The Lawfare Podcast

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 30 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom.

Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff about the timing of the D.C. case, Judge Aileen Cannon's denial of Special Counsel Jack Smith's gag order request in Florida, updates in the Fulton County case, the performance of Trump's attorneys and jury deliberations in the New York case, and more. And of course, they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Zoom.

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This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations, N.Y. Dispatch” was recorded on May 30 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom.

Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Courts Correspondent and Legal Fellow Anna Bower about Trump's conviction in his N.Y. criminal case. Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts for falsification of business records in the first degree. They discussed the the mood in the courtroom when the jury delivered the verdict, what this means for the 2024 election, big takeaways from the trial, and more.

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This week, a Quinta-less Alan and Scott sat down with Lawfare all-stars Natalie Orpett, Eugenia Lostri, and Kevin Frazier to talk about the week’s big national security news, including: 

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Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler joins Lawfare Tarbell Fellow Kevin Frazier and LawfareSenior Editor Alan Rozenshtein to discuss the latest developments in AI governance. Building off his book, “Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?” Wheeler makes the case for a more agile approach to regulating AI and other emerging technology. This approach would likely require the creation of a new agency. Wheeler points out that current agencies lack the culture, structure, and personnel required to move at the speed of new technologies. He also explores the pros and cons of the Bipartisan Senate AI Working Group’s roadmap for AI policy. While Wheeler praises the collaboration that went into the roadmap, he acknowledges that it may lack sufficient focus on the spillover effects of more AI development and deployment. 

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On May 14, the Georgian parliament passed a controversial foreign agent bill titled “Transparency of Foreign Influence,” which has led to mass protests across the country. Although President Salome Zourabichvili's vetoed the bill, Georgia Dream, the majority party, overturned the veto on May 28, ensuring the enactment of this legislation.

Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey sat down with Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe Thomas de Waal to discuss what exactly was in the bill, why it was so controversial, how the U.S. and European Union have reacted, and why Georgia Dream decided to pass it now.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 28. Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, Tyler McBrien, and Katerine Pompilio to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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Raised in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), Dr. Anaïs Maurer is assistant professor of literature at Rutgers University and author of The Ocean on Fire. Her research and writing, including this book, have explored the intersection of the legacy of colonial powers' massive nuclear detonations in Oceania, critical threats from climate change, and the stories the people of Oceania tell about it all.

David Priess chatted with Maurer about her experience growing up in Oceania, the scope of the nuclear detonations in the region, how the people of Oceania have addressed radiation effects through stories, why cultural resilience has remained a greater theme than individualism or victimhood, how these narratives inform our current era of climate change, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book The Ocean on Fire by Anaïs Maurer

The book Quand le cannibale ricane by Paul Tavo

The short story "Eden" in the collection Vai: La Rivière au ciel sans nuages by Ra'i Chaze

The book The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

The visual art French Apocalypse Now by Cronos

The Coconut poetry series by Teresa Teaiwa

The book Pensées insolentes et inutiles by Chantal Spitz

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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Between June 6–9, voters across the EU’s member states will go to the polls to select members of the European Parliament. For today’s episode, Brookings Senior Fellow and Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Reynolds chatted with Tara Varma, Visiting Fellow, and Sophie Roehse, Senior Research Assistant, both of the Center for the United States and Europe at Brookings, to discuss these elections, what they mean for European politics, and how they might affect key issues also facing the U.S., including the war in Ukraine, relations with China, and how to handle asylum seekers.

For further reading and listening on topics discussed, see:

·       Why should Americans care about the European Parliament election?, Tara Varma and Sophie Roehse, May 17, 2024

·       Ukraine Index: Tracking developments in the Ukraine war, April 15, 2024

·       The Lawfare Podcast: Asylum-Seekers and the EU Migration Pact, April 1, 2024

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From August 12, 2020: President Trump recently issued executive orders aimed at banning TikTok and WeChat from operating in the United States. To discuss the sanction, Bobby Chesney sat down with Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, an associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a faculty affiliate with the Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the Clements Center for National Security at UT; and Dr. Ronald Deibert, a professor of political science and the founder and director of The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. In addition to the executive orders concerning TikTok and WeChat, they also discussed the larger U.S.-China relationship and the role of technology competition in that space.

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From June 17, 2019: It's getting ugly in the Persian Gulf: Iran allegedly attacks two oil tankers. It announces that it's going to violate the JCPOA, the so-called Iran nuclear agreement. There's talk of military strikes. Europe is edgy, and the Secretary of State is on Sunday talk shows being edgier still.

Benjamin Wittes sat down with Suzanne Maloney and Scott R. Anderson to talk it all through. They talked about whether the AUMF covers Iran, why Iran is doing this stuff, whether the Trump administration brought this all on itself, and where it's all going from here.

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This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 23 in front of a live audience on  YouTube and Zoom.

Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about the Wednesday hearing in the Southern District of Florida and Judge Cannon's decision to unseal several court filings. They checked in on Fulton County to see how DA Fani Willis and Judge Scott McAfee fared in their elections on Tuesday before discussing what is left in the New York City Trump trial. And of course, they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Zoom.

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Undersea cables carry more than 95 percent of the world’s digital traffic. The system of cables is vulnerable to a range of threats, from fishing accidents and acts of nature to tampering from state actors. To discuss how to best protect this critical infrastructure, Lawfare's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, Eugenia Lostri, talked with Kevin Frazier Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and Lawfare's Tarbell Fellow. They talked about the different types of threats to undersea cables, the importance of redundancy, and what's in the way of policy solutions.

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This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes, fresh from his New York rumspringa, to talk over the week’s big national security news, including:

For object lessons, Alan recommended pianist Víkingur Ólafsson’s reworking of Bach's Organ Sonata No. 4. Quinta shouted out two cartoonists illustrating the Trump trial: Liza Donnelly for the New Yorker and Josh Cochran for the New York Times. Scott recommended the new book forthcoming from friend-of-the-pod Michel Paradis, a new portrait of Dwight Eisenhower in the lead-up to D-Day entitled “The Light of Battle.” And Ben gave an unlikely endorsement to one of Trump’s legal counsel, the somewhat vampiric but nonetheless effective Emil Bove.

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For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Chimène Keitner, a Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law and former Counselor on International Law at the U.S. Department of State, to discuss the recent applications for arrest warrants filed by the prosector for the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing several senior Hamas leaders as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. They discussed the nature of the allegations, how the ICC has come to exercise jurisdiction over the Gaza conflict, and what impact this recent action may have on the broader conflict.

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In March, the Cyber Safety Review Board issued a report examining the Summer 2023 Microsoft Exchange Online Intrusion. Stephanie Pell, Senior Editor at Lawfare, sat down with Robert Silvers, Under Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security and Chair of the Cyber Safety Review Board to discuss the report. They talked about the Board’s determination that the intrusion was preventable and should never have occurred, Microsoft’s response to the report, and the Board’s unique role as a true public-private partnership, giving it a powerful position from which to drive change.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 21. Katherine Pompillo, an associate editor of Lawfare, sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Tyler McBrien to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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Tim Alberta is an American journalist and author, and son of an evangelical pastor. Following his father’s death in 2019, Alberta began a four year journey, talking to American evangelicals ranging from megachurch pastors who preach to thousands to pastors at churches with a few dozen congregants to understand the schism occurring in the American evangelical community. His book “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” puts American evangelicalism under a microscope as Alberta grapples with how the community he grew up in has changed.

Lawfare Associate Editor Anna Hickey spoke to Alberta about what led him to write this book, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the evangelical community, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, what Croatian theologist Miroslav Volf warns about creeping totalitarianism that results from religion, how evangelicals talk about Christian nationalism, and more.

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was recorded by Noam Osband and produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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Across the country, state lawmakers are joining the effort to address the perceived national security threat from China by passing a number of measures attempting to curb Chinese influences in their states. One such effort in Florida prevents Chinese citizens from owning property in the state.Lawfare’s Associate Editor Hyemin Han spoke with Matthew Erie, Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, about what makes the Florida law and the ongoing litigation challenging it particularly notable, the state of property rights challenges against Chinese citizens across the U.S., the tension between state and federal oversight of national security issues, and how this fits into the growing economic battles between the U.S. and China.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 20. Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, and Tyler McBrien to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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In foundational accounts of AI risk, the prospect of AI self-improvement looms large. The idea is simple. For any capable, goal-seeking system, the system’s goal will be more readily achieved if the system first makes itself even more capable. Having become somewhat more capable, the system will be able to improve itself again. And so on, possibly generating a rapid explosion of AI capabilities, resulting in systems that humans cannot hope to control.

Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Senior Editor at Lawfare, spoke with Peter Salib, who is less worried about this danger than many. Salib is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center and co-Director of the Center for Law & AI Risk. He just published a new white paper in Lawfare's ongoing Digital Social Contract paper series arguing that the same reason that it's difficult for humans to align AI systems is why AI systems themselves will hesitate to self-improve.

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From January 14, 2017: At this week's Hoover Book Soiree, Jack Goldsmith interviewed Jameel Jaffer about his new book, The Drone Memos: Targeted Killing, Secrecy, and the Law.

It's a wide-ranging discussion about targeted killing and its legality, and of Jaffer's work at the ACLU—where he ran national security litigation until recently—in holding the government to account for its practices. And it includes a fascinating debate between him and Jack about whether, in that role, he won more than he lost or lost more than he won, a debate in which each side takes exactly the opposite view than one might expect.

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From August 20, 2020: This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former chief security officer of Yahoo and Facebook. Alex has appeared on the podcast before, but this time, they discussed a new coalition he helped set up called the Election Integrity Partnership—a coalition focused on detecting and mitigating attempts to limit voting or delegitimize election results. Disinformation and misinformation around the U.S. presidential election has already started popping up online, and it’s only going to increase as November draws closer. The coalition aims to counter this in real time. So how will it actually work?

They also asked Alex for his hot takes on TikTok—the popular video sharing platform facing pressure over concern about influence from the Chinese government.

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The recently released International Cyberspace and Digital Strategy focuses on building digital solidarity as an alternative to digital sovereignty policies. Lawfare's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, Eugenia Lostri, spoke with Pablo Chavez, Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security’s Technology and National Security Program. Pablo first promoted the idea of digital solidarity in a Lawfare article in 2022. They talked about the range of policies that can fall under the digital sovereignty category, how digital solidarity offers an alternative position, and the evolution of the term from his 2022 article to the international strategy.

The article Eugenia and Pablo reference in their conversation is “Defending the ‘S Word’: The Language of Digital Sovereignty Can be a Tool of Empowerment,” by Arindrajit Basu.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 16. Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, and Tyler McBrien to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to go over the week’s big national security news, including:

For object lessons, Alan lamented the passing of great Canadian Alice Munro. Quinta celebrated the semi-resolution of a long-running mystery involving Prague. Scott renewed his call for people to grill more pizza this summer and shared some tips before handing the mic to producer Noam, who shared that he’s performing at the DC Improv on May 23. And Natalie reminisced fondly (?) on her time living in New York. 

To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.

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This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 15 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about the lack of action in Fulton County, the Southern District of Florida and D.C. They then took a deep dive into the New York City Trump trial and looked ahead to whether there are witnesses left in the case. And of course they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Zoom.

To be able to submit questions to the panelists and receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.

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After the 2020 Presidential Election, a plan was hatched in seven swing states that had voted for Joe Biden. Lawsuits challenging the election outcomes in those states continued to fail, but this plan attempted to find another path to keep Trump in office—using the Electoral College process. The idea was to create slates of electors for Trump that would oppose the duly-elected Biden electors, and to send those slates of electors to DC to be counted on Jan. 6. Then, Vice President Mike Pence was supposed to either choose the Trump electors, thereby overturning the 2020 election results, or kick the competing slates back to the states to be sorted out, thereby delaying Congress's certification of the election. It's a plan that the Jan. 6 Committee would later dub "the fraudulent electors scheme." The whole scheme relied on specific individuals in each state—the fake electors themselves. So, three and a half years later, what has happened to them? 

Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke with Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic, who has been closely following the issue from the beginning. Last month, she published an article explaining what happened to the fake electors in these seven states with Lawfare Student Contributors Hunter Evans, Adam George, and Emma Plankey.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 14 Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, and Tyler McBrien to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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Migration has always been a part of humanity's story. It will continue to be so long after any of us now living are gone. Population shifts in the coming century, spurred by climate change, are on track to become more extreme than at any point in our history--with hundreds of millions, probably billions, of people on the move. 

For this episode, David Priess spoke with Gaia Vince, self-described former scientists and author of the book Nomad Century (among other works), about various aspects of climate change-driven mass migration, including perceptions of borders across history, attitudes toward climate change mitigation vs. adaptation, why the "Dubai model" isn't a global solution, demographic shifts in the global north, migration as a cause of evolutionary and cultural development, myths about migrants and jobs and wages, nurses from the Philippines as a case study, how enlightened leadership can guide the most productive migration outcomes, and much more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book Transcendence by Gaia Vince

The book Nomad Century by Gaia Vince

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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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that the United States lost a record $12.5 billion to various types of cyber crime in 2023. Law enforcement hacking is one tool increasingly used to combat transnational cyber crime. Stephanie Pell, Senior Editor at Lawfare, sat down with Gavin Wilde, Senior Fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Emma Landi, Research Assistant in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to talk about their new paper exploring law enforcement efforts to “hack the hackers” in the fight against cyber crime. They talked about the types of hacking operations performed by law enforcement, when law enforcement may be better suited to address the actions of malicious cyber actors as compared with the military and private sector, and some of the major policy questions posed by law enforcement hacking.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 13 Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, and Tyler McBrien to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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On May 6, the U.S. State Department unveiled its U.S. International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy. Lawfare's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, Eugenia Lostri, discussed the new strategy with Adam Segal, Senior Advisor in the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. They talked about how the strategy fits with other cyber actions from the Biden administration, what the principle of digital solidarity looks like in practice, and how to future-proof these initiatives. 

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From September 12, 2015: On this week’s Lawfare Podcast, Benjamin Wittes sits down with Professor Gabriella Blum, professor at Harvard Law School, and Dustin Lewis, a senior researcher at Harvard Law Schools’ Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, to discuss their new report written with Naz Modirzadeh entitled Medical Care in Armed Conflict: IHL and State Responses to Terrorism. The conversation takes a look at whether we should consider medical care a form of illegitimate support to terrorists. Their argument? We shouldn't, because IHL lays down extensive protections for medical care, and those protections in many instances should also constrain domestic material support cases. Yet the authors make clear that in their view, there's also more to be done, as there are gaps and weaknesses in the protections afforded by IHL itself.

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From May 3, 2021: In the fourth episode of “After Trump,” the six-part limited podcast series based on the book, "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency," by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, we explore how and when a president is held to account for wild and sometimes criminal behavior.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 10. Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, and Business Insider's Jacob Shamsian to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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David Pozen is the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the author of the new book, “The Constitution of the War on Drugs,” which examines the relationship between the Constitution and drug prohibitions. He joined Jack Goldsmith to talk about the constitutional history of the war on drugs and why the drug war was not curbed by constitutional doctrines about personal autonomy, limits on the federal government’s power, the Equal Protection Clause, or the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. They also talked about whether the political process is working with advancing decriminalization and how this impacts the constitutional dimension of the drug war.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 9. Roger Parloff sat down with Tyler McBrien, Benjamin Wittes, and Claire Meynial to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri, to to hash through the week’s big national security news, including:

For object lessons, Alan endorsed the new period miniseries Fellow Travelers. Lacking any Menendez updates, Quinta broadened her beat to cover the new indictment of Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). Scott sang the praises of a childhood classic he and his son have rediscovered, James Gurney’s “Dinotopia.”And Eugenia celebrated the early look at retirement provided by one of her favorite video games, Sims 4.

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This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 8 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about Judge Cannon’s order suspending the trial start date of May 20 in the classified documents case, the Georgia Court of Appeals decision to hear former President Trump and his co-defendants’ appeal of Judge McAfee’s decision keeping DA Fani Willis on the case, and more. And of course they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Zoom.

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The White House on April 30 released a “National Security Memorandum on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience.” According to the White House, the memo marks the beginning of a new comprehensive initiative to safeguard U.S. infrastructure against current threats and those on the horizon. The Department of Homeland Security is tasked with leading this effort—through coordination with other federal agencies, states and localities, and private-sector actors.

Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck discussed the memo and what it reveals about the U.S. strategy for protecting its critical infrastructure with Juliette Kayyem, a Professor of International Security at the Harvard Kennedy School. What does it mean to share responsibility and information in this context? How does geopolitics affect the United States’ approach to protecting critical infrastructure? Which types of infrastructure are more closely tied to national security than others?

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 7. Roger Parloff sat down with Tyler McBrien, Benjamin Wittes, and Claire Meynial to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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David Ignatius has worked at the Washington Post for more than 35 years in various roles and won many awards. He has written a column on foreign affairs for 25 years and reported some of the most significant national security stories over the last couple of decades. And he has done it while pumping out best-selling spy thrillers.

Lawfare Research fellow Matt Gluck spoke with Ignatius about his newest spy thriller, Phantom Orbit, which is a story of intelligence and the advance of space technology in the age of intensified geopolitical competition between the U.S., China, and Russia. They spoke about Ignatius’s character development in the book, what the book reveals about the new strategic space race, gender in the Central Intelligence Agency, and scientific discovery, among other things.

For more about David:

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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Andrew Reddie is an Associate Research Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder and faculty director of the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab. Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien spoke with Andrew about wargaming as a tool to manage risk from war to climate—and beyond.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 6. Roger Parloff sat down with Tyler McBrien, Benjamin Wittes, and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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On April 24, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes delivered a Watson Distinguished Lecture at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University to discuss the Israel-Gaza war and the implications for U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He talked about Israel’s incompatible objectives of freeing hostages and eradicating Hamas, the moral context of the war, U.S.-Israeli relations in this context, what the U.S. and Israel still have in common—and what they no longer have in common—in this environment, and how the war could affect U.S. presidential elections.

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From April 9, 2021: Tensions are heating up between Russia and Ukraine, seven years after the seizure by the Russians of the Crimean Peninsula and the incursions into Eastern Ukraine. With troop movements and some saber rattling, is Vladimir Putin trying to send a message to Joe Biden, or perhaps to Ukrainian President Zelensky? Is he trying to satisfy domestic constituencies or distract them? Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alexander Vindman to talk about what Russia is doing and why, and what the Biden administration should do about it.

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From March 7, 2015: This week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a controversial address to a joint session of Congress in a move not coordinated with President Barack Obama. The speech, repeatedly interrupted by thunderous applause, focused on the nature of the developing nuclear accord between the P5+1 and Iran and insisted a better deal was possible. The speech was also heavily colored by its proximity to the upcoming Israeli elections, with many Israel watchers wondering whether it was meant to play more to Israeli voters than to Congress. Just after Netanyahu's address, we invited Brookings Fellow Natan Sachs into the Lawfare studios to unpack the speech, including what it means for the US-Israeli relationship, the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, and Bibi's chances in the upcoming election.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 3. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tyler McBrien and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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Over the past several years, governors around the country from both political parties have used their respective National Guards for an increasingly unconventional array of domestic missions, ranging from teaching in public schools to regulating immigration at the southern border. To discuss how this trend may impact the National Guard—and our broader democracy, particularly in this pivotal election year—LawfareSenior Editor Scott R. Anderson recently sat down with a panel of senior former National Guard and Defense Department officials, including: General Craig McKinley, General Joseph Lengyel, Brigadier General Allyson Solomon, Major General Daryl Bohac, and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Paul Stockton. 

A video recording of the panel is available at https://www.brookings.edu/events/domestic-deployment-of-the-national-guard/. 

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 2. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tyler McBrien and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare Contributing Editor Eric Ciaramella to talk through the week’s big natsec stories, including:

For object lessons, Alan got on the Amor Towles admiration train and endorsed both his book “A Gentleman in Moscow” and the forthcoming TV adaptation. Quinta recommended the classic 2003 journalism period piece “Shattered Glass.” Scott log-rolled for a forthcoming project by our friends at Goat Rodeo and Project Brazen: Fur and Loathing, which looks at one of the most significant chemical weapons attacks in U.S. history, which took place at a 2014 convention for furries. And Eric shared a cultural lesson his Italian friend impressed upon him about the impropriety of drinking a cappuccino after 11:00am.

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It's another episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” recorded on May 1 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom.

Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower and Lawfare Senior Editors Roger Parloff and Quinta Jurecic to talk about state-level prosecutions of "fake electors," what Judge Cannon is up to in the classified documents case, and what has happened in the New York hush money and election interference trial so far. And of course, they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Riverside.

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What do port cranes, TikTok, artificial intelligence, and connected vehicles have in common? They may all be subject to regulation by a new office within the Department of Commerce: the Office of Information and Communications Technology and Services (OICTS). 

Between 2019 and 2023, the president issued multiple executive orders aimed at securing the United States' information and communications technology and services. They focused on the supply chain, cybersecurity, sensitive data of U.S. persons, and artificial intelligence. And in 2023, OICTS was created to implement them.

Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack spoke with the Office's Executive Director, Elizabeth Cannon. They talked about the Office's recent activities, who it regulates, and how it sets priorities. 

This is the latest episode in our special series, “The Regulators,” co-sponsored with Morrison Foerster, in which we talk with senior government officials working at the front lines of U.S. national security policy.

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Dmitri Alperovitch is the author, with Garrett Graff, of the new book, “World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century.” He’s also the cofounder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator. He joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the book, tensions in the Taiwan Strait, deterring China from invading Taiwan, and the history of what Dmitri calls “Cold War II.”  

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, April 30. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tyler McBrien and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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For a period of time in the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, employer in the city of Miami. The CIA had set up a base of operations there, aimed primarily at undermining the regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. From those early days, writes historian Vince Houghton, the Cold War battle against communism shaped the city, which he says should rank among the world’s great capitals of espionage. 

Houghton and co-author Eric Driggs, both Miami natives, chronicle the city’s spooky history in their rolicking new book Covert City: The Cold War and the Making of Miami. Houghton spoke to Shane Harris about some of the colorful characters that span this decades-long story, why Miami has played such a pivotal role in the history of U.S. spying, and how the the Cuban intelligence service became one of the best in the world. 

The books, people, events, films, TV shows, video games, and actors discussed in this book include: 

More about Vince Houghton 

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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On April 24, President Joe Biden signed the National Security Package into law. It's a bundle of legislation that provides aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and requires TikTok's Chinese parent company to divest from the app or face a national ban, among various other provisions. 

Lawfare Associate Editor Katherine Pompilio sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Reynolds to unpack what exactly is in the package and explore the legislation’s journey through Congress. They talked about the group of hardline Republicans that blocked the legislation in the House, how Speaker Mike Johnson had to rely on the help of Democrats to get the aid package for a vote on the House floor, how Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell worked together to get the legislation through the Senate to Biden’s desk, and more.

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On March 20, the House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans’ Data From Foreign Adversaries Act. The House bill was passed by the Senate on April 23 as part of the larger foreign aid package, which President Biden signed into law on April 24. Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Justin Sherman, Senior Fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, to talk about the benefits and limits of the new legislation, now law. They talked about the path that led to the bill’s passage in both the House and Senate, similarities and differences between this new legislation and a recent Executive Order focusing on the preventing the sale of American’s bulk sensitive personal data, and some ways the new law could be improved. 

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From September 28, 2020: It's been a wild few weeks with President Trump threatening to shut WeChat and TikTok out of the U.S. market and rip them out of the app stores. There have been lawsuits, a preliminary injunction—and a sudden deal to purchase TikTok and moot the issue out. To chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Lawfare co-founder Bobby Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, and Jordan Schneider, the voice behind the podcast ChinaTalk. They talked about how we got here, whether the threat from these companies is real or whether this is more Trump nonsense, and whether the deal to save TikTok will actually work.

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From June 15, 2019: Russian and Chinese leaders understand that they’re unlikely to win a shooting war with the United States, but they have other ways to challenge Western interests, turning our greatest strengths—open societies, dominance of technology on Earth and in space, and military innovation—into weaknesses.

CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto calls it “the shadow war,” and it’s the subject of his new book of the same name. David Priess sat down with Jim to talk about these asymmetric threats to national security, and what the United States and its allies can do to fight back.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, April 26. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tyler McBrien and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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In today's Lawfare Podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic, Roger Parloff, and Alan Rosenstein. In a live conversation recorded less than an hour after Supreme Court Oral Arguments concluded, they discussed presidential immunity, and whether former president Trump is immune from prosecution for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, April 25. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tyler McBrien and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were finally reunited to talk through the week’s big natsec stories, including:

For object lessons, Alan finally put down the damn remote and recommended an actual book, Charles Mann’s “The Wizard and the Prophet,” about the competing, prescient visions of the future put forward by early 20th-century scientists William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Quinta picked it up and urged listeners to check out the new documentary “Stormy,” about Stormy Daniels and the impact her alleged involvement with former President Trump and its aftermath has had on her life. And Scott shouted out one of his favorite purveyors of the silver screen, Alamo Drafthouse, and their thoughtful “sensory friendly” showings that turn up the lights and down the noise for those with young children or sensory sensitivities — something that recently allowed him and his wife to see “Dune 2” in the theater with a newborn in tow.

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In today's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tyler McBrien, Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic and Roger Parloff for a round-up of the most recent news in all of Donald Trump's ongoing legal cases.

To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.

The podcast was edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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The annual U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) Legal Conference convenes lawyers across government and the private sector working on cyber issues. This year’s conference focused on the power of partnerships. Executive Editor Natalie Orpett moderated a panel, titled “The Business of Battle: Navigating the Role of the Private Sector in Conflict,” featuring Jonathan Horowitz of the International Committee for the Red Cross, Laurie Blank of the Defense Department’s Office of the General Counsel, and Adam Hickey of the law firm Mayer Brown. They talked about how government and private sector actors bring different frames of reference and different equities when faced with a conflict, and how they can work together to address it.

To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, April 23. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tyler McBrien and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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David Sanger has been writing for the New York Times since he graduated from college more than four decades ago. Over that period, Sanger has served as a business correspondent in Silicon Valley, the Times bureau chief in Japan, and has covered the last five presidents—which has given Sanger a front-row seat to U.S. foreign policy for much of the post-Cold War period. It is that experience that informs Sanger’s newest book, “New Cold Wars,” in which Sanger argues—relying on a voluminous and colorful set of interviews with administration officials—that the U.S. has entered two new military, technological, and economic conflicts with Russia and China.

Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck spoke about the book with Sanger. They discussed how the United States slipped into these conflicts through misreading Chinese and Russian geopolitical intentions and how the U.S. is seeking to navigate this new era. They also discussed how close Biden administration officials believed Vladimir Putin was to using a nuclear weapon in the fall of 2022.

For more about David:

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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Ambassador Robert Lighthizer is the former United States Trade Representative in the Trump administration and the author of the 2023 book, “No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers.” He sat down with Jack Goldsmith to talk about his work as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative under President Reagan, why extreme neoliberal trade policy took hold in the 1990s, his core philosophy on trade and how it departed from the 1990s neoliberal consensus, and the main ways he implemented this view in the Trump administration and with what results. They also discussed the importance of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and why it was controversial, the extent to which the Biden administration adopted Lighthizer’s views on free trade, and the relationship between national security and trade policy.

To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.

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It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, April 22. Tyler McBrien sat down with Benjamin Wittes and Anna Bower to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.

The podcast was edited by Ian Enright of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

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Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, Eugenia Lostri, talks to Dr. Erica Lonergan, Assistant Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Dr. Lonergan recently authored a report making the case for establishing a U.S. Cyber Force as a way to address the military’s difficulty to recruit, train, and equip sufficient personnel to meet growing cyber challenges. They talked about the types of problems the cyber mission faces, different ways in which they can be addressed, and why establishing a distinct cyber force might be the best path forward.

To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.

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Starting Monday, April 22, the Lawfare Podcast feed is gonna look a little different.

Our daily show, the Lawfare Podcast, will remain on this feed, along with Rational Security and Chatter. We’ll also be adding some important new content as well.

Starting with opening statements in the New York state court trial against Donald Trump, we will discuss the events of the day’s proceedings on a short livestream dispatch on our YouTube channel. These dispatches, which we’ll record after court lets out on trial days (Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays), will be available in podcast form on this feed the following day. They’ll be called Trump Trials & Tribulations: N.Y. Trial Dispatch.

Our weekly Trump’s Trials & Tribulations livestream, which we’ve been holding on Thursdays, will move to Wednesday afternoons, when court is not in session. (We’ve been releasing podcast versions of the livestream on Saturdays; these will move to Thursdays.) In addition to a short overview of the previous week’s proceedings in the New York case, we will continue to bring you updates on the cases in Florida, Fulton County, and Washington, D.C. As always, our Material Supporters will be able to join the discussion via Riverside and ask questions live.

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This week on Rational Security, Alan and Quinta sat down with LawfareEditor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week’s big national security news, including:

For object lessons, Quinta recommended a throwing-the-wife-under-the-bus update in New Jersey's Senator Bob Menendez's ongoing legal troubles, and Alan and Ben both recommended excellent, if anxiety-inducing, national security themed movies: the recently released Civil War and the upcoming War Game.

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It's another episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” recorded on April 18 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Riverside. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff to talk about oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Fischer v. United States, over an obstruction charge used to charge hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, including former President Trump. They checked in on Judge Cannon and last week's hearing on motions from Trump's co-defendants, De Oliveira and Nauta. They also checked in with Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to discuss the ongoing jury selection in the hush money case in New York, why it is going faster than expected, and whether we can really expect opening statements to occur on Monday. And of course, they took audience questions from LawfareMaterial Supporters on Riverside.

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From November 29, 2017: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Carpenter v. United States, a major Fourth Amendment case asking whether a warrant is necessary before law enforcement can obtain cell site data identifying a suspect phone's location from a service provider. Lawfare contributor and Fourth Amendment expert Orin Kerr discussed the case with Benjamin Wittes at Brookings shortly after the argument.

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NATO recently had its 75th birthday. And many say its trajectory traces the adage, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” That is, at least in some ways, NATO has returned to its original mission of collective self-defense. This means the alliance is concentrating less on out-of-area operations that have occupied much of its focus since the end of the Cold War. The transition comes at a time when many are questioning the U.S.’s long-term commitment to its NATO allies, especially in light of former President Trump’s recent comments about burden sharing within the alliance. 

Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck discussed NATO’s current and likely future posture with Sara Moller, Associate Teaching Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. They spoke about NATO’s role in the war in Ukraine, the alliance’s focus in the Indo-Pacific, and how NATO is balancing arms control with maintaining strong nuclear deterrence.

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Author and speaker Virginia Postrel has spent many years researching and writing about, among other things, various aspects of the economics and societal context of fashion, glamour, and consumer choice. A few years ago her book The Fabric of Civilization tackled the history and global effects of fabric-making, dyeing, the clothing trade, and other textile-related activities. So when host David Priess had his curiosity piqued by some displays at the International Spy Museum related to silk, dyes, and espionage, he knew who to call.

David talked to Virginia about the origins of string and of fabric, togas in fiction and reality, the value of purple in the Roman Empire, the importance of fabrics for outfitting armies and making warships' sails, the development of weaving, how textile merchants led to the modern political economy, Jakob Fugger, Chinese silk and espionage, Spain's 200 year monopoly on vibrant reds, efforts to steal Spain' cochineal secret, the long history of indigo, French efforts to steal Indian indigo, the invention of synthetic dyes, modern sneaker culture and conceptions of value, Jackie Kennedy, fashion and glamour on the world stage today, and more.

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

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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One year ago, fighting broke out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In the intervening months, the death toll and humanitarian cost have been immense. 

And yet, the suffering has gone largely overlooked by the United States and European nations. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield recently said, “Just five years after a revolution that offered a glimpse at a free, peaceful, democratic Sudan, people are losing hope. Aid workers have begun calling this conflict the forgotten war. Sudanese children are asking why the world has forgotten them.”

To learn more, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Reva Dhingra, a Policy Adviser at the International Rescue Committee, and Ciarán Donnelly, a Senior Vice President for International Programs, also at the IRC. They discussed the roots of the current conflict, the spillover effects, and the exacerbating effects of climate change. They also heard about what Ciarán saw on his recent trip to the Sudan-Chad border. 

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Last week, the House passed an overhaul and reauthorization of the FISA 702 program, a bill which now heads to the Senate for final passage. In the run-up to Senate consideration of it, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matt Olsen joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about the House bill. They talked about the new constraints it imposes on the Justice Department and the FBI, what it doesn't do, the warrant requirement that isn't there, some other provisions that have generated controversy, and the bill's prospects in the Senate this week.

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Friday morning, the House of Representatives suddenly—after failing to do so earlier in the week—took up the reauthorization of FISA 702. They considered a bunch of amendments, one of which failed on a tie vote, and then proceeded to pass reauthorization of 702. 

Immediately after the votes, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke with Lawfare Senior Editors Stephanie Pell and Molly Reynolds, and Lawfare Student Contributor Preston Marquis. They talked about how the center beat the coalition of the left and right on the key question of warrant requirements for U.S. person queries, about whether the civil liberties community gained anything in this protracted process or whether the administration just kicked its butt, about what happens now as the bill goes back to the Senate, and about all the little details that went into this bill. 

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Today marks the start of the first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York City. Trump is facing 34 felony counts for his alleged falsification of business records related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and others after the 2016 election. After months of pretrial hearings, motions to dismiss and for an adjournment, motions for recusal, and more, jury selection in the case begins today.

In light of today’s events, Lawfare Associate Editor Katherine Pompilio sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff who will be covering the trial at length. They discussed the case’s background, Trump’s various attempts to delay the proceedings, how jury selection will work, our plans for covering the trial, and more.

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This week on Rational Security, Alan and Quinta were joined again by Brookings Senior Fellow and Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Reynolds to talk over the week’s national security news, including:

For object lessons, Alan recommended an adorable giraffe growth chart for keeping track of your child's height. Quinta took a cue from Molly and endorsed a podcast by a local NPR affiliate—“Lost Patients,” a series about mental health care from KUOW and the Seattle Times. And Molly shared a story about misprinted pens from the Clinton impeachment trial, as told in Peter Baker’s book "The Breach."

Other references from this week’s show:

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It's another episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” recorded on April 11 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Riverside. Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Legal Fellow Anna Bower and Senior Editor Roger Parloff to talk about the upcoming jury selection in the hush money case against Trump in New York City and what Judge Cannon is up to in Florida, including her ruling on whether to unseal witness names. They also checked in on Fulton County to see what Fani Willis was up to and talked about Jack Smith's brief to the Supreme Court in Trump's presidential immunity defense. And of course, they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Riverside.

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From January 17, 2015: This week, Ben Wittes and Matt Waxman sat down with Daniel Reisner, former head of the International Law Branch of the Israeli Defense Forces and current partner with Herzog, Fox and Neeman. Reisner has also served as a senior member of Israel’s peace delegations over the years, participating in negotiation sessions and summits including those at Camp David. He continues to advise senior members of the Israeli government on a variety of issues relating to international law and operational security issues. Colonel Reisner was in New York on a visit sponsored by Academic Exchange for a series of events and discussions on contemporary national security challenges. His experiences set up a wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from the law of targeted killing to the role of morality in operational law advice.

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For decades, country music has had a close and special relationship to the U.S. military. In his new book, Cold War Country, historian Joseph Thompson shows how the leaders of Nashville’s Music Row found ways to sell their listeners on military service, at the same time they sold country music to people in uniform.

Shane Harris spoke with Thompson about how, as he puts it, Nashville and the Pentagon “created the sound of American patriotism.” Thompson’s story spans decades and is filled with famous singers like Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, and Lee Greenwood. Collectively, Thompson says, these artists helped to forge the close bonds between their genre and the military, but also helped to transform ideas of race, partisanship, and influenced the idea of what it means to be an American. 

Songs, people, TV shows, and books discussed in this episode include: 

Thompson’s book Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism https://uncpress.org/book/9781469678368/cold-war-country/ 

“Goin’ Steady” by Faron Young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNqhVyPxPk8 

Grandpa Jones https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/grandpa-jones 

“Hee Haw” https://www.heehaw.com/ 

The Black Opry https://www.blackopry.com/ 

“Okie from Muskogee” by Merle Haggard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68cbjlLFl4U 

“Cowboy Carter” by Beyoncé https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beyonce-cowboy-carter-tops-country-album-chart-number-one-1234998548/ 

“God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KoXt9pZLGM 

Learn more about Joseph Thompson and his work: 

https://www.josephmthompson.com/ 

https://www.history.msstate.edu/directory/jmt50 

https://twitter.com/jm_thompson?lang=en 

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The Insurrection Act is a provision that allows the president to deploy the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement. It’s been invoked dozens of times by presidents to respond to crises in the over 230 years that it’s been around, but it hasn’t been reformed in centuries. In recent years, the Insurrection Act has come back into public focus because of its implication in a number of domestic crises, prompting a renewed conversation about whether it’s finally time to curb the sweeping powers afforded to the executive in this unique federal law.

On April 8, the American Law Institute released a set of principles for Insurrection Act reform, prepared by a group of 10 individuals with backgrounds in constitutional law, national security law, and military law. The co-chairs of this group were Jack Goldsmith, Lawfare Co-Founder and Harvard Law School Professor, and Bob Bauer, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law. They joined Lawfare Associate Editor Hyemin Han to talk about the history of the Insurrection Act, to parse out the recommendations the American Law Institute is making for reform, and to make the case for reforming the act in 2024. 

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Last week, 40 Democratic members of the House of Representatives wrote a letter to President Biden expressing concern and outrage over an Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen. The lawmakers urged the president to reconsider his recent authorization of an arms transfer package to Israel and withhold any future offensive arms transfers if the strike was found to have violated U.S. or international law. They also urged Biden to withhold arms transfers if the humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate. 

Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Sarah Harrison, a Senior Analyst with the International Crisis Group’s U.S. program and former Associate General Counsel at the Defense Department’s Office of General Counsel, International Affairs. They talked about the laws and policies that govern U.S. security assistance, what recent reporting may or may not tell us about Israel’s law of war compliance, and the difficulty of some of these assessments. They also discussed what President Biden risks by not applying conditions on military aid abroad.

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Hosted by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Cyber Initiative and Aspen Digital, Verify 2024 brings together journalists and cyber and tech policy experts to discuss critical issues in cybersecurity. For this live recording of the Lawfare Podcast, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down at Verify 2024 to talk about information ecology and 19th-century naturalism with Alicia Wanless, the Director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Chinmayi Sharma, an Associate Professor at Fordham Law School.

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In the early morning on March 26, a Singapore-flagged cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The bridge collapsed, resulting in the death of six of the eight individuals conducting maintenance on the bridge. The incident has disrupted commuter traffic and the transport of hazardous materials, and it has halted shipping traffic at the Port of Baltimore, among other effects.

Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck discussed the bridge’s collapse, how authorities responded to it, and what it all means for the resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure and the state of crisis response with Juliette Kayyem, a professor of international security at the Harvard Kennedy School—who recently wrote a book on disaster management. Was the bridge adequately protected? How should governments and the private sector prepare to both prevent crises, but perhaps more importantly, prepare for the aftermath when they inevitably occur? 

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There is a lot to keep up with in U.S. cybersecurity law and policy these days. To talk about the current regulatory landscape and the progression of the DOJ’s strategy relating to takedown and disruption efforts, LawfareSenior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Jim Dempsey, Senior Policy Advisor at the Stanford Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and John Carlin, Partner at Paul Weiss. They talked about the SEC’s cyber disclosure rule, the new executive order focused on preventing access to Americans’ bulk sensitive personal data, the LockBit and Volt Typhoon disruption efforts, and more. 

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This week on Rational Security, Alan and Quinta were joined by Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to talk through the week's big national security news, including:

For object lessons, Alan suggested the new Netflix adaptation of the "3 Body Problem", Quinta shared a New Yorker article about the United Kingdom's recent decline, and Natalie recommended the Serial podcast's new season on Guantánamo Bay.

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It's another episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” recorded on April 4 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Riverside. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower and Lawfare Senior Editors Roger Parloff and Quinta Jurecic to talk about Judge Cannon's order denying both Trump's motion to dismiss the classified documents case based on the Presidential Records Act and Jack Smith's request for a ruling on jury instructions prior to trial. They also discussed the preliminary ruling in Jeffrey Clark's bar discipline hearing, Judge McAfee's order denying Trump's motion to dismiss criminal charges in Fulton County on First Amendment grounds, and Justice Merchan's expanded gag order against Trump in New York. And of course, they took audience questions from LawfareMaterial Supporters on Riverside.

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From December 2, 2020: The top Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed, apparently in an Israeli strike. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who has long been the mastermind of the Iranian nuclear program, was gunned down in an attack with a remote control machine gun. Iranian reprisals are expected, although their timing and nature is not clear. It also puts the incoming Biden administration, which is looking to bring back the Iran nuclear deal, in a bit of a pickle.

To chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Scott R. Anderson, international law specialist and Lawfare senior editor; Suzanne Maloney, the vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and an Iran scholar; and Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings where he focuses on Israeli policy. They talked about why the Israelis would conduct this operation, how effective its killing of Iranian nuclear scientists has been, whether any of it is legal and what it means for the future of U.S.-Iran relations.

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A new report from the POPVOX Foundation focuses on a little-known and hugely under-appreciated congressional effort: that of congressional staffers helping Afghan allies flee the country during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan  

LawfareExecutive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with the report’s author, Anne Meeker. They talked about what staffers did to help, the challenges they faced, and how the experience exposed both weaknesses and strengths in how Congress functions. 

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The "deep state." The "blob." Foreign policy elites are often so labeled, misunderstood, and denigrated. But what influence on presidents and on public opinion do they actually have?

Elizabeth Saunders, professor of political science at Columbia, has researched this topic deeply and written about it in her new book, The Insiders' Game. David Priess spoke with her about her path to studying foreign policy, the ups and downs of archival research, the meaning of foreign policy "elites," the differences between the influences of Democratic and Republican elites, a counterfactual President Al Gore's decisionmaking about invading Iraq, pop cultural representations of foreign policy elites, how heightened polarization changes the dynamics of elite influence, and more.

Among the works mentioned in this episode:

The book The Insiders' Game by Elizabeth Saunders

The book Leaders at War by Elizabeth Saunders

The TV show The West Wing

The movie The Hunt for Red October

The TV show The Diplomat

The TV show The Americans

The movie Thirteen Days

The article "Politics Can't Stop at the Water's Edge" by Elizabeth Saunders, Foreign Policy (March/April 2024)

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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Paul Beckett was the Washington Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. But since the arrest of the newspaper's Russia correspondent, Evan Gershkovich, last year in Russia on bogus spying charges, he has been working full time on advocating for the reporter's release. In connection with the one-year anniversary of Gershkovich's arrest, he joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the case. What do we know about the charges against the young reporter? What is the U.S. government doing to secure his release? What progress, if any, has been made? And how is Gershkovich holding up in prison in Moscow?

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The use of AI to make decisions about individuals raises the issue of contestability. When automated systems are used by governments to decide whether to grant or deny benefits, or calculate medical needs, the affected person has a right to know why that decision was made, and challenge it. But what does meaningful contestability of AI systems look like in practice?

To discuss this question, Lawfare's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri was joined by Jim Dempsey, Senior Policy Advisor at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and Ece Kamar, Managing Director of the AI Frontiers Lab at Microsoft. In January, they convened a workshop with stakeholders across disciplines to issue recommendations that could help governments embrace AI while enabling the contestability required by law. They talked about the challenges that the use of AI creates for contestability, how their recommendations align with recently published OMB guidelines, and how different communities can contribute to the responsible use of AI in government.

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The Federal Trade Commission’s data, privacy, and AI cases have been all over the news recently, from its proposed settlement with Avast Antivirus to its lawsuit against data broker Kochava.

Lawfare Contributor Justin Sherman sat down with Ben Wiseman, the Associate Director of the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection at the FTC, who oversees a team of attorneys and technologists working on technology and consumer protection. They discussed the FTC’s recent focus on health, location, and kids’ privacy; its ongoing data privacy and security rulemaking; and how the FTC looks beyond financial penalties for companies to prevent and mitigate harm to consumers.

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In early February, the European Union approved a major overhaul of its immigration laws. If approved by EU member states, the pact will drastically curtail the rights of migrants and asylum seekers entering the European Union. It’s part of a trend we’re seeing all over the world, including here in the U.S.  

LawfareExecutive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Steve Meili, Professor of International Human Rights Law at University of Minnesota Law School. They discussed the EU Pact’s new provisions, why critics are calling them a violation of human rights law, and how asylum and migration law is evolving globally. 

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