The Lawfare Podcast
Ideas
The 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.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Location:
United States
Description:
The 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. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Twitter:
@lawfareblog
Language:
English
Episodes
A Jan. 6 Committee Staffer on Social Media and the Insurrection
2/8/2023
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...
Duration:00:56:18
The Hacker's Mind
2/7/2023
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...
Duration:00:51:07
It's Not Too Late to Deter China From Invading Taiwan
2/6/2023
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...
Duration:00:30:01
Chatter: M. Todd Bennett on the Secretive Story of the Glomar Explorer
2/5/2023
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...
Duration:01:21:52
Lawfare Archive: Rashawn Ray on Police Violence
2/4/2023
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...
Duration:00:53:23
The CLOUD Act Five Years Later
2/3/2023
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....
Duration:00:38:18
“Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends,” with Linda Kinstler and Sam Moyn
2/2/2023
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...
Duration:00:50:24
ChatGPT Tells All
2/1/2023
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...
Duration:00:59:22
Even More Classified Documents
1/31/2023
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...
Duration:00:46:20
Roger Parloff with a Proud Boys Trial Update
1/30/2023
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...
Duration:00:36:10
Rational Security: The “M1 Abrams Accords” Edition
1/29/2023
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:
providing the country with tanksslapped new sanctionstrying someone under state criminal laws barring material support for terrorism
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Duration:01:05:58
Lawfare Archive: Brad Moss on Presidential Power and Security Clearances
1/28/2023
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,...
Duration:00:30:09
Gavin Wilde and Justin Sherman on Russia’s Information War and Regime Security
1/27/2023
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...
Duration:00:47:54
Finland’s NATO Bid, Interrupted
1/26/2023
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...
Duration:00:35:17
Anna Bower on Judge McBurney's Deliberations
1/25/2023
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...
Duration:00:42:06
Lynzy Billing on Afghanistan's Zero Unit Night Raids
1/24/2023
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...
Duration:00:42:18
When States Make Tech Policy
1/23/2023
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...
Duration:00:45:03
Chatter: A Post-Presidency Done Right with Jean Becker
1/22/2023
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...
Duration:01:40:39
Lawfare Archive: The Past, Present and Future of Sovereign Immunity
1/21/2023
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...
Duration:01:04:24
Biden's National Security Presidency So Far with Chris Whipple
1/20/2023
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...
Duration:00:44:29