The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

From April 19, 2014: Benjamin Wittes had meant to have a book review of former CIA lawyer John Rizzo's new book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, ready to run along with this episode of the podcast. But he was still working on the review, which will be up shortly, and he didn't want to hold up the podcast while he finished it.Ben caught up with Rizzo at a recent conference at Pepperdine University Law School. They talked about the book, some of its major themes, the persistence of the interrogation controversies and their latest manifestations. They also talked about the growth of lawyering at the CIA and why all the lawyers in the world can't seem to keep the agency out of trouble. And they talked about a career that, in many ways, tells the story of the modern CIA and the effort to do intelligence and covert action under law—from the Church Committee to the post 9/11 scandals. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two of the biggest controversies in tech are how to stop the spread of child pornography and other exploitation material, and whether encryption prevents legitimate law enforcement investigations. In an announcement last week, Apple dropped a bomb into both of these debates.Apple announced that future versions of its iPhone operating system would scan photos its users post to the cloud and automatically detect if those photos contain child exploitation material. If so, Apple would notify the government. While many in law enforcement and in organizations devoted to child safety have hailed Apple's announcement, it has proven hugely controversial among many technologists, security researchers and digital civil society advocates. They worry that Apple’s system will harm privacy and civil rights, especially if governments demand that it be used to scan for content other than child exploitation. To help make sense of all of this, Alan Rozenshtein sat down with Mayank Varia, a cryptographer at Boston University, and Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We live in the Disinformation Age. The internet has revolutionized our information ecosystem and caused disruption totally unprecedented in human history, and democracy may not survive. ... Just like it didn’t survive the television, radio, telegram and printing press before it. Right?When it comes to talking about the internet, all too often history is either completely ignored with bold claims about how nothing like this has ever happened before—or it’s invoked with simple analogies to historical events without acknowledging their very different contexts. As usual, the real answer is more complicated: talking about history can inform our understanding of the dilemmas we face today, but it rarely provides a clear answer one way or another to contemporary problems. This week on our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information ecosystem, Quinta Jurecic spoke with Heidi Tworek, an associate professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and History at the University of British Columbia. In a recent essay, she made the case for how a nuanced view of history can better inform ongoing conversations around how to approach disinformation and misinformation. So how do current discussions around disinformation leave out or misinterpret history? What’s the difference between a useful historical comparison and a bad one? And why should policymakers care? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've probably heard about the craziness around the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium. They consulted outside law professors instead of the Justice Department. Or did they? The president said he didn't have the authority to do it, and then he did it anyway. Lawfare has published two big articles on the subject in the last couple of days—one of them by Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein, and the other by Lawfare founding editor Jack Goldsmith. They both joined Benjamin Wittes to talk it all through. What exactly did the Biden administration say? What exactly did it do? Where was the Justice Department? And did any of this violate the law? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The spread of misinformation is one of the biggest challenges facing social media platforms. A standard approach is to label suspicious posts or links so as to warn users that what they're engaging with is not reputable, but warnings, despite their wide use, haven't proven to be particularly successful. So what's a social media platform to do? Two Princeton University computer scientists, Ben Kaiser, a PhD student, and Professor Jonathan Mayer, think they've found a better way. Instead of warning users about misinformation, they propose putting roadblocks between users and the misinformation they're tempted to click on. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Ben and Jonathan about their research and about a piece they and Dr. J. Nathan Matias wrote recently for Lawfare entitled, "Warnings that Work: Combating Misinformation Without Deplatforming." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Olympics ended yesterday after more than two weeks of exciting international competition in Tokyo. On this episode of the podcast, we're taking a look back at some of the security and international affairs issues that you might have noticed in this year's games and in Olympic history. Rohini Kurup sat down with author Roy Tomizawa to talk about the last time that Japan hosted the Summer Olympics in 1964 and the similarities with this year's games. Bryce Klehm spoke with Libby Lange, a former speech writer for Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, about the tense relations between China and Taiwan on display at the Olympics. Jacob Schulz spoke with ​Ethan Scheiner, a professor at UC Davis, about the history of violence at the Olympics. And Bryce talked with Claire Collins, an Olympic rower and a member of the U.S. national team, about participating in this year's games and some of the security challenges that followed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been a busy few weeks at the Justice Department. There was a major indictment of the chair of the former president's inaugural committee. There have been new policies promulgated on subpoenas to media organizations and on Justice Department White House contacts. There's been a decision not to defend a member of Congress for his role in the Jan. 6 uprising, and there are questions about what positions the Justice Department is going to take as the Jan. 6 committee begins its work. To talk about it all, Lawfare executive editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, former Justice Department official Carrie Cordero, now with the Center for a New American Security, and Chuck Rosenberg, who served at both DOJ and FBI. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There have been a thousand hot takes about the Facebook Oversight Board, the Supreme Court-like thing Facebook set up to oversee its content moderation. The Board generated so much press coverage when it handed down its decision on Donald Trump’s account that Kaitlyn Tiffany at The Atlantic called the whole circus “like Shark Week, but less scenic.” Everyone weighed in, from Board Members, to lawmakers, academics, critics and even Lawfare podcast hosts. But there’s a group we haven’t heard much from: the people at Facebook who are actually responsible for sending cases to the Board and responding to the Board’s policy recommendations. Everyone focuses on the Board Members, but the people at Facebook are the ones that can make the Board experiment actually translate into change—or not. So this week for our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information environment, in light of Facebook’s first quarterly update on the Board, Evelyn Douek talked with Jennifer Broxmeyer and Rachel Lambert, both of whom work at Facebook on Facebook’s side of the Oversight Board experiment. What do they think of the first six or so months of the Oversight Board’s work? How do they grade their own efforts? Why is their mark different from Evelyn’s? And, will the Oversight Board get jurisdiction over the metaverse? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The U.S. raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that brought Osama bin Laden to ultimate justice also recovered nearly half a million files. In 2017, these files were publicly released, but few people have the expertise, the experience and the time to go through those materials, as well as interview family members of bin Laden and former associates to try to paint a full picture of the man. One person who fits that description is Peter Bergen, the author or editor of eight books, including "Holy War, Inc.," the definitive early study of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Peter is also a vice president at New America and a national security analyst for CNN. Most recently, he is author of "The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden," a cradle-to-grave biography that takes advantage of a lot of this new material. David Priess sat down with Peter to talk about bin Laden's evolution from a shy, humble, religious young man to the leader of a global terrorist network bent on killing thousands of civilians. They talked about the development of al-Qaeda as an organization and the U.S. response to al-Qaeda attacks, but they focused especially on what Peter learned from the 470,000+ files and his interviews that made him change his mind about a few things regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman is the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute, a former NSC staffer, and of course, an impeachment witness in the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump. He is also the author of the new book, "Here, Right Matters: An American Story." He joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about the book and the ground it covers—from Vindman's immigration as a small child, to his departure from the Army, the decision he made to report what he heard Donald Trump say to President Zelensky of Ukraine and the fallout, positive and negative. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The president's interactions with intelligence and public comments about intelligence are dramatically different in the first six months of the Biden administration than they were during the last presidency. To talk about those differences and why they matter for intelligence and national security, David Priess sat down with Sue Gordon and John McLaughlin. Sue Gordon, for two years during the Trump administration, was the principal deputy director of national intelligence, after decades of service at CIA and at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA. John McLaughlin served as the acting director of central intelligence during the Bush 43 administration, after a career as an analyst, manager and executive in the CIA. They talked about the differences between the Trump administration and the Biden administration when it comes to intelligence focused on the presidents themselves. And they talked about President Biden's recent comments at Liberty Crossing in McLean, Virginia, the home of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center, what he said and what he didn't say, and what it all reveals about intelligence and policymaking in the Biden years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the past decade, Tunisia's democracy has stood out as one of the few remaining bright spots of the Arab Spring. But earlier this week, it entered its own crisis as President Kais Saied declared a state of emergency, suspended parliament and stated his intent to move forward with widespread prosecutions as part of a long-promised anti-corruption effort. Some argue that Saied's strong-arm tactics are exactly what's needed to break the stagnation that's been plaguing Tunisia's economic and political systems, but others fear that it may be the beginning of the end for Tunisian democracy as we know it. To discuss these developments, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Tunisia. They discussed the context for Saied's actions, how other actors in Tunisia and the region have reacted, and what the international community can and should do about it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The attempted insurrection on January 6 is back in the headlines. This week, the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot began its work with its very first hearing. So for our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information environment, Evelyn Douek interviewed Quinta Jurecic about social media’s role in warning of the riot. Specifically, they talked about an essay Quinta wrote in Lawfare on the FBI’s failure to examine social media posts announcing plans to storm the Capitol—and how FBI Director Christopher Wray’s explanations don’t hold water.So why does Quinta think Wray has been misleading in his answers to Congress on why the FBI didn’t review those posts from soon-to-be-rioters? What about the First Amendment issues raised by the U.S. government refreshing your Twitter feed? What role is social media playing in the Jan. 6 prosecutions—and what does that say about how tech companies should preserve online evidence of wrongdoing, rather than just taking it down? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yesterday saw the first hearing of the special House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riots and insurrection. Four law enforcement officers testified before the committee, which consisted of the Democrats along with two renegade Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.To chew it all over, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare congressional guru Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Quinta Jurecic, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. They talked about how the first hearing went, what it says about where the committee is headed, the fissures within the Republican party over how to handle this committee and whether the committee will have enough time and focus to get to real accountability. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United States is just over a month out from completing its full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, but as U.S. troops have moved on, the situation on the ground has only gotten more challenging, with the Taliban claiming control of a growing portion of the country. In recent days, the United States even reentered the arena with airstrikes on the Taliban intended to reinforce U.S. support for Afghan security forces and dissuade a major Taliban offensive on Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. Whether this will be enough to stave off a broader Afghan civil war, however, remains to be seen.To get a better sense of the state of things, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Dr. Jonathan Schroden, director of the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the nonprofit research and analysis organization, CNA. They discussed how the withdrawal has gone so far, the impact it is having on the ground and what it all means for the future of Afghanistan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are some stunning revelations coming out of the new blockbuster book by Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker, “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year.” If you thought you knew how bad some things during that final year of the Trump presidency were, this book will surprise you with what it tells us about the things that even those of us who watched the presidency closely did not know. David Priess sat down with Leonnig, a national investigative reporter at the Washington Post and author of “Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service,” and Rucker, the senior White House correspondent at the Washington Post and coauthor with Carol of the book, “A Very Stable Genius,” to talk about what they discovered in their book and their reporting. They discussed not only a few of the headline scoops, but also some lesser reported stories in their book, ranging from Trump's briefing before the U.S. strike that killed Iran’s Qasem Soleimani, to Trump's attitude toward potential 2024 running mates, to what we've learned about the behavior of people around the president near the end of the administration, like Mark Milley, Bill Barr, Mark Meadows and Mike Pompeo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From November 24, 2018: John Carlin served as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division from April 2014 to October 2016. In his new book with Garrett Graff, called “Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat," Carlin explains the cyber conflicts the U.S. faces and how the government fights back. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Carlin last week to talk about the book. They talked about about the FBI and Justice Department’s fight against cyber espionage, about how the Justice Department attributes cyberattacks to the responsible actors, and about Carlin’s experience as FBI director Robert Mueller’s chief of staff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we're bringing you the breakdown of the heavyweight bout of the century—a battle over vaccine misinformation. In the left corner we have the White House. Known for its impressive arsenal and bully pulpit, this week it asked for the fight and came out swinging with claims that Facebook is a killer—and not in a good way. In the right corner we have Facebook, known for its ability to just keep taking punches while continuing to grace our screens and rake in the cash. The company has hit back with gusto, saying that Facebook has actually helped people learn the facts on vaccines. Period. Will either of them land a knockout blow? Is this just the first round of many match ups? On this episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information ecosystem, we devote the conversation to the latest slugfest between Facebook and the White House. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Renee DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, and Brendan Nyhan, professor of government at Dartmouth University, both of whom have been working on questions of online health misinformation. Let’s get ready to rumble. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s our last episode—at least in our current form. We’ll reminisce about our favorite moments, hear from longtime friends and listeners, and share in a final Object Lesson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was quite a week in cybersecurity. The Israeli firm NSO Group was outed by a consortium of newspapers and media entities for its snooping software Pegasus, which seems to have gathered data from the phones of a shockingly large number of people. Then, starting Sunday evening and into Monday morning, the Biden administration announced a multi-lateral response to China's Microsoft Exchange Server hack. There were indictments, there was a toughly worded statement, but there were no sanctions. Was it enough? Benjamin Wittes sat down with Matt Tait, AKA @pwnallthethings, the chief operating officer of Corellium, and Dmitri Alperovitch, the founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator and the co-founder of CrowdStrike. They talked about the Biden administration's response on China; the disclosure of Pegasus and what that means for iPhone security, for Apple and for the Israeli government; and they talked about mobile device security. Is it hopeless? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

U.S. troops are pulling out of Afghanistan, the withdrawal is almost done and U.S. forces turned over the Bagram Airfield to Afghan forces the other day. Scott Anderson knows something about withdrawals. He served at U.S. Embassy Baghdad shortly after the United States withdrew from Iraq. He joined Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare Live to talk about the Afghan withdrawal, his memories of the Iraq withdrawal and why these things sometimes go better and sometimes go worse. What has the Biden administration learned from the Iraq withdrawal experience? What is it doing right this time, and what is it doing wrong? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 16, 2013: Fawzia Koofi (website, Twitter) is an Afghan Member of Parliament and Vice President of the Afghan National Assembly. She is also running for President of Afghanistan in the planned April 2014 elections, and would be the first female president in Afghan history. She has a remarkable backstory: Born as the nineteenth of her father's twenty-three children, Koofi was left to die from exposure as a baby girl. She survived and witnessed during her childhood father's and brother's deaths from political unrest. She was forced to leave medical school when the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996 and banned the education of women and girls, and, soon after her own daughters were born, her husband died from tuberculosis he contracted while a political prisoner in a Taliban jail. After the new Afghan government was formed after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, Koofi ran for and won a seat in the Afghan parliament. She currently represents the Badakshan region in northeastern Afghanistan and is a leading advocate for the rights of women and girls. Koofi has also written a recently published memoir, The Favored Daughter, about her life and her journey into politics.Koofi delivered the closing remarks at the Harvard Women's Law Association's annual conference. (Special thanks to the association's president and conference organizer, Stephanie Davidson, for arranging the interview.) Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Koofi at her snowed-in hotel about the current state of Afghanistan and the challenges facing her country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From April 9, 2016: This week on the podcast, we welcome Eric Schwartz, the Dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Schwartz previously served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. In his conversation with Benjamin Wittes, he sketches the key aspects of U.S. refugee policy, explaining how it both protects the security of the United States and at times undermines its ability to accept refugees. Schwartz, who believes the United States has an interest in alleviating the Syrian refugee crisis, outlines what a coherent refugee policy would look like, and argues that the reforms must go beyond simply accepting more refugees. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

National security attention rarely focuses for long on Sub-Saharan Africa, and when it does, it's largely on the most populous countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Former intelligence community and National Security Council official Judd Devermont, now director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wants to change that. Along with Nicole Wilett, who used to cover Africa for the State Department, the National Security Council and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Judd has created and co-hosts the new podcast called "49," now available everywhere. This podcast jumps head-first into the past, present and future of U.S. policy toward each of Sub-Saharan Africa's 49 countries. David Priess sat down with Judd to discuss a few of these countries, the new podcast and the opportunities for the incoming Biden administration to make real inroads in relations with countries across the continent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On May 24, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill designed to limit how social media platforms can moderate content. Technology companies, predictably, sued—and on June 30, Judge Robert Hinkle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida granted a preliminary injunction against the law.The legislation, which purported to end “censorship” online by “big tech,” received a lot of commentary and a great deal of mockery from academics and journalists. Among other things, it included an exemption for companies that operate theme parks. But Alan Rozenshtein argues in a piece for Lawfare that though the law may be poorly written, the issues raised by the litigation are worth taking seriously. This week on our Arbiters of Truth miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alan—an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School and a senior editor at Lawfare—about the Florida legislation.What exactly would the law have done, anyway? Why does Alan think the judge underplays the potential First Amendment considerations raised by private companies exerting control over huge swaths of the online public sphere? And what’s with the theme park stuff? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Historic protests rock Cuba. The ripple effects of an assassination linger in Haiti. And a former president warns the consequences of withdrawal from Afghanistan will be “unbelievably bad.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jack Goldsmith is feeling a little bit grouchy. In a piece on Lawfare entitled, "Empty Threats and Warnings on Cyber," he blasts the Biden administration and its predecessors for "publicly pledging to impose 'consequences' on Russia for its cyber actions for at least five years—usually, as here, following a hand-wringing government deliberation in the face of a devastating cyber incident." Goldsmith catalogs the recent history of administrations promising big action against Russia, yet seeming to take none, and he asks why we would do this. Why would we thus erode our deterrent capability?He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the latest of these statements, the history of them and the question of why the United States keeps speaking loudly and carrying such a small stick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, the country of Haiti was rocked by the assassination of its controversial president, Jovenel Moïse, who was killed in a bizarre plot, the details of which are still being uncovered. Moïse's death is yet another shock for a Haitian political system that was already in a state of crisis and has some calling for foreign intervention, a controversial proposal with which Haiti has a long and difficult history.To discuss these developments, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Professor Robert Fatton, Jr. of the University of Virginia, a native of Haiti and a widely published expert on Haitian politics. They discussed what we know about the assassination plot and what it may mean for the country and region moving forward. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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For many Americans, the events of the past several years—from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to the January 6 assault on the Capitol building—have driven home a disturbing conclusion: that the problems of extremism, violence and terrorism are not just overseas phenomena, but have taken root here in the United States.One of President Biden's first actions upon assuming the presidency was to direct his staff to produce a strategy for addressing this challenge. One hundred days later, they did so, putting forward the first ever "National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism." To discuss this strategy, Scott R. Anderson sat down with White House official Joshua Gelzter, who is currently serving as a special advisor to the Homeland Security advisor and who oversaw the development of the national strategy. They talked about the logic behind it, the challenges and obstacles its authors encountered, and what it means for U.S. national security policy through the Biden administration and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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From the Lawfare Archive, July 18, 2015: While world powers and Iran were embroiled in last minute negotiations last week, Brookings hosted a panel discussion on the meaning of another power’s recent nuclear threats: Russia's. In recent months, Russia has rattled the saber, with Vladimir Putin remarking on his nuclear options during the Crimea crisis and making a mild threat to nuke the Danish navy. Given that Russia maintains enough nuclear muscle to destroy the world---theoretically anyway---how seriously should we take these provocations?The panel was moderated by Brookings Fellow Jeremy Shapiro and featured Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists and Brookings scholars Pavel Baev and Steven Pifer. Together, the trio took a deep dive into Russia’s recent nuclear threats during the Crimea crisis, the country’s capabilities—both conventional and nuclear—relative to NATO, and its ongoing modernization program. The three conclude with terrifying thought: The folks surrounding Putin just might not fully understand deterrence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Lawfare Archive, March 31, 2020: Saudi Arabia continues to be a mainstay of newspaper headlines, whether it be for its oil price war with Russia or for news about Turkish indictments in connection with the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But making sense of Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed Bin Salman, known widely as MBS, can be a difficult proposition. He has made social reforms—lifting the ban on women driving and taking power away from Saudi Arabia’s infamous religious police—but he has no interest in political reform and has a propensity to take impulsive and remarkably violent action, both in the foreign policy space and toward perceived enemies within Saudi Arabia and beyond. Ben Hubbard, Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times, provides an account of the young prince’s rise and his early years in power in Saudi Arabia. Jacob Schulz talked with Hubbard about MBS's rise to power, his influence on domestic life in Saudi Arabia, his relationship to Jared Kushner and the Trump administration, and about the White House response to Khashoggi’s murder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong has shut down under pressure from the Chinese and Hong Kong governments. It's the latest political repression in Hong Kong that shows no sign of easing up. Alvin Cheung is a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and a non-resident affiliated scholar at NYU's U.S.-Asia Law Institute. He joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about the Apple Daily case, the other cases like it, the implementation of Hong Kong's new national security law and what it all means for the Hong Kong constitutional order. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Arbiters of Truth, our podcast on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Camille François, the chief innovation officer at Graphika, about a new report released by her team earlier this month on an apparent Russian influence operation aimed at so-called “alt-tech” platforms, like Gab and Parler. A group linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency “troll farm” has been posting far-right memes and content on these platforms over the last year. But how effective has their effort really been? What does the relatively small scale of the operation tell us about how foreign interference has changed in the last four years? Has the media’s—and the public’s—understanding of information operations caught up to that changing picture? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Egyptian government may have assisted a Saudi hit team in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a new investigation finds. Congress debates repealing an authorization for “forever war.” And a judge narrows the lawsuits filed over the clearing of Lafayette Square before a Trump photo op. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the latest installment in our ongoing series of historical inquiries with U.S. and Five Eyes intelligence agencies. Earlier episodes have featured CIA, NSA and GCHQ, and today, it's the first of a two-part discussion of FBI, featuring FBI historian John Fox. David Kris sat down with John for a whirlwind tour of the Bureau, from its founding through the era of prohibition and gangsters, World War II, the Cold War, abuses revealed in the 1970s, 9/11 and right up to the present, focusing on the use of wiretap evidence and intelligence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bryce Klehm sat down with Peter Martin, a defense policy and intelligence reporter at Bloomberg. Peter is the author of the new book, "China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy," which traces the history of China's diplomatic corps from the founding of the Chinese Communist Party to the present. They covered a lot of ground, from Zhou Enlai's impact on the Chinese foreign ministry to the Biden administration's first interactions with China's top diplomats. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.