The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition
The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. It covers issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law. The show aims to provide serious analysis in a time when others are avoiding it.
Episodes
Lawfare Daily: The Spy Who Changed the Cold War in the Middle East
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with author and journalist Ben Macintyre to discuss his new book, “Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy,” which details a little known intelligence coup from the Cold War that changed the strategies of great powers in the Middle East. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 9th
Benjamin Wittes is joined by Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, and Eric Columbus for a fast-moving tour of the week’s most important Trump-era litigation. They break down the CNN v. Trump press-pool case and why Judge Kelly may be headed for a due-process ruling; the twin Harvard cases over grants and visas, where Paul Clement makes a forceful First Amendment argument; and the FTC’s campai
Lawfare Archive: Energy Security, Data Centers, and AI
From November 18, 2024: Christie Hicks, the Managing Attorney overseeing Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program, and Mandy DeRoche, a Deputy Managing Attorney in Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program, join Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to explore the intersection of environmental
Lawfare Archive: President Trump’s Peace Plan for Gaza
From October 2, 2025: In a live conversation on October 1,Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson spoke to Managing Director at S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace Joel Braunold about President Trump’s proposed peace plan for Gaza and what it means for the future of Iraeli-Palestinian relations.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare.
Lawfare Archive: National Security and the 2024 Election, Election Management
From September 16, 2024: On Sept. 24, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes moderated a panel discussion featuring Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Fellow Scott R. Anderson, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Fellow Quinta Jurecic, Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower, and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School Nate Persily.The p
Lawfare Daily: The U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq and the Future of the Iraq-U.S. Relationship
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Dr. Omar Mohammed, a senior researcher with the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University and the author of the blog Mosul Eye, which anonymously documented life under ISIS control in Iraq; Amb. Doug Silliman, President of the Arab Gulf States Institute and a former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq; and Victoria Tayl
Rational Security: The “Too Much Molly” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Editor in Chief and cohost emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Roberts, and Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution Molly Reynolds to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:“Pocket Change.” Late on Friday, September 25, the White House sent Congress an $810 million “pocket resc
Lawfare Daily: Gulf Countries Hedging Amid Iran War Debacle
Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee talks with former CIA analyst Shawn Howard and Ariane Tabatabai of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs about Shawn’s new Foreign Policy essay on how the Gulf states are coping with a war they didn’t start. They discuss why U.S. protection has made the Gulf states targets, how Tehran sees them, Iran’s strikes on the mediators, the possibility of a UAE si
Lawfare Daily: ‘Crossing the Red Line’ in Gaza with Akbar Shahid Ahmed
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Akbar Shahid Ahmed, the diplomatic correspondent at The Washington Sun, to discuss Ahmed’s new book “Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza.” They talk about the top officials in the administration who drove Biden’s Gaza policy, how the war quickly became a moral and strategic disaster, and w
Lawfare Daily: A Progress Report on the War on Terrorism with Peter Bergen
Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Peter Bergen, author of “All the Presidents' Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America's War on Terror,” to discuss counterterrorism in the 25 years after 9/11, reviewing the many mistakes the United States and al-Qaeda made, as well as some of the surprising successes. Peter also draws lessons from the war in Iran today for how to better
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 2
You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.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/lawfare-institute. Hosted on Acast. See a
Lawfare Archive: Nayib Bukele's Crackdown on Dissent in El Salvador
From May 20, 2025: El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has made a lot of headlines recently in the United States for his partnership with the Trump administration. Bukele has helped enable President Trump’s scheme to remove supposed Venezuelan gang members from the U.S. under the Alien Enemies Act, housing these detainees in the notorious CECOT prison. In court, the Justice Department has claimed
Lawfare Archive: Reparations for Russia's Aggression Against Ukraine with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi and Patrick Pearsall
From July 16, 2025: Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sit down with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, Executive Director of the Register of Damage for Ukraine at the Council of Europe and a former legal advisor of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and Patrick Pearsall, Partner at Gibson Dunn and directs the International Claims and Reparations Project
Lawfare Daily: The Trump-Xi Summit and U.S.-China AI Competition
Martin Chorzempa is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a leading U.S. expert on China's economy and tech sector. In this week's episode, Peter and Martin unpack President Trump's September 24 summit with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping, talk about the balance of leverage in the geopolitical and economic relationship, and unpack the
Rational Security: The “Techs Appeal” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Senior Editors Anna Bower and Michael Feinberg to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:“Third Country’s the Charm.” On Tuesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way—for the third time—for the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to “third countries” with which they have no
Lawfare Daily: The Remaking of the Department of Defense
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sits down with Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, to talk about the many ways in which the Trump administration has been remaking DoD. Some changes are announced loudly—the ban on transgender service members and the so-called “High-T” initiative—while others are taking
Lawfare Daily: Did Washington Walk Into Beijing’s Trap? Xi’s State Visit with Jonathan Czin
Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee sits down with Jonathan Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, to unpack Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington, his first in 11 years.The two former CIA and National Security Council colleagues discuss what each side walked away with, including a two-mont
Lawfare Live: Debriefing the D.C. Circuit's Argument Over Contempt Inquiry
On September 29 at 9:30 a.m. ET, the full D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument over Judge Boasberg's inquiry into whether top Trump administration officials committed criminal contempt when they sent 137 Venezuelans to CECOT, a notorious El Salvador prison. Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to break down what happe
Lawfare Daily: The Policy Implications of the AI Vibe Shift
Lawfare Senior Editor Kevin Frazier is joined by Scaling Laws co-host Assemblyman Alex Bores of New York, AVERI Director of U.S. Policy Nat Purser, and Institute of Law and AI Managing Director of U.S. Law Mackenzie Arnold to discuss recent developments in the AI risk environment, what led us here, and what comes next for domestic and AI foreign policy. They also touch on other major pieces of AI
September Minipod: What Supreme Court Reforms Are Constitutional?
On this month’s minipod, Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey talked to Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Scott R. Anderson about the proposed Supreme Court reform to establish a senior status for justices and what other reforms could be possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 25
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff discussed the D.C. Circuit rejecting Anthropic’s challenge to the Pentagon’s exclusion of Claude from its supply chain, the Supreme Court allowing the Department of Homeland Security to use the SAVE database with social security information, DHS requesting the Supreme Court allow third
Lawfare Archive: Mikhail Zygar on Putin, the Russia-Ukraine War, and Press Freedom
From April 23, 2025: On today's episode, Mikhail Zygar, a renowned Russian journalist living in exile in the U.S. and the author of multiple books on Vladimir Putin, joined Lawfare Associate Editor Olivia Manes to discuss his experience as the founder of one of the last independent Russian media channels, TV Rain. They talked about the incentives underlying Putin's actions in Ukraine, how
Lawfare Archive: Robert Mahari on Addictive Intelligence, Digital Attachment Disorders, and Other AI-related Concerns
From October 1, 2024: Robert Mahari, a joint JD-PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to explain how increased use of AI agents may lead humans to form troublingly and even addictive relationships with artificial systems. Robert also shares the significance of his
Lawfare Daily: Iran War Update—and How We Got Here
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett is joined by Ariane Tabatabai and Julia Curlee. Ari is Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare, and Julia Curlee is a Public Service Fellow at Lawfare. They talk about the war in Iran: where things stand today, and how we got here—including how the gutting
Rational Security: “The Right Kind of American for Rational Security” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:"The Xi-Quel." This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for a three-day state visit—his first to the U.S. capital in more than a decade, and the second Trump-Xi summit of 2026
Lawfare Daily: The Houthi War Against Saudi Arabia
For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviews Gregory Johnsen, non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf State Institute, to discuss the current war in Yemen. The two discuss the latest developments in the war, the reasons for the Houthis' successes so far, the dilemmas facing Saudi Arabia, and why the situation has gone from bad to worse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.co
Ask Lawfare Anything: September 2026
Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Contributing Editor Paul Rosenzweig took questions from Lawfare supporters on this month's "Ask Lawfare Anything," available exclusively for paid supporters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Emily Benson on What Economic Security Is, and How We Should Think About It
Emily Benson is the Head of Strategy at Minerva Technology Futures, a strategic consulting firm that advises companies on how geopolitics impacts their business. She has also spent time at CSIS and at the Department of Commerce, and has spent more time thinking about economic statecraft than most of us. Emily joins Lawfare Contributing Editor and host of the Security Economics podcast Peter H
Lawfare Daily: Two Appeals Concerning Alien Enemies Act Removals in Apparent Defiance of a Court Order
Lee Gelernt, the chief ACLU litigator on Alien Enemies Act cases, speaks to Senior Editor Roger Parloff about two upcoming DC Circuit arguments he’ll be making relating to the March 15, 2025, removals of 137 Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act.In one, the en banc court will grapple with whether to permit Judge James Boasberg to conduct fact-finding on whether to seek contempt charges against h
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 18
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the First Circuit rejecting the Trump administration’s third country deportation policy, former fugitive ICE agent jailed in Minnesota, oral argument in the Fourth Circuit over the dismissal of the first indictment against James C
Lawfare Archive: Page Hedley and Gad Weiss on OpenAI’s Latest Corporate Governance Pivot
From May 22, 2025: Page Hedley, Senior Advisor at Forecasting Research Institute and co-author of the Not for Private Gain letter urging state attorneys general to stop OpenAI’s planned restructuring, and Gad Weiss, the Wagner Fellow in Law & Business at NYU Law, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professo
Lawfare Archive: Conversations from Aspen, Part 1: Shashank Joshi on European Security and Iris Ferguson on the Arctic
From July 23, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson shares some of the conversations he had with leading policy experts and practitioners on the margins of this year's Aspen Security Forum, which took place last week. First he sat down Shashank Joshi, the Defence Editor for The Economist to discuss the new dynamics surrounding European security, as well as the pat
Lawfare Daily: Julia Curlee and John Sipher on John Ratcliffe’s Tenure as the Director of Central Intelligence
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg talks with Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee and former CIA Case Officer John Sipher about John Ratcliffe’s tenure as the Director of Central Intelligence and cultural changes in the intelligence community writ large. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rational Security: The “Worlds Colliding” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his colleagues Lawfare Senior Editors Kevin Frazier and Roger Parloff, and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ariane Tabatabai, to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including:“P(doom) and Gloom.” Last week, a wonky corner of the tech world became national
Lawfare Daily: Eileen Guo on Whether “the Censorship-Industrial Complex” Actually Exists
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with Eileen Guo, co-author with Gisela Perez de Acha and Martin Sona of “How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy,” and senior reporter with the MIT Technology Review, to discuss her research into whether the “censorship-industrial complex” was an actually entity or a pretextual justification to dismantle the gover
Lawfare Daily: Far-Right Gains and a Political Reckoning in Germany
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sits down with Constanze Stelzenmüller, Director and Fritz Stern Chair of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, to discuss what’s going on in the German political scene, where a far-right party, the AfD, is making a strong showing in state elections. They talk about what the party stands for, why its emergence i
Lawfare Daily: ‘A Whole Other Country,’ with Zoe Kurland and Terence O’Rourke
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Zoe Kurland, Senior Producer at Marfa Public Radio, and Terence O’Rourke, an attorney based in Houston, Texas. They discuss “A Whole Other Country,” the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning six-part podcast series, hosted and produced by Kurland, that tells the story of a secessionist movement in the mid-90s called the “Republic of
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 11
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Associate Editor Peter Beck and Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss an Afghan legal permanent resident deported less than 2 months after case is filed in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, updates in the Grand Conspiracy, a judge allowing the Pentagon to fire Stars
Lawfare Archive: David Frum on 'Trumpocalypse'
From June 10, 2020: David Frum is one of the most prominent and eloquent conservative critics of the president. The former George W. Bush speechwriter and current writer for The Atlantic has written "Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy," a book about the Trump presidency, and in this case, what comes after it. David joined Benjamin Wittes for a wide-ranging conversation of the ground he co
Lawfare Archive: The Complicated Politics of Ukraine Aid
From December 11, 2023: The Senate last week failed to move forward the national security supplemental, which includes a large package of aid for Ukraine. The holdup? Migration at the southern border and Republican insistence that the administration and Democrats will have to swallow major policy changes in order to get the Ukraine aid through. Meanwhile, the mood in Kyiv is a little down. The cou
Lawfare Daily: Sept. 11, 2001, 25 Years Later
On today’s episode, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Lawfare Associate Editor Katherine Pompilio sits down with five members of the Lawfare team—Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, Senior Editor Michael Feinberg, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, Senior Editor Loren Voss, and Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes—to talk about how Sept. 11 shaped the U.S. national security apparatus and the guests’ caree
Rational Security: The “Fifth Anniversary Hot Take Takedown” Edition
This week, Scott celebrated the fifth anniversary of Rational Security 2.0 with the return of co-hosts emeriti Shane Harris, Quinta Jurecic, and Benjamin Wittes. In varying degrees of witheringness, the four sat in brutal judgment of this year’s Hot Take Takedown pitches:Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee gives her informed analysis of whether we should get rid of the President’s Daily Brief.Senio
Lawfare Daily: The National Guard in Washington, D.C.
Over a year ago, President Trump sent 800 National Guard members to the streets of Washington D.C., citing a purported crime emergency. Since then, thousands of armed troops have been deployed in D.C.—usually traveling in groups of four or more, seemingly always armed. On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sits down with Brad Heath, a reporter at Reuters, who has been reporting
Lawfare Daily: Why Autocrats Hate Cities with Ambassador Nina Hachigian
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Ambassador Nina Hachigian, President and CEO of the Alliance for Local Leaders International and the first U.S. Special Representative for City and State Diplomacy from 2022 to 2025.They discuss Hachigian’s recent piece in Foreign Affairs, entitled "The Autocrat’s Worst Enemy: Why Despots Hate Cities and the Mayors Who Run Th
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 4
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss Judge Boasberg’s denial of the government’s motion to dismiss Lawfare‘s suit seeking information on international agreements entered into by the Trump administration; developments in President Trump’s targeting of mail voting; upd
Lawfare Archive: The Violent Extremist Threat to Critical Infrastructure in the United States
From October 24, 2022: Last month, the George Washington University Program on Extremism published a report called, “Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States.” To talk through that report and a recent Lawfare article on the topic, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Ilana Krill, a research fellow at the Pr
Lawfare Archive: An Election in Germany
From September 28, 2021: Over the weekend, Germany held elections to see who will succeed Angela Merkel as Germany's chancellor. The results are in, but there's still a lot of coalition building to go. To break it all down, Jacob Schulz sat down with Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Yascha M
Lawfare Archive: Juliette Kayyem on Dealing with Disasters
From March 29, 2023: We live in a time of seemingly constant catastrophes, and we always seem a step behind and still fumble when they occur. It's no longer about preventing disasters from occurring, but learning how to use the tools at our disposal to minimize the consequences when they inevitably do.Juliette Kayyem has just written a book about it all called, “The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to
Lawfare Daily: Mike Schmidt Talks CHIPS and U.S. Industrial Policy
When Congress passed the CHIPS Act in 2022, it was the first major piece of U.S. industrial policy legislation in decades and was intended to expand America's ability to manufacture the computer chips that are vital for everything from AI to phones and modern automobiles. Mike Schmidt, distinguished visitor at Princeton University's Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies and a non-resident se
Rational Security: The "Whale of a Tale" Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Senior Editors Molly Roberts and Eric Columbus, and Contributing Editor Renée DiResta, to talk through the week’s big domestic news stories, including:“Signed, Sealed, Undelivered.” As the first mail ballots of the 2026 midterms go out this week, a fast-moving legal fight over President Trump’s effort to reshape mail-in voting is racing toward
Lawfare Daily: Peter Salib on the Legal and Policy Ramifications of the OpenAI-Hugging Face Postmortems
Peter Salib, Associate Professor at the UH Law Center and co-Director of the Center on AI Law & Risk, joins Kevin Frazier, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to break down the postmortems produced by METR and Redwood Research and OpenAI on the lab’s failure to contain AI agents undergoing testing, which resulted
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 1
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Molly Roberts and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court granting a stay of the district court's preliminary injunction, allowing President Trump to continue to build the White House ballroom while litigation is ongoing, and the information about the U.S. Postal Service's system for handling mail
Lawfare Daily: How Terrorist Groups are Using Artificial Intelligence
Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Tricia Bacon, professor at American University, and Antonia Juelich, International Security Lead at the Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy (CASP), to talk about how different terrorist groups are using artificial intelligence and how governments are employing AI to fight them. They discuss how Boko Haram and other terrorist grou
August Minipod: Can Anyone Stop President Trump from Cutting Federal Funds to Blue States?
On this month’s minipod, Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey talks to Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution Molly Reynolds about whether the president can be prevented from withholding or cutting funds based on partisan politics.Read more:"Executive Branch Control of Federal Grants: Policy, Pork, and Punishment," by Eloise Pasachoff Host
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, August 28
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, Kate Klonick, and Eric Columbus to discuss a judge finding the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation of Anthropic unlawful, significant developments in the litigation challenging President Trump’s mail in ballot executive order, the prosecution of Representative LaMonica
Lawfare Archive: ‘Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare,’ with Edward Fishman
From March 5, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare general counsel and senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy within Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, to discuss his new book: "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare."They discussed Fishman's own career at the cu
Lawfare Archive: The Trucker Convoys and Domestic Unrest in Canada
From February 11, 2022: Over the past few weeks, Canada has been living through its own insurrectionary moment, as a series of trucker convoys have used tractor trailer trucks to occupy much of downtown Ottawa, launch protests in other major Canadian cities, and block points of entry along the country's southern border with the United States. While nominally objecting to Canadian vaccination manda
Lawfare Daily: Israel's Most Consequential Election, with Natan Sachs
Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, to discuss who is likely to win the October 27 Israeli elections and what the consequences might be for wars in Gaza and Iran as well as Israeli domestic politics. They also talk about the role of small parties and how Trump might sway the vote. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac
Rational Security: The “All Takin’ and No Givin’” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Contributing Editor Alex Zerden to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:“Skynet’s the Limit.” A Russian drone guided entirely by onboard artificial intelligence—with no human directing the final strike—appears to have killed three civilians at a
Scaling Laws: Is Meta's Oversight Board a Model for AI Governance?
Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law and a member of Meta’s Oversight Board, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and guest co-host Lawfare Senior Editor Kate Klonick, to discuss what frontier AI companies can learn from the O
Ask Lawfare Anything: August 2026
Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg, and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee took questions from Lawfare supporters on this month's "Ask Lawfare Anything," available exclusively for paid supporters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Censorship Incentives with Julia Curlee and Mike Feinberg
Lawfare Public Service Julia Curlee has written an article on the incentives facing intelligence community members when they are purged from government. Entitled “The Censorship Machine: Silencing the National Security Workforce,” and published on August 26, the piece explains why more former public servants are not speaking out about what they saw in government. She and former FBI Special Agent M
Lawfare Daily: Trump, Kim, and the Future of Korea
Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Andrew Yeo, senior fellow and the Korea Foundation Chair at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies and professor of politics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to talk about Trump's decision to engage in talks with North Korea's leader while curtailing military exercises with South Korea. They dis
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Aug 21
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, and Eric Columbus to discuss Chief Justice Roberts issuing a stay of the injunction preventing the construction of the White House ballroom, updates in the prosecution of Don Lemon, two courts of appeal ruling against acting U.S. attorneys, developments in the Kennedy Cente
Lawfare Archive: Much Ado About Coups with Naunihal Singh
From September 13, 2023: On August 30, soldiers and high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of Gabon seized control of government buildings and communication channels in the capital city of Libreville, detaining Gabon’s President Ali Bongo in his residence and declaring an end to the Bongo family’s 56-year rule. It was a coup—one of nine in the last three years in West and Central Africa, includ
Lawfare Archive: The Golden Dome Missile Defense Program
From April 11, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviewed Tom Karako, the Director of the Missile Defense Program at CSIS, to discuss the Trump administration's missile defense proposals known as "Golden Dome." Karako explains the purpose of Golden Dome, its feasibility and cost, the likely reactions of China and Russia, and what realistic success would look
Scaling Laws: Matt Abrams on Trust and the Migration to the Digital Age
Matt Abrams, technologist, investor, and co-founder of $1 Billion for Trust, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the collapse of institutional trust and how AI may accelerate—or potentially help reverse—that trend.The conversation explores Matt’s work to rebuild trust in information ecosystems, interp
Lawfare Daily: What’s So Special About a Special Grand Jury?
The Justice Department has empaneled a special grand jury in Washington, D.C., according to a new report from the Washington Post. But what, exactly, is so special about a special grand jury? Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Senior Editor Anna Bower to discuss that very question, which Bower answers at length in her latest Lawfare article. Bower and Wittes talk about how
Lawfare Daily: The Complicated Past and Present of Ukraine’s Relations with Poland
In this episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak to discuss the history of Ukrainian-Polish relations, the controversies surrounding the Volhynian tragedy, and how the politicization of history can impact Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Vinh Nguyen, Elham Tabassi, and Kat Duffy on How to Design a Better AI Regulator
Lawfare Senior Editor Kate Klonick is joined by three guests to discuss their recent article for the Council on Foreign Relations on the FINRA-style AI regulator reportedly under White House review: Vinh Nguyen, former chief AI officer at the National Security Agency and now CFR’s Senior Fellow for Artificial Intelligence; Elham Tabassi, former chief AI advisor at NIST and now director of Brooking
Lawfare Daily: Trans and Indispensable in the Trump White House
Julia Curlee was a long-time CIA officer; she served as Vice President Mike Pence’s briefer for more than a year; and she was a senior NSC official when the second Trump administration began. She is also a trans woman. In two articles published recently—this one on Lawfare and this one today in The Atlantic—she describes the purge of the NSC in the first 70 days of Trump’s second presidency. In th
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, August 14
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff to discuss a fired Justice Department prosecutor challenging his firing, a nationwide preliminary injunction against President Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order, the new birthright citizenship order, and more..You can find information on legal ch
Lawfare Archive: The Return of the Syrian Civil War
From December 3, 2024: Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor and Georgetown professor Daniel Byman sits down with Charles Lister, Director of Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism Programs at the Middle East Institute for an update on the Syrian opposition taking Aleppo and the prospects for the civil war going forward. They discuss the status of the Syrian conflict; the nature of the key group,
Scaling Laws: AI Consciousness with Anil Seth
Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to examine whether artificial intelligence could ever be conscious.Drawing on Seth’s essay, “The Mythology
Rational Security: The "Sloop John Stamos" Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Alan Rozenshtein, Michael Feinberg, and Loren Voss to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:“Under Pressure.” Over the past two weeks, hackers have breached the industrial control systems of water and wastewater utilities in at least seven states, prompting an urgent joint warning from federal agencies. The intruders
Lawfare Daily: Purges and Power Plays in Domestic Ukrainian Politics
Weeks after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky fired Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the fallout is still reshaping Kyiv's political landscape. Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina is joined by Danylo Mokryk, a war crimes investigator at the Kyiv Independent and the author of a YouTube blog about domestic Ukrainian Politics, to unpack what's happened since Federov's departure. Th
Lawfare Daily: Trump's New Plan for Gaza, with Joel Braunold
Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Contributing Editor Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the Center Project, for the latest installment of their podcast series on developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Together, they discuss the Trump administration's new plan for Gaza, why Israel doesn't appear to be on board with it, related developments in Lebanon and the West Bank, and
Lawfare Daily: Grokipedia’s Deafening Silence with Renée DiResta
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In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Trump administration requesting the Supreme Court stay the district court’s order halting the enforcement of the mail-in voting executive order, updates on where TPS stands following the Supreme Court’s order, developments in the Ref
Lawfare Archive: Guantanamo, Immigration, and the U.S. Military
From February 20, 2025: On Jan. 29, President Trump ordered the expansion of facilities at Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants being deported from the United States. It was the latest—and perhaps most aggressive—move to deploy the U.S. military in pursuit of the administration's immigration policies. And it's not at all clear that there's a solid legal basis for doing it. Executive Editor Natalie Orpe
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