The Lawfare Podcast - The Lawfare Institute

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Finland’s NATO Bid, Interrupted Jan 26, 2023

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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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Anna Bower on Judge McBurney's Deliberations Jan 25, 2023

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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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Lynzy Billing on Afghanistan's Zero Unit Night Raids Jan 24, 2023

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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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When States Make Tech Policy Jan 23, 2023

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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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Chatter: A Post-Presidency Done Right with Jean Becker Jan 22, 2023

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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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Lawfare Archive: The Past, Present and Future of Sovereign Immunity Jan 21, 2023

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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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Biden's National Security Presidency So Far with Chris Whipple Jan 20, 2023

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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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Lifting the Veil on Fusion Centers Jan 19, 2023

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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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Halkbank Hits the Supreme Court Jan 18, 2023

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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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How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy Jan 17, 2023

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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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