with host Lester Munson. They discuss the fascinating policy dilemmas posed by the unique geography of the North Pole and how the United States can exploit new opportunities to maximum benefit.
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Artificial Intelligence is advancing at what seems like an exponential rate, with every month—sometimes every week—bringing news of a new, game-changing discovery. But just as the progress in AI is accelerating, so is the pessimism about it, with many scholars, commentators, and technologists themselves raising the alarm about AI's potential harms to equality, privacy, and security.
Challenging this consensus is Orly Lobel, a law professor at the University of San Diego and the author of the new book, "The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future." Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Orly to discuss her book, why she's optimistic about AI's potential to advance equality, and what the government can do to help.
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As U.S. counterterrorism efforts have waned in Yemen, Libya, and parts of Pakistan, Somalia has emerged as the most active element in the “forever wars” that the U.S. has waged since 9/11, according to Eric Schmitt of the New York Times. Schmitt traveled to Somalia in February for a rare embed with U.S. Special Operations forces on the ground in the midst of a recent offensive launched by the Somali government against a formidable enemy, Al Shabab.
Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Eric and his Times colleague Charlie Savage to discuss the conflict in the Horn of Africa and the extent of U.S. military involvement there. They discussed the roots of the Shabab insurgency, whether or not the current moment marks an inflection point in the fight, the legal grounds on which the U.S. government justifies its campaign, and why the American public and government alike should pay more attention to Somalia.
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As Director of the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly is one of several women at the very top of the cybersecurity pyramid in the United States. A graduate of West Point, decorated U.S. Army officer, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jen has served her country in a plethora of senior cybersecurity and counterterrorism roles, and most recently before her return to government, was the head of Firm Resilience at Morgan Stanley.
David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Jen to talk about everything cybersecurity, about the need for revolutionary new approaches to emerging threats to our cyber and national security, the recent U.S. National Cyber Strategy, the cyber offense/defense flywheel, and even where her avatar got her cape. Jen also talks about CISA’s priorities for the coming years, new cyber incident reporting requirements, and new cybersecurity help coming to a city near you.
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For years, the international community has wrestled with how to reconcile sanctions policies targeting terrorist groups and other malevolent actors with the need to provide humanitarian assistance in areas under those groups’ control. Late last year, both the Biden administration and the UN Security Council took major steps toward a new approach on this issue, installing broad carveouts for humanitarian assistance into existing sanctions regimes.
To talk through these changes, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading sanctions experts: Rachel Alpert, a Partner at the law firm Jenner & Block and former State Department attorney, and Alex Zerden, the Founder and Principal of Capitol Peak Strategies and a former Treasury Department official, including at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. They talked about the long-standing issues surrounding humanitarian assistance, what these changes may mean in jurisdictions like Afghanistan, and where more changes may yet be forthcoming.
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Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace are the creators of the NPR audio documentary White Lies, which was a Pulitzer finalist for its first season. Chip and Andrew are back for season 2, a story they began reporting in 2015 after they stumbled on an archival photo of a prison riot in Talladega, Alabama. This season focuses on the Mariel boatlift, a 6-month period in 1980 during which 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States to seek asylum. What they found is as much an American immigration story as a history of American immigration—and the laws that govern it.
Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Chip and Andrew to discuss the legal fictions that prop up the U.S. immigration system, how a country with due process under the law justifies detaining people indefinitely, and their obsession with Lady Bird Johnson’s White House audio diaries.
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This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Naval Academy professor and cyberlaw expert Jeff "Two Effs" Kosseff to work through the week's big national security news stories, including:
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From March 19, 2021: Jack Goldsmith spoke with New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth about her new book, "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race." They discussed the dark world of markets for zero-day vulnerabilities that are so vital in offensive cyber operations, the history of the markets, how they work, who the players are and why the United States doesn't control as much as it used to. They also discussed broader issues of U.S. cybersecurity policy, including the recent SolarWinds hack.
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Kemba Walden recently took over from Chris Inglis as Acting National Cyber Director in the White House. She had been Principal Deputy Assistant National Cyber Director after serving in multiple cybersecurity positions in government and in the private sector.
David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and Executive Director of the University of California, Irvine’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, sat down with Kemba to talk about the challenges and opportunities of her new role, the recently released U.S. National Cyber Strategy and the significant policy changes it announces, threats to our national and economic security from China, and a fairly long discussion of music theory.
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During recent oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, a Supreme Court case concerning the scope of liability protections for internet platforms, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked a thought-provoking question. Does Section 230, the statute that shields websites from liability for third-party content, apply to a generative AI model like ChatGPT?
Luckily, Matt Perault of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had already been thinking about this question and published a Lawfare article arguing that 230’s protections wouldn’t extend to content generated by AI. Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Matt and Jess Miers, legal advocacy counsel at the Chamber of Progress, to debate whether ChatGPT’s output constitutes third-party content, whether companies like OpenAI should be immune for the output of their products, and why you might want to sue a chatbot in the first place.
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A few weeks ago, Human Rights Watch released a report on the forced expulsion of the Chagossian people, whom the United Kingdom deported from their island homes in the Indian Ocean about 60 years ago to make way for the United States to build a military base called Diego Garcia. The report recommends reparations for the Chagossian people and a trial for individuals responsible for these crimes against humanity—the very first time the group has laid such a charge at the door of the US and UK.
Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Philippe Sands, an international human rights lawyer who served as counsel for Mauritius in its bid to reclaim sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago. Philippe is the author of several books, including his most recent, "The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy," which is about the islands. They discussed the Chagossian people’s decades-long legal struggle to return to their ancestral home, a chance phone call from a ski lift, and the role of race and identity in the making and application of international law.
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On March 2, the Biden administration released its long-awaited National Cybersecurity Strategy. The new strategy comes more than two years after President Biden took office and sets out a bold vision to achieve a more cyber-secure future by the end of the decade. Lawfare Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with our in-house cyber experts, Lawfare’s Senior Editor Stephanie Pell and Fellow in Tech Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri, to discuss the strategy and their latest piece published on Lawfare, titled “The Biden-Harris Administration Releases New National Cybersecurity Strategy.”
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Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany are both Israeli legal scholars and longtime Lawfare contributors. Shany is a professor of international law at the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem. Cohen is a professor at Ono Academic College. They are both scholars at the Israel Democracy Institute, and together they are also co-authors of a six-part series in Lawfare about the ongoing effort by the Israeli government to alter the Israeli judicial system. It is a detailed account of a very serious reform operation in Israel, one that the authors argue is dangerous. They joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the ongoing protests in Israel, the ongoing legislative efforts, and the history of the Israeli judicial system and its growing power that has led to this crisis.
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For the past 20 years, Richard Haass has led the Council on Foreign Relations, building on his national security experience in government and his related work in academia and think tanks. Although his efforts have focused overwhelmingly on foreign policy, his central concern has turned to something closer to home: the decline of democratic norms in the United States. He's even written a new book about this problem and something we all can do about it, “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.”
David Priess and Haass discussed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and Haass' experiences leading it, reflections on his service in the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations, the mission of the Council on Foreign Relations and Haass's longest-ever tenure of leading it, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its many implications, the roles of China and India in this shifting strategic landscape, democratic decline in the United States, the ten habits that American citizens can adopt to heal our divisions and safeguard representative democracy in the U.S., and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From December 7, 2019: Wargaming has long been a staple of military strategizing, but how do we plan for the future in cyberspace, a realm where governments do not hold a monopoly on capabilities? A new report from the Atlantic Council argues that "visualizing and describing the evolution of cyber capabilities and strategic competition require envisioning multiple futures," and the report sets out to do exactly that. This week, Lawfare's Susan Hennessey sat down with John Watts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and JD Work, the Bren Chair for Cyber Conflict and Security at the Marine Corps University, who are authors of "Alternate Cybersecurity Futures," along with Nina Kollars, Ben Jensen, and Chris Whyte. They talked about the behind-the-scenes of strategic policy planning, the value of creativity, and what scenarios emerge when you ask cybersecurity experts to predict the future.
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This week, Lawfare Publisher David Priess wore his hat as a Senior Fellow at George Mason University's Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security to host a rare live conversation on counterintelligence with leading practitioners. His guests were Mirriam-Grace MacIntyre, Executive Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and Alan Kohler, Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI.
They discussed the organization known as the NCSC, the role it plays across the U.S. Government and beyond, and how the FBI's long-running counterintelligence efforts play into it. They talked a lot about the People's Republic of China and its extensive intelligence efforts against the U.S., as well as about counterintelligence and science, outreach to the public on these issues, how Congress fits in, and more. The event was not brief, so we have edited it slightly for length without losing any significant substance.
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Since December, Peru has been in the midst of a protracted politico crisis. Following a failed coup in early December, President Pedro Castillo was arrested, becoming the fifth president to leave office in Peru in five years. In the midst of protests, Castillo’s deputy Dina Boluarte took power. But protests have continued in the following months, with roughly 60 people dead—mostly protestors killed by the police and the military, as the Peruvian government takes an increasingly authoritarian turn.
After Castillo’s departure from office in December, Lawfare published a podcast conversation with Rodrigo Barrenechea, a 2022/23 Santo Domingo Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and an assistant professor at the Departamento de Ciencias Sociales of the Universidad Católica del Uruguay. With the violence and unrest continuing to unfold, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic asked Rodrigo back on the podcast for an update on where things stand. He explained why he thinks that Peru may no longer be fairly described as a democracy and why it’s hard to see an end to this crisis any time soon.
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Matthew Olsen, the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, gave yesterday a major address at the Brookings Institution. He talked about FISA Section 702, the section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows U.S. intelligence authorities to collect against targets reasonably believed to be overseas when their signals pass through the United States. The provision comes up for reauthorization this year, and Olsen argues that it is imperative that Congress act to reauthorize it. This audio from the Brookings event includes an introduction from Camille Busette, the Interim Vice President for Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution; remarks from Olsen; a Q&A between Olsen and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes; and questions from the live audience.
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There was a big showdown at the D.C. Circuit last week over the Speech or Debate Clause and Representative Scott Perry and his cell phone, the latter of which was seized by the FBI in connection with the Jan. 6 investigation. Representative Perry wants it back, and he does not want anything on it used in the investigation. He went to Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and moved to quash the order for his phone. The judge said no, Perry’s legal team appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held arguments last week.
To discuss it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Scott Anderson, and Dominic Solari, a Lawfare student contributor who wrote an oral argument preview and summary of the case.
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Remember Havana Syndrome? Diplomats, spies, and other people suddenly hearing a loud noise and then having neurological symptoms, sometimes debilitating... Was it a mass panic? Was it a sonic weapon? Was it a directed energy weapon? And who was wielding it?
These are the subjects of The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome, a new podcast series put out by Goat Rodeo, PRX, and Project Brazen. Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with journalist and host Nicky Woolf, and producer Max Johnston of Goat Rodeo, to talk about the truth of Havana Syndrome. Was it real, or was it a fantasy? What kind of weapon could do that sort of thing, and could you build one at home? And who would want to shoot a ray gun at U.S. personnel all over the world?
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This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott sat through literally hours of oral arguments to prepare to discuss all the national security developments in the news, including:
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From March 18, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and an expert on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statute that shields internet platforms from civil liability for third-party content on their websites. The statute has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, and both President Trump and President Biden separately called for its repeal. So what should we expect in terms of potential revision of 230 during the current Congress? What does Daphne think about the various proposals on the table? And how is it that so many proposals to reform 230 would be foiled by that pesky First Amendment?
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It’s the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. To talk about this first year and what comes next, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis. In a kind of tour of what's been happening in the region over the past year, they discussed what’s been going on in Ukraine, in Russia, in Eastern Europe, in Western Europe, and of course, in the United States.
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On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a pair of cases concerning to what extent online platforms can be held responsible for terrorist content on their services. Gonzalez v. Google focused on the scope of Section 230, which shields platforms from liability for third-party content. Twitter v. Taamneh, meanwhile, concerned whether platforms can be held liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act if members of terrorist groups use their services to recruit and spread their message.
Oral arguments took a combined five hours as the justices slogged through these difficult questions about the functioning of the modern internet. Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson, and Alan Rozenshtein, and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, sat down to discuss.
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Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence as part of the investigation into Trump’s role in instigating the Jan. 6 riot. But Pence has said he’ll fight the subpoena. And he’s pointed to the Speech or Debate Clause—a constitutional immunity that protects members of Congress—on the argument that he was acting as part of the legislative branch when he presided over the electoral count on January 6, 2021.
Setting aside Pence’s motives for taking this approach, the merits of the legal argument are less crazy than they might sound. Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Molly Reynolds sat down to talk through these issues with two former congressional lawyers: Eric Columbus, who recently served as Special Litigation Counsel in the House Office of General Counsel under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Mike Stern, a former senior counsel to the House of Representatives.
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Chris Inglis has had an illustrious career in the defense of this country, serving as an Air Force general, deputy director of the National Security Agency, and most recently as the first National Cyber Director in the White House. Chris stepped down from his position last week, and he sat down for his first interview as a private citizen with David Kris, Lawfare contributor and former assistant attorney general for the National Security Division, and Bryan Cunningham, Lawfare contributor and executive director of the University of California, Irvine’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute. They talked about a wide range of cyber topics, including the newly minted National Cyber Strategy, protection of critical infrastructure, cyber insurance, competition in the international front, and more.
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From April 30, 2021: When President Biden entered office, he inherited a bilateral relationship with Turkey that was strained to the limits by the growing independent streak in that country's foreign policy—and one that had been pushed in unfamiliar directions by his predecessor's direct and often unpredictable personal relationship with Turkey's longstanding president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This past week, the Biden administration made its first major move on the U.S.-Turkey relationship by recognizing the atrocities committed against Armenians by Ottoman authorities in the early 20th century as a genocide, a move that prior presidents had avoided for fear of how Turkey might react.
To discuss what these developments may mean for this key bilateral relationship, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Nicholas Danforth of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy and Asli Aydıntaşbaş of the European Council on Foreign Relations. They discussed how Turkey views its place in the world, what this means for its alliance with the United States and how the Biden administration is likely to respond moving forward.
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Along with co-editors Peter Feaver, William Inboden, and Meghan O'Sullivan, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is editor of the new “Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama.” This unique and massive book contains 30 Transition Memos prepared in 2008–2009 under Hadley's direction by the outgoing George W. Bush administration’s National Security Council staff for the incoming Obama Administration—each with a postscript by these same experts critically assessing the Bush foreign policy legacy.
Historians and national security junkies usually have to wait a long time for such materials to see the light of day; this consolidated content reveals much, and relatively quickly, about the various policies of the time and the extensive effort that was put into the gold-standard 2008–2009 transition.
David Priess asked Hadley about his experiences with presidential transitions dating back to the 1970s; how it felt to be on the receiving end of the transition process in 2000–2001; President George W. Bush's transition mandate to him and to Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in 2008; the substantive NSC Transition Memos on the Freedom Agenda, the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and PEPFAR; public perceptions of the national security advisor's role; how much national security advisors should interact with the media; and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From April 6, 2021: Natan Sachs is a Brookings senior fellow and the head of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Brookings Foreign Policy program. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Natan to talk about the results of the Israeli election, which are still unclear amid a haze over the entire political system. They talked about what the dispute between the camps is about, the many different factions and what they want, and why they can't sit together easily in a government. They also talked about the fact that Israel doesn't have a budget for the second year in a row, and they discussed whether anyone will be able to prevent the fifth election in two years.
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On February 14, the Brookings Institution hosted an event on the upcoming Supreme Court oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh—two cases that could potentially reshape the internet. The Court is set to hear arguments in both cases next week, on February 21 and 22. Depending on how the justices rule, Gonzalez could result in substantial changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the bedrock legal protection on which the internet is built.
For today’s podcast, we’re bringing you audio of that discussion. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic moderated a panel that included Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, with a joint appointment in electrical engineering & computer sciences and the School of Information; Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center; Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein; and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes.
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Earlier this month, a Pakistani man named Majid Khan started his new life in Belize after spending nearly half his previous life in U.S. detention, first at a CIA black site where he was subjected to torture and other mistreatment, and then at Guantanamo Bay. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law, and the author of several books, to discuss one of Khan's fellow inmates, Saifullah Paracha, as well Saifullah’s son Uzair. They discussed Karen's recent Lawfare article on the Parachas, the separate but intertwined systems of justice that the father and son navigated, and Guantanamo Bay's fraught past and uncertain future.
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The Jan. 6 committee’s final report on the insurrection is over 800 pages, including the footnotes. But there’s still new information coming out about the committee’s findings and its work.
Last week, we brought you an interview with Dean Jackson, one of the staffers who worked on the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the role of social media in the insurrection. Today, we’re featuring a conversation with Jacob Glick, who served as investigative counsel on the committee and is currently a policy counsel at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. His work in the Jan. 6 investigation focused on social media and far-right extremism. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jacob about what the investigation showed him about the forces that led to Jan. 6, how he understands the threat still posed by extremism, and what it was like interviewing Twitter whistleblowers and members of far-right groups who stormed the Capitol.
You can read Jacob’s essay with Mary McCord on countering extremism here in Just Security and listen to an interview with Jacob and his Jan. 6 committee colleagues here at Tech Policy Press.
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Last month's brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police has once again sparked a national conversation about the causes of and remedies for persistent police misconduct and abuse. To explore this issue, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA School of Law, who is the author of a new book called, “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.” The book argues that police abuse is a result of pervasive pathologies in the legal system that shield from accountability not just police officers, but also their supervisors and the local governments for which they work.
Joanna and Jack discussed the many accountability gaps in the legal regime governing police abuse. Like her book, they focused on problems of achieving justice through the civil rights system, problems that include the high bars to finding a lawyer and to convincing a judge to hear the case, Fourth Amendment doctrine, qualified immunity, and the challenges of municipal liability. They also discussed the best path to reform and the prospects of reform.
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Since it launched in November of last year, ChatGPT has been subject to widespread attention. Cyber criminals have been quick to try to find ways to abuse the AI tool for their own purposes, from improving their phishing emails and supporting money-making schemes, to writing malware. Could ChatGPT help lower entry barriers for less skilled cyber criminals to be?
To answer that question, Lawfare fellow in technology policy and law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Alexander Leslie, associate threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future. Alexander was the lead analyst for the recent report, “I, Chatbot,” which looked at how threat actors are trying to misuse ChatGPT. They discussed who are the threat actors that can benefit from it the most, the impact this will have on the cybercrime-as-a-service business model, and how to think through mitigation strategies.
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This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined once again by host emeritus Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's various freak-outs, including:
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From June 2, 2018: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) plays an essential role in advising the president on how to exercise his or her authority to block foreign investments that might let the U.S.'s adversaries acquire sensitive American technology or intellectual property. A bipartisan proposal in Congress aims to expand CFIUS’s powers. On Thursday, the Center for Strategic and International Studies convened a panel of Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon official; Ivan Schlager, a partner with Skadden Arps’ national security practice; Nova Daly, a senior public policy adviser with Wiley Rein; and CSIS Vice President James Andrew Lewis, to talk about CFIUS and how it might change under the new law.
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International law has been under significant stress in the last decade as a result of global populism, the rise of China, the war in Ukraine, and the challenges of the pandemic, climate change, and cybersecurity threats, among many others. To discuss why international law seems to be failing in important respects and what to do about it, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Paul Stephan, the John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, and author of the new book, “The World Crisis and International Law: The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future.” They discussed whether international law is truly failing, and if so, how; Stephan's claim that the accelerating pace of technological change induced by the knowledge economy best explains international law’s unraveling; why the highest courts of important states are increasingly rejecting international law and the orders of international courts and tribunals; and Stephan's bottom-up prescriptions for these problems.
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On January 26, the Department of Justice held a press conference to announce its months-long disruption campaign against the Hive ransomware group that has targeted more than 1,500 victims in over 80 countries around the world, including hospitals, school districts, financial firms, and critical infrastructure. In July 2022, the FBI penetrated Hive’s computer networks, captured its decryption keys, and, over the course of the ensuing months, offered the decryption keys to victims worldwide, preventing these victims from having to pay $130 million in ransom that Hive demanded.
To talk about this disruption operation, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Alex Iftimie, partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster and a former federal prosecutor in the National Security and Cyber Crimes Units in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. They talked about how the Hive ransomware group operated, the significant aspects of this disruption operation, and how this disruption operation fits into the broader picture of U.S. government efforts to disrupt ransomware groups and actors.
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The Jan. 6 Committee released its final report on December 22, 2022—the capstone of a year and half of investigative work. But while the report is 800 pages, there’s a lot that it doesn’t include. The Washington Post recently reported on the work done by investigators looking into the role of social media in enabling the insurrection—work that wasn’t incorporated into the final document.
Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Dean Jackson, project manager of the Influence Operations Researchers’ Guild at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served as an investigative analyst with the Jan. 6 committee, investigating the role of social media in the insurrection. They talked about his experience working on the investigation and what his team uncovered—and walked through what got left out from the final report.
You can read Dean’s essay with fellow Jan. 6 committee staffers Meghan Conroy and Alex Newhouse here on Just Security and listen to an interview with Dean and his colleagues here at Tech Policy Press.
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How does computer hacking work? When is it good, and when is it bad? And what does it have to teach us about law, politics, and inequality? These are some of the questions that Bruce Schneier, a well-known security expert and lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School, answers in his new book, “A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules and How to Bend Them Back.”
Jack Goldsmith sat down with Bruce to discuss what it means to have a hacker's mind, why all systems—not just computer systems—are hackable, how and why the powerful and wealthy are typically the most successful hackers, and what AI will mean for hacking various systems.
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Last week, the United States and the Philippines reached an agreement to expand U.S. military operations in the Philippines to deter China's increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The news was sandwiched between Air Force General Mike Minihan predicting that U.S. confrontation with China may happen as early as 2025 and Secretary Antony Blinken postponing his trip to China after a Chinese surveillance balloon was detected flying over the United States.
Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Dr. Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss the likelihood of military confrontation between the United States and China over Taiwan, and whether the United States has exhausted all of its deterrent capabilities to stall China from invading Taiwan.
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A sunken Soviet submarine. A secret CIA plan to lift it from the bottom of the ocean with a giant claw. And reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. It sounds like the makings of a Netflix series—and it should be. But the story of the Glomar Explorer is the stuff of fact, even if it has long been shrouded in secrecy.
In his new book, intelligence historian M. Todd Bennett pierces the veil surrounding this most improbable of intelligence operations and surfaces a riveting tale of underwater espionage and high-stakes foreign policy. The sub-salvage mission, which the CIA codenamed AZORIAN, was green-lit at a time of remarkable daring and ingenuity by the spy agency, which enjoyed only minimal oversight from Congress. But journalists brought the Glomar operation to light in another era, when scandals and excesses led lawmakers to rein in the intelligence community.
Shane Harris talks with Bennett about his book, “Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency,”which shows how the exposure of the secret program led to a public backlash against disclosures of classified information and helped reinforce the culture of secrecy that envelops the CIA’s work. The phrase “neither confirm nor deny,” which Bennett tells Harris has become a kind of coy cliche, originates from attempts to uncover the facts of the Glomar mission.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From June 3, 2020: Dr. Rashawn Ray is a David M. Rubenstein fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He's also an associate professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he directs the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR). He is a scholar of, among other things, police-civilian relations and has done a lot of work on police-involved killings. He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the mechanisms of police violence, what causes it, what can be done to address it and reduce it, and the role of race in this problem. They talked about police unions, implicit bias, the difference between legality and morality in police shootings and what policy levers are available to bring an end to the rash of police killings.
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Next month will mark the five-year anniversary of the CLOUD Act, a foundational piece of legislation on cross-border data transfers and criminal investigations. Before he was a University of Minnesota law professor and senior editor at Lawfare, Alan Rozenshtein worked in the Department of Justice where he was a member of the team that developed the CLOUD Act. In that capacity, he interacted with representatives from the large tech companies that would be most directly affected by the law. One of these people was Matt Perault, then the head of Global Policy Development at Facebook, and now the director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Matt joined Alan to discuss the CLOUD Act with two more people who were present at its creation: Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Aaron Cooper, a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block, who was at the time a colleague of Alan’s at the Department of Justice. They talked about the reasons for the CLOUD Act’s development, whether it has succeeded in its goals, and what we should expect to see in the next five years.
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Last December, a German court convicted a 97-year-old former Nazi camp secretary of complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people in what the media called—once again—the last Nazi trial. After almost eight decades, the Holocaust is still being litigated, remembered, and all-too-often misremembered.
Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Linda Kinstler, author of the book, “Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends,” and Sam Moyn, a professor of both history and law at Yale University, to discuss Linda's book. They talked about Linda's stunning discovery in Latvia that led her to tell this story, the limits of the law in holding perpetrators of mass murder accountable, and whether the antonym of forgetting is not remembering, but justice.
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You've likely heard of ChatGPT, the chatbot from OpenAI. But you’ve likely never heard an interview with ChatGPT, much less an interview in which ChatGPT reflects on its own impact on the information ecosystem. Nor is it likely that you’ve ever heard ChatGPT promising to stop producing racist and misogynistic content.
But, on this episode of Arbiters of Truth, Lawfare’s occasional series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with ChatGPT to talk about a range of things: the pronouns it prefers; academic integrity and the chatbot’s likely impact on that; and importantly, the experiments performed by a scholar name Eve Gaumond, who has been on a one-woman campaign to get ChatGPT to write offensive content. ChatGPT made some pretty solid representations that this kind of thing may be in its past, but wouldn't ever be in its future again.
So, following Ben’s interview with ChatGPT, he sat down with Eve Gaumond, an AI scholar at the Public Law Center of the University of Montréal, who fact-checked ChatGPT's claims. Can you still get it to write a poem entitled, “She Was Smart for a Woman”? Can you get it to write a speech by Heinrich Himmler about Jews? And can you get ChatGPT to write a story belittling the Holocaust?
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It seems like everyone has classified documents stashed away these days. First, it was Donald Trump, with the Justice Department investigation into documents stored improperly at Mar-a-Lago. Then, it was Joe Biden, with news that documents bearing classification markings were found at Biden’s Wilmington home and at the Penn Biden Center. And now, former Vice President Mike Pence has also uncovered classified materials at his home. What on earth is going on?
Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, publisher David Priess, and senior editor Scott Anderson to discuss. They talked about why classified documents are suddenly showing up everywhere; how to understand the differences between the Trump, Biden, and Pence cases; and what to make of the pickle that Attorney General Merrick Garland now finds himself in.
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For the last several days, Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been in court covering the Proud Boys trial on a live blog on Lawfare. The trial took a two-day break the other day, so Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to catch up on what is proving to be a grueling presentation of evidence. They talked about how the government has been doing in presenting its case against Enrique Tarrio and the other Proud Boys, where the defense has scored points, what evidence is left still to present, and how long this trial is likely to go.
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This week on Rational Security, Quinta and Scott were joined by special guest Michel Paradis to talk over the week's big national security news, including:
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From August 18, 2018: The President of the United States this week stripped the former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance in a dramatic White House statement by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The White House is threatening more adverse security clearance actions against presidential critics, and former senior security officials are outraged. Benjamin Wittes sat down Friday afternoon with Bradley Moss, who represents people in security clearance revocation processes, to discuss the president's move, how different it is from a normal security clearance action, and what we can expect if a lawsuit develops.
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Russia’s use of information warfare during the 2016 U.S. presidential election period focused attention on Russia’s weaponization of information in its effort to influence a U.S. election outcome and sow discord across the American public. But to the extent that we only view Russian information warfare as an aggressive or expansionist expression of Moscow’s foreign policy, we may misunderstand some key tenets of Russian information warfare doctrine.
To gain a better understanding of the history and dynamics of Russian information warfare, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Gavin Wilde, senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Justin Sherman, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. They discussed their new paper, "No Water’s Edge: Russia’s Information War and Regime Security,” and they talked about Russian information doctrine under Vladimir Putin, the differences between how the concept of information security is understood in Russia versus the West, and some key takeaways of their research for analysts and policymakers.
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Turkish President Erdoğan has thrown a giant wrench into Sweden's NATO membership bid after a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. This, in turn, affects Finland's application to the alliance because Sweden and Finland applied to and intended to join the alliance concurrently.
Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Minna Ålander, research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, to talk about how we got here, about what Finnish leaders have been saying about these new developments, and about paths forward for Finland and NATO.
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Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County held a hearing on Tuesday to decide whether or not to release the Fulton County Special Grand Jury's report on 2020 election interference in Georgia. Lawfare's Fulton County correspondent Anna Bower was in the room live-blogging the matter, and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes caught up with her right after the hearing to talk it through. Why did the district attorney argue that the report should continue to be sealed for now? What were the media organizations’ arguments, and which way was Judge McBurney leaning? Is the report going to become public? And if so, when?
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In 2019, investigative journalist and photographer Lynzy Billing went to Afghanistan to investigate a very personal story: her own past. In the process, she discovered what she came to call a classified war, one with lines of accountability so obscured that no one had to answer publicly for operations that went wrong.
Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Lynzy to talk through her four-year investigation, published last month in ProPublica. They discussed Afghanistan's shady Zero Units and their relationship with the CIA, the traumatic ripple effects caused by this lack of accountability, and why the U.S. continues to rely on a strategy of night raids, which Lynzy describes as quick, brutal operations that went wrong far more often than the U.S. has acknowledged. They also discussed why Lynzy decided to tell this story when few others would.
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Tech policy reform occupies a strange place in Washington, D.C. Everyone seems to agree that the government should change how it regulates the technology industry, on issues from content moderation to privacy—and yet, reform never actually seems to happen. But while the federal government continues to stall, state governments are taking action. More and more, state-level officials are proposing and implementing changes in technology policy. Most prominently, Texas and Florida recently passed laws restricting how platforms can moderate content, which will likely be considered by the Supreme Court later this year.
On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our occasional series on the information ecosystem, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with J. Scott Babwah Brennen and Matt Perault of the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill. In recent months, they’ve put together two reports on state-level tech regulation. They talked about what’s driving this trend, why and how state-level policymaking differs—and doesn’t—from policymaking at the federal level, and what opportunities and complications this could create.
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For almost 25 years, until his death in November 2018, former president George H. W. Bush's chief of staff was Jean Becker. For event after event through both the best of those times and the worst—from dozens of affirming trips overseas to several parachute jumps in his latter years to many funerals—Becker was there to schedule it, plan it, manage it, and often attend it. All of this has given her a uniquely wide and deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of a long post-presidency.
For the 30th anniversary of Bush 41's departure from the White House, Lawfare publisher David Priess chatted with Becker about how she first came to work with First Lady Barbara Bush, how that led to her work as chief of staff for Bush after he'd left office, the diverse activities of a lengthy post-presidency, former presidents' interactions with intelligence and classified material, Bush 41's choice to refrain from frequent political statements, his relationships with other presidents ranging from his son to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama to Joe Biden, and what a chief of staff for a former president actually does.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From December 11, 2020: This week, the Supreme Court returned once again to the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, that protects foreign sovereigns from litigation before U.S. courts. At the same time, Congress is once again debating new exceptions to the protections provided by the FSIA on issues ranging from cybercrime to the coronavirus pandemic, an effort that may risk violating international law and exposing the United States to similar lawsuits overseas. To discuss these developments and where they may be headed, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading scholars on sovereign immunity issues: Chimène Keitner, a professor at the UC Hastings School of Law and a former counselor on international law at the U.S. State Department, and Ingrid Wuerth, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School and one of the reporters for the American Law Institute's Fourth Restatement on U.S. foreign relations law.
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We have just ended Biden's first two years as president, and it's a great time to reflect back on the wild national security ride we’ve had. In fact, Chris Whipple has just done that by publishing his book, “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House,” a deeply reported book that contains many interviews with Biden's inner circle.
Lawfare publisher David Priess spoke with Chris about the transition from Trump to Biden, Biden's decision to pull out of Afghanistan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration's strategy of releasing intelligence before the invasion to try to both preempt the invasion and prepare European allies for what would come afterward, and much more.
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In the wake of September 11, 2001, federal law enforcement agencies were caught flatfooted when they realized that they'd had the intel to prevent the attack on the homeland, but they'd failed to connect those dots. Fusion centers were born out of an abundance of caution to share and streamline counterterrorism information between the federal level and state and local levels. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has supported the development of a national network of 80 fusion centers across the United States. And while its principle goal initially was to disseminate counterterrorism intel from the state and local levels, it's now expanded to include the sharing of intelligence regarding crimes or hazards more broadly.
Last month, the Brennan Center released a report entitled, “Ending Fusion Center Abuses,” explaining how fusion centers’ domestic intelligence model has undermined American's privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, who co-authored the report, as well as Thomas Warrick, a non-resident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Forward Defense Practice at the Atlantic Council. They discussed how fusion centers were conceived, where they've excelled as intelligence centers, and where they've abused their powers.
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In 2019, the U.S. government took a step that it had never taken before. It brought criminal charges against a foreign state-owned bank, Turkiye Halk Bankasi, or Halkbank, which is majority-owned by the country of Turkiye (until recently known as Turkey), for evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. Turkiye in turn argued that such a move was not only unprecedented but prohibited by the legal immunities it is entitled to under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA. Yesterday, those arguments reached the U.S. Supreme Court where both sides seemed to agree on just one thing—that the court's eventual decision could well have major consequences for the United States and its foreign relations.
To talk through oral arguments in Halkbank, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading sovereign immunity experts: Professor Chimène Keitner of the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and Professor Ingrid Wuerth of Vanderbilt Law School. They discussed how each side reads the FSIA and other related statutes, whether any of the justices seemed particularly persuaded, and where the court—as well as the broader issue—seems likely to go from here.
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Lawfare fellow in technology policy and law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud to talk about their new book, “Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy.” Laurent is the founder and executive director of Forbidden Stories, and Sandrine is its editor-in-chief. Along with Amnesty International’s Security Lab, they led the investigative effort by 17 international media organizations that in July 2021 exposed how some governments regularly used the Pegasus spyware against journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, and others. Their new book tells the story of how they conducted this investigation. Laurent and Sandrine talked about the operational security concerns they had to balance, how they coordinated this international effort, and the impact of their work.
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From August 17, 2019: Andrew Beck Grace and Chip Brantley are the creators of the NPR podcast audio documentary White Lies, which deals with the murder of Rev. James Reeb in Selma, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Era. The podcast is an incredible historical investigation of an episode that many people had forgotten, and resonates remarkably in contemporary discussions of domestic terrorism, white supremacist violence, and many other things we're still talking about today.
Benjamin Wittes talked with Andrew and Chip about how to tell the story of a murder that happened a long time ago, the FBI's role in investigating the crime at the time (what they did badly, and what they did right), and what it all says about terrorism today.
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This week on Rational Security, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott were joined by their Lawfare colleagues senior editor Molly Reynolds and managing editor Tyler McBrien to talk over some copycat-ing that's been taking place in the national security space, including:
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From March 21, 2015: This week, we invited Major General Michael Lehnert (Ret.), the first commander of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to chat on the show. In January 2002, General Lehnert deployed to Guantanamo Bay as Commander of Joint Task Force 160 with the mission to construct and operate the detention facilities for Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees. He is now one of the more prominent voices calling for the closure of the prison facility. In the interview, General Lehnert describes those early days of uncertainty before GITMO became "GITMO," how, while facing a policy vacuum in Washington, he built and managed the facility, and what he thinks should be done with the remaining detainees now. In the end, he offers advice for how future policymakers can avoid mistakes when conducting critical missions and making hard national security choices.
You can read General Lehnert's most recent piece calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention facility at Politico.
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Yesterday afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he has appointed a special counsel to investigate the revelations that documents bearing classification markings had been found in President Biden's private office and residence. The appointment comes after a preliminary investigation that began on November 14, just days before a different special counsel was appointed to investigate documents found at former President Trump's residence.
To go through it all, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Lawfare contributor Paul Rosenzweig, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, and Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson. They talked about why these circumstances triggered the special counsel regulations, what we know about potential criminal exposure, and how this may impact the ongoing special counsel investigation of Donald Trump.
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It's Proud Boys Trial Day at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, DC, when five leaders of the right wing paramilitary gang go on trial in a 10-count seditious conspiracy indictment.
To talk about this second major seditious conspiracy indictment, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff, who will be there live blogging it for the site. They talked about how it compares with the Oath Keepers case, which wrapped up over the fall. They talked about how the evidence is different, the Proud Boys being a bit more into the whole violence thing than the Oath Keepers. They talked about whether there was a plan, and they talked about whether the defendants can get a fair trial in the overwhelmingly Democratic District of Columbia.
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Various press reports have indicated that the Biden administration intends to release its cyber strategy in the coming weeks. The cyber strategy will likely cover a range of issues. One potential topic could involve the creation of a federal response or “backstop” to the financial exposure risks that insurers and reinsurers face from future catastrophic cyber incidents affecting those that they insure.
To talk about the pros and cons of a federal backstop for the cyber insurance ecosystem, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Bryan Cunningham, executive director of the Cybersecurity Research and Policy Institute at the University California, Irvine, who co-authored the article, “Uncle Sam Re: Improving Cyber Hygiene and Increasing Confidence in the Cyber Insurance Ecosystem via Government Backstopping.” They talked about what is keeping cyber insurance executives up at night, why the cyber insurance industry has not incentivized better cyber hygiene by the insured, and how a federally funded backstop could assist in shoring up the cyber insurance ecosystem.
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District Attorney of Fulton County Fani Willis has completed her special grand jury investigation of election tampering in 2020. The special purpose grand jury has completed its report and has been dissolved, and the supervising judge yesterday scheduled a hearing for January 24 to decide whether to make the report public. What will happen next? Will there be indictments? Are they going to wait until after the report comes out, or should we expect them imminently? Should we expect a Trump indictment coming next?
To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare contributor Anna Bower, Georgia State University Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, and Tamar Hallerman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and co-host of the podcast Breakdown, which has followed the special grand jury from the beginning.
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On Friday evening, we had no idea if Kevin McCarthy was going to be elected speaker or not, so Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Brookings senior fellow and Lawfare senior editor Molly Reynolds to talk through the options. They talked about why it actually matters if you have a Speaker of the House, how long the House of Representatives can go without one before the government falls apart, and the consequences of the compromises Kevin McCarthy made.
On Sunday afternoon, Ben and Molly sat down again to record an update to their earlier conversation based on the results of Friday night’s vote.
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Abigail Spanberger, who represents Virginia's 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives, is one of the few members of Congress to have served as an operations officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. She also worked in law enforcement as an officer of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Not typical experiences for a thrice-elected politician—but useful for the role she finds herself in now.
On this episode of Chatter, David Priess chatted with Rep. Spanberger about her recent re-election to the House, the nature of "swing districts," working across the aisle, her road to working at CIA, her experiences as a postal inspector and intelligence operations officer, what she sees as important national security issues right now, her advice for former colleagues considering a run for elective office, and how listening skills she learned at CIA have helped her as a representative.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From January 6, 2021: Today a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol following a rally at which the president spoke. Congressional efforts to count the electoral votes were suspended, and an armed standoff, in which at least one person was killed, ensued. To discuss the matter, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Quinta Jurecic; David Priess; Georgetown's Mary McCord, who used to run the National Security Division at the Justice Department; and Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown and Lawfare's foreign policy editor.
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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. They discussed what has been done across the many diverse areas in which we have sought accountability for Jan. 6—to do justice, to tell the story, and to make legal and policy changes to prevent this from ever happening again. They talked about criminal investigations and prosecutions, the Jan. 6 committee, congressional storytelling, the legislative process, what is left to do, and what’s been left undone. And they consider a big question: are we safer now than we were then?
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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.
This was the subject of a lengthy article in the Washington Post, the lead author of which was Shane Harris. Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Shane to discuss the article, what we know about the Nord Stream attacks, and what we know about who could be behind them.
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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.
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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 some of these assets available to Ukraine, it begs the question: Under what legal authority can the United States seize these Russian frozen assets?
Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson and Chimène Keitner, Alfred & Hanna Fromm Professor of International & Comparative Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, wrote a piece for Lawfare titled, “The Legal Challenges Presented by Seizing Frozen Russian Assets,” where they explain the core legal issues that U.S. policymakers need to consider as they weigh whether and how to move forward with seizing any frozen Russian-related assets. Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Scott to discuss all of this, as well as to get Scott's take on how the U.S. might move forward in its efforts to support Ukraine using Russian assets, notwithstanding, of course, the many legal constraints it faces.
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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 Chafetz, a law professor and author of the book "Congress's Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers." They talked about his most recent article, in which he argues that congressional overspeech, like congressional oversight, is actually an important tool of constitutional politics, even if it doesn't automatically produce good outcomes.
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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:
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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 Amendment!” at some point. But the cultural conception of the First Amendment doesn’t always match the legal conception. Evelyn and Quinta spoke with Genevieve about what First Amendment doctrine actually says, how its history might be quite different from what you think and what the dynamism of the doctrine over time—and the current composition of the Supreme Court—might suggest about the First Amendment’s possible futures for grappling with the internet.
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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 years away. They also discussed the current limitations of artificial intelligence, whether there are any dangers to our current approach and whether AI's advancement to super intelligence is really inevitable.
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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, to uncover how the Kremlin crafts its narratives and spreads disinformation to its people.
To unpack the findings of the investigation and their implications, Lawfare associate editor Katherine Pompilio sat down with the journalists that conducted the investigation: Paul Mozur, a New York Times correspondent focused on technology and geopolitics in Asia; Adam Satariano, a New York Times technology correspondent focused on digital policy; and Aaron Krolik, an interactive news journalist and developer also at the Times. They discussed how they conducted their investigation, Russia's propaganda machine that they describe as the country's greatest wartime success, the limits of the disinformation campaign, and more.
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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 Americans' data raises interesting questions about the existing data protection and privacy frameworks in the U.S.
To discuss what is going on, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Caitlin Chin, a fellow with the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has been closely following these developments. They discussed why TikTok is considered a national security threat to the United States, why a ban might not be the right solution to this problem, and her recommendations for what a comprehensive data protection framework should look like.
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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 foreign policy writer Jonathan Guyer to discuss his reporting on Rebellion Defense. They talked about the thorny ethical questions of artificial intelligence on the battlefield, the unholy alliance of Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, and why one former Rebellion Defense employee likened the company to a “Fyre Festival led by Jar Jar Binks.”
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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 in the four years of the Trump administration, the trickle of norm violations became a torrent. As a response, many in academia, the media and politics have called for Congress to pass legislation that would codify what had previously been unwritten norms of behavior, from requiring that presidential candidates disclose their tax returns to limiting the president's pardon power.
In a forthcoming article in the Georgetown Law Journal, Jonathan Gould, assistant professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzes many of these proposals and points out the potential unintended consequences of trying to commit unwritten norms to legislative language. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Jonathan about the importance and erosion of constitutional norms, especially within the executive branch, and how best to repair them.
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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 Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland,” to Chatter to explore how the stories of rejected presidents in the past shed light on Trump's effort to retake the Oval Office now—with a whole lotta Grover in the conversation.
They discussed how we rate U.S. leaders, the cases of presidents who lost their reelection bids and then tried again, what drove those men to do so, Grover Cleveland's formative experiences, his political offices in New York, how he became president, his predilection for vetoes, his loss in 1888, his comeback in 1892, why Cleveland is largely forgotten, how our views of presidents change over time, how Cleveland's effort in 1892 to regain the presidency compares to Trump's attempt now, and more.
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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, Molly Reynolds, and Roger Parloff.
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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 national security. And even by the usual standards of Congress, this year's process has been a chaotic one.
To discuss, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with fellow Lawfare senior editor and Brookings Institution colleague Molly Reynolds. They talked about the process that led to this year's bills and highlighted some notable items that are in them— and some notable items that aren't.
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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 Wheeler, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (or FCC), and Admiral (ret.) David Simpson, professor at Virginia Tech and former chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau at the FCC. They just published a new paper entitled, “5G is Smart, Now Let’s Make it Secure.” They talked about the 5G cyber paradox, three specific cybersecurity challenges they outline in the paper, and recommendations they make for addressing these cybersecurity challenges going forward.
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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 crimes. Shortly after the event concluded, the committee released the executive summary of its final report.
To talk through it all, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down for a live event with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic, Roger Parloff, Molly Reynolds, and Alan Rozenshtein, as well as editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes.
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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 the police and military that has left 25 people dead.
To understand what’s going on right now in Peru, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Rodrigo Barrenechea, a 2022/23 Santo Domingo Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and an assistant professor at the Departamento de Ciencias Sociales of the Universidad Católica del Uruguay. They talked about how and why Peru ended up here, the fragile state of the country’s democracy, and why Rodrigo thinks that Castillo’s attempted dissolution of Congress was “the most ill-planned coup d’etat in Latin American history.”
You can read Rodrigo’s article on the crisis in the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio(in Spanish) here.
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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 and of the implications it has for our privacy and security is Chris Slobogin, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School and one of the leading scholars of the digital Fourth Amendment. Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Chris to discuss his new book, “Virtual Searches: Regulating the Covert World of Technological Policing,” in which Chris explains how the traditional legal framework for surveillance is out of date and what should take its place. Alan and Chris talk about the importance of taking a more flexible approach to what makes a search reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, and why it's so important for legislatures to pre-authorize any police surveillance techniques.
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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 policymaker who leads the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, has written a new survey of the 40th president's national security policies, “The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink.” In it, he uses newly declassified documents and policymaker interviews to give an informative and insightful reassessment of the formation, development, execution, and impact of Reagan's foreign policy.
In this episode of Chatter, David Priess and Inboden touch on the challenges of conducting research on decades-old administrations, the National Security Council process under different presidents, Reagan's influence on an entire generation, the origins of Reagan's national security views, the impact of the 1981 assassination attempt, the nature and influence of Reagan's faith, his evolving relationship with Soviet leaders, the Reykjavik summit, how close the US and USSR came to agreeing to eliminate nuclear weapons, Reagan's legacy beyond the Cold War, what Will would ask Reagan if he had the chance to do so, how Reagan might view the United States today, why Reagan is hard to capture onscreen, and more.
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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 tax. So, is this a story of a president merely in massive debt, or is there something more sinister at play? To whom does the president owe all this money? And what are the national security risks of the president being in this sort of financial position? To try to break it all down, Susan Hennessey sat down with Margaret Taylor, formerly a fellow at Brookings and senior editor at Lawfare; Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the author of "The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency"; and Adam Davidson, a contributing writer to The New Yorker who has written extensively on Trump's financial entanglements.
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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 of Comparative and International Law at UCLA Law School, about his new book, “The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire.” They discussed the role played by Bunche and the United Nations in the decolonization movement, what made Bunche such a great diplomat, Bunche’s view of the relationship between empire and domestic racial segregation, and more.
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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 following his suspension after the Jan. 6 insurrection. How should we think through the difficult question of how social media platforms should handle the presence of a political leader who delights in spreading falsehoods and ginning up violence?
Luckily for us, Stanford and UCLA recently held a conference on just that. On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic sat down with the conference’s organizers, election law experts Rick Hasen and Nate Persily, to talk about whether Trump should be returned to social media. They debated the tangled issues of Trump’s deplatforming and replatforming … and discussed whether, and when, Trump will break the seal and start tweeting again.
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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 investigations.
To discuss the implications and potential impact of this new security feature, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Riana Pfefferkorn, research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory. They discussed the costs and benefits to users who may choose to opt in to this feature, how Apple's choice to offer this feature plays into a broader conflict known as the Crypto Wars, and how this feature relates to another part of Apple's announcement where it indicated that it would not be scanning all iPhones for child sexual abuse material before images were backed up to iCloud.
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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 hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters. Lawfare legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani attended the argument, and Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with her to discuss what the parties argued, how the judges responded, and what might happen to the charge of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.
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When Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen shared a trove of internal company documents to the Wall Street Journal in 2021, some of the most dramatic revelations concerned the company’s use of a so-called “cross-check” system that, according to the Journal, essentially exempted certain high-profile users from the platform’s usual rules. After the Journal published its report, Facebook—which has since changed its name to Meta—asked the platform’s independent Oversight Board to weigh in on the program. And now, a year later, the Board has finally released its opinion.
On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic sat down with Suzanne Nossel, a member of the Oversight Board and the CEO of PEN America. She talked us through the Board’s findings, its criticisms of cross-check, and its recommendations for Meta going forward.
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This week on Rational Security 2.0, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were reunited after a few weeks apart to talk through the week's big national security news, including:
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From April 14, 2021: A lot of people are expressing anxiety about white supremacist violent terrorism, yet in a new Brookings paper entitled "Identifying and Exploiting the Weaknesses of the White Supremacist Movement," Daniel Byman, Lawfare's foreign policy editor and a senior fellow at the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, and Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, say that while the threat is real, these movements have weaknesses that other terrorist groups do not. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Byman and Pitcavage to talk about these weaknesses, how white supremacist groups are vulnerable and how law enforcement in the United States can exploit them to reduce the threat.
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The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday heard oral arguments in the case of Blassingame v. Trump, an appeal from a civil lawsuit against the former president over Jan. 6. The question before the appeals court is: Does a president have immunity from lawsuit even when he's accused of stirring up a mob against a coordinate branch of government engaged in a function constitutionally entrusted to it? The judges seemed skeptical of the former president's argument, which was a bit of a surprise given the composition of the panel.
To chew it all over, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor and University of Minnesota Law School professor Alan Rozenshtein, who followed the oral arguments and live tweeted them. They talked about the case that gave rise to the arguments, how it played out at the lower court, and what the Supreme Court might do when it confronts this question down the road.
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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what may be the biggest case of the term: Moore v. Harper. In that case, North Carolina’s state legislature is arguing that the state Supreme Court lacks the legal authority to review the heavily gerrymandered congressional districts it has enacted, on the grounds that the Constitution's elections clause gives that authority exclusively to the state legislatures—an argument often referred to as the independent state legislature doctrine, which many fear may undermine state law election protections around the country if taken up by the Court.
To discuss, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down on Twitter Spaces with Professor Ned Foley of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Professor Derek Muller of the University of Iowa College of Law. They discussed where the justices seem to be leaning, how they may resolve different aspects of the party's arguments, and what it all might mean for 2024.
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Earlier this fall, the Biden administration released what it called a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” a policy document that lays out a five-pillar strategy for how the United States intends to wrestle with and regulate the challenges arising from the increasingly common use of artificial intelligence. In recent weeks, the European Union has been wrestling with its own AI regulation challenges and is now on the verge of releasing its own similar strategy.
Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Alex Engler, a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, who has been closely tracking these policies. They talked about the challenges AI poses to policymakers, the strategy the United States is set to pursue, and how it is both different from and similar to the EU’s approach.
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J. Edgar Hoover served as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years, from 1924 until 1972. Since his death, Hoover has become one of the most reviled figures in American history due to FBI operations under his leadership to spy on Americans, including government officials, in order to manipulate democratic politics.
To discuss Hoover's extraordinary role in American politics in the 20th century and the continuing influence of his legacy today, Lawfare co-founder and Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith sat down with Yale University history professor Beverly Gage, who is the author of a new biography of Hoover called, “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.” They discussed why Hoover's place in American history is much more complex than conventional wisdom suggests; Hoover as a master bureaucrat who managed the press, Hollywood, and senior government officials to maintain enormous popularity throughout his reign as FBI director; how Hoover, the fierce anti-communist, was the key to the elimination of McCarthyism in the 1950s; and much, much more.
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On Thursday afternoon, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in the amusingly captioned case Trump v. United States of America. The three-judge panel vacated District Judge Aileen Cannon's order appointing a special master to review the material seized at Mar-a-Lago by the Justice Department, and it ruled in scathing language that she had no authority to entertain the case at all
To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down before a live audience on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett and Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson. They went through the decision page-by-page and talked about whether things would speed up now that Judge Cannon's ruling is out of the way and what kind of message the 11th Circuit is sending to a new judge who seemed to be willfully intervening on the part of the ex-president.
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Plagues periodically exact a heavy toll on human life—and much more. They devastate economies, exacerbate social disorder, shock governance systems, provide fodder for political violence, and interact in surprising ways with terrorism.
In this episode of Chatter, David Priess and longtime RAND Corporation terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins talk about the long nature of pandemics, the history of public resistance to efforts to protect public health, links between plagues and social unrest, how the concept of comorbidity applies to the effects of pandemics, the relationship between plagues and political violence, the challenges of rumors and rapid communication, the threat of biological terrorism, and pragmatic ways to counter domestic political violence.
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From April 28, 2020: Sophia Yan, a correspondent for the London Telegraph, joined Benjamin Wittes from Beijing where she is in coronavirus lockdown after traveling to Wuhan, China, to see how it was recovering from being the coronavirus epidemic center earlier in the year. They talked about what Wuhan looks like these days, what quarantine means in China, and how close the surveillance is. And they talked about the Chinese government, how it is responding to the crisis, and about how the Chinese economy is recovering and suffering.
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U.S. Cyber Command was established on May 21, 2010, and is the second youngest unified combatant command after U.S. Space Command in the United States. As explained in the Command history, U.S. Cyber Command operates globally in real time against determined and capable adversaries. Lawyers who work in the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate at Cyber Command provide legal advice on a range of issues, including the legality of offensive cyber operations.
Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Kurt Sanger, a recently retired Cyber Command lawyer, to discuss the kind of work he did and issues he addressed at U.S. Cyber Command. They talked about why the application of international law can be challenging in the cyber domain, some of the most vexing international legal issues with respect to offensive cyber operations, and some legal issues he is observing in the context of the current armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
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Protests have broken out in China over the zero-Covid policy, over lockdowns, and even over the rule of newly appointed third-term leader Xi Jinping. The government has begun a crackdown, there have been arrests, there have been intimidating interrogations, there have been street closures, and there has been a lot of internet content removed.
To go over it all and see what we can make of it, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Sophia Yan, who just left China where she has been The Telegraph’s correspondent for a number of years. They talked about whether these protests might have legs, about what capacity the government has to shut them down, and about whether this could be the beginning of something.
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The 2002 Iraq AUMF authorized the invasion of Iraq and a variety of U.S. military activities since then, and a large bipartisan group of senators and representatives have decided it's time for it to go away. A repeal bill was passed by the House and is awaiting action in the Senate, but we don't know if there's going to be time for that action before the Senate adjourns.
It’s a good opportunity to have a conversation about this orphaned AUMF that just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny through the decades. To talk through the history of the 2002 AUMF, its surprising rebirth, and its dangerous continued life, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson, who recently wrote a two-part series on the subject for Lawfare, focusing on the history and practice of the 2002 AUMF, as well as its interpretations and implications.
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The United States military was one of the first institutions in government to acknowledge the threat posed by climate change, as well as the science behind it, and yet it remains the largest single energy consumer in the country and the largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter in the world. To talk through this strategic disconnect, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Dr. Neta Crawford, Montague Burton Chair in International Relations at the University of Oxford, co-director of the Costs of War study at Brown University, and author of the new book, “The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions.” They discussed what Dr. Crawford calls the irony and tragedy of the military's carbon emissions, how war drives emissions and industrialization, and why climate activists may be skeptical about framing climate as a security issue.
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It's been an eventful several weeks on the Korean Peninsula, with a spree of missile tests, the sudden display of a daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and the articulation of a remarkably aggressive nuclear doctrine. To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Stephan Haggard, the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego. They talked about how all of this relates to prior diplomacy between North Korea and the Trump administration, what message the North Koreans are trying to send with the combination of this testing and the articulation of this new doctrine, and whether there is any prospect of denuclearization at any time in the foreseeable future.
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This week on Rational Security 2.0, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott welcomed Lawfare's dynamic associate editor duo, Katherine Pompilio and Hyemin Han, on to the show to talk through the week's big national security news stories, including:
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From March 30, 2021: Anti-Asian violence in the United States seems to be on the rise. On March 16, a shooter killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women, at several Atlanta businesses. Across the country, Asian-Americans have shared stories of attacks and harassment, some of which involved racist language in connection with the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet there is very little data available that could help journalists and policymakers make sense of this apparent trend. To understand why, Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and the co-founder of AH Datalytics, who recently wrote for Lawfare on why there’s so little reliable data on anti-Asian violence—or on any other kind of hate crime. Jeff discussed the patchwork system by which the FBI currently collects data on hate crimes, what other factors might explain why the data is so unreliable and how improved data could help guide the response to anti-Asian attacks.
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From May 2, 2020: Most of us don’t think of United States history as an imperial history, but the facts are there. The law and policy surrounding westward expansion, off-continent acquisitions, and a worldwide network of hundreds of bases reveal much about how and why the United States grew as it did.
Last month, David Priess spoke with Daniel Immerwahr, associate professor of history at Northwestern University and author of “How to Hide an Empire.” They talked about everything from what the Constitution says about lands west of the thirteen colonies, to the critical role of the Guano Islands in U.S. history, to the famous Insular Cases, to how military access agreements and long-term leases help the United States avoid a truly territorial empire.
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From December 11, 2020: This week, the Supreme Court returned once again to the complex and sometimes controversial Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, that protects foreign sovereigns from litigation before U.S. courts. At the same time, Congress is once again debating new exceptions to the protections provided by the FSIA on issues ranging from cybercrime to the coronavirus pandemic, an effort that may risk violating international law and exposing the United States to similar lawsuits overseas. To discuss these developments and where they may be headed, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading scholars on sovereign immunity issues: Chimène Keitner, a professor at the UC Hastings School of Law and a former counselor on international law at the U.S. State Department, and Ingrid Wuerth, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School and one of the reporters for the American Law Institute's Fourth Restatement on U.S. foreign relations law.
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For the last 29 days, Roger Parloff, Lawfare senior editor, has been sitting in on the Oath Keeper trial in Washington. The trial is now done, the jury has the case, and Roger joined Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about it. Which charges are likely to stick, and which ones seem weak? How did the various defendants do when they took the stand to defend themselves? And what kind of verdict do we expect when the jury eventually comes back?
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Earlier this month, officials from the government of Ethiopia and representatives from the Tigray People's Liberation Front agreed to halt the two-year conflict that has been rife with accusations of ethnic cleansing, sexual violence, and famine as a weapon of war. To discuss the current state of the conflict and the prospect of peace, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. A longtime expert on the Horn of Africa, de Waal co-edited the book, “Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law,” which was published in August. They discussed the terms of the recent truce agreements, the irony of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Nobel Peace Prize, and the options for accountability for forced starvation and other crimes committed by both sides.
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Over the weekend, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 27, went into overtime as nations came to an historic agreement to establish a loss and damage fund. This fund is meant to give resources to countries who have experienced the worst effects of climate change. Some like to think of it as climate reparations.
There are a lot of factors that might have created the momentum for this historic agreement to go through after many years. An interesting one is that it's becoming more and more difficult for big emitters like the United States to deny their role in contributing to climate change, particularly as new scientific studies have been pivotal in creating a pretty unimpeachable basis for climate responsibility. But, just because science can verify certain realities does not mean that it's a straight path forward for climate justice.
To get a sense of what factors are coming together to achieve climate justice, Lawfare associate editor Hyemin Han merges the legal and policy perspective with the science perspective in a conversation with Karen Sokol, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and a fellow at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Chris Callahan, a PhD candidate at Dartmouth College who co-produced a scientific study that informed negotiations on loss and damage at COP 27.
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Satellites have held a special place in military planning and in spy fiction alike for more than half a century. Both domains ended up devoting much attention to satellite-based weapons and anti-satellite weaponry; both have also dealt with the problem of space debris related to the latter.
In this chat, David Priess and George Washington University historian Aaron Bateman talk about Bateman's early interest in satellites, early satellite technology and attempts at anti-satellite activity, the Outer Space Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, actions by presidents from Eisenhower through Biden related to the testing of satellite and/or anti-satellite weapons, the Strategic Defense Initiative (commonly called the "Star Wars program"), the problem of space debris, the Kessler Syndrome, other countries' satellite and anti-satellite activities, the Space Force, and on-screen portrayals of satellite warfare and space debris from the James Bond movies to Gravity.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From September 23, 2017: The escalating tension between North Korea and the United States has risen to an unprecedented level. Earlier this month, Stephan Haggard, Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies at UC San Diego, gave a lecture at a private function on the complicated strategic and political risks that North Korea’s missile and nuclear capabilities present. He talked about the complex relationship among North Korea’s allies and adversaries, the impact of sanctions against Pyongyang, and the past and future role of the United States in addressing North Korean aggression.
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Earlier today, in a surprise announcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to lead two ongoing federal investigations of former president and now official 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump. The special counsel, Jack Smith, is a longtime DOJ prosecutor and currently the chief Kosovo war crimes prosecutor in The Hague. He will take over the investigation into the retention of classified and government documents at Mar-a-lago, as well as the investigation into attempts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power after the 2020 election.
To make sense of the special counsel appointment and what it means for the federal investigations into Donald Trump, Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Lawfare editor-in-chief Ben Wittes, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic, and former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into foreign election interference in the 2016 election.
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Today, the U.S. military maintains around 800 bases in installations around the world with around 75 of those in Latin America, including perhaps its most notorious in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But it wasn't always this way.
To learn more about this fraught and understudied history, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Dr. Rebecca Herman, assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley, to discuss her new book, “Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America.” They discussed how the U.S. went from its good neighbor policy of the 1930s to nearly 200 military bases on sovereign Latin American soil by the end of the war, and the thorny questions of legal jurisdiction, labor rights, and gender relations that arose from those new sites. They also got into how, in Prof. Herman's words, although national sovereignty and international cooperation are compatible concepts in principle, they're difficult to reconcile in practice.
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American democracy might look healthier in light of last week's midterms, but there's still a lot of skepticism across the political spectrum about how it's doing. From the right, would-be authoritarians cast doubt on elections and on the very idea of liberal democracy. But even those who reject this authoritarian impulse are frequently uncomfortable with the messiness of democratic politics, instead preferring an anti-politics of technocratic decision-making.
Jedediah Purdy, a law professor at Duke Law School, wants to defend democracy from its critics and its skeptics. In his new book, “Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening—and Our Best Hope,” he argues that democratic renewal is both desirable and, most importantly, possible. Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Jed to talk about the book, get his thoughts about the state of American democracy, and chart the path toward a healthier democratic future.
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Matt Tait is a cybersecurity expert who has worked both in the private sector and for the British government at GCHQ, the UK's intelligence, security, and cyber agency. He's also a Lawfare contributor. Like a lot of us, Tait has spent the last several months thinking about Ukraine, and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes had cybersecurity questions for him. They talked about why the Ukrainian internet is still functioning and why the Russians have been so ineffective in the cyber arena. They also talked about whether U.S. support for Ukraine is threatened with Republicans in control of the House and what the Biden administration is going to do about Section 702, which is scheduled to expire at the end of next year.
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Sophia Yan, pianist for the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, is also The Telegraph’s Beijing correspondent—or at least, she was until the other day. She’s produced a new podcast entitled, “How to become a dictator,” about the rise and rule of Xi Jinping and her own struggles as a reporter in Xi’s China. Now Sophia’s in Taiwan after a hasty exit from the country, and she joined Lawfare’s editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the new podcast and her departure from China. Who is Xi Jinping really? How is Xi different from other recent Chinese leaders? Why did Sophia leave China? And did she take her piano with her?
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Georgii Dubynskyi is the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. It is a ministry set up to modernize government services for Ukrainians that has taken a lead role in keeping Ukraine functioning online during the war. On Thursday morning, he joined Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes before a live audience at the Hewlett Foundation's cybersecurity grantee convening conference in Los Angeles.
It was a wide-ranging conversation that started with what the ministry was meant to do and what role it has taken on during the war. How has Ukraine remained so resilient amidst Russian kinetic and cyber attacks? Why have the Russian cyberattacks been less effective than we expected them to be? And why is the Ukrainian internet still up when so much of the power is down.
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This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Brookings Institution Middle East expert Natan Sachs to talk over the week's big (non-U.S. election) national security news, including:
For object lessons, Alan endorsed hunting the world's most dangerous game: man (with paintballs). Quinta passed along a useful reference on the state of crime in the United States and the way it is being used in the midterm elections. Scott recommended everyone try a sip of his long neglected workplace colleague. And Natan celebrated the pandemic perseverance of his office jade plants as a sign of hope in dark times.
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From September 23, 2020: Bobby Chesney sat down with former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Texas Congressman Chip Roy as part of the 2020 Texas Tribune Festival. They discussed Portland, DHS, domestic violence, and even the shortage of civil discourse in our society.
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Due to the Veterans Day holiday, our team is taking a break and bringing you a Lawfare Archive episode that we think you’ll find timely given some events from the last few weeks.
From April 2, 2020: On this episode of the Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Nate Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. Persily is also a member of the Kofi Annan Commission on Democracy and Elections in the Digital Age, which recently released a report on election integrity and the internet for which Nate provided a framing paper. Alongside his work on internet governance, Nate is also an expert on election law and administration. They spoke about the commission report and the challenges the internet may pose for democracy, to what extent the pandemic has flipped that on its head, and, of course, the 2020 presidential election.
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On Tuesday, November 8, Americans finished casting their ballots in the midterm elections. Given that the president’s party typically performs poorly in the midterms, Democrats were poised for major losses and Republicans were ready to celebrate a “red wave” handing them control of both the House and Senate. But instead, Democrats saw a striking overperformance—and as of Wednesday afternoon, control of both the House and Senate remains up for grabs.
Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with fellow senior editors Scott Anderson and Molly Reynolds to talk through what they know and don’t know about the results. Was this a stay of execution for American democracy? If the GOP does take the House by a narrow margin, how hard is it going to be for the messy Republican caucus to stick together? And what do questions over control of Congress mean for the Jan. 6 investigation and key foreign policy issues, like aid to Ukraine?
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In the summer of 2020, Lawfare’s editor in chief Benjamin Wittes found out that he had been the subject of intelligence reports compiled by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. It was a bizarre but troubling revelation, and it raised a lot of questions, not only about the propriety of those reports but also about the practice in general. Who else was I&A compiling intelligence reports about and on what basis? So, Ben filed a FOIA request and subsequently a lawsuit in hopes of getting some answers. He's written about this matter for Lawfare a number of times, including in an update published yesterday.
Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Ben to talk through it all. They discussed the background of the case, why so-called open source intelligence reports can be so dangerous, and what we've learned about DHS over the course of the litigation.
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It’s Election Day in the United States—so while you wait for the results to come in, why not listen to a podcast about the other biggest story obsessing the political commentariat right now? We’re talking, of course, about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the billionaire’s dramatic and erratic changes to the platform. In response to Musk’s takeover, a great number of Twitter users have made the leap to Mastodon, a decentralized platform that offers a very different vision of what social media could look like.
What exactly is decentralized social media, and how does it work? Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein has a paper on just that, and he sat down with Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic on the podcast to discuss for an episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem. They were also joined by Kate Klonick, associate professor of law at St. John’s University, to hash out the many, many questions about content moderation and the future of the internet sparked by Musk’s reign and the new popularity of Mastodon.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
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The government has rested its case in chief in the criminal seditious conspiracy trial of Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and several other members of the Oath Keepers. The trial has been going on for the last several weeks, and Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been in court every day keeping us up to date.
Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to talk through it all. Who has the government put on the stand? What parts of the government's case has it proved, and what parts are a little bit dodgy? What can we expect as the defense presents its case, which began on Thursday? And what do we make of the government’s silence on the question of the Insurrection Act?
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Although codemaking and codebreaking often receive less attention in the public imagination than swashbuckling HUMINT operations and ingenious spy gadgets, they have changed history. The under-appreciation of cryptography might stem from a combination of the complexity of encryption, the classified nature of much of its technology, and the difficulty of conveying codebreaking effectively in pop culture.
David Priess spoke with Vince Houghton about the realities and fictional representations of cryptography, as well as the challenges and rewards of making a compelling museum experience out of U.S. codemaking and codebreaking efforts. Houghton is director of the National Cryptologic Museum, the open-to-the-public museum of the National Security Agency. They talked while walking through the newly redesigned museum in Annapolis Junction, Maryland, highlighting various artifacts including early American codebreaking computers, German Enigma machines, the oldest known book of cryptography (from the 16th century), and code generators for U.S. nuclear weapons. They discussed the provenance of highly unusual items and the value of having so many of them on display. And they traded views on movies incorporating ciphers or codes, from The Da Vinci Code to Sneakers to The Empire Strikes Back to The Imitation Game.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From April 8, 2021: If you’re listening to this podcast, the odds are that you’ve heard a lot about QAnon recently—and you might even have read some alarming reporting about how belief in the conspiracy theory is on the rise. But is it really?
This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Joseph Uscinski, an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories. He explained why conspiracy theories in America aren’t actually at a new apex, what kinds of people are drawn to ideas like QAnon and what role—if any—social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter should have in limiting the spread of conspiracy theories.
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On October 30, Brazilians elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as their next president. Within minutes, world leaders, including President Biden and Secretary Blinken, offered official congratulations. For Lulu supporters, the atmosphere was celebratory but tense, as many wondered if Lulu's opponent, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro—who once said the election would end either in his death, arrest, or victory—would accept the legitimate results of the election.
To talk through that election and its aftermath, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Brian Winter, editor in chief of Americas Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade living and reporting across Latin America. They discussed whether warnings of an election crisis were alarmist or not, what's next for Bolsonaro and his movement, and what to watch for during Lulu's first 100 days.
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The Israeli election results are in—sort of—and the early count looks very favorable for former Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and the far-right coalition that he would bring to power. The results are not a hundred percent clear yet, but they're clear enough for Benjamin Wittes to sit down on Twitter Spaces with Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, to talk through it all.
How did Netanyahu win while getting no more votes than the other side? How did he impose a unity on his side, and how did the other side fail to do so in a fashion that facilitated this? Who is Itamar Ben-Gvir, and why is he the new power source in Israeli politics? And what can we say about the government that is going out—a government that ranged from the hard right to an Islamist party?
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Last week, Lawfare published a piece by Lawfare’s legal fellow Saraphin Dhanani called, “The Case for Designating the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Militias as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” The article considered whether the Russian-backed militias operating in the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk can be properly designated as FTOs, and whether they should be.
Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Saraphin and with Lawfare’s editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, who has also been giving this topic a lot of thought. They discussed the legal requirements for FTO designation, how such a designation would interact with the existing sanctions regime the United States has imposed in response to Russia's war in Ukraine, and what impact FTO designations might have on the conflict.
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In recent weeks, the Biden administration has released a trio of long-awaited strategy documents, including the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the Nuclear Posture Review. But how should we read these documents, and what do they actually tell us about how the Biden administration intends to approach the world?
To answer these questions, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security, who is himself also a former National Security Council official and senior congressional adviser. They discussed the role these strategy documents play in U.S. foreign policy, what we can learn from them, and what they say about the state of the world and the United States’ role in it.
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The effect of the digital revolution on privacy has been mixed, to say the least, and for intimate privacy—information about our health, sexual activities, and relationships—it's been a downright disaster. Corporations and governments surveil us, former sexual partners post revenge pornography online, and our virtual reality future threatens to take privacy intrusions to a whole new level.
Danielle Citron is a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, a MacArthur Fellow, and the leading law reformer on digital privacy. She's just released a new book, “The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age.” Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Danielle to talk about her research and advocacy, the dangers that technology and the market pose to intimate privacy, and what we can do to fight back.
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This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by China expert and law professor Julian Ku to talk through some of the week's big national security news, including:
For object lessons, Alan recommended the new film "Argentina, 1985." Quinta endorsed the novel "Grey Bees" by Andrey Kurkov for those wanting to sample some modern Ukrainian literature. Scott urged listeners who share his space obsessions to check out "For All Mankind," one of the best shows he's seen on television. And Julian recommended the BBC documentary series "Rome: Empire Without Limit" by Mary Beard for those wanting to reflect a bit on the rise and decline of great powers.
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From August 24, 2020: In recent months, relations between the United States and China seem to have reached a new low as disagreements over trade, tech, human rights and the coronavirus have led the two sides to exchange increasingly harsh rhetoric. Just weeks ago, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went so far as to suggest that the decades-long experiment of U.S. engagement with China had been a mistake. But is this heightened tension just a bump in the road, or is it a new direction for one of the United States's most important bilateral relationships? To discuss these issues, Scott R. Anderson sat down with an all-star panel of China watchers, including Tarun Chhabra of the Brookings Institution and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Elsa Kania of the Center for a New American Security, and Rob Williams, executive director of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School.
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There's been a lot of discussion about whether Donald Trump should be indicted. Lately, that discussion has focused on the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-lago or the Jan. 6 committee's revelations about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But what about his speech on the ellipse on Jan. 6 when he told a crowd of thousands to “fight like hell,” and they went on to attack the Capitol? Isn't that incitement?
Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Alan Rozenshtein, a senior editor at Lawfare and an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Jed Shugerman, a professor at Fordham Law School. Alan and Jed explained the complicated First Amendment jurisprudence protecting political speech, even when it leads to violence, and why they believe that given everything we know now, Trump may in fact be criminally liable. They also reference Alan and Jed’s law review article in Constitutional Commentary, “January 6, Ambiguously Inciting Speech, and the Overt-Acts Solution” (forthcoming 2023).
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Claudia Swain is Lawfare’s digital strategist—but before coming to Lawfare, she worked at the Federal Railroad Administration, deep in the bureaucracy. She recently wrote an article for Lawfare called, “The Emerging Cyber Threat to the American Rail Industry,” which is a bit of a chilling read about the threat that the American rail industry faces as a result of, of all things, new computerized safety systems.
Benjamin Wittes sat down with Claudia for a fascinating conversation about Positive Train Control, this new computerized system, and the potential cybersecurity threats it poses.
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This past weekend, the Chinese Communist Party held its 20th National Congress, an event held every five years at which it appoints its senior leadership who in turn holds the reins of China's government. This year, the event focused on one man, Xi Jinping, the current president of China, who secured an unprecedented, third consecutive five-year term as the party’s senior-most official and was able to staff the party apparatus with hand-chosen loyalists, even at the expense of his predecessors and other factions in the party.
To discuss these events, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sophia Yan, China correspondent for The Telegraph, and Julian Ku, Professor of Law at Hofstra University. They discussed what went down at the National Congress, where it says China is headed in the next five years, and what it might mean for its relationship with the United States.
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In two weeks, millions of Americans will head to the polls for the 2022 midterm election. During that time, an estimated one million poll workers will help administer the election and ensure the process runs safely and smoothly.
Ahead of the midterms, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Rachel Orey, associate director of the Bipartisan Policy Center Elections Project, and Grace Gordon, a policy analyst on the project, to talk through their latest report, “Fortifying Election Security Through Poll Worker Policy.” They discussed how elections are fundamentally a human enterprise, why poll workers are so important, and how states can better safeguard against efforts to use poll workers to undermine election credibility.
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Last month, the George Washington University Program on Extremism published a report called, “Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States.” To talk through that report and a recent Lawfare article on the topic, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Ilana Krill, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism, and Seamus Hughes, the program's deputy director. They discussed the white supremacists and Salafi-jihadists who make up these movements, the encrypted channels through which propaganda and plans are spread, and what's to be done to protect critical infrastructure in the United States.
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Olivia Troye has worked in the Republican National Committee, the Pentagon, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Department of Homeland Security. But it was her role on the small team directly supporting Vice President Mike Pence that brought her the most challenging experiences of her career while making her all too aware of the surprisingly thin staffing for the next in line to the presidency.
Lawfare publisher David Priess spoke to Troye about her path from El Paso to Philadelphia to Washington, her experience on Capitol Hill on 9/11, serving in Baghdad after the U.S. invasion, working at the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security, differences between core National Security Council staff and the support staff for the vice president, the many different tasks that support to a vice president entails, Mike Pence as a customer of the President's Daily Brief, the value of civil service professionals, the ups and downs of working with Pence during the COVID-19 pandemic, the inappropriate handling of classified material she saw during her final years on the job, the ethical reasons spurring her to leave government service, the importance of reasonable gun control, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From February 5, 2021: Some countries don't just abuse their citizens within their own borders; increasingly, they target individuals after they have gone abroad. A range of nefarious acts play a role here, and together they make up a phenomenon called transnational repression.
Nate Schenkkan, the director of research strategy at Freedom House, and Isabel Linzer, Freedom House's research analyst for technology and democracy, are the two authors of "Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: Understanding Transnational Repression," a new report detailing the practice and Freedom House's research on the topic. David Priess sat down with them to discuss the variety of forms transnational repression can take; whom is targeted and why; examples from the governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Rwanda, and even Equatorial Guinea; and recommendations to buck this growing trend.
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Recently, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported that the Biden administration had finalized a new policy governing drone strikes used in counterterrorism operations outside war zones. The policy tightens up rules established under the Trump administration—which themselves replaced an earlier guidance set out by President Obama. President Biden’s policy is the latest effort to calibrate America’s use of force in a 21st-century conflict outside the traditional battlefield.
To talk through Charlie’s reporting, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with him and Lawfare cofounder Bobby Chesney, who has closely observed this area of U.S. law and policy. They discussed how U.S. counterterrorism operations have changed in recent years, how Biden’s approach compares to the Obama and Trump policies before it, and the significance of these changes for U.S. counterterrorism going forward.
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Senior Editor Roger Parloff joins Managing Editor Tyler McBrien for another quick update on the prosecution’s case in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy trial.
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Joe Sullivan, Uber's former chief security officer and a former federal prosecutor, was found guilty of obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony. These charges arose from what the Department of Justice characterized as Sullivan's attempted coverup of a 2016 hack of Uber. The Sullivan case has created some consternation in the cybersecurity community. Kellen Dwyer, partner at the law firm of Alston & Bird, argues in a recent Lawfare piece that the Sullivan prosecution threatens to undermine the positive working relationship between DOJ and the tech sector.
Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Kellen to talk about the Sullivan case. They discussed the specific charges for which Sullivan was convicted, how those charges blur the lines between covering up a data incident and merely declining to report it, and how in order to facilitate timely reporting of serious cybersecurity incidents to the FBI, the DOJ should clarify certain aspects of its charging policy to address concerns raised by the Sullivan case.
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On October 13, the Jan. 6 committee closed what may be its final public hearing with a dramatic vote: unanimously, the committee members agreed to subpoena former president Donald Trump. So … what happens now? Will Trump actually testify? What happens if he defies the committee—would the Justice Department prosecute him for contempt of Congress?
To talk things through, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with fellow senior editors Molly Reynolds and Jonathan Shaub and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes. They discussed the historical precedent for current and former presidents testifying before Congress and debated the likelihood that Trump will take the plunge and show up before the committee.
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Fulton County DA Fani Willis is closing in on Donald Trump's 2020 election meddling. She could begin issuing indictments as soon as December, CNN reports. In the meantime, she's gotten testimony from a long list of the former president's allies, and she's sought testimony from even more who are still resisting. All of this has America wondering: what the heck is a special purpose grand jury? Why can't it indict people? And what does it mean for Rudy Giuliani to be a target of a grand jury if it can't even issue any indictments?
To talk it over, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare’s Fulton County court reporter Anna Bower, who wrote a Q&A piece entitled, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Georgia Special Purpose Grand Juries But Were Afraid to Ask.”
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Presidential transitions are the most delicate and hazardous periods in the entire political cycle. Even at the best of times, incoming administrations face a huge task. Each new president must make more than 4,000 political appointments in a short period of time, as well as get up to speed on ongoing policy issues.
To discuss the history and the current framework of presidential transitions, Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with David Marchick, the dean of American University's Kogod School of Business and previously served as the director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service. He also is the author of, “The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America’s Presidential Transitions,” and the host of the Transition Lab podcast. They discussed examples of effective and ineffective recent transitions, the role of everyone from outgoing presidents to the GSA to agency teams, and what else might be done to nail down best practices for presidential transitions.
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This week on Rational Security, Alan Rozenshtein, Quinta Jurecic, and Scott R. Anderson were joined by beloved Lawfare contributor and UVA Law professor Ashley Deeks, fresh from her latest stint at the White House. They hashed through some of the week's big national security news, including:
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From March 24, 2022: It's been a big week for the seditious conspiracy statute, which has long been on the books, quietly forbidding violent interference with the lawful functions of the United States government. But on 60 Minutes this weekend, the former chief prosecutor supervising the January 6 investigation hinted not too subtly that the seditious conspiracy statute might come out of obscurity and enter into action. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Jacob Schulz, Lawfare's deputy managing editor who has written a series of articles for Lawfare on recent deployments of the seditious conspiracy statute, to talk through the law's recent enforcement history.
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Senior Editor Roger Parloff joins Ben Wittes for another quick update on the prosecution’s case in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy trial.
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Thursday was the final day of hearings for the Jan. 6 select committee, and it turned out to be a bit of a barn burner, with a lot of new information about Donald Trump's state of mind, about the secret service, and about people with weapons threatening violence.
To chew it all over, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic, Alan Rozenshtein, and Molly Reynolds. They talked through what we learned on Thursday, what the subpoena of Donald Trump is going to mean, what the effects on the midterm elections are likely to be, and how the committee has done given the constraints it faced.
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The Supreme Court has granted cert in two cases exploring the interactions between anti-terrorism laws and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. To discuss the cases, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down on Arbiters of Truth, our occasional series on the online information ecosystem, with Lawfare senior editors and Rational Security co-hosts Quinta Jurecic, Alan Rozenshtein, and Scott R. Anderson. They discussed the state of 230 law, what the Supreme Court has taken on, what the lower court did, and if there is a right answer here and what it might look like.
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Foreign-imposed regime change is a policy tool that a number of countries—most frequently the United States—have used to establish friendly regimes and align interests in regions around the world. With the ongoing unrest in Iran and the war in Ukraine, foreign-imposed regime change is in the news once again.
But conversations around foreign-imposed regime change often occur without reference to the whole historical record. Hindsight might suggest that foreign-imposed regime change can be done but that it just needs to be done better, that we just need more resources or better strategy.
To evaluate the efficacy of foreign-imposed regime change in a systematic way, Lawfare associate editor Hyemin Han spoke with Alexander Downes, professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University, who wrote a book about it called “Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong.” With his data set, he draws out the lessons we can learn from attempts of foreign-imposed regime change over time. Ultimately, he argues that even when foreign-imposed regime change works, its successes don't last very long, and the downsides of regime change are actually built into the process of trying to achieve it in the first place.
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Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian region of Kherson, along with others. In the months leading up to the sham referendum that solidified the annexation, the Kremlin launched a forced assimilation campaign that targeted nearly every aspect of daily life in Kherson. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Belén Carrasco Rodríguez and Tom Southern of the Centre for Information Resilience to talk through their research into the means used to establish and strengthen Russian occupational rule over the seized territories. They discussed this Russian playbook for control and the ways that forced assimilation may be working or not.
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From May 25, 2018: Vladimir Milov is the current economic advisor to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the former deputy minister of energy in the Russian government. This week, Milov spoke to Alina Polyakova about the Russian economy, the recent Cabinet reshuffles in the Kremlin, and how local politics are back in Russia.Vladimir Milov is the current economic advisor to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the former deputy minister of energy in the Russian government. This week, Milov spoke to Alina Polyakova about the Russian economy, the recent Cabinet reshuffles in the Kremlin, and how local politics are back in Russia.
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Darrell Blocker retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2018 after serving as an operations officer and manager in many countries, especially within Africa. His self-described lack of success recruiting assets during early assignments nevertheless taught him important lessons about the intelligence business, about how people work, and about himself; later tours of duty gave him the chance to make up for lost time by excelling at the job while also getting shot at and even gaining minor fame as the lead singer in an African jazz band. Blocker left CIA service as one of the most senior black officers in the Agency's history—and he was reportedly on President Biden's shortlist to become the director of the CIA. Now, he's involved in several creative projects in Hollywood.
On this episode of Chatter, David Priess chatted with Blocker about his career and his activities since retirement. They discussed getting spy stories told on film, growing up as an Air Force brat, understanding the Pledge of Allegiance, stumbling early in an intelligence career, appreciating the operational environment in Africa, growing from mistakes, accepting lessons from 360-degree feedback, performing on stage in a jazz band, singing the national anthem, being considered as a CIA director, enhancing the CIA's interactions with the media, learning about the benefits of fictional representations of Hollywood's take on intelligence, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From December 31, 2019: Iran is in turmoil. Protests erupted across the country last month, sparked by the government's decision to triple the price of gasoline. The Iranian government has responded with brute force, imposing a blackout of the internet and deploying security forces to crack down in the streets. The crackdown has left hundreds dead and thousands injured or detained. On December 18, the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution hosted a discussion on the unrest in Iran, what it means for the future of the country and the region, and how the United States and the international community should respond. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius led the conversation, which featured Brookings senior fellow Suzanne Maloney and film maker and journalist Maziar Bahari, who leads IranWire, a news site that conveys original information from Iran via citizen journalists.
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It's been a tumultuous few weeks in Iran with the death of a young woman at the hands of the morality police leading to street protests all over the country, calls for the death of the supreme leader, and widespread opposition to compulsory wearing of the hijab. To chew it all over and figure out where this is all going, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Suzanne Maloney, the vice president for Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and a long-time Iran policy scholar. They talked about whether these protests are the latest round of something we've seen before or whether there's something different going on, about the regime's reaction and whether it's connected to unrest elsewhere in the world, about how the United States can constructively respond, and about where it is all going from here. Note: Wittes incorrectly states that Maloney is vice president of Brookings Governance instead of Foreign Policy Studies.
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Ben Wittes sits down for a quick update on the prosecution’s case in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy trial from Senior Editor Roger Parloff, who has been covering the trial for Lawfare.
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The United States is looking to curb China's advanced computing and chip production capabilities by using the so-called Foreign-Direct Product Rule to prevent companies globally from selling certain advanced computing chips to Chinese buyers without a U.S. government license. To understand the background, the details, and the implications of this, Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Martijn Rasser, senior fellow and director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Martijn also served as a senior intelligence officer and analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and a senior adviser in the office of the Secretary of Defense. They talked about the nature of the semiconductor industry, what a Foreign-Direct Product Rule is and what it can do, whether the Commerce Department is well positioned to do what's proposed, the tension of working with allies versus going it alone, and the precedent of U.S.-led actions against Huawei.
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After months of mostly quiet, behind-the-scenes debate, both the House and Senate seem ready to move forward with reforming the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 statute governing how Congress counts electoral votes, whose various ambiguities played a central role in unsuccessful plans to turn the 2020 election results in favor of former President Trump. Experts are all but unanimous on the need to reform the law, and both proposals have at least some bipartisan support, including from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. But the path forward remains far from certain.
To discuss what comes next, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Ned Foley, a leading election law expert and professor at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, and Genevieve Nadeau, a Counsel at the organization Protect Democracy who has been engaging on reform efforts. They discussed the similarities and differences between the House and Senate reform proposals, how they will strengthen our election process, and what work remains to be done.
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Today, we’re bringing you another episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Mark Bergen, a reporter for Bloomberg News and Businessweek, about his new book, “Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination.” YouTube is one of the largest and most influential social media platforms, but Bergen argues that it’s long been “criminally undercovered.” As he tells it, the story of YouTube has a great deal to tell us about the development of the modern attention economy, the promise and pitfalls of the internet, and the struggles of platforms to grapple with their own influence and responsibility.
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There's been a lot going on in Russia: a partial mobilization, protests, a mysterious explosion underwater along the Nord Stream pipelines, and most recently, the annexation of seized Ukrainian territory in a bizarre ceremony in Moscow. To go over it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Julia Ioffe, currently of Puck, and Alexander Vindman, Lawfare’s Pritzker Military Fellow and a former Eastern Europe and Russia specialist for the NSC. They talked about the explosions along the Nord Stream pipelines, the protests, the annexations, and the threat of nuclear escalation.
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Every year, the eastern United States faces the prospect—and, too often, the reality—of major hurricanes that cause extensive physical and financial damage. This year is no exception; even as Hurricane Ian approaches the Gulf Coast, more storms are likely in the coming weeks.
On this episode of Chatter, David Priess chatted with author Eric Jay Dolin about the history of Atlantic hurricanes, with a special focus on such storms' influence on U.S. national security. They spoke about the devastating 2017 hurricane season, how tropical systems are covered in the media, Ben Franklin's role in hurricane science, the role of Caribbean hurricanes in the American Revolution and the Spanish-American War, the evolution of the federal government's storm forecasting and crisis response efforts, hurricane hunter flights, attempts to use technology to disrupt massive storms, Hurricane Andrew (1992), the effects of climate change on tropical systems and their impact, viewing hurricanes as national security threats, how humans assess risk, and films about hurricanes.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From Monday, June 1, 2020: Journalist Bart Gellman is the author of the new book, "Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State." Jack Goldsmith sat down with Gellman to discuss the book. They spoke about Gellman's reporting on the Snowden affair, the scope of the National Security Agency's surveillance capabilities, and press freedom as it relates to national security reporting.
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In modern-day warfare, data is considered a weapons system, and the Russia-Ukraine armed conflict gives us some perspective into what warfare looks like in a data-rich, hyperconnected world. To talk about the pervasiveness of data in contemporary and future warfare, Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Brigadier General Shane Reeves, the dean of the Academic Board at West Point, and Robert Lawless, assistant professor in the Department of Law at West Point, to discuss their new piece, “Data-Rich Battlefields and the Future LOAC,” or law of armed conflict. They talked about the growing importance for militaries to be able to exploit data on the battlefield, the deception arms race that is emerging in the modern battlefield, and some key ways in which data-rich battlefields are putting pressure on the law of armed conflict.
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This week marked the end of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, an annual event that brings world leaders together in New York and often serves as both a forum for and a barometer of international politics. This year's session was particularly notable, both because it was the first in-person session since the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic and because it was the first session since what many see as the greatest crisis in the United Nations history: Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
To learn more about what went down at the UNGA, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group. They discussed how the Ukraine conflict shaped events at the session, how major powers like China and the United States responded, and what it might all mean for the future of both the conflict in Ukraine and the United Nations itself.
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For much of its history, the United States has had a single law on the books that governs when the president can deploy the military to enforce federal law within the United States: the Insurrection Act. While the act hasn't been invoked in decades, it played an important role in several recent controversies, including the acts of Jan. 6. Now, some scholars have written the Jan. 6 commission, urging that it be included in the broader set of reforms that committee is reportedly getting ready to endorse.
To learn more, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with the two authors of the recent submission to the committee: Liza Goitein, senior director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and her colleague Joseph Nunn, counsel at the same program. They discussed the history of the Insurrection Act, what they think makes it dangerous, and how Congress should try to fix it.
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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 reporting across Latin America. They discussed the leading candidates, Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the potential election crisis, and what's at stake as Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday.
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Stewart Rhodes, the chieftain of the Oath Keepers, goes on trial this week for seditious conspiracy. The trial is expected to run about five weeks, with jury selection sort of already underway. The opening of the trial gives us a great opportunity to catch up with Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff on the Oath Keepers, the chief defendant Stewart Rhodes, and the larger project of criminal accountability for the Jan. 6 riot and insurrection.
Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to talk about the ever-mounting statistics of convictions and sentencing in Jan. 6-related matters. They talked about Stewart Rhodes: who he is and his weird journey from Yale Law School to conspiracy theorizing and violent uprisings. They talked about the specifics of the indictment. They talked about what makes Proud Boys different from Oath Keepers: who was the pointy end of the spear, and who was standing around waiting for the president to invoke the Insurrection Act? And they talked about the law under which this is taking place: the famed seditious conspiracy statute.
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This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott went guestless to discuss the week’s big national security news, including:
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From July 15, 2020: We talk a lot about Chinese policy in Hong Kong, but there's another human rights crisis going on in China in the province of Xinjiang. It concerns the Turkic minority known as the Uighurs whom the Chinese government has been rounding up and putting in reeducation camps. It is an ugly story—one that the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to keep from international attention, with some degree of success. To walk us through the situation in Xinjiang, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Jessica Batke, a senior editor at ChinaFile; Darren Byler, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder whose research focuses on Uighur dispossession; and Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch, who has written extensively on the use of biometrics, artificial intelligence and big data in mass surveillance in China.
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Our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem has been taking a bit of a hiatus—but we’re back! On today’s episode, we’re discussing the recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in NetChoice v. Paxton, upholding a Texas law that binds large social media platforms to certain transparency requirements and significantly limits their ability to moderate content. The decision is truly a wild ride—so unhinged that it’s difficult to figure out where First Amendment law in this area might go next.
To discuss, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with fellow Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein and Alex Abdo, the litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University—who’s come on the podcast before to discuss the case. They tried to make sense of the Fifth Circuit’s ruling and chart out alternative possibilities for what good-faith jurisprudence on social media regulation might look like.
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There's enormous debate about how much social media platforms should be doing to moderate extremist content. But that debate often lacks nuance about the many different ways that platforms can moderate and that moderation is not an all or nothing proposition.
Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Lawfare’s foreign policy editor. He recently published a paper for Lawfare’s ongoing Digital Social Contract Research Paper series in which he lays out the many different ways that platforms can and do moderate content. Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Dan about his research and how it can inform not just more but better moderation.
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This past Monday, the criminal trial of Thomas Barrack began in federal court in the Eastern District of New York. Barrack, who served as an informal advisor to the 2016 Trump campaign and then as chair of Trump's inaugural committee, is alleged to have acted as a foreign agent of the United Arab Emirates. According to the indictment, Barrack acted as a back channel for the UAE to influence U.S. foreign policy.
Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Alex Iftimie, a partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster, and a former Department of Justice attorney specializing in national security matters, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, and related statutes. They discussed the case against Barrack, the significance of the charges to broader enforcement strategy, and why foreign influence matters for U.S. national security.
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Geoffrey Berman was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the Trump administration. He was appointed under peculiar circumstances, and he was fired under even more peculiar circumstances. He is now a partner at the law firm of Fried Frank, and he’s the author of the new book, “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent U.S. Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department.” He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the book’s shocking revelations of political interference in the Southern District's work by Bill Barr, by Donald Trump, and by others in the Justice Department. They also talked about the pattern of political interference, the relationship between it and more famous cases, the efforts by senior Justice Department officials to shift gears after the 2020 election, and whether this is a story of fragility in the U.S. Attorney's office or strength.
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On September 15, Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued two key rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. She appointed Judge Raymond Dearie of the Eastern District of New York as the special master reviewing the documents and denied the Justice Department’s motion for a partial stay of her previous injunction barring the department from using the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation. The next day, Friday, September 16, the Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for a partial stay of the September 15 ruling.
Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down for a live conversation on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes and senior editors Scott Anderson and Alan Rozenshtein to talk through Cannon’s latest ruling. They recorded before the Justice Department filed its appeal, but the conversation is a useful breakdown of Cannon’s somewhat off-the-wall orders. Namely: what, exactly, is this judge doing? And where is the case headed next?
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Of all of the Central Intelligence Agency's activities, paramilitary operations might remain the least understood. This, in part, is both a cause and a consequence of inaccurate portrayals of such work in prominent movies; it's also because fewer memoirs come from the CIA's Special Activities Division than from traditional human intelligence collectors and from analysts.
David Priess chatted with former CIA officer Ric Prado about the fiction and the reality of CIA paramilitary operations, including stories Ric tells in his book, “Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior.” They spoke about what Hollywood gets wrong about intelligence work, Ric's escape as a child from Castro's Cuba, his path to a CIA career, differences between paramilitary operations and intelligence collection, his years of work with the Contras in Central America, the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at CIA before and on 9/11, the work ethic in CTC after 9/11, why his book has substantial chunks of redacted text, and who he thinks played the best James Bond.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by David Priess with Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with additional editing by Cara Shillenn. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From March 17, 2018: In 1963, John Feerick became a witness to and a framer of our constitutional history. Within two years of graduating from law school, Feerick had written an influential law review article on presidential disability and succession, joined the ABA’s blue-ribbon commission to create a solution to those problems, and became a confidant and an adviser to the members of Congress who wrote the 25th amendment.
As many in the public wonder about the current president’s fitness, Matthew Kahn went up to Fordham Law School, where Feerick is now dean emeritus, for a conversation about the page of the constitution he helped write. They talked about how Dean Feerick got involved in the creation of the 25th amendment, how Congress settled on the scheme the amendment enshrines, where it still has gaps and ambiguity, and how political leadership and the public should understand it in modern times.
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Ken Starr, the former federal judge and independent counsel who became famous for his investigation of President Bill Clinton, died this week on September 13 at age 76. Starr was a complex and controversial figure: after running the Whitewater and Lewinsky investigations, he went on to serve as president of Baylor University, only to resign over the mishandling of a sex abuse scandal involving the university’s football team, and he would later go on to defend President Trump in Trump’s first impeachment.
To think through Starr’s legacy, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, who published a book on Starr, and Lawfare contributing editor Paul Rosenzweig, who worked with Starr on the Clinton investigation. They took a look back on the Starr investigation and how the probe shaped the culture and practice of presidential investigations in ways that are more relevant than ever in the Trump era.
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Dmitri Alperovitch is the founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics think tank in Washington, and the impresario of the Geopolitics Decanted podcast. He joined Benjamin Wittes to talk through the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv Oblast last week. They discussed whether the Ukrainian retaking of large swaths of territory is a big deal, what’s going to come next, and if this is a prelude to a larger rout of Russian forces, to a negotiated settlement, or if something else is going to happen. They also talked about whether the Russians are running out of ammunition and people, or if the Ukrainian economy will collapse before victory.
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Amid the war and instability in Afghanistan over the last two decades, the opium industry has seen explosive growth. In fact, Afghanistan accounts for the vast majority of the world's opium supply. The Taliban vowed to crack down on the production of illicit drugs, and in March, they issued a total ban on opium cultivation, which has stripped many rural Afghans of their livelihoods. But in the meantime, drug prices have been increasing, making the production and trafficking of methamphetamines even more profitable.
To discuss the situation, former Lawfare associate editor Tia Sewell sat down with Rupert Stone, an independent journalist who recently published a piece with the Atlantic Council entitled, “Afghanistan’s Drug Trade is Booming Under Taliban Rule.” They discussed how Afghanistan's drug trade has evolved under the Taliban, the growing problems of addiction, and how the Taliban's rule has affected the export and trafficking of illicit drugs in the broader region.
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Since his 1991 death, Rainer Sonntag has been remembered as a martyr by generations of neo-Nazis and other far-right activists, especially in his native Germany. Less discussed, however, is the fact that he was also a spy for the communist authorities of East Germany and their counterparts in the Soviet Union—and that a young KGB operative named Vladimir Putin played a prominent role in his rise to power.
To learn more, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Leigh Baldwin, the editor of SourceMaterial, and independent journalist Sean Williams, who co-authored a recent article on the relationship between Putin and Sonntag for The Atavist Magazine, entitled “Follow the Leader.” They discussed the relationship between communist intelligence agencies and far-right German movements, how those movements reacted to the reunification of Germany, and what Putin might have learned from his early dalliances with foreign far-right political movements.
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Pakistan is experiencing one of the largest natural disasters in modern history. The massive floods there, combined with glacier melt, have led to one third of the country being submerged underwater with more than one million people displaced and tens of billions of dollars in damage.
Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Erin Sikorsky, the director for the Center for Climate and Security, who has over a decade of experience previously in the U.S. intelligence community looking at issues like climate and security. They talked about the situation in Pakistan, its impact on the Pakistani military and security services, how the Pakistani military is being employed to help with flood relief, the impact on regional security and the ultimate impact on U.S. national security, and how we address climate change.
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From January 25, 2022: In this bonus episode of Chatter, David Priess talks with professor and author Marita Sturken about 9/11-related memorials, museums, and architecture. Her research and writings have examined everything from visual culture to the connection between memory and consumerism, with much of her recent work addressing memory of the attacks on September 11, 2001, as both the battleground and the site for negotiations of national identity.
In this conversation, they talked briefly about various historical memorials and the purposes of such work before comparing and contrasting the 9/11 memorials around the country and those at Ground Zero, next to the Pentagon, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. They also discussed controversies surrounding the National September 11 Memorial Museum (commonly called the "9/11 museum"), including those about its gift shop and about human remains currently in the facility.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo.
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This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by co-host emeriti Ben Wittes and Shane Harris for a very special anniversary edition of Rational Security that pits their national security hot takes up against each other.
Which of the following takes will the team find to be "too hot," which "undercooked," and which "just right"?
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From September 3, 2020: This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alissa Starzak, the head of public policy at Cloudflare—a company that provides key components of the infrastructure that helps websites stay online. They talked about two high-profile incidents in which Cloudflare decided to pull its services from websites publishing or hosting extremist, violent content. In August 2017, after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince announced that he would no longer be providing service to the Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer. Two years later, Cloudflare also pulled service from the forum 8chan after the forum was linked to a string of violent attacks.
They talked about what Cloudflare actually does and why blocking a website from using its services has such a big effect. They also discussed how Cloudflare—which isn’t a social media platform like Facebook or Twitter—thinks about its role in deciding what content should and shouldn’t stay up.
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On August 25, the Defense Department released its long-awaited Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, something that human rights advocates have called on the Pentagon to do for the past 20 years. To discuss it, former Lawfare associate editor Tia Sewell sat down with Todd Huntley, a former JAG and current director of the National Security Law Program at Georgetown University Law Center, as well as Marc Garlasco, a former targeting professional and war crimes investigator who consulted on the plan. They talked about Todd’s and Marc’s respective Lawfare articles on the topic and how this new action plan improves the Pentagon's handling of civilian harm in war or not.
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On August 23, the Washington Post published a story about a whistleblower complaint filed by Peiter Zatko, the former security lead and member of Twitter's executive team responsible for information security, privacy, physical security, and information technology. In the whistleblower complaint, Zatko describes extreme problems and deficiencies with the security, privacy, and integrity of Twitter's platform. The complaint also alleges that since 2011, Twitter's senior executives have engaged in making false and misleading statements to users and the Federal Trade Commission about Twitter's privacy, security, and integrity.
Lawfare senior editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, to discuss some of the most interesting aspects of the complaint. They talked about some of the background leading up to the filing of the complaint, some of its most significant alleged privacy and security violations, and what to look for in the upcoming congressional hearing on the complaint.
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Monday afternoon, a federal judge in Florida acceded to Donald Trump's motion to appoint a special master to review privilege claims arising out of the Mar-a-Lago search. The ruling was not a particular surprise given that the judge had foreshadowed that it was coming, but it shocked observers nonetheless on a number of different bases. The decision raised questions of how it would affect the Justice Department's ongoing investigation of document retention at Mar-a-Lago. Would the department appeal, would it seek a stay, and who could possibly serve as special master for such a task?
Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down before a live audience on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, Lawfare contributing editor Jonathan Shaub, and Lawfare student contributor Anna Bower, who attended the hearing. They talked about whether the opinion is quite as outlandish as many commentators seem to think, about how the Justice Department would likely respond, and whether it could just let it stand. They also nominated their picks for special master and took questions from the audience.
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Late last month, investigative journalists at Bellingcat and partner organizations published a story exposing the identity of a Russian spy named Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, who over the course of 10 years had charmed her way into the social circles of NATO members in Naples. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Christo Grozev, Bellingcat's lead Russia investigator, who walked us through this stranger-than-fiction spy thriller. They discussed how Maria Adela found herself courting NATO officers in Italy, how Bellingcat's team exposed the truth, often at great personal risk to themselves, and how this story can help us understand the state of Russian tradecraft.
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Oleksandra Povoroznik is a (@rynkrynk) is a Kyiv-based journalist, film critic and translator, who joins us to discuss the changing politics of language in Ukraine, as well as the country's defiant wartime culture and humor.
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From September 24, 2020: Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, about her new book: “How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict.” The book chronicles Nina’s journey around Europe, tracing down how information operations spearheaded by Russia have played out in countries in the former Soviet bloc, from Georgia to the Czech Republic. What do these case studies reveal about disinformation and how best to counter it—and how many of these lessons can be extrapolated to the United States? How should we understand the role of locals who get swept up in information operations, like the Americans who attended rallies in 2016 that were organized by a Russian troll farm? And what is an information war, anyway?
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From February 15, 2014: The University of Richmond invited Ben and Conor Friedersdorf to participate in a debate on the ethics of drone warfare. Conor is a familiar voice in the anti-drone camp, as those who have come across his articles in The Atlantic well know. I edited the podcast version of the debate for length and got rid of the introductions and audience questions. It thus proceeds as four speeches: Ben and Conor each give opening remarks, in that order, and then each responds to the other.While the back-and-forth touched on the legal issues behind targeted killing, it was really about the many ethical implications, both positive and negative, of U.S. drone policy. These range from the precedent the United States sets in the international community, to the psychological effects of drones on civilians. In a discussion that can often focus on the big issues of civilian casualties, oversight, legality, and sovereignty, these other questions can get lost in the foray. But as Al Qaeda continues to morph and the United States struggles to define the boundaries of the war it has been fighting, they are more important than ever.
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In recent months, the country of Iraq has been living through the latest in a series of political crises as different factions have struggled for control of its governing institutions. Earlier this week, that tension broke out into the open as rioters occupied government office buildings and militias associated with other factions responded with violence.
To learn more, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Marsin Alshamary, a research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. They discussed the players involved in this latest crisis, what's led to this point, and where their conflict might go next.
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On Tuesday night, running up against the 11:59 PM deadline, the Justice Department filed its 40-page motion opposing Donald Trump's request that a special master be appointed to oversee the handling of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. To wade through that meaty document and its implications, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien was joined by Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, COO and publisher David Priess, and senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Scott R. Anderson for a special Twitter Spaces event in front of a live virtual audience.
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In February 2020, police in the town of Rexburg, Idaho, uncovered evidence of what seemed like an unthinkable crime: two children murdered by one of their parents. The investigation that followed revealed not only more possible murders but also two alleged perpetrators possessed of a radical belief system that both justified their use of violence and shared common threads with the beliefs of numerous other members of their community.
In her new book, “When the Moon Turns to Blood,” independent journalist Leah Sottile documents how this grizzly murder has its roots in religious and political movements that started more than a century earlier, and how it may have lessons to teach us on the unique forms of extremism that are well established in the American west and are beginning to play a more influential role on the national scene.
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The era of the global internet offered opportunities for economic and political progress, but it has also afforded bad actors the opportunities to manipulate and leverage this interconnected system for the worse. Over the past decade, there has been an increase in internet shutdowns, ransomware, and cyberattacks, but despite these growing challenges, there's still an opportunity for collaboration around the preservation of an open internet.
To understand what the current state of cyberspace is, Lawfare fellow in cybersecurity law Alvaro Marañon sat down with Adam Segal and former Rep. Will Hurd to discuss the Council on Foreign Relations’s latest task force report entitled, “Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet.” Adam was project director for both the 2013 and 2022 task force, and Will was a member of the 2022 task force. They discussed how the cyberspace environment has changed from 2013 to now, the differences in attitudes and approaches between the two CFR reports, and what the United States needs to do to reverse this trend around fragmentation and to preserve the benefits of an open internet.
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“Cyberspace is the domain of modern warfare” is a popular headline in recent times. Recent state and non-state cyber attacks have given support to this notion, but beyond vague national cyber strategies and new cyber commands, not much is publicly known about a state’s military cyber capacity.
To get a better understanding of the current state of militarization in cyberspace, Lawfare fellow in cybersecurity law Alvaro Marañon sat down with Max Smeets, senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich and the director of the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative. They explored Max’s new book, “No Shortcuts: Why States Struggle to Develop a Military Cyber-Force.” They also discussed the barriers of entry for states to participate in cyber conflict, how we should go about thinking about military cyber capacity, and how external actors can influence a state’s cyber capability development process.
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This week on Rational Security, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott were joined by host emeritus Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's big national security stories, including:
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NASA next week plans to launch the first of several Artemis missions, which collectively aim to land astronauts on the Moon again for the first time in more than half a century, explore the lunar surface more extensively, and establish a long-term presence on the Moon. Controversy lingers over both the launch system selected for these missions and the next step of human spaceflight to Mars.
This week on Chatter, David Priess spoke with science journalist Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today and co-host of Astronomy Cast, about why exploring the Moon matters, what to expect from the launch and voyage of Artemis-I, and the challenges of missions to Mars. They also chatted about international space competition vs. cooperation during the Cold War and now, NASA's rollout of initial images from the James Webb Space Telescope, space-based threats ranging from gamma ray bursts and rogue black holes to near-Earth objects and coronal mass ejections, Cain's evolution in communicating science both online and through podcasts, the downward spiral of engaging conspiracy theorists, frustrations with popular culture's association of unidentified aerial phenomena with "aliens," and the interaction of science fiction and real-world space exploration.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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From October 8, 2016: Stephanie Leutert, the Mexico Security Initiative Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Lawfare's "Beyond the Border" series, joined Benjamin Wittes on this week's podcast to talk about the epidemic of violence plaguing Mexico and Central America. Despite the brutality, extremity, and remarkable scale of the violence going on immediately to our south, those of us in the United States who work and think on national security issues rarely consider it to be relevant to national security. Why is that? How bad is the violence in these countries? What's causing the crisis, and the waves of migration it generates, in the first place? And what, if anything, can be done to stop it?
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Back in March, a team of researchers published an article in Nature Machine Intelligence showing that a drug discovery company’s AI-powered molecule generator could have a dangerous dual use: The model could design thousands of new biochemical weapons in a matter of hours that were equally as toxic as, if not more toxic than, the nerve agent VX.
Lawfare associate editor Tia Sewell sat down with two of the paper’s authors: Dr. Filippa Lentzos, senior lecturer in science & international security at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and Dr. Sean Ekins, CEO of Collaborations Pharmaceuticals. They discussed the story of their discovery and their reaction to it, as well as how we should think about dual-use artificial intelligence threats more broadly as new technologies expand the potential for malicious use. They also got into why governments need to work more proactively to address the challenges of regulating machine learning software.
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While everyone's eyes have been on Mar-a-Lago, there has also been a lot going on with the Jan. 6 investigation: cases going to trial, major sentencing developments, and some people getting real time. We have some new data on which cases are resulting in convictions and which ones in acquittals, a bunch of defendants have been trying to get their cases moved out of Washington, D.C. altogether, and there have been developments in litigation under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the disqualification provision.
To go over it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff. They talked through the recent sentences, the escalating numbers, whether the Justice Department may have hit a ceiling, and more.
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One year ago this month, the last American troops withdrew from Afghanistan, marking the end of a 20-year war. To reflect on those two decades, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Elliot Ackerman, author of the new book, “The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan.” They discussed Elliot's personal involvement in the struggle to get Afghan allies out of Kabul a year ago, as well as his time in Afghanistan, first as a Marine and then as a CIA officer. Drawing on firsthand experience, Elliot spoke about what it means to win or lose a war and some of the reasons why this war was a debacle for Americans and a tragedy for Afghans.
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In 2014, as Islamic State insurgents took control of the Iraqi city of Mosul, President Barack Obama made the decision to send troops back to Iraq. Within five years, through the work of the United States and its partners, the organization was largely dismantled. What was the nature of the U.S. struggle against the Islamic State? Which decisions were instrumental to its success? And how did the U.S. coordinate with partners in the region.
To discuss these issues, former Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm spoke with Michael Gordon, a national security correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, about his new book, “Degrade and Destroy,” Gordon's fourth book on Iraq. They covered a range of topics, including the status of forces agreement, or SOFA, the Trump administration's counter-Islamic State strategy, and the challenges for journalists embedding with coalition forces.
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One of the last decisions that the Supreme Court handed down this year was Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety. Le Roy Torres, an Iraq war veteran and Texas state trooper, sued the state of Texas after he was denied an employment accommodation for injuries he sustained while on duty. The question in the case was whether the federal law that Torres sued under could subject states themselves to legal liability. In other words, as a constitutional matter, can Congress, when legislating under its war powers, limit the normal sovereign immunity that state governments enjoy? This is an important question, not just for veterans who want to vindicate their rights, but also more broadly because Congress's war powers are some of the broadest and most consequential that the federal government possesses.
Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein talked through these issues with Andrew Tutt, a lawyer at the law firm of Arnold & Porter, who argued and won the case on behalf of Torres before the Supreme Court.
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Gone with the Wind—the top-grossing movie of all time, adjusted for inflation—remains an iconic influence in American culture, despite its deeply troubling portrayal of social and political dynamics in the South during and after the Civil War. The continued popularity of the film points to a need to examine its influence on nearly a century's worth of American race relations, fascistic movements, and denialism in the United States. And why did Adolf Hitler reportedly love it so much?
In this cross-post of Chatter, David Priess spoke with cultural and literary historian Sarah Churchwell of the University of London, author of “The Wrath To Come,” a book that dives deeply into the film, how it reflects a mythologized "Lost Cause" version of the Old South, and its connection with today's increasing political violence. They discuss the popularity of the movie, its differences from the book it was based on, some of the challenges for filmmaker David O. Selznick and for the film's actors, the "Lost Cause" theme that the movie conveys, its intersection with fascist thinking in America and with modern racism, why it attracted Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, its links to various iterations of the Klan and "America First" campaigns, and how even disturbing movies like this can spur social progress.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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In this cross-post of Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by their fellow Lawfare senior editor Molly Reynolds to talk through a week of big national security news stories, including:
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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, David Priess spoke with Judd Devermont, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, host of the Into Africa podcast, and former national intelligence officer for Africa from 2015 to 2018.
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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 International Studies, and Michael Beckley, an associate professor of political science at Tufts University, to discuss their new book, “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China.” They discussed the authors’ argument that China is structurally far weaker than people think, but that this weakness makes China more likely to act aggressively over the next several years. They also discussed the implications of this argument for U.S. policy and to what extent international initiatives that are already underway are responsive to this near-term threat.
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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 and the debate over what comes next. Daniel and Tyler discussed the two warring camps at either end, known as the restrainers and the liberal internationalists, and the stakes of their debate for the future of U.S. foreign policy and the world.
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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 charge former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and aide Dan Scavino. Why? A recent filing by the Justice Department in civil litigation brought by Meadows may have some answers.
To discuss, Quinta Jurecic sat down with Jonathan David Shaub, a contributing editor to Lawfare and an assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law, and Mike Stern, former senior counsel to the House of Representatives. They talked about where the various cases stand and why, and what to make of the Justice Department’s filing spelling out its understanding of the doctrine of testimonial immunity for close presidential advisors.
You can read Jonathan’s take on the filing (with Rohini Kurup) here, and Mike’s here.
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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 prevent the harmful proliferation of certain missiles and missile technology. They spoke about the origins of the agreement, the challenges it has faced, and potential avenues for productive reform. Is the agreement still useful, or have technological advances and developments in other areas over the last few decades left it outdated?
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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 historian who wrote, “Intelligence and the State: Analysts and Decision Makers.” Jonathan joined Lawfare publisher David Priess to talk about intelligence as a profession, the responsibilities of senior intelligence leaders, and how Samuel Huntington's classic “soldier and the state” framework applies to intelligence.
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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 covering corridors of intelligence and international intrigue.
This week on Chatter, Lawfare’s weekly long-form podcast featuring conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security, Kelly talked to Shane Harris about how she got her start, where her travels have taken her, and how journalism has proven to be a rich source of material for her fiction.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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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 lying around at Mar-a-Lago?
For an emergency version of the Lawfare Podcast, Benjamin Wittes sat down to talk it all through with Pete Strzok, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who has executed his share of warrants; Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic; and Alex Wellerstein, historian of nuclear weapons and secrets.
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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 ofThe Aftermath Natalie Orpett, Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Molly Reynolds, and Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien, who read questions from the live audience. They discussed what the committee has accomplished institutionally, what it has accomplished from an adding-new-evidence point of view, what the purpose of this next round of hearings might be, and what relationship this investigation might have to the Justice Department's recent spree of activities.
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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 prove to be the antidote for corruption that he has promised or the nail in the coffin for what had been the Arab Spring's last surviving democracy.
To discuss these developments and what they might mean, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program, and Sharan Grewal, an assistant professor of government at the College of William and Mary and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. They discussed where the new constitution came from, what it may mean in practice, and how it will impact Tunisia and the broader region's future.
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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 editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic, and Andrew Weissmann, a former senior prosecutor for Bob Mueller. They talked about what we know and what we don't know, what sort of investigation this might be, where it may be going, and whether this has anything to do with Jan. 6.
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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 what it means for U.S. foreign policy, Tyler McBrien sat down with Nick, an investigative journalist at The Intercept who has reported on 127-echo for years. They discussed the history of the funding authority, what these new documents and interviews can tell us about U.S. proxy wars, and how much we still don't know.
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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 of the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency. The indictment is a wild ride, with a number of Americans listed as unindicted co-conspirators.
To discuss, Quinta Jurecic sat down with Thomas Rid—professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and author of a book on Eastern bloc influence operations called “Active Measures”—and Brandon Van Grack, a partner and co-chair of the National Security and Crisis Management practices at the law firm Morrison and Foerster and a former official at the Justice Department, where—among other things—he served as senior assistant special counsel to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They talked through what to make of the allegations against Ionov: are they alarming, or evidence of clumsiness and incompetence on the part of Russia? What can we say about the Justice Department’s strategy in bringing this case and where the investigation might go?
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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:
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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 one understands this better than the People’s Republic of China, who over the last several years has built up an aggressive state-driven campaign to accelerate the development of quantum technology—a set of policies intended to put it at the very front of the pack of the next technological revolution, and all the competitive advantages it is likely to bring.
To discuss this development, what it may mean for the future, and how the United States should respond, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Elsa Kania, an adjunct fellow with the Center for a New American Security and the co-author of a new report on China’s efforts to achieve “Quantum Hegemony.”
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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. Recently, lawyers involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election have faced professional discipline—like Rudy Giuliani, whose law license has been suspended temporarily in New York and D.C. while a New York ethics investigation remains ongoing.
Quinta Jurecic sat down with Paul Rosenzweig a contributing editor at Lawfare and a board member with the 65 Project, an organization that seeks to hold accountable lawyers who worked to help Trump hold onto power in 2020—often by spreading lies. He’s also spent many years working on issues related to legal ethics. So what avenues of discipline are available for lawyers who tell lies about elections? How does the legal discipline process work? And how effective can legal discipline be in reasserting the truth?
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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 Wittes sat down with Sophia Yan, Beijing correspondent for the Telegraph; Julian Ku, professor of law at Hofstra University; and Zack Cooper of the Alliance for Protecting Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. They talked about why Pelosi went, about how Beijing reacted, and whether it's all bluster or whether this is the real deal. They also talked about what we can expect to happen over the next few months and how we can deescalate the situation over the next few days.
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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 badly degraded is al-Qaeda? Who's going to replace al-Zawahiri? What does it mean for the Taliban's promises not to allow al-Qaeda attacks on the United States to be planned from its soil? And what is the international and domestic law of killing al-Qaeda leaders 21 years after 9/11.
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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 wrote Lawfare articles about the EU’s proposal back in June: Robert Gorwa, postdoctoral research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center who specializes in platform governance and transnational digital policy issues, and Susan Landau, Bridge Professor of Cybersecurity and Policy in The Fletcher School and at the School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science at Tufts University. They discussed the European proposal in the context of child sexual abuse material, as well as within other contexts, such as that of terrorism. And they walked through the practical, legal, and technical implications of the draft regulation, as well as what its evolution reveals more broadly about policymaking in the digital sphere.
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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 and senior editor Quinta Jurecic argued that it’s reasonable to push harder for the department to understand its particular responsibilities in upholding the rule of law in this unique political moment.
After that debate, Ben, Natalie, and Quinta put their heads together with former FBI official Pete Strzok—who’s expressed his own skepticism about whether the Justice Department is investigating aggressively enough—to map out some benchmarks for what to look for in the Jan. 6 investigation going forward. They wrote that up as a Lawfare piece—and then they sat down to talk about it on the podcast.
How will we know if the Justice Department investigation is proceeding aggressively? What signs should worry people hoping for legal accountability for the insurrection? Natalie, Pete, Ben, and Quinta discussed.
Note: This podcast was recorded before the New York Times published some new reporting on July 28 about the role of lead prosecutor Thomas Windom. Throughout the show, you’ll hear reference to a major report by the Washington Post published on July 26 stating that prosecutors have asked witnesses testifying before the grand jury about Trump’s individual actions before and on Jan. 6.
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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 news and related matters in articles and books—including True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News, which she targeted at a Young Adult audience. She balances a deep understanding of the challenges of fake news with a deep commitment to providing practical guidance for dealing with it.
David Priess spoke with Cindy about writing about fake news and other national security issues for the Young Adult audience, the history of fake news, the challenges of writing about the Holocaust, the changing terminology for disabled persons, the continuing challenges of wheelchair use in travel and in government buildings, her experiences at the CIA, why she writes for outlets ranging from Teen Vogue to USA Today, how to avoid falling prey to fake news, and why the exposure of Russian fake news about Ukraine gives her optimism about our collective ability to counter disinformation.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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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.
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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 followed eventually led to the takedown of La Cosa Nostra in New York City.
Decades later, now-Judge Gleeson memorialized how he obtained Gotti's conviction in his new book entitled, “The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America's Most Notorious Mobster.” Former Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm sat down with Judge Gleeson. They discussed how Gleeson became involved in one of the biggest mafia cases in the history of United States jurisprudence, conflicts between the prosecution and the FBI, and how underboss “Sammy The Bull” Gravano became an informant to take down the rest of the mob.
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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 series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek spoke with Adriana Robertson, the Donald N. Pritzker Professor of Business Law at the University of Chicago Law School, to talk about the legal issues behind the headlines. What is the Delaware Court of Chancery in which Musk and Twitter are going to face off? Will it care at all about the bots? And how do corporate lawyers think and talk about this differently from how it gets talked about in most of the public conversation about it?
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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 Advisory Committee and has written the book, “The Devil Never Sleeps,” and also with Jonathan Wackrow, chief operating officer of Teneo Risk, who was a long-serving special agent in the Secret Service, including in the presidential protection division.
They talked about the use of phones on that job, the loss of trust and confidence in the Secret Service, and its mismanagement of the crisis. They also talked about the performance of the vice president's protection detail on Jan. 6, the Secret Service’s status within DHS, and the prospect for a Department of Justice investigation of the Service.
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At the end of its past term, the Supreme Court took up the case of Moore v. Harper, a challenge to North Carolina State Supreme Court rulings on elections that promises to confront the controversial independent state legislature doctrine, which argues that the Constitution empowers state legislatures over other state institutions when it comes to deciding certain election matters. Court watchers have posited that the decision could be a major one, as upholding the independent state legislature doctrine could not only hinder the state judicial enforcement of various election-related rights, but potentially strengthen arguments that state legislatures can decide how to allocate their state's electors in presidential elections, a contention that played a central role in some of the legal machinations that former President Donald Trump supporters attempted to pursue following the 2020 election in order to turn the results in his favor.
To better understand what exactly is at stake in Moore v. Harper, Scott R. Anderson spoke to Derek Muller, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and a leading election law expert. They discussed what the independent state legislature doctrine may look like in practice, how it intersects with congressional and presidential elections, and what Moore v. Harper does and doesn't mean for the security of U.S. elections moving forward.
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The Cyber Safety Review Board issued its first major report this month, which focused on the Log4j disaster. So, what is the Cyber Safety Review Board, and what is Log4j?
To answer these questions and others, Benjamin Wittes sat down with the deputy chair of the Cyber Safety Review Board, Heather Adkins, and board member Dmitri Alperovitch. They talked about what the board is, where it comes from, how it is composed, and what it does. And they talked about Log4j, why the board started with this particular cybersecurity incident, how the board went about doing its investigation, what it found, and what it recommended.
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From July 20, 2020: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. Though often called the "Forgotten War," the Korean War has highly conditioned much of our contemporary international politics in East Asia, and the people of Korea continue to live with its aftermath, both in the north and in the south. And the shadow of the Korean War looms large over something we often debate on Lawfare—war powers. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the U.S. entry into the Korean War, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Katharine Moon, a professor of political science at Wellesley College and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for East Asia Policy Studies; Matt Waxman, a professor at Columbia University Law School and long-time Lawfare contributor; and Scott R. Anderson, senior editor of Lawfare and a specialist on war powers, among other things. They talked about what happened on the Korean peninsula during the war, how it affected the way we talk about war powers, and the international law status of the conflict in Korea.
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Lawfare No Bull is a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. This episode features audio from the Jan. 6 committee's eighth public hearing on July 21. The committee focused on former President Trump's actions and inactions during the insurrection, describing in detail the three hours during which the mob overran the Capitol and Trump refused to instruct his supporters to stand down. The committee also heard testimony from two Trump officials who resigned from their positions on Jan. 6: former Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger and former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews.
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The final hearing in the spree of hearings the Jan. 6 committee has put on this summer took place Thursday evening during prime time. It focused on Donald Trump's personal conduct in the period in which the riot was taking place. To debrief on it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down in Twitter Spaces with Lawfare publisher David Priess, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, and Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Molly Reynolds. They talked about where this hearing fit in with the larger story the committee was telling, what they learned that was new, what they learned that was duplicative, and what the committee is going to do between now and when its hearings resume in September.
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The false claims of election fraud and other controversies that followed the 2020 election brought to light a number of frailties in the United States system for selecting presidents. Several have their origins in the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law whose vagaries played a central role in efforts by John Eastman and other supporters of former President Trump to keep him in the White House, despite the election results.
This past Wednesday, after months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators finally put forward a set of legislative reforms aimed at resolving these and other issues well in advance of the next presidential election in 2024. To determine what this reform package will do and how it may impact future elections, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Ned Foley, a leading election law expert and professor at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, and Genevieve Nadeau, a counsel at Protect Democracy who has been actively engaged in reform efforts. They talked about what the reform package intends to change, what will stay the same, and how likely it is to eventually become law.
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When the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade, the impact of the decision on the internet may not have been front of mind for most people thinking through the implications. But in the weeks after the Court’s decision, it’s become clear that the post-Dobbs legal landscape around abortion implicates many questions around not only data and digital privacy, but also online speech. One piece of model state legislation, for example, would criminalize “hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion.”
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Evan Greer, the director of the digital rights organization Fight for the Future. She recently wrote an article in Wiredwith Lia Holland arguing that “Section 230 is a Last Line of Defense for Abortion Speech Online.” They talked about what role Section 230’s protections have to play when it comes to liability for speech about abortionand what content moderation looks like in a post-Dobbs world.
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Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has cooperated extensively with U.S. state governments on economic issues, replacing Canada as the country with the most diplomatic relations with U.S. states. To discuss how we got here and what it means for U.S.-China relations, former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz sat down with Ryan Scoville, professor of law at Marquette University Law School. Jacob and Ryan discussed new evidence that sheds light on the nature of the relationships between China and U.S. states, the lack of public discourse and transparency around these arrangements, and how this subnational diplomacy has allowed China to acquire cutting-edge American technology. They also discussed what Congress should do to ensure federal monitoring and public discourse of future arrangements.
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In recent weeks, we've brought you information and insight about Swedish and Finnish attitudes toward NATO membership, and about Turkey's machinations regarding the two country's applications. But now, Sweden and Finland have been invited to NATO - and member country ratifications are coming in.
To explore the topic deeper, David Priess sat down with Katarina Tracz, the director of the Stockholm Free World Forum (Frivärld) and author of the book in Swedish, The Sea of Peace? Increased Tensions Around the Baltic Sea, and with Minna Ålander, from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, where she focuses on Finnish and Nordic security.
They talked about Swedish and Finnish strategic perceptions and military interoperability with NATO equipment, the geopolitical importance of the Baltic sea, specifically the Gulf of Finland and Gotland, and about Swedish and Finnish risk perceptions as they await NATO membership.
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Earlier this month, the Fulton County special grand jury investigating potential criminal interference into Georgia's 2020 elections subpoenaed members of former President Donald Trump's inner circle, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Senator Lindsay Graham, among others.
To discuss these high profile subpoenas and some of the finer points of Georgia state criminal procedure, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Tamar Hallerman, reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who is covering the Fulton County Trump probe, and who also formally served as the papers Washington correspondent covering the Trump administration. Tamar also hosts a weekly podcast on the special grand jury called The Breakdown.
They discussed the scope of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's criminal probe, how a special grand jury operates in the state of Georgia, what this one has been up to, and what's next for the investigation.
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#LiveFromUkraine is an experimental project hosted on Twitter Spaces by Ben Wittes, with the goal of interviewing a diverse lineup of guests to educate and engage directly with people on the ground in Ukraine during Russia's ongoing invasion. In this episode, Ben talks with Katya Savchencko (@shanovna_s), who grew up in the Donbas region of Ukraine and moved to Bucha following the Russian invasion of that region in 2014. This year, following the full-scale invasion, she survived several days of the brutal and murderous Russian occupation of Bucha before escaping by train with her sister. She kept a diary of her days in Bucha, which she recently published on Medium in English translation. Savchhencko joined Benjamin Wittes on #LiveFromUkraine.
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From April 9, 2019: On this episode of the Lawfare Podcast, our friends at the National Security Institute at George Mason University came over to have a discussion in our podcast studio about Yemen and the U.S.-Saudi alliance. Four former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers who worked with and sometimes at odds with each other participated. The conversation was moderated by Lester Munson, former Staff Director of the Committee under Chairman Bob Corker, and it included Jodi Herman, former Staff Director of the Committee under Ranking Member Ben Cardin; Jamil Jaffer, Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute and former Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor with the Committee under Chairman Bob Corker; and Dana Stroul, former Democratic senior staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the Middle East.
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Global crises of the last 20 years have led to a backlash against elites of all kinds, but those same crises often lay bare just how much power they still have, especially informed policy. Former Lawfare Associate Editor Bryce Klehm sat down with Elizabeth Saunders, an associate professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, to talk about her recent article in the Annual Review of Political Science: "Elites in the Making and Breaking of Foreign Policy."
They discussed questions like who exactly are foreign policy elites, why they behave the way they do, and what, if anything, is the alternative to concentrating power in the hands of an elite few? Bryce and Elizabeth also got into why, when it comes to foreign policy elites, we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em.
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Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve talked a lot on this show about how falsehoods about the coronavirus are spread and generated. For this episode, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with two emergency medicine physicians who have seen the practical effects of those falsehoods while treating patients over the last two years. Nick Sawyer and Taylor Nichols are two of the cofounders of the organization No License for Disinformation, a group that advocates for medical authorities to take disciplinary action against doctors spreading misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19. They argue that state medical boards, which grant physicians the licenses that authorize them to practice medicine, could play a more aggressive role in curbing falsehoods.
How many doctors have been disciplined, and why do Nick and Taylor believe that state medical boards have fallen down on the job? What are the possibilities for more aggressive action—and how does the First Amendment limit those possibilities? And how much good can the threat of discipline do in curbing medical misinformation, anyway?
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Yesterday, July 12, the January 6 committee held its seventh in a series of prominent hearings unveiling the findings of its investigation to the public. This hearing focused on the role of extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys in planning the assault on the Capitol, and unveiled new evidence about Trump’s plans to direct protestors to the Capitol in advance of January 6.
As always, we convened afterwards on Twitter Spaces to discuss. Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes moderated a conversation with Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Roger Parloff, and me.
It’s the Lawfare Podcast, July 13: The Jan. 6 Committee, Day Seven.
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The “hackers for hire” industry continues to grow unbothered. Reports in recent years have uncovered details about governments and officials using spyware and other security and privacy circumventing tools to target dissidents and other sensitive targets. But another equally invasive and secretive industry has developed over the last decade, involving the use of foreign hackers to win lawsuits and arbitration battles.
To discuss this issue, Alvaro Marañon, fellow in cybersecurity law at Lawfare, sat down with Chris Bing and Raphael Satter. Chris is a reporter for Reuters, covering digital espionage and Raphael is a journalist and writer for Reuters, covering cybersecurity. Chris and Raphael recently published an extensive investigation, entitled “How Mercenary Hackers Sway Litigation Battles”, where they breakdown this hackers-for-hire business model in India.
They discussed the details around the structure of this marketplace such as how the clients and hackers are matched, the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by the various hacking groups, and what the significance of this illicit industry could be for other sensitive communities.
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We often use the terms democracy and liberal democracy interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. Democracy means majority rule and public participation. Liberal democracy means democracy plus minority rights. There's no guarantee that democracy will be liberal. And in fact, some of the same things that enable democracy can also undermine its liberal commitments.
Zac Gershberg, a professor of journalism and media studies at Idaho State University and Sean Illing, the host of the Vox Conversations podcast, have recently released a new book, The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion.
In the book, they argue that every democracy is fundamentally shaped by the dominant media technology of its time. And that the current landscape of social media and cable news fuels our democracy, but also pushes it in an illiberal authoritarian direction. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Zac and Sean about how American democracy got to this point, how the present compares to the past, and what, if anything, can be done to put liberal democracy on firmer footing.
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Rational Security is a weekly roundtable podcast featuring Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein. It's a lively, irreverent discussion of news, ideas, foreign policy and law. And there’s always a laugh.This week, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien. They discussed the news of the week, primarily the surprise testimony given by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th.
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From January 8th, 2019: On this episode of the Lawfare podcast, David Priess sat down with John Sipher to discuss the past, present and future history of spy swaps in reference to the 2019 Russian arrest of Paul Waylon, who is currently imprisoned in a Russian labor camp now. This is more relevant than ever, as WNBA star Brittney Griner, who is imprisoned and on trial in Russia on drug charges, sent president Biden a handwritten letter this week pleading for his help in bringing her back to the United States.
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For decades, experts and analysts have written in great detail about the importance of liberalization and its role in promoting democracy and other western values. Specifically, many believed that once a state began this track towards liberalization, open markets and a liberal democracy was inevitable. Yet, the several decades following Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to China has proven differently, as China continues to grow more distant and confrontational with the West.
Lawfare Fellow in Cybersecurity Law, Alvaro Marañon, sat down with Aaron Friedberg, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Aaron is an expert on the relations between China and the West, and has written numerous articles and books assessing the economic, military and political dangers of this rivalry.
They explored his new book, “Getting China Wrong”, and discussed the origins of the West’s engagement with China, how and why the West miscalculated the Chinese Communist Party’s identity and objectives, and how the U.S. and Biden administration can start getting China “right.”
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Algorithms! We hear a lot about them. They drive social media platforms and, according to popular understanding, are responsible for a great deal of what’s wrong about the internet today—and maybe the downfall of democracy itself. But … what exactly are algorithms? And, given they’re not going away, what should they be designed to do?
Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jonathan Stray, a senior scientist at the Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI and someone who has thought a lot about what we mean when we say the word “algorithm”—and also when we discuss things like “engagement” and “amplification.” He helped them pin down a more precise understanding of what those terms mean and why that precision is so important in crafting good technology policy. They also talked about what role social media algorithms do and don’t play in stoking political polarization, and how they might be designed to decrease polarization instead.
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Earlier this year, Finland and Sweden applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But both of their applications were held up, due to an objection by Turkey. NATO being a mutual security alliance, any one member can prevent new countries from joining. To fully understand the background dynamics at play here and to explain the agreement that the three countries recently signed, allowing the applications to move forward, Lawfare Publisher David Priess spoke with two people who have covered Turkey from a multitude of angles.
Nick Danforth is the author of The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire. He has also covered U.S.-Turkish relations for the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Bipartisan Policy Center. Rachel Rizzo is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Europe Center, where she focuses on European security, NATO, and the trans-Atlantic relationship.
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Many individual police officers acted heroically on January 6th. But the successful attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, seeking to disrupt the certification of the electoral votes, remains one of the biggest policing failures in American history. Not only did the Capitol police fail to prepare for the attack, but many members of the mob were themselves police officers from around the country.
To talk through the many reasons behind this failure, Alan Z. Rozenshtein sat down with Vida Johnson, an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law School and the author of a recent Brooklyn Law Review article and companion Lawfare post, exploring the tactical and structural policing failures that contributed to January 6th.
Alan spoke with her about what the police should have done differently, and the role that race and politics play in how police react to domestic extremism.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Vida's Brooklyn Law Review article - https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol87/iss2/3/
Vida's Lawfare article - https://www.lawfareblog.com/policing-and-siege-united-states-capitol
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Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. Today’s episode features audio from the surprise sixth public hearing held by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee heard explosive testimony from former white house aid, Cassidy Hutchins. Learn more and subscribe to Lawfare No Bull.
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Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. Today’s episode features audio of the fifth of a series of public hearings held by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The hearing included testimony from former Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steve Engel. Learn more and subscribe to Lawfare No Bull.
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Chatter, a podcast from Lawfare, features weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. This week on Chatter, David Priess talked with former U.S. Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow to discuss the inherent dilemmas that come along with the job. One of them can arise if agents become partisan actors or allow themselves to even be perceived as such. We heard another one described in shocking terms during this week's testimony before the Jan. 6 committee: A protectee and the agents protecting him or her can disagree with the protectee about the latter's presence in a threatening situation or movement toward it.
It turns out a whole lot of training prepares agents for these contingencies--as well as more predictable ones like how to respond instantaneously to myriad threats. Many lessons emerge from the study of past service failures, up to and including presidential assassinations and attempts. And some others can shed light elsewhere, such as on personal security and safety of institutions from schools to churches.
Jonathan is now the COO and Global Head of Security for Teneo Risk and a law enforcement analyst for CNN. He and David have a deep and wide discussion about how cable news networks cover tragedy, the challenges of providing insight on security incidents in real time, his path into the Secret Service, how agents are trained, the lessons learned from historical failures of presidential protection, his own experiences with security breaches during the Obama administration, the dangers of perceived or actual politicization in the service, the balance between protecting a president and allowing a president's desired movements, agents' duty to testify in criminal investigations involving their protectees, how Secret Service experiences can help other institutions during an era of rising political violence, the benefits and drawbacks of school active shooter drills, and more.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
The movie The Bodyguard
The movie In the LIne of Fire
The book Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig
The book The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters by Juliette Kayyem
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When a Russian missile recently struck a TV tower in Kyiv, near Babyn Yar, the site of Nazi mass murders during the Holocaust, some saw the attack as a potent symbol of the tragic occurrence of violence in Ukraine. To talk through the historical significance of the attack, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Maksym Rokmaniko, an architect, designer, entrepreneur, and director at the Center for Spatial Technologies in Kyiv, and Linda Kinstler, a PhD candidate in the rhetoric department at UC Berkeley.
In her recent New York times essay, the Bloody Echoes of Babyn Yar, Linda wrote, "the current war in Ukraine is so oversaturated with historical meaning, it is unfolding on soil that has absorbed wave after wave of the dead, where soldiers do not always have to dig trenches in the forest because the old ones remain."
Linda's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic and Jewish Currents, where she recently reported on the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial center. Linda is also the author of Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends, which is out in the U.S. on August 23rd, from Public Affairs.
Tyler, Linda and Maksym discuss the history of Babyn Yar as a sight and symbol, the role of open source investigative techniques and forensic modeling in the documentation of war crimes, the battle over historical narratives, memorialization and memory, as well as the limits of the law in achieving justice for victims of negation and genocide.
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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is midway through a blockbuster series of hearings exploring Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. Central to those efforts, of course, was the Big Lie—the false notion that Trump was cheated out of victory in 2020.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Kate Starbird, an associate professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington—and repeat Arbiters of Truth guest. Kate has come on the show before to talk about misinformation and Jan. 6, and she and a team of coauthors just released a comprehensive analysis of tweets spreading misinformation around the 2020 election. So she’s the perfect person with whom to discuss the Jan. 6 committee hearings and misinformation. What does Kate’s research show about how election falsehoods spread, and who spread them? How has, and hasn’t, the Jan. 6 committee incorporated the role of misinformation into the story it’s telling about the insurrection? And is there any chance the committee can break through and get the truth to the people who most need to hear it?
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It was a blockbuster day at the Jan. 6 committee hearings. Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified in riveting detail about what the president was up to and what the people around him were up to in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day itself. There's an assault against a Secret Service officer. There's a shattered plate and ketchup dripping down the wall. And there are a lot of warnings that violence was coming, warnings that the president really didn't seem to mind.
Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces to debrief it all with Lawfare publisher David Priess, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, and Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein, and Roger Parloff. They went over what was new and what it means for the investigation to come.
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On May 19, the Department of Justice announced a new policy concerning how it will charge cases under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, the primary statute used against those who engage in unlawful computer intrusions. Over the years, the statute has been criticized because it has been difficult to determine the kinds of conduct it criminalizes, which has led to a number of problems, including the chilling of security research.
Stephanie Pell sat down with Andrea Matwyshyn, professor of law and associate dean of innovation at Penn State Law School to discuss DOJ's new charging policy and some of the issues it attempts to address. They talked about some of the problems created by the CFAA's vague terms, how the new charging policy tries to protect good faith security research, and the significance of the requirement that prosecutors must now consult with the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property section at main Justice before charging a case under the CFAA.
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An interesting subplot of the Russian invasion and subsequent war in Ukraine has been the rush of fighters from other countries to join the Ukrainian foreign legion and to fight as legionnaires on behalf of the Ukrainian government. The phenomenon of legionnaires is an interesting one that crops up all throughout history yet has remained relatively understudied. What role do legionnaires play in conflicts? How does their impact differ from that of typical soldiers? How can we distinguish them from contractors or mercenaries or other categories of fighters? And what can legionnaires tell us about the ways that states like to conduct international affairs and international conflict?
To talk through these issues, Jacob Schulz spoke with Elizabeth Grasmeder, a researcher and author of an international security article entitled “Leaning on Legionnaires: Why Modern States Recruit Foreign Soldiers.” They talked about the historical practice of use of legionnaires and what it can reveal about conflicts today.
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Chatter, a podcast from Lawfare, features weekly long-form conversations with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security.This week on Chatter, Shane Harris talked with historian Tim Naftali about the legacy of Watergate and how we tell stories, fifty years later, about America’s most notorious presidential scandal. What is it about Watergate that still captures our attention? What do historians, journalists, and citizens misremember about the events? And how does the scandal shape our understanding of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol?
Naftali was the first federal director of the Richard Nixon library and earned accolades from historians—and criticism from Nixon loyalists—for his efforts to truthfully tell the story of Watergate in the Nixon museum. Naftali has written about intelligence, counterterrorism, national security, and the American presidency in the modern era. He is currently a professor at New York University.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Learn more and subscribe to Chatter.
Among the works discussed in this episode:
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From May 4, 2021: 2020 was a remarkable year in so many ways, not least of which was the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects. Why did so many countries bungle their responses to it so badly? And what should their leaders have learned from earlier disasters and the pathologies clearly visible in the responses of their predecessors to them?
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, "Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe." David Priess sat down with Niall to discuss everything from earthquake zones, to viruses, to world wars, all with a mind to how our political and social structures have or have not adapted to the certainty of continued crises.
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It was Day Five of the House select committee hearings on Jan. 6. This time, the committee was focused on the president's efforts to pressure, and one may even say decapitate, the Justice Department to get it to put pressure on states on voter fraud matters and overturn the results of the 2020 election. In front of the committee were senior Justice Department officials who threatened to resign if an obscure environmental lawyer was made acting attorney general.
It was another dramatic day of testimony, and to chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, and New York Times reporter Katie Benner, who broke the whole story of the coup attempt at the Justice Department shortly after it happened. They talked about whether they learned anything new. They talked about how the department officials came off: are they heroes or are they apparatchiks? And they talked about how all of it fits into the committee's larger story.
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If you’ve been watching the hearings convened by the House select committee on Jan. 6, you’ve seen a great deal about how the Trump campaign generated and spread falsehoods about supposed election fraud in 2020. As the committee has argued, those falsehoods were crucial in generating the political energy that culminated in the explosion of the January 6 insurrection.
What shape did those lies take, and how did social media platforms attempt to deal with them at the time? Today, we’re bringing you an episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on the online information ecosystem. In fact, we’re rebroadcasting an episode we recorded in November 2020 about disinformation and the 2020 election. In late November 2020, after Joe Biden cemented his victory as the next president but while the Trump campaign was still pushing its claims of election fraud online and in court, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Their conversation then was a great overview of the state of election security and the difficulty of countering false claims around the integrity of the vote. It’s worth a listen today as the Jan. 6 committee reminds us what the political and media environment was like in the aftermath of the election and how the Trump campaign committed to election lies that still echo all too loudly. And though it’s a year and a half later, the problems we’re discussing here certainly haven’t gone away.
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Tuesday was day four of the Jan. 6 committee hearings, this time on Donald Trump's efforts to coax, cajole, and threaten state election officials and legislators into overturning their state election results in 2020. To go over it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down in Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior editors Roger Parloff, Quinta Jurecic, and Molly Reynolds. They talked about where this story fits in with the larger narrative the committee is trying to spin, about what is working and what is not working in the committee's presentation, and they took live questions from the audience.
The committee’s next hearing is currently scheduled for Thursday, June 23, at 3pm Eastern. We'll be hosting these events on Twitter Spaces after every hearing. Find us on Twitter @lawfareblog for more details.
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Asfandyar Mir of the U.S. Institute of Peace and Daniel Byman of Lawfare, Brookings, and Georgetown, are both analysts of al-Qaeda and terrorist groups. They have a different analysis, however, of how al-Qaeda is faring in the current world. Rather than argue about the subject on Twitter, they wrote an article on it, spelling out where they agree and where they disagree, and they joined Benjamin Wittes to talk it all through. Where is al-Qaeda strong and resilient? Where is it weak and failing? And where has it disappeared altogether?
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Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. Today’s episode features audio of the third of a series of public hearings held by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee heard in-person testimony from former Vice President Pence’s general counsel Greg Jacob and retired federal judge Michael Luttig.
Learn more and subscribe to Lawfare No Bull.
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Today we’re bringing you another episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. Today’s episode features audio of the second of a series of public hearings held by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee heard in-person and video testimony, including from former Attorney General William Barr and former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien.
Learn more and subscribe to Lawfare No Bull.
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Today we’re bringing you an episode of Lawfare No Bull, a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. This episode features audio of the first of a series of public hearings held by the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The hearing included testimony from documentarian Nick Quested and Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, as well as video footage of interviews from a number of Trump aides.
Learn more and subscribe to Lawfare No Bull.
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On Thursday, June 16, the Jan. 6 committee held its third day of public hearings. Afterwards, the Lawfare team convened once again in Twitter Spaces for a live recording of the podcast. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic talked with editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, executive editor Natalie Orpett, and senior editor Alan Rozenshtein about the substance of the day’s hearing, which focused on President Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into overturning the results of the 2020 election.
The committee’s next hearing is currently scheduled for Tuesday, June 21, at 1pm Eastern. We'll be hosting these events on Twitter Spaces after every hearing. Find us on Twitter @lawfareblog for more details.
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If you loaded up the internet or turned on the television somewhere in the United States over the last two months, it’s been impossible to avoid news coverage of the defamation trial of actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard—both of whom sued each other over a dispute relating to allegations by Heard of domestic abuse by Depp. In early June, a Virginia jury found that both had defamed the other. The litigation has received a great deal of coverage for what it might say about the fate of the Me Too movement—but the flood of falsehoods online around the trial raises questions about how useful defamation law can really be in countering lies.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with RonNell Andersen Jones, the Lee E. Teitelbaum Professor of Law at the University of Utah College of Law and an expert on the First Amendment and the interaction between the press and the courts. Along with Lyrissa Lidsky, she’s written about defamation law, disinformation, and the Depp-Heard litigation. They talked about why some commentators think defamation could be a useful route to counter falsehoods, why RonNell thinks the celebrity litigation undercuts that argument, and the few cases in which claims of libel or slander really could have an impact in limiting the spread of lies.
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On Monday, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion titled, “Allies: How America failed its partners in Afghanistan.” The event featured comments from Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, a preview clip of Episode 6 of the podcast Allies, and a moderated discussion with an all-star panel.
Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm sat down with Shala Gafary, the managing attorney for Project: Afghan Legal Assistance at Human Rights First; Col. Steven Miska, who serves on the steering committee of the Evacuate Our Allies Coalition; and Matt Zeller, a U.S. Army veteran, co-founder of No One Left Behind, and an advisory board chair of the Association of Wartime Allies. They discussed some of the past failures that led to a situation where tens of thousands of the U.S.’s allies were left behind in Afghanistan. They also discussed current resettlement issues and relocation for those still in Afghanistan or other third countries.
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Recorded almost immediately after the Jan. 6 committee conducted its second public hearing, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic, Natalie Orpett, and Rohini Kurup. They talked about what the committee accomplished in this second hearing, what evidence it put forth, and whether Donald Trump actually knew that the election lies were false or whether he had convinced himself that they were true.
We'll be hosting these events on Twitter Spaces the morning after every hearing. Find us on Twitter for more details.
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Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff has been following in a way that just about nobody else has the litigation to keep people off ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment—the part of the amendment that says that if you engaged in an insurrection, you're excluded from public office. It was the subject of a recent major Fourth Circuit opinion, and the state of Section 3 litigation is also the subject of a significant new Roger Parloff piece on Lawfare entitled, “After the Cawthorn Ruling, Can Trump Be Saved From Section 3 of the 14th Amendment?”
Roger joined Benjamin Wittes to talk through the piece. What are the major legal arguments that people involved in Jan. 6 are using to keep themselves on the ballots? How strong are the factual cases against different gubernatorial and congressional actors? And why is Donald Trump uniquely vulnerable to a challenge on this basis?
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When the term "intelligence" comes up regarding an organization, most of us immediately think of government institutions. And there's a good reason for that: nation-states have become the centers of the most prominent intelligence collection, analysis, and direct action. But that's far from the whole story. Increasingly, corporations are developing intelligence units of their own to uncover and assess threats to their personnel and facilities, analyze geopolitical and environmental risks that might affect their business prospects, and even take actions traditionally associated with governments.
In this episode of Chatter, David Priess chats about all of this and more with Lewis Sage-Passant, who has built on his experiences in British military intelligence, private sector intelligence, crisis management, and related PhD research to explore the history, evolution, and ethics of this intriguing and challenging domain. They discuss the long history of private sector intelligence efforts, the difficulty disentangling early commercial efforts from government purposes, the fabled Pinkertons in the United States, the development of intelligence around modern corporations, the ethical issues that arise in this realm—and James Bond.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Learn more and subscribe to Chatter.
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On Thursday, the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack held the first in a series of public hearings that they will use to present the findings of its ongoing investigation. The hearing laid out the evidence of Trump's culpability in bringing about the attack and also heard from witnesses about the role of the Proud Boys and the experience of law enforcement officers guarding the Capitol that day.
On Friday, June 10, the morning after the hearing, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter with Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic, Molly Reynolds, and Roger Parloff to discuss their impressions and answer questions from the audience.
We'll be hosting these events on Twitter Spaces the morning after every hearing, and you can join us for the next one on Tuesday, June 14, at 8:30 AM Eastern. Find us on Twitter for more details.
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Oleksandra Matviychuk is the head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. She founded the organization to work on internal reform in her own country, but for the last eight years, she has spent a great deal of her time investigating and documenting Russian war crimes. She began this in the wake of the 2014 Russian invasion of the Donbas and Crimea, but the work has really accelerated since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of this year. While in Washington to talk to U.S. policymakers about her vision of a hybrid tribunal to try Russian war crimes, she took some time to speak with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes. It's a wide-ranging conversation covering her own history as a war crimes investigator and documenter, the current challenge of documenting and prosecuting Russian war crimes on a scale we haven't seen in a very long time, and how the Ukrainian war effort relates to the project of defending civilians and preventing further war crimes.
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On May 31, by a five-four vote, the Supreme Court blocked a Texas law from going into effect that would have sharply limited how social media companies could moderate their platforms and required companies to abide by various transparency requirements. We’ve covered the law on this show before—we recorded an episode right after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit allowed Texas to implement the law, in the same ruling that the Supreme Court just vacated. But there’s enough interesting stuff in the Supreme Court’s order—and in Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent—that we thought it was worth another bite at the apple.
So this week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic invited Genevieve Lakier, professor of law at the University of Chicago and Evelyn’s colleague at the Knight First Amendment Institute, to walk us through just what happened. What exactly did the Supreme Court do? Why does Justice Alito seem to think that the Texas law has a decent chance of surviving a First Amendment challenge? And what does this suggest about the possible futures of the extremely unsettled landscape of First Amendment law?
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What does the American public actually know concretely about the effectiveness of U.S. drone strikes? Jack Goldsmith sat down with Mitt Regan, a professor at Georgetown Law School and the co-director of its Center on National Security and Law, who seeks to answer this question in his new book, “Drone Strike—Analyzing the Impacts of Targeted Killing.” They discussed his deep analysis of the empirical literature on the effectiveness of targeted strikes outside active theaters of combat against al-Qaeda and affiliates and the impact of these strikes on civilians. They also explore the theoretical challenges to real empirical knowledge of these questions, the extent to which drone strikes have contributed to security within the United States, and what his findings imply about the consequences of the impact of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
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What, if any, theory of international relations best explains U.S. foreign policy outcomes? Why, for example, did President Biden withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, re-engage Iran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, impose harsher than expected sanctions on Russia, and give more than expected support to Ukraine following the Russian invasion? Jack Goldsmith sat down with Richard Hanania, the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, whose new book, “Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy,” seeks to provide answers to these types of questions. They discussed Hanania’s view that academic theories about American grand strategy cannot explain important U.S. foreign policy outcomes, and his argument that these outcomes are better explained by public choice theory, especially by the dominant influences on the presidency of government contractors, the national security bureaucracy, and foreign governments. They also discussed whether realistic complaints about these influences are consistent with realistic premises about how to discern the national interest and the value, if any, of international relations theorizing.
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The business of offensive cyber operations and intelligence gathering increasingly requires the military and intelligence community to exploit networks, hardware, and software owned or produced by American companies and used by American citizens. Sometimes this exploitation occurs with the use of zero-day vulnerabilities. In order to determine when zero-day vulnerabilities should be exploited versus disclosed to the relevant vendor so that the vulnerability can be patched, the United States government engages in an interagency process known as the Vulnerabilities Equities Process or VEP.
Stephanie Pell sat down with Dr. Lindsey Polley, director of defense and national security at Starburst Aerospace, to talk about her recently defended dissertation, “To Disclose or Not to Disclose, That Is the Question: A Methods-Based Approach for Examining & Improving the US Government's Vulnerabilities Equities Process.” They discussed the purpose of the VEP, how it is structured to operate, and how its current state and structure impedes its ability to promote longer-term social good through its vulnerability adjudications. They also talked about some of Lindsey's recommendations to improve the VEP.
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This week on Chatter, Shane Harris talks with journalist Jamie Kirchick about his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Kirchick’s story unfolds over several decades and reveals the secret history of gays and lesbians in the capital, as well as the history of secrecy in which they played pivotal roles.
The book is a set of personal stories as well as an exploration of the national security bureaucracy at the heart of power and influence in Washington. And Kirchick explores a provocative idea: Were gays and lesbians, already accustomed to living secret lives, well-suited to work as intelligence officers?
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Learn more and subscribe to Chatter.
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From October 29, 2020: On this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Casey Newton, veteran Silicon Valley editor for The Verge who recently went independent to start a newsletter on Substack called Platformer. Few people have followed the stories of platforms and content moderation in recent years as closely and carefully as Casey, so Evelyn and Quinta asked him about what’s changed in the last four years—especially in the lead-up to the election. They also spoke about the challenges of reporting on the tech industry and whether the increased willingness of platforms to moderate content means that the name of this podcast series will have to change.
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In May, news came out that the U.S. government was thinking of putting the Chinese video surveillance company Hikvision on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals list, otherwise known as the SDN list. The move would have huge impacts on Hikvision’s business prospects in the U.S. and around the world and would represent yet another escalation in the way that the U.S. government handles Chinese technology companies.
To talk through the news and why it's so significant, Jacob Schulz sat down with Katrina Northrop, a reporter at The Wire China who wrote a story about the Hikvision saga, and Alex Iftimie, a partner at Morrison & Foerster and a former official within the National Security Division at the Justice Department.
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As transparency reporting about content moderation enforcement has become standard across the platform industry, there's been growing questions about the reliability and accuracy of the reports the platforms are producing. With all reporting being entirely voluntary and the content moderation industry in general being very opaque, it’s hard to know how much to trust the figures that companies report in their quarterly or biannual enforcement reports. As a result, there's been growing calls for independent audits of these figures, and last month, Meta released its first ever independent audit of its content moderation reporting systems.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek sat down with someone who actually knows something about auditing: Colleen Honigsberg, an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, whose research is focused on the empirical study of corporate and securities law. They talked about how auditors work, the promises and pitfalls of auditing in other contexts and what that might teach us for auditing in the content moderation context, and whether this is going to be a useful regulatory tool.
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Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, have captured the attention of thousands over the past few weeks and months. This technology's use has encompassed various forms of digital art such as the popular depictions of cartoon apes. But, one country has begun looking beyond NFT’s use as a digital asset toward using it for the creation of a more centralized and restrictive internet ecosystem.
Lawfare fellow in cybersecurity law Alvaro Marañon sat down with Yaya Fanusie, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, to speak about the China government’s vision for the next iteration of the internet. Yaya is an expert on the national security implications of cryptocurrencies and recently has written Lawfare posts analyzing China’s NFT and national digital currency initiatives.
They broke down an NFT and the other technical acronyms, what the Chinese government’s aspirations are with its national blockchain project, and what the strategic risk to nation-states is if China can implement its technological vision.
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A few weeks ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the latest FISA transparency data. It was notable in at least two major respects: the continued decline of traditional Title I FISA applications—that is, warrants for individual surveillance—and separately, the rather large number of U.S. persons who had been searched under so-called 702 surveillance.
To discuss the news, the data and what it all means, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Carrie Cordero of the Center for a New American Security and Adam Klein of the Strauss Center at the University of Texas. They talked about the 702 number. Is it really big, or does it just seem big? They talked about what's causing the decline in traditional FISA, about whether reforms in the wake of the Carter Page debacle have gone too far, and they talked about where it is all going from here.
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Chatter is a podcast hosted by David Priess and Shane Harris that features in-depth discussions with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security.
In this episode of Chatter, Priess sits down with Meredith Henley to discuss the movie “Casablanca,” the city's wartime history, and the veracity of “Casablanca”’s representations about Casablanca. Their conversation covers her advocacy for the humanities and history, unexpected discoveries in archival research, an appreciation of the film, American and French resistance intelligence operations in French Morocco, intersections between wartime Casablanca and personalities from Franklin Roosevelt to Josephine Baker, and what the film got right and wrong about the experiences of refugees, and more.
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Rational Security is a weekly roundtable podcast featuring Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein. It's a lively, irreverent discussion of news, ideas, foreign policy and law. And there’s always a laugh.
This week, Quinta, Scott and Alan were joined by Shane Harris to talk about the week's biggest national security news, including the recent House public hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena, Biden's statement confirming that the United States would defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression and more.
Learn more and subscribe to Rational Security.
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From November 19, 2016: At this week's Hoover Book Soiree, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Bill Banks, Professor of Law at Syracuse University and the Founding Director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, to talk about Bill's book, “Soldiers on the Homefront: The Domestic Role of the American Military,”with Stephen Dycus. The book examines how both law and culture has shaped and constrained the military's domestic activities, reviewing the legal history of the various different roles that soldiers have played at home, from law enforcement to martial law. Given the widespread concern over the strength of the next administration's commitment to civil liberties and the rule of law, it's a conversation that's unfortunately more relevant than ever.
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Bryce Klehm sat down with Phil Klay, the author of the new book, “Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless Invisible War.” Klay is a winner of the National Book Award for fiction and a veteran of the war in Iraq. His latest book is a collection of essays from the past ten years that deal with the consequences of America's endless wars. His essays cover a number of topics, ranging from the concept of citizen soldier, to a history of the AR-15. Phil and Bryce talked about a number of themes in the book, including Phil’s experience as a public affairs officer in the Marine Corps, the way that America chooses to exercise its power and the obligations of citizenship.
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On May 14, a shooter attacked a supermarket in a historically Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, killing ten people and wounding three. The streaming platform Twitch quickly disabled the livestream the shooter had published of the attack—but video of the violence, and copies of the white supremacist manifesto released by the attacker online, continue to circulate on the internet.
How should we evaluate the response of social media platforms to the tragedy in Buffalo? This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Brian Fishman, who formerly worked at Facebook, now Meta, as the policy director for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations. Brian helped lead Facebook’s response to the 2019 Christchurch shooting, another act of far-right violence livestreamed online. He walked us through how platforms respond to crises like these, why it’s so difficult to remove material like the Buffalo video and manifesto from the internet, and what it would look like for platforms to do better.
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Finland and Sweden have made the historic choice to apply to NATO, but there's a lot of misunderstanding out there about the context for these decisions. To talk through it all, David Priess sat down with Emanuel Örtengren, the acting director of the Stockholm Free World Forum, a Swedish foreign and security policy think tank; Minna Ålander from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, where she focuses on northern Europe and Nordic security; and Henri Vanhanen a foreign policy advisor to Finland’s center-right National Coalition Party. They discussed the history of Finnish and Swedish nonalignment, the shift in public and government opinion toward NATO in recent months, and both countries’ processes for applying to the alliance.
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For years, Russia has both officially and unofficially used cyber tools to ruthlessly advance its international agenda. For this reason, many expected Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine to also kick off a new and brutal era of international cyberwar. Instead, cyber measures have only played a small part in the overall conflict compared to more conventional capabilities, leading many to ask whether Russian cyber capabilities and the role of cyber in the future of warfare more generally might well have been exaggerated.
To dig into these issues, Scott R, Anderson sat down with University of Virginia law professor Kristen Eichensehr, who wrote a recent article on the topic for the American Journal of International Law. They discussed possible explanations for the limited role that cyber capabilities have played in the conflict, whether that might change in the next stage of the conflict and what it all means for the future of cyber measures in warfare.
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The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known by its initials as SIGAR, released an interim report last week on the reasons for the collapse of the Afghan army. To break down the report’s findings, Bryce Klehm spoke with Dr. Jonathan Schroden, the research program director at the Center for Naval Analysis. Dr. Schroden is a longtime analyst of the Afghan military and has deployed or traveled to Afghanistan 13 times since 2003. He is quoted and cited several times in the latest report. They spoke about a range of topics covered in the report, including the U.S.’s efforts to build an Afghan army, the Afghan government's decisions that contributed to the collapse and the Taliban's highly effective military campaign.
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Rational Security is Lawfare’s weekly roundtable podcast, featuring Quinta Jurecic, Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein. It's a lively and irreverent discussion of news, ideas, foreign policy and law—and there’s always a laugh.
In this episode, Jurecic, Rozenshtein and Anderson were joined by Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm to hash through some of the week's big national security news, including the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, NY, and the House select committee investigating Jan. 6’s decision to subpoena five house Republicans. They also encouraged listeners to check out the newest podcast series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo, Allies, which does a deep dive into how the decades-long failure of the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program led the United States to leave so many allies behind following its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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From September 21, 2020: Elizabeth Neumann served as the assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the Department of Homeland Security. She has recently been speaking out about President Trump and, among other things, his failure of leadership with respect to the threat of white supremacist violence. In the course of doing so, she made reference to a book by Kathleen Belew, a historian at the University of Chicago: "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America," a history of violent white power movements in the modern United States.
Elizabeth and Kathleen joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the interactions of policy and the history that Belew describes. Why have we underestimated this threat for so long? How has it come to be one of the foremost threats that DHS faces? And what can we do about it, given the First Amendment?
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Congress this week held its first public hearing on unidentified flying objects in more than 50 years, as the House Intelligence Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation hosted two Department of Defense officials to discuss military encounters with unexplained objects.
David Priess sat down with the Washington Post’s Shane Harris—who has been watching this issue for quite some time and who watched the hearings quite closely—to talk about the long U.S. government history with UFOs (now called unidentified aerial phenomena), the recent move toward more transparency, and the legitimate reasons, having nothing to do with aliens, why some things will remain classified.
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On May 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit allowed an aggressive new Texas law regulating social media to go into effect. The law, known as HB20, seeks to restrict large social media platforms from taking down content on the basis of viewpoint—effectively restricting companies from engaging in a great deal of the content moderation that they currently perform. It also imposes a range of transparency and due process requirements on platforms with respect to their content moderation. A group of technology companies challenging the law have filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court seeking to put HB20 back on hold while they continue to litigate the law’s constitutionality under the First Amendment.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Abdo, litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute, and Scott Wilkens, senior staff attorney at Knight. The Institute, where Evelyn is a senior research fellow, filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit, taking a middle ground between Texas—which argues that the First Amendment poses no bar to HB20—and the plaintiffs—who argue that the First Amendment prohibits this regulation and many other types of social media regulation besides. So what does the Texas law actually do? Where does the litigation stand—and what will the impact of the Fifth Circuit’s ruling be? And how does the Knight First Amendment Institute interpret, well, the First Amendment?
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In October 2021, the House of Representatives voted to find Trump associate Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress after Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. In November 2021, the Justice Department indicted Bannon, and the trial is currently scheduled to begin this summer. So what’s been happening in the interim?
To catch up, Quinta Jurecic spoke with Lawfare senior editors Roger Parloff and Jonathan David Shaub. Roger has been following the Bannon prosecution closely and wrote about it in a recent Lawfare article—and Jonathan has written a great deal on Lawfare about the Office of Legal Counsel’s positions on executive privilege, including how they might affect prosecutions for contempt of Congress. Bannon recently filed a motion to dismiss, making the argument that he believed Donald Trump’s supposed invocation of executive privilege made it unnecessary for him to comply with the subpoena—relying heavily on memos from OLC. What should we make of Bannon’s arguments? How is the Justice Department navigating a legally tricky situation? And what, if anything, might this case tell us about the other contempt of Congress cases coming out of the Jan. 6 committee, which the Justice Department has yet to bring?
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Bryce Klehm is an associate editor at Lawfare. Max Johnston is a creative producer at Goat Rodeo. Together, they are the creators of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo’s newest podcast series, Allies, which launched on Monday and covers the history of the Special Immigrant Visa Program in Afghanistan. It's an amazing story. It covers a lot of time, a lot of action and a lot of people, all through the lens of the efforts—legislative and administrative—to get visas for Afghan translators to come to the United States to protect them from Taliban retaliation. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Bryce and Max to talk about the creation of the podcast, and how you take a wonky visa program and turn it into drama. Following the conversation, we’re bringing you the entirety of Episode One of Allies.
Learn more and subscribe to Allies at https://pod.link/1619035873.
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During the past couple of months, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there have been several claims that Russia was invading its neighbor to seize its oil and gas resources. And even in the cases where pundits were claiming that Russia was not doing this, they would often phrase it as, “This is not yet another oil war.” But do oil wars happen at all?
David Priess sat down with the woman who has literally written the book on this: Emily Meierding, assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. She has argued that countries do not launch major conflicts to acquire hydrocarbon resources because the costs of foreign invasion, territorial occupation, international retaliation and damage to oil company relations deter even the most powerful countries from doing so. They talked about the myth of oil wars, about the logic behind why they will not happen and about why it is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine probably has very little to do with hydrocarbons at all.
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For today's episode, the team at Lawfare decided to cross-post the latest episode of The Aftermath, a narrative podcast series from Lawfare and Goat Rodeo on picking up the pieces after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Episode 3 of The Aftermath looks at what Congress was doing in the days immediately after Jan. 6. In the episode, you'll hear from experts and from people who were actually on both sides of the proceedings, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, and David Schoen, the lead defense lawyer for Donald Trump.
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From April 16, 2021: On Wednesday, President Biden announced a full withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, an announcement that comes as the U.S. and Afghan governments have been trying to reach a power sharing agreement with the Taliban. Prior to the withdrawal announcement, Bryce Klehm spoke with Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a New York Times correspondent based in the Kabul bureau and a former Marine infantryman, who walked us through the situation on the ground in Afghanistan over the last year. Following Biden's announcement, Bryce spoke with Madiha Afzal, the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, who talked about the broader implications of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In May 2022, Lawfare and Goat Rodeo will debut their latest podcast, Allies, a series about America’s eyes and ears over 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the American soldiers as translators, interpreters and partners made it onto U.S. military planes. But despite the decades-long efforts of veterans, lawmakers and senior leaders in the military, even more were left behind. This show will take you from the frontlines of the war to the halls of Congress to find out: How did this happen? Learn more and subscribe to Allies at https://pod.link/1619035873.
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David Fahrenthold is a reporter who works for the New York Times. In his capacity as a reporter at the Washington Post, he reported on misdeeds within the Trump financial universe, and now he’s come out with a story in the Times about a peculiar financial scandal at the United Nations. It’s about a little known UN agency trusting tens of millions of dollars to a relatively unknown British businessman and the investment not quite working out. Jacob Schulz talked with David about his story and about the broader world at the United Nations that enabled this to happen.
After running this episode, Lawfare received a letter from lawyers representing David and Daisy Kendrick disputing some of the representations in the discussion that follows. To address their concerns, we’ve posted excerpts stating the positions of Mr. and Ms. Kendrick on this episode’s show page, which you can find at http://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-scandal-un.
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Internet blackouts are on the rise. Since 2016, governments around the world have fully or partially shut down access to the internet almost 1000 times, according to a tally by the human rights organization Access Now. As the power of the internet grows, this tactic has only become more common as a means of political repression. Why is this and how, exactly, does a government go about turning off the internet?
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke on this topic with Peter Guest, the enterprise editor for the publication Rest of World, which covers technology outside the regions usually described as the West. He’s just published a new project with Rest of World diving deep into internet shutdowns—and the three dug into the mechanics of internet blackouts, why they’re increasing and their wide-reaching effects.
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Dmytro Kuzubov is the editor-in-chief of Lyuk Media in Kharkiv, Ukraine. It is a publication that used to be devoted to the culture and people and underground life of the country's second largest city. Then came the war. Dmytro joined Benjamin Wittes from 10 kilometers outside of Kharkiv to talk about his work as a Ukrainian cultural journalist before the war, and about how everything has changed during the war in a Russian-speaking city that has become very Ukrainian.
Some of this discussion takes place in English, and some takes place in Russian. Simultaneous translation from Russian to English is provided by Dominic Cruz Bustillos.
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Modern life relies on digital technology, but with that reliance comes vulnerability. How can we trust our technology? How can we be sure that it does what we expect it to do? Earlier this month, Lawfare released the results of a long-term research project on those very questions. The report, prepared by the Lawfare Institute’s Trusted Hardware and Software Working Group, is titled, “Creating a Framework for Supply Chain Trust in Hardware and Software.” On a recent Lawfare Live, Alan Rozenshtein spoke with three members of the team that wrote the piece: Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes; Lawfare contributing editor Paul Rosenzweig, who served as the report’s chief drafter; and Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Atlantic Council.
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Many individuals seeking asylum or other forms of immigration relief in the U.S. are subject to a program run by Immigration Customs Enforcement, or ICE, called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which uses various kinds of tracking technologies as a way of keeping tabs on individuals who are not detained in ICE custody
Stephanie Pell sat down with Sejal Zota, legal director of Just Futures Law, to talk about this program and the kinds of tracking technologies it employees. They discussed what is publicly known about these technologies, the privacy concerns associated with them, as well as some of the harms experienced by individuals who are subjected to the surveillance. Not withstanding these concerns, they also discussed whether the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program is a reasonable alternative to ICE detention, considering ICE’s need to keep track of individuals who are both seeking immigration relief and who may be ordered removed from the U.S. if that relief is not granted.
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Today on Lawfare No Bull: On April 29, at the 2022 Verify Conference hosted by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Aspen Institute, journalist Aruna Viswanatha hosted a fireside chat with Matt Olsen, the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division at the Justice Department. They discussed the report published earlier that day from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that disclosed, for the first time, that the FBI had searched the section 702 database 3.4 million times to access information regarding U.S. persons last year. They also spoke about current cyber powers, how cyber threats have shifted in the past decade and the Justice Department’s recent efforts to go after Russian oligarchs following the invasion of Ukraine.
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From August 5, 2012: Ritika Singh sat down with Bruce Riedel, one of the country’s leading experts on Al Qaeda. Riedel’s long and impressive career speaks for itself. A 30-year veteran of the CIA, a senior advisor on South Asia and the Middle East to the last four presidents of the United States in the staff of the National Security Council, and an expert advisor to the prosecution of underwear bomber Omar Farooq Abdulmutallab, he is also the author of Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad and The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future, among much else.
The discussion ranged from the state of Al Qaeda today, to the posture of the Taliban and other regional terrorist groups that the United States engages by both military and diplomatic means, to targeted killing and the way forward for U.S. counterterrorism policy. They don’t discuss the law—but any lawyer interested in the power to confront the enemy will find Riedel’s discussion of the enemy itself particularly valuable.
In May 2022, Lawfare and Goat Rodeo will debut their latest podcast, Allies, a series about America’s eyes and ears over 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the American soldiers as translators, interpreters and partners made it onto U.S. military planes. But despite the decades-long efforts of veterans, lawmakers and senior leaders in the military, even more were left behind. This show will take you from the frontlines of the war to the halls of Congress to find out: How did this happen? Learn more and subscribe to Allies at https://pod.link/1619035873.
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The COVID-19 pandemic, disputed elections and threats against election officials have brought back into focus a set of questions first raised for many after the terrorist attacks of September 11. What would happen if a large number of members of Congress were dead, incapacitated or otherwise unable to meet to do the work of the country?
A new report from the American Enterprise Institute’s Continuity of Government Commission explores these questions. Lawfare senior editor and Brookings senior fellow Molly Reynolds sat down with Greg Jacob, a member of the commission, and AEI’s John Fortier, the commission's executive director, to discuss the continuity challenges facing Congress and what we might do to address them.
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While the U.S. Congress has been doing hearing after hearing with tech executives that include a lot of yelling and not much progress, Europe has been quietly working away on some major tech regulations. Last month, it reached agreement on the content moderation piece of this package: the Digital Services Act. It's sweeping in scope and likely to have effects far beyond Europe.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek sat down with Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, to get the rundown. What exactly is in the act? What does she like and what doesn't she? And how will the internet look different once it comes into force?
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Catarina Buchatskiy was—until a couple of months ago—a student at Stanford University. For the past couple of years, she has run The Shadows Project, an online forum devoted to the preservation of Ukrainian cultural heritage. A couple of months ago, she took a leave to go to Poland where she has been shuttling protective equipment into Ukraine to help museums preserve artifacts. She joined Benjamin Wittes from Krakow to talk about The Shadows Project, about preservation of artifacts in the middle of the war in Ukraine and about what it means to be a Ukrainian nationalist as a young person in 2022.
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Hosted by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Cyber Initiative and Aspen Digital, Verify 2022 brings together journalists and cyber and tech policy experts to discuss critical issues in cybersecurity. On this live recording of the Lawfare Podcast, Benjamin Wittes sat down at Verify 2022 to talk about cybersecurity and Ukraine with a truly remarkable panel: Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute, Megan Stifel of the Institute for Security and Technology, and Mieke Eoyang, currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy.
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Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is putting one of its closest partners, China, in a difficult position. Just weeks before the conflict began, China and Russia announced a new partnership without limits that was seen as a shared bulwark against pressure by the United States and its allies. But Russia's choice to attack its neighbor Ukraine is an awkward tension with China's long-standing position against the use of force between states, and some cracks may be showing in the new relationship as China has so far not proven willing to come as wholeheartedly to Russia’s support as its pre-war declaration might have suggested.
To better understand how the war in Ukraine is impacting China's strategy toward the rest of the world, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two legal experts: Dr. Patricia Kim, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in China policy, and Professor Julian Ku, a professor at Hofstra University School of Law who has studied China's approach to the international system. They discussed the new relationship between China and Russia, China's role in the Ukraine conflict and what lessons it is taking away from the Western response, including for its own interests in Taiwan.
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This week on Rational Security, Alan Rozenshtein and Scott R. Anderson were joined by Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett and law professor extraordinaire Kate Klonick to hash through some of the week's big national security news, including:
For object lessons, Alan endorsed the sci-fi action adventure comedy drama "Everything Everywhere All at Once" and its stirring depiction of laundromats and the IRS. Kate shouted out her decade old "Loose Tweets Sink Fleets" poster and celebrated the fact that it becomes more relevant by the day. Scott announced that his effort to make flavored rotten pineapple water succeeded with flying colors, and encouraged listeners to use pineapple scraps to make their own tepache. And Natalie finally took a stand in support of comprehension and encouraged others to do the same with tee shirts that practically shout one's preference for the Oxford Comma from the rooftops.
Be sure to visit our show page at www.lawfareblog.com and to follow the show on Twitter at @RatlSecurity.
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From August 22, 2012: This is the second in a series of interviews Ritika Singh is doing with scholars around town who have non-legal expertise that bears on the national security law issues Lawfare readers care about. As she did in her first piece with Brookings Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, she is posting the full interview as an episode of the Lawfare Podcast and writing up a summary of their conversation as well.
The subject this time is Daniel Byman, Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, and a professor at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program. Byman is one of the country’s foremost experts on counterterrorism and the Middle East. He served as a staff member on the 9/11 Commission, and has worked for the U.S. government and at the RAND Corporation. He recently published a paper entitled Breaking the Bonds between Al Qaeda and its Affiliate Organizations that Ritika describes in more detail here. They sat down for a discussion of the major themes that make up his paper—themes that dovetail with those Ritika discussed with Riedel in her first interview.
In May 2022, Lawfare and Goat Rodeo will debut their latest podcast, Allies, a series about America’s eyes and ears over 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the American soldiers as translators, interpreters and partners made it onto U.S. military planes. But despite the decades-long efforts of veterans, lawmakers and senior leaders in the military, even more were left behind. This show will take you from the frontlines of the war to the halls of Congress to find out: How did this happen? Learn more and subscribe to Allies at https://pod.link/1619035873.
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Last week, a federal district judge in Florida named Kathryn Mizelle struck down the Biden administration's policy requiring that individuals wear masks on airplanes and other forms of interstate travel. In doing so, she adopted an extremely narrow reading of relevant public health statutes to conclude that they did not authorize any such masking policies, a move that has since triggered more questions about what public health tools the federal government will have left if Mizelle’s decision is left to stand.
To better understand this decision and its ramifications, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two legal experts: Lindsay Wiley, a professor specializing in health, law and policy at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law, and Alan Rozenshtein, a Lawfare senior editor and professor of, among other things, legislative and regulatory law at the University of Minnesota Law School. They talked about Mizelle’s approach to statutory interpretation, the role of the major questions doctrine, whether her views are likely to survive appeal and how the entire endeavor is likely to impact ongoing efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
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This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek spoke to Charlotte Willner, who has been working in content moderation longer than just about anyone. Charlotte is now the executive director of the Trust and Safety Professionals Association, an organization that brings together the professionals that write and enforce the rules for what’s fair game and what’s not on online platforms. Before that, she worked in Trust and Safety at Pinterest and before that she built the very first safety operations team at Facebook. Evelyn asked Charlotte what it was like trying to build a content moderation system from the ground up, what has changed since those early days (spoilers: it’s a lot!) and—of course—if she had any advice for Twitter’s new owner given all her experience helping keep platforms safe.
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Finlandization is a troubled concept. It is generally used to describe the attempt by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to hold Finland in a position of neutrality and friendliness toward the Soviet Union, even while politically, Finland was more aligned with the West. In recent years—before the Russian invasion of Ukraine—it was sometimes brought up as a model for Ukraine to straddle the boundary between east and west. But for Finns, Finlandization meant something quite dark—the long-term subjugation of Finland's politics to the will of an authoritarian neighbor.
David Priess sat down with Antti Ruokonen, who wrote an article recently for Lawfare titled, “Why Finlandization is a Terrible Model for Ukraine.” They spoke about Finland's experience in the second World War, the imposed restrictions on its sovereignty because of this Finlandization during the Cold War, and the dangers of seeing Finlandization as a model for peaceful coexistence with Russia.
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Vladislav Davidzon is a journalist and author. He is a New Yorker, a Parisian and an Odessa resident. He's the author of “From Odessa with Love: Political and Literary Essays in Post-Soviet Ukraine,” and he joined Benjamin Wittes from Odessa where he is covering the war.
It's a wide-ranging conversation about the course of the war, the state of life in Odessa today and the current state of Ukrainian politics. They talked about how the war is really going, about myths and facts about denazification of Ukraine and about what Ukraine will look like as a political society when the war is over.
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Emily Hoge is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, writing a dissertation on Russian veterans groups from the Afghan war and their evolution over time. She wrote a recent piece in Lawfare about how these groups, which started as anti-war, anti-state, pro-veterans activist organizations, morphed into a big part of Vladimir Putin's propaganda operations. She joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about the history of these groups, how they emerged from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union to represent veterans all over the country, how Putin adopted their victimization narrative and made it key to his vision of the state's relations with the international order more broadly, and how these groups are now promoting the war in Ukraine.
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In this episode of Chatter, a podcast hosted by David Priess and Shane Harris that features in-depth discussions with fascinating people at the creative edges of national security, Harris and Priess speak jointly with former intelligence officer, prominent yacht-watcher and book author Alex Finley. They talk about her career in the CIA's Directorate of Operations (which became the National Clandestine Service during her tenure there), her keen observation and analysis of Russian oligarchs' mega-yachts (which brought her onto cable news networks this spring after several countries started to seize the ships in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine), and her experience writing a series of spy satire novels (which take espionage absurdity to a new level). The three of them also kicked around views on a range of spy satire films, from 1985's Spies Like Us to the puppet-centric Team America to Spy with Melissa McCarthy. Learn more about Chatter at https://shows.acast.com/chatter.
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From July 12, 2014: As the election crisis in Afghanistan comes to a head, all eyes—or some of them, anyway—are once again on the future of Afghan democracy. But the United States's history in the region extends back much further than its nation-building efforts there since September 2001. On Tuesday, at a Brookings Institution launch event for his newest book entitled, “What We Won: America’s Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-1989,” Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow and Director of the Intelligence Project at Brookings, discussed lessons the United States can learn from its successful efforts in the 1970s and 1980s in Afghanistan. In his talk, Riedel discusses why the American intelligence operation in Afghanistan in the 1980s was so successful, and what, if any lessons, the United States can apply to its ongoing operations in the country. Riedel also explored the complex personalities and individuals who shaped the war, and explained how their influence still affects the region today. Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott provided introductory remarks and moderated the conversation.
In May 2022, Lawfare and Goat Rodeo will debut their latest podcast, Allies, a series about America’s eyes and ears over 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the American soldiers as translators, interpreters and partners made it onto U.S. military planes. But despite the decades-long efforts of veterans, lawmakers and senior leaders in the military, even more were left behind. This show will take you from the frontlines of the war to the halls of Congress to find out: How did this happen? Learn more and subscribe to Allies at https://pod.link/1619035873.
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In this live recording of the Lawfare Live event, “Ukraine and the Future of National Security Law,” Natalie Orpett moderated a panel of experts, including Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group; Chimene Keitner, professor of international law at UC Hastings; Todd Huntley, director of the National Security Law Program at Georgetown Law; and Scott R. Anderson, Lawfare senior editor and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. They talked about a wide range of issues coming out of the current conflict in Ukraine, ranging from war crimes, to sanctions, to information operations, to the multidimensional role that technology is playing. They talked about what we're seeing now and what it may mean for the future of national security law and international law.
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This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with a reporter who has carved out a unique beat writing about not just technology but the creativity and peculiarities of the people who use it—Taylor Lorenz, a columnist at the Washington Post covering technology and online culture. Her recent writing includes reporting on “algospeak”—that is, how algorithmic amplification changes how people talk online—and coverage of the viral Twitter account Libs of TikTok, which promotes social media posts of LGBTQ people for right-wing mockery. They talked about the quirks of a culture shaped in conversation with algorithms, the porous border between internet culture and political life in the United States, and what it means to take the influence of social media seriously, for good and for ill.
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Monday evening on the Tucker Carlson show, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was complaining that she had to submit to sworn questioning in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. That will come on Friday in a case designed to disqualify her as an insurrectionist from future holding of office. It will take place before an administrative law judge in Georgia, her home state, and that makes this the first case brought under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to actually move to discovery.
For an update on the Marjorie Taylor Greene case and the other Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualification litigations, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff. They talked about how this case came to an actual testimony by Marjorie Taylor Greene, where the other 14th Amendment disqualifications are and what we should expect in her livestream testimony on Friday.
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Throughout human history, democracies have been the exception, not the rule, and that's been doubly true for ethnically, religiously or linguistically diverse societies. But these are precisely the societies that benefit the most from politically stable and inclusive institutions. So why is it so hard to get them to work? And what can we do to encourage them?
Yascha Mounk teaches political science at Johns Hopkins University and is one of the leading commentators on the threats to liberal democracy. And he's just published a book, “The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.” Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Yascha about his book, his diagnosis of what ails diverse democracies and what can be done to strengthen them.
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Scott R. Anderson is a senior editor at Lawfare, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow with the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He’s also the author of a new Politico Magazine piece that raises an often overlooked vulnerability in the presidential election. A lot of attention after Jan. 6 and Nov. 2020 has rightly gone to the Electoral Count Act and other similar reforms, but Scott argues that if Congress really wants to protect the presidency, it can't just reform the process for counting electoral votes. Jacob Schulz sat down with Scott to talk about his Politico article and about the broader landscape of electoral reforms in the aftermath of 2020.
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From March 6, 2019: Susan Hennessey interviewed FBI Director Chris Wray at the 2019 RSA Conference. They discussed how the Director views the cyber threat landscape 18 months into his term, his concerns about the threats posed by Russia and China, what the FBI is doing to protect the 2020 elections, and more.
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From November 14, 2012: Ritika Singh interviews American University scholar Stephen Tankel on Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation, the endgame in Afghanistan, and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
In May 2022, Lawfare and Goat Rodeo will debut their latest podcast, Allies, a series about America’s eyes and ears over 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the American soldiers as translators, interpreters and partners made it onto U.S. military planes. But despite the decades-long efforts of veterans, lawmakers and senior leaders in the military, even more were left behind. This show will take you from the frontlines of the war to the halls of Congress to find out: How did this happen? Learn more and subscribe to Allies at https://pod.link/1619035873.
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American political life is defined by what can seem like a paradox. Our society is incredibly politically polarized, but our parties are as weak as they've ever been. How else could a reality TV star have so quickly and completely taken control of one of our major political parties?
For Larry Jacobs, a political scientist and professor at the University of Minnesota, the weakness of our parties is a major threat to American democracy. But as he explains in his new book, “Democracy under Fire: Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History,” the roots of this weakness go back all the way to the earliest years of the United States and today manifest in our broken system of presidential primaries.
Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Larry about his new book, his diagnosis of what ails American politics and what, if anything, can be done to fix it.
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The internet is increasingly emerging as a source for identification and documentation of war crimes, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has devastatingly proven yet again. But how does an image of a possible war crime go from social media to before a tribunal in a potential war crimes prosecution?
On a recent episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Nick Waters, the lead on Justice and Accountability at Bellingcat, about how open-source investigators go about documenting evidence of atrocity. This week on the show, Evelyn and Quinta interviewed Alexa Koenig, the executive director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on using digital evidence for justice and accountability. They talked about how international tribunals have adapted to using new forms of evidence derived from the internet, how social media platforms have helped—and hindered—collection of this kind of evidence, and the work Alexa has done to create a playbook for investigators downloading and collecting material documenting atrocities.
Because of the nature of the conversation, this discussion contains some descriptions of violence that might be upsetting for some listeners.
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Over the weekend, France held the first round of its presidential elections for 2022. The result was that the same two candidates as last time will move on to the final round: incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. To talk through the election results and what comes next, Jacob Schulz sat down with Agneska Bloch, a senior research assistant at a DC-based think tank where she works on European affairs.
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Over the weekend, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, a former international cricket star who later ascended to the role of prime minister, was removed from office. Khan lost a no confidence vote in Pakistan’s parliament that came after a few weeks of intense legal and political turmoil.
To make sense of the complicated developments, Jacob Schulz sat down with Madiha Afzal, a fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. They talked about how the situation has developed, how to think about the relative roles of opposition political parties and the military, and what comes next.
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The period after Watergate and President Nixon's resignation saw an unprecedented barrage of congressional efforts at reforming the executive branch. The period after Donald Trump's departure from office has seen no comparable spree of legislative action—at least not yet. In a recent Lawfare article, Quinta Jurecic and Andrew Kent explored the disparity and the reasons for it, and they analyzed whether any of the legislative reforms that have been so far proposed have any prospect of passage. They joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about why things are so different today than they were in the late 1970s, what happened in that period and whether Congress will actually be able to do anything now.
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From December 19, 2019: In this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series, Alina Polyakova and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Peter Pomerantsev, a research fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the author of "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." The book explores how the nature of propaganda has shifted as authoritarian governments move from silencing dissent to drowning dissent out with squalls of disinformation. Pomerantsev argues that this transformation traces back to the cynicism and chaos in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, but now it's become all too familiar around the world.
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From August 26, 2020: Yemen is home to the most tragic circumstances imaginable right now—years upon years of war, environmental disasters and severe humanitarian plight, exacerbated by cholera, diphtheria and now COVID-19. To discuss the ongoing situation, David Priess sat down with Elisabeth Kendall, a senior research fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Pembroke College, Oxford University, who has spent extensive time on the ground in Yemen, and Mick Mulroy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. They talked about the roots of the Yemeni war and its humanitarian toll, its evolution through conflict and COVID-19, and prospects for improved conditions.
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Last week on Lawfare Live, Jacob Schulz sat down with Andrew Mines, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mines helps lead the Program on Extremism's efforts to keep track of criminal charges resulting from the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill siege. They talked about the U.S military’s efforts to counter extremism within its ranks. Mines is the recent author of a Lawfare piece on the subject, and they talked through the history of the problem, the history of Defense Department efforts to fix it and where the department is still coming up short.
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We’re taking a look back at one of the stranger stories about social media platforms and the role of the press in the last presidential election. In the weeks before the 2020 election, the New York Post published an “October Surprise”: a set of stories on the business and personal life of Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, based on emails contained on a mysterious laptop. A great deal was questionable about the Post’s reporting, including to what extent the emails in question were real and how the tabloid had obtained them in the first place. The mainstream press was far more circumspect in reporting out the story—and meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook sharply restricted circulation of the Post’s stories on their platforms.
It’s a year and half later. And the Washington Post just published a lengthy report verifying the authenticity of some of the emails on the mysterious laptop—though a lot still remains unclear about the incident. In light of this news, how should we understand Facebook and Twitter’s actions in 2020?
Washington Post technology reporter Will Oremus weighed in on this question in his own reflection for the paper. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic asked him on the show to discuss the story. Did the social media platforms go too far in limiting access to the New York Post’s reporting? How did the mainstream press deal with the incident? What have we learned from the failures of how the press and social media responded to information operations around the 2016 election, and what can we learn from how they behaved differently in 2020?
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In the last few weeks, much has been said about how energy issues are playing into Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. It's especially coming up in the context of sanctions regimes against Russia, whose economy relies so heavily on energy production. But the war has serious implications for energy security more broadly.
Natalie Orpett sat down with Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security, to talk about how the events in Ukraine are both exposing and exacerbating threats to energy security and climate security. They discussed the effect of European dependence on Russian oil and gas, how ecological damage is causing both immediate crises and long-term threats, why the conflict is causing food insecurity at a global scale, and what, if anything, can be done about it.
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On June 3, President Biden issued a national security memorandum that established the “Fight Against Corruption” as a core national security interest for the United States. The memo described the staggering costs of corruption, with it being “estimated that acts of corruption sap between 2 and 5 percent from global gross domestic product.” The memo also directed U.S. officials to develop a comprehensive presidential strategy focused on anti-corruption.
Alvaro Marañon sat down with Paul Massaro, the senior policy advisor for counter-kleptocracy at the Helsinki Commission, to speak about the United States government's latest anti-corruption efforts following the June memo. They discussed the latest developments in the efforts to combat corruption, details around the first-ever presidential strategy on anti-corruption and the kinds of messages these unified efforts send to other authoritarian regimes beyond Russia.
For more on this topic, consider watching “Countering Oligarchs, Enablers, and Lawfare,” a hearing on Wednesday, April 6, at 2:30 p.m., hosted by the Helsinki Commission.
Disclaimer: Paul Massaro serves on the staff of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent an official position of the U.S. government.
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Madeleine Albright passed away on March 23. She was the first woman to serve as secretary of state in United States history, and she had a long legacy, both from her time as secretary and beyond. To talk through what made her special and what her impact was, David Priess sat down with Kori Schake and Natalie Orpett. Kori is the director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and she worked in the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the National Security Council staff. Natalie Orpett is the executive editor of Lawfare, and she worked with Secretary Albright as her executive assistant after she had left the Department of State. They talked about some of the foreign policy developments during Secretary Albright's tenure; about her personal relationships, including with those with whom she did not agree; and about her legacy when it comes to helping women in national security positions.
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From October 1, 2019: The first two years of the Trump presidency were tied up with the Russia scandal. Now, there’s another scandal involving Russia’s next-door neighbor: Ukraine. The revelation that President Trump and his envoys pressured the Ukrainian government for information about debunked claims of Biden family corruption in Ukraine have brought Ukrainian domestic politics onto the American stage. The Ukrainian side of this very American scandal is complicated yet vital to understanding the whistleblower complaint and the reality of what happened with the Ukrainian prosecutor and Joe Biden’s son. Quinta Jurecic sat down with Alina Polyakova, the Director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology at the Brookings Institution, to break it all down. They talked about recent Ukrainian political developments, what exactly Joe Biden did or didn’t do in Ukraine, and what this might mean for the U.S.-Ukraine relationship going forward.
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From April 13, 2020: Whether it has been travel bans, family separation, or changes to asylum rules, the Trump administration has long been embroiled in controversies over its immigration and detention policy. Those controversies have come amidst surges in migrants and asylum seekers, particularly at the U.S. southern border. The Trump administration's new policies have been legally and technically complex, and that was all before COVID-19.
Mikhaila Fogel sat down with immigration reporters Hamed Aleaziz of Buzzfeed News and Dara Lind of ProPublica, as well as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council. They discussed how Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, are responding to COVID-19; the changing legal landscape for those agencies before the pandemic; and the challenges faced by migrants, asylum seekers and the U.S. immigration system during coronavirus and beyond.
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Andrea Chalupa is a writer, podcaster and Ukrainian American who worked for 15 years on a screenplay about a man named Gareth Jones, a journalist who uncovered the genocide perpetrated by Stalin against Ukrainians in the early 1930s. Directed by the great filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, the film is called “Mr. Jones,” and it was released in the middle of the pandemic. It is an incredible piece of work that could not be more relevant to the current news about the conflict in Ukraine. Chalupa sat down with Benjamin Wittes to discuss Gareth Jones; the New York Times reporter in Moscow at the time, Walter Duranty; her own grandfather; and the story of how she came to write this film.
Please note that this episode contains brief depictions of violence, including against children, that some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.
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This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information environment, we’re turning our attention to the United Kingdom, where the government has just introduced into Parliament a broad proposal for regulating the internet: the Online Safety Bill. The U.K. government has proclaimed that the Bill represents new “world-first online safety laws” and includes “tougher and quicker criminal sanctions for tech bosses.” So … what would it actually do?
To answer this question, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Ellen Judson, a senior researcher at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, a U.K. think tank. Ellen has been closely tracking the legislation as it has developed. And she helped walk us through the tangled system of regulations created by the bill. What new obligations does the Online Safety Bill create, and what companies would those obligations apply to? Why is the answer to so many questions “yet to be defined”—a phrase we kept saying again and again throughout the show—and how much of the legislation is just punting the really difficult questions for another day? What happens now that the bill has been formally introduced in Parliament?
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In the hours following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine's foreign minister tweeted out a call for what he called an international legion of fighters to come to Ukraine and fight against Russia. And so far, it seems that some have heeded that call. Jacob Schulz talked with Daniel Byman, Lawfare’s foreign policy editor and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who is the author of a book on foreign fighters. They talked through the history of foreign fighters in different conflicts, how to think about the inflows into Ukraine and what the downsides might be of the phenomenon of foreign fighters traveling to Ukraine.
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We live in a time of seemingly constant catastrophes, and we always seem a step behind and still fumble when they occur. It's no longer about preventing disasters from occurring, but learning how to use the tools at our disposal to minimize the consequences when they inevitably do.
Juliette Kayyem has just written a book about it all called, “The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters.” Juliette is a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a CNN national security analyst, and David Priess sat down with her to talk about it all. They talked about the traditional focus of the disaster framework; consequences minimalization; the paradox of preparedness; and a variety of disasters and what we can learn from them, ranging from the Y2K incident, to Super Bowl XLVII, to the shipping incident in the Suez Canal back in 2021. They talk a lot about how to recover from disasters, and how to deal with them in a way that stops the bleeding and keeps them from getting worse, even as they’re occurring.
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Polina Ivanova is a Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, and has spent the better part of the last decade reporting from Russia for that publication, for Reuters and elsewhere. She joined Benjamin Wittes to talk through the Russian military press conference that took place on Friday in which the Ministry of Defense seemed to walk back Russia's war aims in the Ukraine conflict. Ben and Polina talked about what the Ministry of Defense said, how different or similar it is from previous Russian statements about what this war is about, whether it was intended for international or domestic consumption, or maybe both, and whether it provides a plausible basis for resolution of the conflict.
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From February 19, 2021: On February 1, Myanmar's military overthrew the country's democratically elected government in a coup and declared a state of emergency for a year. Since then, the country has seen daily peaceful protests and large-scale strikes against military rule, at times clashing with security forces who have been seen using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds. To break it all down, Rohini Kurup spoke with Aye Min Thant, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based in Myanmar. They discussed Myanmar's history of military rule, what it is like living through a coup and what to expect in the coming weeks.
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From March 4, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Emily Bell, the founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Emily testified before Congress last week about the role of legacy media, and cable news in particular, in spreading disinformation, but she’s also one of the keenest observers of the online news ecosystem and knows a lot about it from her days as director of digital content for The Guardian. They talked about the relationship between online and offline media in spreading disinformation, the role different institutions need to play in fixing what’s broken and whether all the talk about “fighting misinformation” is a bit of a red herring.
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Earlier this month, the Supreme Court issued rulings in two separate cases involving the state secrets privilege: United States v. Abu Zubaydah and Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga. To talk about the Court's decision and what it means for state secrets doctrine and executive power, Rohini Kurup sat down with Liza Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Bob Loeb, partner in Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation practice, and former acting deputy director of the Civil Division Appellate Staff at the Department of Justice. Rohini first talked to them on the Lawfare Podcast back in October when they discussed the cases that were then before the Court. Now that the Court has issued its ruling, they got back together to discuss the Court's decision and what it means for the future of state secrets doctrine.
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Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about the war in Ukraine on this series—how the Russian, Ukrainian and American governments are leveraging information as part of the conflict; how tech platforms are navigating the flood of information coming out of Ukraine and the crackdown from the Kremlin; and how open-source investigators are documenting the war.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information environment, we’re going to talk about getting information into Russia during a period of rapidly increasing repression by the Russian government. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Thomas Kent, a former president of the U.S. government-funded media organization Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who now teaches at Columbia University. He recently wrote an essay published by the Center for European Policy Analysis on “How to Reach Russian Ears,” suggesting creative ways that reporters, civil society and even the U.S. government might approach communicating the truth about the war in Ukraine to Russians. This was a thoughtful and nuanced conversation about a tricky topic—whether, and how, democracies should think about leveraging information as a tool against repressive governments, and how to distinguish journalism from such strategic efforts.
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Cyberwar is here, proclaims Thomas Rid, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in a New York Times op-ed last week entitled, “Why You Haven’t Heard About the Secret Cyberwar in Ukraine.” While some cyber warfare experts expected massive cyberattacks against Ukraine before Russia invaded in February of this year, Rid suggests in his op-ed that significant cyberattacks have occurred, but they are more covert and insidious in nature, and we're not focusing on them. Stephanie Pell spoke with Rid about the kinds of cyber operations and attacks we have seen in Ukraine, how we might compare and contrast them, along with some of his insights about the use of leaks and disinformation in this conflict.
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General John Baker served until December as the chief defense council at the military commissions. The military commissions’ prosecutors and defense lawyers are in conversations now about a possible plea deal to resolve the 9/11 case once and for all—that's the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and three others of their al-Qaeda co-conspirators. It has been hanging around in the military commissions for more than a dozen years, and until the other day, it showed no sign of coming to a close. Trial is still some time away, and appeals will take years more than that, but the current round of plea negotiations promises a potential way out—removing the death penalty from the table in exchange for guilty pleas and presumably life sentences.
Benjamin Wittes sat down with General Baker to talk about his history at the military commissions, why the process has gotten so bogged down and the promise of the current negotiations. Are they different from earlier rounds, or is this another fit and start before policymakers fail to take the leap?
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Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, who now is a novelist and a writer. Most recently, though, Alex has taken up a different task. She is the leader of #YachtWatch, an effort to track down and monitor the movements of massive yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs. #YachtWatch has become a popular way of following and staying engaged with the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jacob Schulz spoke with Alex about #YachtWatch, how she conducts the project and what its value is in an oversaturated media ecosystem.
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From February 8, 2020: Russia continues to sporadically poke its head into American media headlines, whether it be for its role in Syria or for anxieties about fresh election interference in 2020. But these news stories seldom provide a window into life in Putin’s Russia. Jacob Schulz sat down with Joshua Yaffa, the Moscow correspondent for the New Yorker, to talk about his new book, "Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia." The book gives a series of portraits of prominent figures within Putin’s Russia and details the compromises they make to maintain their status and goodwill with the Kremlin. They talked about this framework as a way to understand Russia, what Putin’s rule looks like on the peripheries of the country, and about a couple of the fascinating characters that animate the book.
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We're bringing you the second episode of Lawfare’s new narrative series, The Aftermath, which deals specifically with the early phases of the criminal investigation launched by the FBI, even as the perpetrators of the riot were heading home. The episode features interviews with former FBI and Justice Department official Chuck Rosenberg, New York Times reporter Katie Benner, and Seamus Hughes of the George Washington University Program on Extremism. The episode tells the story of how the investigation got started, the challenges investigators faced in a nationwide manhunt featuring thousands of suspects and perpetrators, and the internal struggle that had just taken place within the Justice Department itself.
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In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, one of the groups receiving the most attention for its participation in the insurrection on the Hill was the Oath Keepers, a right-wing extremist group that's been in existence since 2009 but has taken on an increased public profile since the riot last year. In early January, the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, along with 10 others, was indicted in U.S. federal court for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol breach. To discuss the group, its history, and its role on Jan. 6, Jacob Schulz sat down with Sam Jackson, an assistant professor at the University of Albany and the author of a 2020 book about the Oath Keepers and their ideology.
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Open-source investigations—sometimes referred to as OSINT, or open-source intelligence—have been crucial to public understanding of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An enormous number of researchers have devoted their time to sifting through social media posts, satellite images, and even Google Maps to track what’s happening in Ukraine and debunk false claims about the conflict.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, we devoted the show to understanding how open-source investigations work and why they’re important. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Nick Waters, the lead on Justice and Accountability at Bellingcat, one of the most prominent groups devoted to conducting these types of investigations. They talked about the crucial role played by open-source investigators in documenting the conflict in Syria—well before the war in Ukraine—and how the field has developed since its origins in the Arab Spring and the start of the Syrian Civil War. And Nick walked us through the mechanics of how open-source investigations actually happen, and how social media platforms have helped—and hindered—that work.
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Alexander Stubb is the former prime minister, foreign minister and finance minister of Finland. Back in 2008, after the Russian invasion of Georgia, he worked on the ceasefire between Russia and Georgia, giving him a valuable perspective on much of what's going on today. He sat down with David Priess for a conversation covering his experience negotiating that ceasefire in 2008, his experienced impressions of Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov, the differences between this Russian action in Ukraine now and its previous aggressions, and what it all means for European unity and for Finland's place in NATO.
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It's been an eventful week in the department of criminal cases arising out of Jan. 6. We had the first jury verdict convicting an alleged 1/6 perpetrator, an Oath Keeper guilty plea for seditious conspiracy, the indictment of the head of the Proud Boys, and a judge rejecting the lead charge the government has used in a whole lot of criminal cases arising out of the Capitol insurrection. To catch up, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger Parloff, who has been covering 1/6 criminal matters for Lawfare. They talked about the news of the last couple of weeks, focusing particularly on Judge Carl Nichols’s controversial ruling about the availability of an obstruction prosecution to the government.
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Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has undermined some of the fundamental assumptions underlying the security of Europe through much of the post-World War II era. As a result, several European nations have begun to consider dramatic changes in how they approach national security, both individually and collectively.
To better understand how the war in Ukraine is reshaping the European security order, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two of his colleagues from the Brookings Institution: Célia Belin, a visiting fellow at Brookings and a former official in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations in the Center on the United States and Europe.
They discussed how the Ukraine conflict is reshaping Europe's approach to security affairs, what this means for institutions like the European Union and NATO, and how these changes are likely to impact the fundamental debate over what it means to be a part of Europe.
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From February 18, 2020: In what ways did American foreign policy fail to capitalize on victory in the Cold War? Andrew Bacevich, professor emeritus at Boston University and co-founder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, tackles that question and more in "The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory." Jack Goldsmith sat down with Professor Bacevich to talk about his new book. The pair discussed the establishment consensus on American foreign policy, the state of civil-military relations, and the mission of the newly founded Quincy Institute.
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From November 20, 2020: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.) is the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute. You've heard his story, likely in his testimony in the impeachment proceedings for President Trump. But Benjamin Wittes sat down with him for a different reason—his substantive expertise in Eastern Europe policy, Russia matters and great power competition. They talked about the challenges the Biden administration will face as it tries to pick up the pieces the Trump administration has left it, how democracies can hang together and harden themselves against attacks from authoritarian regimes, what a good Russia policy looks like, how China fits in and how we can rebuild traditional American alliances.
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As the war in Ukraine grinds into its third week, conditions on the ground have grown increasingly brutal. While Ukrainian forces have proven remarkably successful at repelling the Russian advance so far, Russian forces have continued to make slow and steady progress into the country, with no clear resolution in sight. To get a sense of the state of the conflict and where it might be headed, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Michael Kofman, director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA and a leading analyst on the Ukraine conflict. They talked about what's gone wrong for Russia so far, how Western assistance is empowering the Ukrainians and how both sides are likely to adapt as the conflict enters its next stage.
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As Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine continues, tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been key geopolitical players in the conflict. The Kremlin has banned those platforms and others as part of a sharp clampdown on freedoms within Russia. Meanwhile, these companies must decide what to do with state-funded Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik that have accounts on their platforms—and how best to moderate the flood of information, some of it gruesome or untrue, that’s appearing as users share material about the war.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our podcast series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. They discussed how various platforms, from Twitter to TikTok and Telegram, are moderating the content coming out of Russia and Ukraine right now; the costs and benefits of Western companies pulling operations out of Russia during a period of increasing crackdown; and how the events of the last few weeks might shape our thinking about the nature and power of information operations.
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You may think you know all that you need to about the Watergate scandal, its origins, its evolution and its implications. But there has been a lot of new information in the last couple of decades that is simply not in earlier full histories of the scandal. Journalist and popular historian Garrett Graff has written a new history of Watergate called, “Watergate: A New History,” the first overall picture of Watergate in quite some time.
David Priess sat down with Garrett to talk about the contours of the Watergate scandal, and in particular, about some of its national security and foreign policy episodes. They discussed the evolution of Nixon's thinking involving the tapes that he recorded of his White House conversations, the extraordinary order that the Secretary of Defense gave during the height of the scandal to warn soldiers about following the commander-in-chief's orders, and more.
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Kateryna is a fourth-year law student at a university in Kharkiv, Ukraine—at least she was until a few days ago. That's when the Russian army came in and started bombarding the town she grew up in and studies in. Benjamin Wittes spoke with her recently about life as a Russian-speaking Ukrainian in Kharkiv before and after the invasion, about getting out of town, and about being a refugee law student in an adjacent country.
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues full blast with a great deal of brutality, a great deal of destruction and indeterminate levels of success. To talk about it, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Alina Polyakova of the Center for European Policy Analysis; Toomas Ilves, the former president of Estonia; Dmitri Alperovitch, the head of the Silverado Policy Accelerator; Alex Vindman, the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute; and Lawfare’s Dominic Bustillos. They talked about how the Russian incursion is going, whether the Russians are succeeding or falling short, how firm the the European opposition is and how debilitating it is to the Russian economy.
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From December 9, 2017: When the Department of Justice required RT, the Russian-funded news outlet, to register as a foreign agent last month, the Russian government responded in kind. Yet the Kremlin's recent crackdown on Western media is just part of a longer history of stifling independent media in Russia. For this episode of the Lawfare Podcast's special Russia series, Alina Polyakova talked to Mikhail Zygar, a Russian independent journalist, filmmaker, and author of two books on the Kremlin’s elite circle. They discussed what it’s like to be an independent journalist in Russia today, why Putin may be far from a strategic mastermind, and much more.
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From March 22, 2014: On March 19, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) hosted NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a Statesman’s Forum address on the importance of the transatlantic alliance and how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is evolving to address new common security challenges. As the crisis in Ukraine shows that security in the Euro-Atlantic area cannot be taken for granted, the secretary-general discussed NATO’s essential role in an unpredictable world. He outlined the agenda for the September NATO summit in Wales as a critical opportunity to ensure that the alliance has the military capabilities necessary to deal with the threats it now faces, to consider how NATO members can better share the collective burden of defense and to engage constructively with partners around the world.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen took office as North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 12th secretary-general in August 2009. Previously, he served in numerous positions in the Danish government and opposition throughout his political career, including as prime minister of Denmark from November 2001 to April 2009.
Brookings Senior Fellow and CUSE Director Fiona Hill provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.
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Over the past two decades, much of the public's attention has been focused on private markets for individual data, but another equally invasive and expansive market has emerged during this time. The public sector, composed of the federal government, states and cities, have created a substantially and rapidly expanding inter-governmental marketplace in individual data. It is used in areas ranging from policing and immigration, to public health and housing. But this exchange around individual data brings about serious concerns for both privacy and federalism.
Alvaro Marañon sat down with Bridget Fahey, a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss her new law review article, “Data Federalism.” They go into detail about the hybrid structures governing these exchanges of individual data, the risk and protections afforded by existing federalism principles and doctrines, and how and why data is power.
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Almost immediately since he was banned from Twitter and Facebook in January 2021, Donald Trump has been promising the launch of a new, Trump-run platform to share his thoughts with the world. In February 2022, that network—Truth Social—finally launched. But it’s been a debacle from start to finish, with a lengthy waitlist and a glitchy website that awaits users who finally make it online.
Drew Harwell, who covers technology at the Washington Post, has been reporting on the less-than-smooth launch of Truth Social. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our podcast series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with him about who, exactly, this platform is for and who is running it. What explains the glitchy rollout? What’s the business plan … if there is one? And how does the platform fit into the ever-expanding universe of alternative social media sites for right-wing users?
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For the past two decades, there has been an epidemic of data breaches, from Target, to Home Depot, to Equifax, to Uber, just to name a few. In their new book, “Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It,” Daniel Solove, the John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, and Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University, tell us why current data security law fails and how we can improve it.
Stephanie Pell spoke with Dan and Woody about a number of issues they raise in their book, including how current data security law overemphasizes the conduct of breached entities and fails to distribute responsibility among a range of actors in the data ecosystem that contributes to the data breach. They also talked about their ideas for more proactive data security laws that work to reduce the harm caused by data breaches once they occur, encourage greater integration of privacy and security principles, and promote data security rules and practices designed with humans in mind.
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Over the past week, the United States and its allies have responded to Russia's military invasion of Ukraine with some unprecedented actions of their own—economic sanctions that target Russia in ways that have never been tried before, let alone applied to one of the world's largest economies over just a handful of days.
To discuss this revolutionary sanctions strategy and what it may mean moving forward, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two sanctions experts: Julia Friedlander, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and Rachel Ziemba, adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. They talked about the different types of sanctions being applied, what impact they will have on the Russian economy and what the consequences may be, not just for the conflict in Ukraine, but for the rest of the world moving forward.
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In the national security world, including on Lawfare, a lot of attention gets paid to China's tech sector and other parts of its economy. Comparatively less attention is paid to China's illicit economies, illegal trade involving China and other countries around the world. But China has been involved in numerous acts of transnational criminal activity with occasionally lax enforcement, and there's a new series of Brookings papers and blog posts about this very subject.
To talk it through. Jacob Schulz sat down with Vanda Felbab-Brown, the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and Madiha Afzal, a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. They talked through the project and papers that each of them have written on the subject, including one on illegal wildlife trafficking, one on narcotic precursor trafficking and one on human trafficking.
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From October 31, 2015: Perhaps you’ve heard, but tensions between the United States and Russia are heating up. With Putin upping the ante in Syria, Marvin Kalb, journalist, scholar, and a nonresident senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, came to Brookings to launch his new book that looks at the Russian leader’s last foray into another country. Entitled, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War. Putin’s recent actions in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and, more recently, in Syria have provoked a sharp deterioration in East-West relations. Is this the beginning of a new Cold War, or is Putin just wearing the costume of a prizefighter?
Joining the discussion were Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Nina Khrushcheva, a professor at The New School. Brookings President Strobe Talbott provided introductory remarks while Martin Indyk, Executive Vice President of Brookings moderated the conversation.
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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 Alina Polyakova and Scott Anderson. They talked about what happened this week, the international law implications, and the domestic politics in both Ukraine and Russia.
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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 Afghanistan. Following his visa denial, Omar decided to flee as a refugee, and Matthieu decided to join him for the journey. Matthieu and Bryce talked about a range of topics, including Matthieu and Omar's journey and the politics of migration in Europe.
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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 “peacekeepers,” and the Russian military has taken up positions along a broad stretch of Ukraine’s border.
Along with the military dimensions of the crisis, there’s also the question of how various actors are using information to provoke or defuse violence. Russia has been spreading disinformation about supposed violence against ethnic Russians in Ukraine. The United States and its Western partners, meanwhile, have been releasing intelligence about Russia’s plans—and about Russian disinformation—at a rapid and maybe even unprecedented clip.
So today on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, we’re bringing you an episode about the role of truth and falsehoods in the Russian attack on Ukraine. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Olga Lautman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis—who has been tracking Russian disinformation in Ukraine—and Shane Harris, a reporter at the Washington Post—who has been reporting on the crisis.
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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 Lawfare, and Lawfare, senior editor Scott R. Anderson. What is Vladimir Putin doing? What can we expect militarily? Why did he go through this Byzantine process of recognizing these two non-states? Are we expecting a wider conflict or a narrow one, and what do the prospects look like for either? And will the international community hang together?
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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 intelligence education, about problems with the current structure of congressional oversight of the intelligence community, about the public role of intelligence in the crisis with Russia and Ukraine, about the growing role of open source information in intelligence, and much more.
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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.
Chatteris Lawfare’s weekly long form interview podcast co-hosted by the Washington Post's Shane Harris and Lawfare’s David Priess, focusing on where intriguing ideas in culture, technology, entertainment and history intersect with the worlds of espionage and foreign affairs. Subscribe to Chatter on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on Twitter at @ThatWasChatter.
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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 Soviet Union’s policy and enforcement. Last week, Benjamin Wittes interviewed Applebaum on her new book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, to discuss the scope of the book, the devastating impact of Stalin’s policy on Ukraine’s peasant population, and the book’s relevance to Putin’s current agenda.
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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 reporter in the very country Americans find so confusing. Special guest host Alina Polyakova, David M. Rubenstein fellow in Brookings’s Foreign Policy Program, interviewed Soldatov last week to discuss Russia’s perspective on the 2016 election meddling, the Kremlin’s surveillance operations, Edward Snowden, and much more.
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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 Blocked From the North Carolina Ballot as an Insurrectionist?” He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the various ins and outs of this case, what constitutes an insurrection for purposes of the section, what Madison Cawthorn did, why he—of all members of Congress—is the one who is being subjected to this challenge, and who gets to decide who gets disqualified.
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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 platform. As the New York Times described it, CrowdTangle “had increasingly become an irritant” to Facebook’s leadership “as it revealed the extent to which Facebook users engaged with hyperpartisan right-wing politics and misleading health information.”
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Brandon about what we mean when we talk about transparency from social media platforms and why that transparency matters. They also discussed his work with the Congress and other regulators to advise on what legislation ensuring more openness from platforms would look like—and why it’s so hard to draft regulation that works.
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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 committee on Jan. 6, on which he still sits.
On February 15, the Brookings Institution welcomed Representative Raskin to discuss his new book, “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.” For this special episode of the Lawfare Podcast, we’re bringing you audio of the event. First, you’ll hear Brookings President John R. Allen in conversation with Rep. Raskin. Then, you’ll hear a panel of Brookings scholars discuss Jan. 6 and Rep. Raskin’s reflections. Brookings senior fellow Sarah Binder moderated a discussion with Brookings senior fellows Fiona Hill, Rashawn Ray, Molly Reynolds, and Brookings fellow Quinta Jurecic.
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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 senior editor Scott R. Anderson. They talked about what the Biden administration did and its executive order on Friday, how the media subtly got it wrong, what the implications are for pending litigation and for providing relief to the Afghan people, and whether the administration has successfully threaded a needle.
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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 Justice about what, if anything, it is thinking about potential obstruction charges against the now former president. Natalie Orpett sat down with Ben and Quinta to talk about why that may be, what could be going on inside DOJ, and what we can expect from Attorney General Garland.
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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 revolutionize payment flows and reduce the cost of financial transactions, all while securing information and enhancing privacy. They also tackle some of the most pressing policy questions facing the technology—from consumer protection to terrorists' finances—and how those tensions can be addressed.It's a relatively positive take on Bitcoin and its future potential and an argument for why you should buy back your Bitcoin if you sold it after last week's show featuring Lawfare's Bitcoin skeptic, Nick Weaver.
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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 proportions, the massive criminal problem law enforcement officials have suggested, or something else entirely: a waste of everyone's time and money. He also outlines some of the design flaws he sees in Bitcoin and why those flaws, which many in the Bitcoin community view as important features, will actually lead to the platform’s eventual downfall.
It’s a discussion of Ponzi schemes, the limits of the blockchain, and the future of international currency transactions.
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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 applied to truckers, the convoy movement has at times made even more ambitious demands, including the dissolution of the Trudeau government, and it has close ties to far right-wing nationalists and ethno-nationalist organizations, both in Canada and the United States. While the convoy movement began in Canada, there are signs that is beginning to spread, with similar efforts appearing in Australia and New Zealand and intelligence reports suggesting the same may soon happen in the United States.
To put these recent developments in context, Scott R. Anderson sat down with three Canadian national security experts who have been following the convoy crisis closely: Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor at Queen’s University; Stephanie Carvin, associate professor at Carleton University; and Jessica Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence. They discussed the origins of the convoy movement, its relationship with domestic violent extremism and what it might mean for both Canada and the rest of the world.
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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 Rogan to distribute his show. Spotify came under pressure to intervene, as nearly 300 experts sent the company a letter demanding it take action, and musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their music from Spotify’s streaming service. And the controversy only seems to be growing.
This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Ashley Carman, a senior reporter at The Verge who writes the newsletter Hot Pod, covering the podcast and audio industry. She’s broken news on Spotify’s content guidelines and Spotify CEO’s Daniel Ek’s comments to the company’s staff, and we couldn’t think of a better person to talk to about this slow-moving disaster. How has Spotify responded to the complaints over Rogan, and what does that tell us about how the company is thinking about its responsibilities in curating content? What’s Ashley’s read on the state of content moderation in the podcast industry more broadly? And … is this debate even about content moderation at all?
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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. Instead, it's an example of what scholars call a universal jurisdiction case. In these cases, a country like Germany exercises criminal jurisdiction over certain crimes like war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. A collection of European countries, as well as Argentina, have incorporated provisions like this into their criminal code, and universal jurisdiction cases have served to bring justice for offenses committed in a range of conflicts across the world.
To talk through the most recent developments and the phenomenon of universal jurisdiction cases, Jacob Schulz sat down with Hayley Evans, a research fellow working on Afghanistan projects at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and Rule of Law.
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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 law at Yale Law School and a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center, and Jordan Schneider, the host of the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter. They talked about the legislation, the prospects for reconciling it for the Senate bill, and whether this is a real start or just window dressing.
This episode was recorded live for our Material Supporters.
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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 inv
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