The Lawfare Podcast

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Public Service Fellow Ari Tabatabai and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:

• “Great APEC-tations.” President Trump is headed to Asia this week, both for a meeting of the regional Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization and a one-on-one sit down with Chinese president Xi Jinping. It’s a moment destined...

On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Quico Toro, global opinion columnist at the Washington Post and Director of Climate Repair at the Anthropocene Institute, to talk about his new book, “Charlatans: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Hucksters Bamboozle the Media, the Markets, and the Masses,” which he wrote with his co-author, Moisés Naím.

They discuss what defines a charlatan, the cognitive...

Katsiaryna Shmatsina, Eurasia Fellow at Lawfare, sits down with Gabrielius Landsbergis, former Lithuanian Foreign Minister (2020–2024), now a visiting fellow at Stanford University, and Vytis Jurkonis, Associate Professor at Vilnius University and Director of Freedom House’s Lithuania office.

They discuss Lithuania’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including shifts in security policy, public sentiment, and milit...

Sarah Powazek, Director of the Public Interest Cybersecurity Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, and Michael Razeeq, Nonresident Fellow at the Public Interest Cybersecurity Program, join Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss the cyber threats facing states, what options and resources states currently have to address cybersecurity problems, and how the concept of state cyber corps and volunteer programs f...

In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Contributor James Pearce and Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus to discuss the arraignment of Letitia James, legal challenges to the appointments of Lindsey Halligan and Alina Habba to be U.S. attorneys, litigation over the federalization and deployment of Natio...

From April 24, 2024: 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 ...

From June 5, 2023: 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...

California State Senator Scott Wiener, author of Senate Bill 53—a frontier AI safety bill—signed into law by Governor Newsom earlier this month, joins Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and Research Director at Lawfare, and Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to explain the significance of SB 53 in the large debate about h...

Katsiaryna Shmatsina, Eurasia Fellow at Lawfare, is joined by Beverly Ochieng, senior security analyst at Control Risks and non-resident expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), to examine how external powers compete for influence in Africa—and how African states are responding.

They discuss the shifting priorities of the second Trump administration, including a “trade not aid” approach, stricter visa pol...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Senior Fellow Eric Columbus, Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina, and Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:

• “Visiting Concessions.” President Trump once again turned his focus to the conflict in Ukraine, announcing last week that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin would be meeting to discuss the conflict in B...

For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Holly Berkley Fletcher, a former senior CIA Africa analyst, to discuss the recent coup in Madagascar and the death of Kenyan opposition leader and political giant, Raila Odinga. 

They discuss the reasons for the coup and how Madagascar's neighbors might respond. Berkley Fletcher also explained Odinga's legacy and how his death might ch...

In a Lawfare Live, The Now on October 20, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower to discuss her article about how interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan reached out to her on Signal—and the conversation that followed.

To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support La...

In this episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Eric Ciaramella, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Mykhailo Soldatenko, a scholar of international law and a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School, to discuss the latest meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, armed neutrality for Ukraine, and how Ukraine can nudge the ongoing peace negotiations in its f...

In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Public Service Fellows Loren Voss and Michael Feinberg and Senior Editors Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus to discuss the legal challenges to the National Guard deployment in Chicago, the indictment of John Bolton, a judge preventing the firing of federal employees during the government shutdown, and so...

Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Around 80,000 Afghans were relocated during the withdrawal, and many do not have a pathway to permanent citizenship here in the United States. To get a sense of those immigration challenges and the potential for congressional action on those issues, Bryce Klehm sat down with Shala Gafary, the Managing Attorney of Project: Afghan Legal Assistance at H...

Lawfare Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri sits down with Esteban Carisimo, a Postdoctoral Researcher at Northwestern University to talk about the digital repression in Venezuela after the recent elections. Carisimo co-authored a recent report on the effects of the Venezuelan crisis on internet infrastructure. They discuss how internet censorship impacts the protests, how Venezuela's infrastructure co...

Mosharaf Chowdhury, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and Director of the ML Energy lab, and Dan Zhou, former Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Lincoln Lab, MIT Supercomputing Center, and MIT CSAIL, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the energy costs of AI. 

They break down exactly how much energy fuels a single ...

Lawfare Public Service Fellow Michael Feinberg sits down with Jake Tapper, the lead Washington anchor for CNN, to discuss his new book, “Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War.” The book chronicles the investigation, prosecution, and ultimate conviction of Spin Ghul, an Al Qaeda operative who became the first major international terrorist tried in a U.S. civilian court.

Feinberg and Tappe...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Kate Klonick, and newly-minted Senior Editor Molly Roberts to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including:

• “Peace by Piece.” The first phase of the Trump administration’s peace plan for Gaza went into effect on Monday, resulting in the return of the last living hostages held by Hamas to Israel, among other exchanges. President Trump ...