The Lawfare Podcast

From February 26, 2020: Ben Buchanan is a professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a scholar on cybersecurity and statecraft. He has a new book out this week: “The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics." Jack Goldsmith sat down with Buchanan to talk about Ben’s new book, about the so-called name-and-shame of Justice Department indictments, and about the various reasons why states engage in offensive cyber operations. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On June 8, former President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he has been indicted in Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the improper removal of classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. The indictment is currently under seal, but according to news reports, Trump has been indicted on seven counts relating to the improper retention of classified material and conspiracy to obstruct the special counsel investigation. On Friday, June 9, at 5 p.m. ET, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, alongside Anna Bower and Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Stephanie Pell, and Roger Parloff, will discuss what to make of the reported charges, the cases's reported venue, the Classified Information Procedures Act, and more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The data broker industry and its role in the digital economy is under scrutiny from Congress. Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Justin Sherman, the Founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies and a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, to discuss the data broker ecosystem and the recent article he published in Lawfare about two bills from a previous congress that seek to give consumers more control over the information that data brokers collect and sell about them. They talked about some of the scams and other harms caused by data brokers, the regulatory approaches taken by each bill, and whether federal legislation regulating data brokers will get passed. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shane and David have hosted many former intelligence officers, mostly of the American variety, during more than 80 episodes so far on Chatter. But, until this week, you haven't heard us speak with one who has turned her intelligence experience into a career as a professional genealogist. Lisa Maddox of Family History Investigations has carved out that unique path, and her story reveals much about the nature and wider applicability of analytic skills. David Priess talked to Lisa about her entry into the national security world; the role of intelligence within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS); differences and similarities among NCIS, DIA, and CIA; her work at CIA as an analyst and manager of analysts; the research, analytic, and presentational aspects of intelligence analysis; structured analytic techniques; the coordination process within the Intelligence Community; the discipline of targeting analysis; her decision to start a genealogy business; how the elements of analysis apply to genealogical work; and more. Among the works mentioned in this episode: NCISFinding Your RootsVanished KingdomsDemon Copperhead 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. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A large dam on the Dnipro River has been destroyed, causing massive flooding and a dangerous environmental catastrophe in southern Ukraine. The Ukrainians are blaming the Russians; the Russians are blaming the Ukrainians. Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that the CIA was actually tipped off about the coming destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines last year—and that it was tipped off that a Ukrainian military team was planning to do it. The blockbuster story is the latest bit of evidence that the Nord Stream operation was, after all, not the Russians, but the Ukrainians. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down in three conversations to discuss the goings on. First, he spoke with Eric Ciaramella, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a former CIA analyst and NSC official on Russia and Ukraine, about the scope and scale of the damage the dam break has done. Then Ben spoke with Dmitri Alperovitch, Chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, about the military implications of the dam break. And he spoke with Shane Harris, one of the reporters whose name is on that Washington Post story byline, about his story and what it all means for the future of the Ukraine war. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 1, 2023, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as president of Brazil. A week later, insurrectionists in Brazil stormed government buildings, including the president’s palace, the Supreme Federal Court, and the National Congress building to violently disrupt the democratic transition of power and challenge the results of the election. Lula, however, remained undeterred and forged ahead. It’s been roughly 150 days since those events, and Lawfare Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Brian Winter, Editor-in-Chief of Americas Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade of experience living and reporting across Latin America, to discuss how Lula has fared in his first 100 days in office, his vision for reviving Brazil’s place in the world, and the political forces he’s up against. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On May 31, CNN reported that federal prosecutors investigating the unlawful removal of classified documents from the White House to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence have obtained an audio recording in which the former president acknowledges that he knowingly kept a classified Department of Defense document that contained details about a potential attack on Iran. According to CNN, the tape indicates that Trump “understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House.” Trump’s alleged comments made on the recording have sparked a debate about whether he will be charged with violating 18 U.S.C. 793(e) of the Espionage Act. What exactly did Trump say on the tape? Did he violate the Espionage Act? How does this change Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations? And what does all of this mean for Trump’s reelection campaign? To go over everything that happened, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down for a live recording of the podcast alongside Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecic, and Roger Parloff, who unpack all of these questions and more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been about six months since the Attorney General issued new guidelines on compulsory process to members of the press in criminal and national security investigations, and two officials of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press—Bruce Brown and Gabe Rottman—wrote a detailed analysis of the document in two parts for Lawfare. Rottman joined Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to go through the document carefully: the long history that led to it, the shifting policies that have gotten more restrictive over the years since the Supreme Court ruled in Branzburg v. Hayes, the ramp-up of leak investigations and reporter subpoenas in the Obama and Trump administrations, and the new policy that creates a red line policy against them under most (but not all) circumstances. They talked about the document, about why the Justice Department has forsworn a historic and upheld authority, and about what it means for reporters and criminal investigations going forward. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by their Brookings and Lawfare colleague Molly Reynolds to talk all things Congress in the week’s national security news, including: Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From October 1, 2016: At this week's Hoover Book Soiree, Rosa Brooks joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about her new book, “How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon.” The book covers an extraordinary range of territory, from Brooks' personal experiences working as a civilian advisor at the Pentagon, to the history of the laws of war, to an analysis of the U.S. military's expanded role in a world in which the lines between war and peace are increasingly uncertain. How should we think about the military’s responsibilities outside the realm of traditional warfare? And is it desirable, or even possible, to rethink the way we approach the distinctions between wartime and peacetime? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is often said that “Russia is a country with an unpredictable past.” Such distortions of history can lead to trouble, as the world witnessed last year when Vladimir Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine as an attempt to “denazify” the neighboring country—one with a Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust. As Megan Buskey writes in her new memoir, “Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return”: “How could a country know itself unless it knew all the things it had been?” Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Megan, a nonfiction writer and former Fulbright Fellow to Ukraine, who has studied and written about the country for two decades. They discussed her book, the use and abuse of history in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the role of family histories in countering those false narratives. They also talked about the best way to get a Polish archive to give you the documents you need. Please note that this episode contains content that some people may find disturbing, including descriptions of sexual and other forms of violence. Listener discretion is advised. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alicia Wanless is one of the pioneers of the idea of information ecology, the notion that we should think about information and disinformation as part of a complex ecosystem, the management of which she analogizes to environmental policy. Wanless has been complaining for several years that the war on “disinformation” skates over important question: What are the collateral effects of anti-disinformation policies? How do interventions against information pollution operate in the real world? In her conversation with Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare’s editor in chief and this week’s Chatter guest host, Wanless talks about how she became interested in information management, what’s wrong with the discussion of disinformation, what a more environmentalist approach to information spaces might look like, and what a useful research agenda for the nascent field would focus on. Among the works mentioned in this episode: LawfareThere’s No Getting Ahead of Disinformation Without Moving Past ItNetwork Propaganda 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. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The war in Ukraine is approaching a pivotal moment. Russia remains in control of the hotly contested city of Bakhmut. But the ruthlessly effective mercenary forces of the Wagner Group—the same group whose leader, Yevgeny Prighozin, has openly bickered with the regular Russian military and reportedly offered to trade Russian troop positions to Ukrainian intelligence—are withdrawing. Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, are preparing for a reported counteroffensive, even as unclaimed attacks are taking place across the border in Russia—including, most recently, on a civilian target in Moscow. To discuss these developments, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two reporters covering the conflict for the Washington Post: Intelligence and National Security Reporter Shane Harris and Ukraine Bureau Chief Isabelle Khurshudyan. They discussed the peculiar role played by the Wagner Group, recent revelations stemming from the Discord leaks, and what to expect from the conflict in the months to come. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Sunday, May 28, Turkey held a bitterly contested run-off election, with incumbent presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan winning reelection against opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Lawfare Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Soli Özel, Senior Lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and a columnist at Habertürk daily newspaper, to discuss what was at stake in this election and the future of Turkey as Erdoğan’s next five-year term marks his 25th year in higher office. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim Mak was an NPR reporter in Kyiv since the beginning of the full-scale invasion last year. He recently stepped down and started his own Substack from the Ukrainian capital, called The Counteroffensive, and Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Tim to talk about the publication. What makes a reporter leave an established news organization like NPR to start a startup in a war zone? What is The Counteroffensive going to cover? How will it be different from other stuff you might be reading on the Ukraine war? And what are things like in Kyiv these days as the Ukrainians get ready for the counteroffensive for which the publication is named? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From January 20, 2018: This week on the Lawfare Podcast, the Guardian's Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker joined special guest host Alina Polyakova to discuss his new book "The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past." They discussed Putin's use of Russian history as political strategy, the pulse of Russian politics as its elections approach in March, the changing landscape of Russia's lesser-known cities since the 1990s, and much more. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the birth of the republic, American presidents have communicated with the public in one form or another. The frequency and exact nature of such efforts have varied quite a bit over time due to variables ranging from the extent of partisanship in the media to each commander in chief's personal preference to travel technology. Political scientist Anne Pluta has explored this history deeply, including extensive analysis of contemporary newspaper accounts back to the late 18th century. And her insights, contained in writings like the book “Persuading the Public: The Evolution of Popular Presidential Communication from Washington to Trump,” provide plenty of surprises and even challenge some conventional wisdom about the presidency. David Priess chatted with her about her favorite presidents and her assessment of the best communicators among them; the precedents set by George Washington; Thomas Jefferson's State of the Union delivery method; changes in the communication environment during the Andrew Jackson era; Abraham Lincoln's exceptional presidency; the importance of train travel for presidential contact with the public; Rutherford Hayes's underappreciated importance in presidential communication; Theodore Roosevelt as a speaker; Woodrow Wilson's decision to deliver the State of the Union address in person; the importance for presidential communication of radio, television, and the availability of Air Force One; the relatively brief period of national, "objective" media; the late 20th century shift to splintered media; Donald Trump's social media use; Joe Biden's communication practices; and more. Among the works mentioned in this episode: HamiltonJohn AdamsLincolnPersuading the PublicThe West WingVeepThe American PresidentAir Force OneIndependence DayScandalThe Devil's TeethTwelve Days of TerrorThe WaveChatter 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. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 16, 2019: Since November, Lawfare Contributor Michelle Melton has run a series on our website about Climate Change and National Security, examining the implication of the threat as well as U.S. and international responses to climate change. Melton is a student a Harvard Law school. Prior to that she was an associate fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she focused on climate policy. She and Benjamin Wittes sat down last week to discuss the series. They talked about why we should think about climate change as a national security threat, the challenges of viewing climate change through this paradigm, the long-standing relationship between climate change and the U.S. national security apparatus, and how climate change may affect global migration. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thursday was sentencing day for some senior Oath Keepers, and Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff spent the day in court listening to and watching the sentencing of Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and Kelly Meggs, two Oath Keepers chieftains who were convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. They got a lot of time: Rhodes got 18 years; Meggs got 12. They also got a terrorism enhancement. It was a bad day if you're an Oath Keeper and a really bad day if you're a Proud Boy. After the sentencing, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger to talk through it all. What does it mean for future Oath Keeper sentencing? What does it mean for Proud Boy sentencing? When are we finally going to see the white collar defendants as well as the blue collar defendants in Jan. 6 cases? And can we finally begin to predict what Jack Smith may be up to regarding Jan. 6? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a bomb built by Timothy McVeigh exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. One hundred sixty-eight people died and hundreds more were injured in what remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. Jeffrey Toobin has a new book about the bombing and trial called, “Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism.” Toobin joined Jack Goldsmith to discuss the new and revealing information his book draws on concerning McVeigh’s motivations and trial strategy, Attorney General Merrick Garland's consequential role in the McVeigh trial, and the long-tail impact of the trial on right-wing domestic terrorism in the United States, including the Jan. 6 attacks on Congress. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.