The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

We’re taking a look back at one of the stranger stories about social media platforms and the role of the press in the last presidential election. In the weeks before the 2020 election, the New York Post published an “October Surprise”: a set of stories on the business and personal life of Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, based on emails contained on a mysterious laptop. A great deal was questionable about the Post’s reporting, including to what extent the emails in question were real and how the tabloid had obtained them in the first place. The mainstream press was far more circumspect in reporting out the story—and meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook sharply restricted circulation of the Post’s stories on their platforms. It’s a year and half later. And the Washington Post just published a lengthy report verifying the authenticity of some of the emails on the mysterious laptop—though a lot still remains unclear about the incident. In light of this news, how should we understand Facebook and Twitter’s actions in 2020? Washington Post technology reporter Will Oremus weighed in on this question in his own reflection for the paper. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic asked him on the show to discuss the story. Did the social media platforms go too far in limiting access to the New York Post’s reporting? How did the mainstream press deal with the incident? What have we learned from the failures of how the press and social media responded to information operations around the 2016 election, and what can we learn from how they behaved differently in 2020? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the last few weeks, much has been said about how energy issues are playing into Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. It's especially coming up in the context of sanctions regimes against Russia, whose economy relies so heavily on energy production. But the war has serious implications for energy security more broadly.Natalie Orpett sat down with Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security, to talk about how the events in Ukraine are both exposing and exacerbating threats to energy security and climate security. They discussed the effect of European dependence on Russian oil and gas, how ecological damage is causing both immediate crises and long-term threats, why the conflict is causing food insecurity at a global scale, and what, if anything, can be done about it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On June 3, President Biden issued a national security memorandum that established the “Fight Against Corruption” as a core national security interest for the United States. The memo described the staggering costs of corruption, with it being “estimated that acts of corruption sap between 2 and 5 percent from global gross domestic product.” The memo also directed U.S. officials to develop a comprehensive presidential strategy focused on anti-corruption.Alvaro Marañon sat down with Paul Massaro, the senior policy advisor for counter-kleptocracy at the Helsinki Commission, to speak about the United States government's latest anti-corruption efforts following the June memo. They discussed the latest developments in the efforts to combat corruption, details around the first-ever presidential strategy on anti-corruption and the kinds of messages these unified efforts send to other authoritarian regimes beyond Russia. For more on this topic, consider watching “Countering Oligarchs, Enablers, and Lawfare,” a hearing on Wednesday, April 6, at 2:30 p.m., hosted by the Helsinki Commission.Disclaimer: Paul Massaro serves on the staff of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent an official position of the U.S. government. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Madeleine Albright passed away on March 23. She was the first woman to serve as secretary of state in United States history, and she had a long legacy, both from her time as secretary and beyond. To talk through what made her special and what her impact was, David Priess sat down with Kori Schake and Natalie Orpett. Kori is the director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and she worked in the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the National Security Council staff. Natalie Orpett is the executive editor of Lawfare, and she worked with Secretary Albright as her executive assistant after she had left the Department of State. They talked about some of the foreign policy developments during Secretary Albright's tenure; about her personal relationships, including with those with whom she did not agree; and about her legacy when it comes to helping women in national security positions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From October 1, 2019: The first two years of the Trump presidency were tied up with the Russia scandal. Now, there’s another scandal involving Russia’s next-door neighbor: Ukraine. The revelation that President Trump and his envoys pressured the Ukrainian government for information about debunked claims of Biden family corruption in Ukraine have brought Ukrainian domestic politics onto the American stage. The Ukrainian side of this very American scandal is complicated yet vital to understanding the whistleblower complaint and the reality of what happened with the Ukrainian prosecutor and Joe Biden’s son. Quinta Jurecic sat down with Alina Polyakova, the Director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology at the Brookings Institution, to break it all down. They talked about recent Ukrainian political developments, what exactly Joe Biden did or didn’t do in Ukraine, and what this might mean for the U.S.-Ukraine relationship going forward. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 13, 2020: Whether it has been travel bans, family separation, or changes to asylum rules, the Trump administration has long been embroiled in controversies over its immigration and detention policy. Those controversies have come amidst surges in migrants and asylum seekers, particularly at the U.S. southern border. The Trump administration's new policies have been legally and technically complex, and that was all before COVID-19.Mikhaila Fogel sat down with immigration reporters Hamed Aleaziz of Buzzfeed News and Dara Lind of ProPublica, as well as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council. They discussed how Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, are responding to COVID-19; the changing legal landscape for those agencies before the pandemic; and the challenges faced by migrants, asylum seekers and the U.S. immigration system during coronavirus and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrea Chalupa is a writer, podcaster and Ukrainian American who worked for 15 years on a screenplay about a man named Gareth Jones, a journalist who uncovered the genocide perpetrated by Stalin against Ukrainians in the early 1930s. Directed by the great filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, the film is called “Mr. Jones,” and it was released in the middle of the pandemic. It is an incredible piece of work that could not be more relevant to the current news about the conflict in Ukraine. Chalupa sat down with Benjamin Wittes to discuss Gareth Jones; the New York Times reporter in Moscow at the time, Walter Duranty; her own grandfather; and the story of how she came to write this film. Please note that this episode contains brief depictions of violence, including against children, that some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information environment, we’re turning our attention to the United Kingdom, where the government has just introduced into Parliament a broad proposal for regulating the internet: the Online Safety Bill. The U.K. government has proclaimed that the Bill represents new “world-first online safety laws” and includes “tougher and quicker criminal sanctions for tech bosses.” So … what would it actually do?To answer this question, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Ellen Judson, a senior researcher at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, a U.K. think tank. Ellen has been closely tracking the legislation as it has developed. And she helped walk us through the tangled system of regulations created by the bill. What new obligations does the Online Safety Bill create, and what companies would those obligations apply to? Why is the answer to so many questions “yet to be defined”—a phrase we kept saying again and again throughout the show—and how much of the legislation is just punting the really difficult questions for another day? What happens now that the bill has been formally introduced in Parliament? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the hours following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine's foreign minister tweeted out a call for what he called an international legion of fighters to come to Ukraine and fight against Russia. And so far, it seems that some have heeded that call. Jacob Schulz talked with Daniel Byman, Lawfare’s foreign policy editor and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who is the author of a book on foreign fighters. They talked through the history of foreign fighters in different conflicts, how to think about the inflows into Ukraine and what the downsides might be of the phenomenon of foreign fighters traveling to Ukraine.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Live in an Age of Disasters.” Juliette is a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a CNN national security analyst, and David Priess sat down with her to talk about it all. They talked about the traditional focus of the disaster framework; consequences minimalization; the paradox of preparedness; and a variety of disasters and what we can learn from them, ranging from the Y2K incident, to Super Bowl XLVII, to the shipping incident in the Suez Canal back in 2021. They talk a lot about how to recover from disasters, and how to deal with them in a way that stops the bleeding and keeps them from getting worse, even as they’re occurring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Polina Ivanova is a Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, and has spent the better part of the last decade reporting from Russia for that publication, for Reuters and elsewhere. She joined Benjamin Wittes to talk through the Russian military press conference that took place on Friday in which the Ministry of Defense seemed to walk back Russia's war aims in the Ukraine conflict. Ben and Polina talked about what the Ministry of Defense said, how different or similar it is from previous Russian statements about what this war is about, whether it was intended for international or domestic consumption, or maybe both, and whether it provides a plausible basis for resolution of the conflict.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 19, 2021: On February 1, Myanmar's military overthrew the country's democratically elected government in a coup and declared a state of emergency for a year. Since then, the country has seen daily peaceful protests and large-scale strikes against military rule, at times clashing with security forces who have been seen using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds. To break it all down, Rohini Kurup spoke with Aye Min Thant, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based in Myanmar. They discussed Myanmar's history of military rule, what it is like living through a coup and what to expect in the coming weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 4, 2021: On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Emily Bell, the founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Emily testified before Congress last week about the role of legacy media, and cable news in particular, in spreading disinformation, but she’s also one of the keenest observers of the online news ecosystem and knows a lot about it from her days as director of digital content for The Guardian. They talked about the relationship between online and offline media in spreading disinformation, the role different institutions need to play in fixing what’s broken and whether all the talk about “fighting misinformation” is a bit of a red herring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court issued rulings in two separate cases involving the state secrets privilege: United States v. Abu Zubaydah and Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga. To talk about the Court's decision and what it means for state secrets doctrine and executive power, Rohini Kurup sat down with Liza Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Bob Loeb, partner in Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation practice, and former acting deputy director of the Civil Division Appellate Staff at the Department of Justice. Rohini first talked to them on the Lawfare Podcast back in October when they discussed the cases that were then before the Court. Now that the Court has issued its ruling, they got back together to discuss the Court's decision and what it means for the future of state secrets doctrine.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about the war in Ukraine on this series—how the Russian, Ukrainian and American governments are leveraging information as part of the conflict; how tech platforms are navigating the flood of information coming out of Ukraine and the crackdown from the Kremlin; and how open-source investigators are documenting the war. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information environment, we’re going to talk about getting information into Russia during a period of rapidly increasing repression by the Russian government. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Thomas Kent, a former president of the U.S. government-funded media organization Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who now teaches at Columbia University. He recently wrote an essay published by the Center for European Policy Analysis on “How to Reach Russian Ears,” suggesting creative ways that reporters, civil society and even the U.S. government might approach communicating the truth about the war in Ukraine to Russians. This was a thoughtful and nuanced conversation about a tricky topic—whether, and how, democracies should think about leveraging information as a tool against repressive governments, and how to distinguish journalism from such strategic efforts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cyberwar is here, proclaims Thomas Rid, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in a New York Times op-ed last week entitled, “Why You Haven’t Heard About the Secret Cyberwar in Ukraine.” While some cyber warfare experts expected massive cyberattacks against Ukraine before Russia invaded in February of this year, Rid suggests in his op-ed that significant cyberattacks have occurred, but they are more covert and insidious in nature, and we're not focusing on them. Stephanie Pell spoke with Rid about the kinds of cyber operations and attacks we have seen in Ukraine, how we might compare and contrast them, along with some of his insights about the use of leaks and disinformation in this conflict. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

General John Baker served until December as the chief defense council at the military commissions. The military commissions’ prosecutors and defense lawyers are in conversations now about a possible plea deal to resolve the 9/11 case once and for all—that's the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and three others of their al-Qaeda co-conspirators. It has been hanging around in the military commissions for more than a dozen years, and until the other day, it showed no sign of coming to a close. Trial is still some time away, and appeals will take years more than that, but the current round of plea negotiations promises a potential way out—removing the death penalty from the table in exchange for guilty pleas and presumably life sentences. Benjamin Wittes sat down with General Baker to talk about his history at the military commissions, why the process has gotten so bogged down and the promise of the current negotiations. Are they different from earlier rounds, or is this another fit and start before policymakers fail to take the leap? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, who now is a novelist and a writer. Most recently, though, Alex has taken up a different task. She is the leader of #YachtWatch, an effort to track down and monitor the movements of massive yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs. #YachtWatch has become a popular way of following and staying engaged with the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jacob Schulz spoke with Alex about #YachtWatch, how she conducts the project and what its value is in an oversaturated media ecosystem. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 8, 2020: Russia continues to sporadically poke its head into American media headlines, whether it be for its role in Syria or for anxieties about fresh election interference in 2020. But these news stories seldom provide a window into life in Putin’s Russia. Jacob Schulz sat down with Joshua Yaffa, the Moscow correspondent for the New Yorker, to talk about his new book, "Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia." The book gives a series of portraits of prominent figures within Putin’s Russia and details the compromises they make to maintain their status and goodwill with the Kremlin. They talked about this framework as a way to understand Russia, what Putin’s rule looks like on the peripheries of the country, and about a couple of the fascinating characters that animate the book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're bringing you the second episode of Lawfare’s new narrative series, The Aftermath, which deals specifically with the early phases of the criminal investigation launched by the FBI, even as the perpetrators of the riot were heading home. The episode features interviews with former FBI and Justice Department official Chuck Rosenberg, New York Times reporter Katie Benner, and Seamus Hughes of the George Washington University Program on Extremism. The episode tells the story of how the investigation got started, the challenges investigators faced in a nationwide manhunt featuring thousands of suspects and perpetrators, and the internal struggle that had just taken place within the Justice Department itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, one of the groups receiving the most attention for its participation in the insurrection on the Hill was the Oath Keepers, a right-wing extremist group that's been in existence since 2009 but has taken on an increased public profile since the riot last year. In early January, the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, along with 10 others, was indicted in U.S. federal court for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol breach. To discuss the group, its history, and its role on Jan. 6, Jacob Schulz sat down with Sam Jackson, an assistant professor at the University of Albany and the author of a 2020 book about the Oath Keepers and their ideology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Open-source investigations—sometimes referred to as OSINT, or open-source intelligence—have been crucial to public understanding of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An enormous number of researchers have devoted their time to sifting through social media posts, satellite images, and even Google Maps to track what’s happening in Ukraine and debunk false claims about the conflict. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, we devoted the show to understanding how open-source investigations work and why they’re important. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Nick Waters, the lead on Justice and Accountability at Bellingcat, one of the most prominent groups devoted to conducting these types of investigations. They talked about the crucial role played by open-source investigators in documenting the conflict in Syria—well before the war in Ukraine—and how the field has developed since its origins in the Arab Spring and the start of the Syrian Civil War. And Nick walked us through the mechanics of how open-source investigations actually happen, and how social media platforms have helped—and hindered—that work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexander Stubb is the former prime minister, foreign minister and finance minister of Finland. Back in 2008, after the Russian invasion of Georgia, he worked on the ceasefire between Russia and Georgia, giving him a valuable perspective on much of what's going on today. He sat down with David Priess for a conversation covering his experience negotiating that ceasefire in 2008, his experienced impressions of Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov, the differences between this Russian action in Ukraine now and its previous aggressions, and what it all means for European unity and for Finland's place in NATO. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been an eventful week in the department of criminal cases arising out of Jan. 6. We had the first jury verdict convicting an alleged 1/6 perpetrator, an Oath Keeper guilty plea for seditious conspiracy, the indictment of the head of the Proud Boys, and a judge rejecting the lead charge the government has used in a whole lot of criminal cases arising out of the Capitol insurrection. To catch up, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger Parloff, who has been covering 1/6 criminal matters for Lawfare. They talked about the news of the last couple of weeks, focusing particularly on Judge Carl Nichols’s controversial ruling about the availability of an obstruction prosecution to the government. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has undermined some of the fundamental assumptions underlying the security of Europe through much of the post-World War II era. As a result, several European nations have begun to consider dramatic changes in how they approach national security, both individually and collectively.To better understand how the war in Ukraine is reshaping the European security order, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two of his colleagues from the Brookings Institution: Célia Belin, a visiting fellow at Brookings and a former official in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations in the Center on the United States and Europe.They discussed how the Ukraine conflict is reshaping Europe's approach to security affairs, what this means for institutions like the European Union and NATO, and how these changes are likely to impact the fundamental debate over what it means to be a part of Europe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 18, 2020: In what ways did American foreign policy fail to capitalize on victory in the Cold War? Andrew Bacevich, professor emeritus at Boston University and co-founder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, tackles that question and more in "The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory." Jack Goldsmith sat down with Professor Bacevich to talk about his new book. The pair discussed the establishment consensus on American foreign policy, the state of civil-military relations, and the mission of the newly founded Quincy Institute. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From November 20, 2020: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.) is the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute. You've heard his story, likely in his testimony in the impeachment proceedings for President Trump. But Benjamin Wittes sat down with him for a different reason—his substantive expertise in Eastern Europe policy, Russia matters and great power competition. They talked about the challenges the Biden administration will face as it tries to pick up the pieces the Trump administration has left it, how democracies can hang together and harden themselves against attacks from authoritarian regimes, what a good Russia policy looks like, how China fits in and how we can rebuild traditional American alliances. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the war in Ukraine grinds into its third week, conditions on the ground have grown increasingly brutal. While Ukrainian forces have proven remarkably successful at repelling the Russian advance so far, Russian forces have continued to make slow and steady progress into the country, with no clear resolution in sight. To get a sense of the state of the conflict and where it might be headed, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Michael Kofman, director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA and a leading analyst on the Ukraine conflict. They talked about what's gone wrong for Russia so far, how Western assistance is empowering the Ukrainians and how both sides are likely to adapt as the conflict enters its next stage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine continues, tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been key geopolitical players in the conflict. The Kremlin has banned those platforms and others as part of a sharp clampdown on freedoms within Russia. Meanwhile, these companies must decide what to do with state-funded Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik that have accounts on their platforms—and how best to moderate the flood of information, some of it gruesome or untrue, that’s appearing as users share material about the war.This week on Arbiters of Truth, our podcast series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. They discussed how various platforms, from Twitter to TikTok and Telegram, are moderating the content coming out of Russia and Ukraine right now; the costs and benefits of Western companies pulling operations out of Russia during a period of increasing crackdown; and how the events of the last few weeks might shape our thinking about the nature and power of information operations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You may think you know all that you need to about the Watergate scandal, its origins, its evolution and its implications. But there has been a lot of new information in the last couple of decades that is simply not in earlier full histories of the scandal. Journalist and popular historian Garrett Graff has written a new history of Watergate called, “Watergate: A New History,” the first overall picture of Watergate in quite some time. David Priess sat down with Garrett to talk about the contours of the Watergate scandal, and in particular, about some of its national security and foreign policy episodes. They discussed the evolution of Nixon's thinking involving the tapes that he recorded of his White House conversations, the extraordinary order that the Secretary of Defense gave during the height of the scandal to warn soldiers about following the commander-in-chief's orders, and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kateryna is a fourth-year law student at a university in Kharkiv, Ukraine—at least she was until a few days ago. That's when the Russian army came in and started bombarding the town she grew up in and studies in. Benjamin Wittes spoke with her recently about life as a Russian-speaking Ukrainian in Kharkiv before and after the invasion, about getting out of town, and about being a refugee law student in an adjacent country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues full blast with a great deal of brutality, a great deal of destruction and indeterminate levels of success. To talk about it, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Alina Polyakova of the Center for European Policy Analysis; Toomas Ilves, the former president of Estonia; Dmitri Alperovitch, the head of the Silverado Policy Accelerator; Alex Vindman, the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute; and Lawfare’s Dominic Bustillos. They talked about how the Russian incursion is going, whether the Russians are succeeding or falling short, how firm the the European opposition is and how debilitating it is to the Russian economy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From December 9, 2017: When the Department of Justice required RT, the Russian-funded news outlet, to register as a foreign agent last month, the Russian government responded in kind. Yet the Kremlin's recent crackdown on Western media is just part of a longer history of stifling independent media in Russia. For this episode of the Lawfare Podcast's special Russia series, Alina Polyakova talked to Mikhail Zygar, a Russian independent journalist, filmmaker, and author of two books on the Kremlin’s elite circle. They discussed what it’s like to be an independent journalist in Russia today, why Putin may be far from a strategic mastermind, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 22, 2014: On March 19, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) hosted NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a Statesman’s Forum address on the importance of the transatlantic alliance and how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is evolving to address new common security challenges. As the crisis in Ukraine shows that security in the Euro-Atlantic area cannot be taken for granted, the secretary-general discussed NATO’s essential role in an unpredictable world. He outlined the agenda for the September NATO summit in Wales as a critical opportunity to ensure that the alliance has the military capabilities necessary to deal with the threats it now faces, to consider how NATO members can better share the collective burden of defense and to engage constructively with partners around the world.Anders Fogh Rasmussen took office as North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 12th secretary-general in August 2009. Previously, he served in numerous positions in the Danish government and opposition throughout his political career, including as prime minister of Denmark from November 2001 to April 2009.Brookings Senior Fellow and CUSE Director Fiona Hill provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the past two decades, much of the public's attention has been focused on private markets for individual data, but another equally invasive and expansive market has emerged during this time. The public sector, composed of the federal government, states and cities, have created a substantially and rapidly expanding inter-governmental marketplace in individual data. It is used in areas ranging from policing and immigration, to public health and housing. But this exchange around individual data brings about serious concerns for both privacy and federalism. Alvaro Marañon sat down with Bridget Fahey, a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss her new law review article, “Data Federalism.” They go into detail about the hybrid structures governing these exchanges of individual data, the risk and protections afforded by existing federalism principles and doctrines, and how and why data is power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Almost immediately since he was banned from Twitter and Facebook in January 2021, Donald Trump has been promising the launch of a new, Trump-run platform to share his thoughts with the world. In February 2022, that network—Truth Social—finally launched. But it’s been a debacle from start to finish, with a lengthy waitlist and a glitchy website that awaits users who finally make it online. Drew Harwell, who covers technology at the Washington Post, has been reporting on the less-than-smooth launch of Truth Social. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our podcast series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with him about who, exactly, this platform is for and who is running it. What explains the glitchy rollout? What’s the business plan … if there is one? And how does the platform fit into the ever-expanding universe of alternative social media sites for right-wing users? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the past two decades, there has been an epidemic of data breaches, from Target, to Home Depot, to Equifax, to Uber, just to name a few. In their new book, “Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It,” Daniel Solove, the John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, and Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University, tell us why current data security law fails and how we can improve it. Stephanie Pell spoke with Dan and Woody about a number of issues they raise in their book, including how current data security law overemphasizes the conduct of breached entities and fails to distribute responsibility among a range of actors in the data ecosystem that contributes to the data breach. They also talked about their ideas for more proactive data security laws that work to reduce the harm caused by data breaches once they occur, encourage greater integration of privacy and security principles, and promote data security rules and practices designed with humans in mind.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the past week, the United States and its allies have responded to Russia's military invasion of Ukraine with some unprecedented actions of their own—economic sanctions that target Russia in ways that have never been tried before, let alone applied to one of the world's largest economies over just a handful of days.To discuss this revolutionary sanctions strategy and what it may mean moving forward, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two sanctions experts: Julia Friedlander, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and Rachel Ziemba, adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. They talked about the different types of sanctions being applied, what impact they will have on the Russian economy and what the consequences may be, not just for the conflict in Ukraine, but for the rest of the world moving forward.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the national security world, including on Lawfare, a lot of attention gets paid to China's tech sector and other parts of its economy. Comparatively less attention is paid to China's illicit economies, illegal trade involving China and other countries around the world. But China has been involved in numerous acts of transnational criminal activity with occasionally lax enforcement, and there's a new series of Brookings papers and blog posts about this very subject. To talk it through. Jacob Schulz sat down with Vanda Felbab-Brown, the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and Madiha Afzal, a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. They talked through the project and papers that each of them have written on the subject, including one on illegal wildlife trafficking, one on narcotic precursor trafficking and one on human trafficking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From October 31, 2015: Perhaps you’ve heard, but tensions between the United States and Russia are heating up. With Putin upping the ante in Syria, Marvin Kalb, journalist, scholar, and a nonresident senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, came to Brookings to launch his new book that looks at the Russian leader’s last foray into another country. Entitled, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War. Putin’s recent actions in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and, more recently, in Syria have provoked a sharp deterioration in East-West relations. Is this the beginning of a new Cold War, or is Putin just wearing the costume of a prizefighter?Joining the discussion were Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Nina Khrushcheva, a professor at The New School. Brookings President Strobe Talbott provided introductory remarks while Martin Indyk, Executive Vice President of Brookings moderated the conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From November 27, 2018: This week, Russia and Ukraine went at it in the Kerch Strait, which separates the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. It's the latest salvo in Russia's secret (not-so-secret) war against Ukraine and its eastern provinces, and it's the latest thing that has the world talking about Vladimir Putin's lawlessness in his back yard.To understand it all, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Alina Polyakova and Scott Anderson. They talked about what happened this week, the international law implications, and the domestic politics in both Ukraine and Russia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bryce Klehm sat down with Matthieu Aikins, a Canadian journalist and the author of the new book, “The Naked Don't Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees.” The book details Matthieu’s undercover journey from Afghanistan to Europe. He made the trip with his translator, Omar, who had been denied a special immigrant visa despite having been a translator for coalition forces in Afghanistan. Following his visa denial, Omar decided to flee as a refugee, and Matthieu decided to join him for the journey. Matthieu and Bryce talked about a range of topics, including Matthieu and Omar's journey and the politics of migration in Europe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last several weeks, Russian aggression toward Ukraine has escalated dramatically. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Feb. 21 that Russia would recognize the sovereignty of two breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east, Donetsk and Luhansk, whose years-long effort to secede from Ukraine has been engineered by Russia. Russian troops have entered eastern Ukraine as supposed “peacekeepers,” and the Russian military has taken up positions along a broad stretch of Ukraine’s border.Along with the military dimensions of the crisis, there’s also the question of how various actors are using information to provoke or defuse violence. Russia has been spreading disinformation about supposed violence against ethnic Russians in Ukraine. The United States and its Western partners, meanwhile, have been releasing intelligence about Russia’s plans—and about Russian disinformation—at a rapid and maybe even unprecedented clip.So today on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, we’re bringing you an episode about the role of truth and falsehoods in the Russian attack on Ukraine. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Olga Lautman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis—who has been tracking Russian disinformation in Ukraine—and Shane Harris, a reporter at the Washington Post—who has been reporting on the crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vladimir Putin has recognized two separatist regions in Ukraine, he has sent Russian troops as so-called peacekeepers to defend them, and all of this seems to be presaging a wider war in Ukraine. The United States and lots of other countries have announced sanctions, and it’s all heating up very fast.To talk it all through, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alex Vindman, Pritzker Military Fellow at Lawfare, and Lawfare, senior editor Scott R. Anderson. What is Vladimir Putin doing? What can we expect militarily? Why did he go through this Byzantine process of recognizing these two non-states? Are we expecting a wider conflict or a narrow one, and what do the prospects look like for either? And will the international community hang together? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security and Lawfare hosted an event with Amy Zegart, a professor at Stanford University and one of the leading academic analysts of the intelligence community, to talk about her new book, “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms.”David Priess hosted her for this live recording of the podcast, and they talked about intelligence education, about problems with the current structure of congressional oversight of the intelligence community, about the public role of intelligence in the crisis with Russia and Ukraine, about the growing role of open source information in intelligence, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Presidents' Day! To mark the day, Lawfare publisher David Priess recorded a special episode of Chatter with historian and author Lindsay Chervinsky, who discusses the history of this odd holiday—and the legacy of the first president, George Washington.Chatter is Lawfare’s weekly long form interview podcast co-hosted by the Washington Post's Shane Harris and Lawfare’s David Priess, focusing on where intriguing ideas in culture, technology, entertainment and history intersect with the worlds of espionage and foreign affairs. Subscribe to Chatter on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on Twitter at @ThatWasChatter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From November 1, 2017: Stalin’s 1929 agricultural collectivization policy, which catalyzed the most lethal famine in European history, left millions of Ukrainian peasants dead. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Anne Applebaum recently published a book on this famine and the horrors of Stalin’s agricultural collectivization in Ukraine, revealing the more insidious intent behind the Soviet Union’s policy and enforcement. Last week, Benjamin Wittes interviewed Applebaum on her new book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, to discuss the scope of the book, the devastating impact of Stalin’s policy on Ukraine’s peasant population, and the book’s relevance to Putin’s current agenda. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From November 12, 2017: Matters Russia have been prevalent in U.S. politics since news of the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 elections first surfaced. It's time to pay some serious attention to the Russian surveillance apparatus. Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist and co-author of the book, “The Red Web,” brings a unique interpretation of the Kremlin’s actions as an independent reporter in the very country Americans find so confusing. Special guest host Alina Polyakova, David M. Rubenstein fellow in Brookings’s Foreign Policy Program, interviewed Soldatov last week to discuss Russia’s perspective on the 2016 election meddling, the Kremlin’s surveillance operations, Edward Snowden, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Madison Cawthorn is a Republican congressman from North Carolina. His candidacy for reelection is the subject of challenge under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment—the part that says that people who engage in insurrection are disqualified from holding future office under the Constitution.Roger Parloff has written a lengthy article on Lawfare on the Cawthorn case, entitled “Can Madison Cawthorn Be Blocked From the North Carolina Ballot as an Insurrectionist?” He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the various ins and outs of this case, what constitutes an insurrection for purposes of the section, what Madison Cawthorn did, why he—of all members of Congress—is the one who is being subjected to this challenge, and who gets to decide who gets disqualified. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brandon Silverman is a former Facebook executive and founder of the data analytics tool CrowdTangle. Brandon joined Facebook in 2016 after the company acquired CrowdTangle, a startup designed to provide insight into what content is performing well on Facebook and Instagram, and he left in October 2021, in the midst of a debate over how much information the company should make public about its platform. As the New York Times described it, CrowdTangle “had increasingly become an irritant” to Facebook’s leadership “as it revealed the extent to which Facebook users engaged with hyperpartisan right-wing politics and misleading health information.”This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Brandon about what we mean when we talk about transparency from social media platforms and why that transparency matters. They also discussed his work with the Congress and other regulators to advise on what legislation ensuring more openness from platforms would look like—and why it’s so hard to draft regulation that works. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.