The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was founded in 1949 and quickly became the main way that the United States guaranteed the security of Western Europe, especially against possible invasion by the Soviet Union. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, NATO has faced a series of identity crises. Should it continue to exist in its current form or change? If it should change, should it shrink or expand? Should it continue focusing on European security or embrace global peacekeeping? What should its relationship with Russia be? And perhaps most importantly, should America continue to serve as the de facto head of NATO and the main guarantor of European security? Last week's NATO summit offers an opportunity to revisit all of these cases.To discuss it all, Alan Rozenshtein spoke with two experts on U.S. foreign policy: Stephen Wertheim, a historian and director of the Grand Strategy Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and Sara Moller, an assistant professor in international security at Seton Hall University. To frame the conversation, they focused on Stephen's recent essay in the New York Times, provocatively titled, "Sorry, Liberals. But You Really Shouldn't Love NATO." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Lawfare Archive, February 19, 2020: Jessica Stern, who served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, has a remarkable skill: she interviews really bad people, and she writes about them in really interesting ways. She spent quite a bit of time interviewing Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic, who is serving a life sentence at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague for genocide in connection with the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s. Their conversations led to the publication of the book, "My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide," which triggered a remarkable outpouring of rage at Jessica Stern. Benjamin Wittes spoke with Jessica recently about the book, the controversy, and her general approach to talking to evil men. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Lawfare Archive, July 17, 2018: U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki for their first one-on-one summit, where the U.S. president said that he trusted the Russian president's denial of election interference over his own intelligence community. In the United States, furor followed on both sides of the aisle. To break down what happened and what it means, Alina Polyakova sat down with Julia Ioffe, correspondent at GQ and long-time Russia observer, and Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, to talk about why nobody else was in the room with Trump and Putin during their over-two-hour, one-on-one meeting; what Russia's kompromat on Trump really might be; and whether this summit actually moved the needle in U.S.-Russia policy. What was gained and what was lost? Was this a win for Putin? An embarrassment for Trump?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President Biden met with President Putin in Geneva on Wednesday. There was a lot of press and dueling press conferences, with both presidents having testy moments with them, and the whole thing was pretty different from the last time Putin met with a U.S. president. To talk through the Putin-Biden summit, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Fiona Hill and Alex Vindman, both formerly of the National Security Council, Alina Polyakova of the Center for European Policy Analysis, and former Estonian President Toomas Ilves. They discussed whether this was a win for Putin, a win for Biden, an overblown icebreaker or something else, and what it all says about where U.S.-Russia relations are headed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TikTok has rapidly become one of the most popular apps for teenagers across the world for dancing, lip-syncing and sharing details about their lives. But if you cast your mind back to last year—specifically, August 2020—you may recall that the app’s future in the United States suddenly fell into doubt. The Trump administration began arguing that the app’s ownership by the Chinese company ByteDance raised problems of national security for the United States. ByteDance was ordered to divest from TikTok, and the app, along with the popular China-based chat app WeChat, faced U.S. sanctions.But you might have noticed that your teenager is still making TikTok videos. And President Biden issued his own executive order last week revoking Trump’s sanctions. So, what on earth is happening?On this week’s episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Bobby Chesney, Lawfare co-founder and Charles I. Francis Professor in Law at the University of Texas School of Law, about what’s happened to TikTok over the past year. Bobby brought us up to speed with the Trump administration’s offensive on TikTok, why the app has survived so far and why TikTok shouldn’t breathe easy just yet about Biden’s executive order. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

World leaders convene in Cornwall and Brussels as President Biden makes his first official trip abroad. Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have a face-to-face meeting in Geneva. And leak investigations aplenty have ensnared journalists, former officials and members of Congress. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United States is quickly approaching its September deadline for a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan. As the U.S. completes its withdrawal, many Afghans who partnered with the U.S., serving as translators and interpreters, face the danger of severe retribution from the Taliban.Those who partner with the U.S. military can obtain a special immigrant visa, or SIV, through the U.S. State Department, but many lawmakers and veterans' groups are concerned that the U.S. is running out of time to approve SIVs for its Afghan partners. To help make sense of it all, Bryce Klehm sat down with Congressman Seth Moulton and Matt Zeller. Rep. Moulton is a representative from Massachusetts who served as a Marine infantry officer in Iraq and who is also a member of the Honoring Our Promises Working Group, a bipartisan group of lawmakers calling on the Biden administration to protect the U.S.'s Afghan partners. Zeller is a Truman Center fellow and host of the Wartime Allies podcast, who served as a combat advisor with Afghan security forces and who is also the co-founder of No One Left Behind, a veterans' organization that provides services to former Afghan and Iraqi interpreters who resettle in the United States.They covered a range of issues, including the risks that current and former U.S. partners in Afghanistan face, the obstacles in the SIV process and a potential evacuation of U.S. partners to Guam. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A spree of stories has emerged over the last week or so that the Justice Department under the prior administration obtained phone and email records of several journalists, several members of Congress and staffers, and even family members. It has provoked a mini scandal, calls for investigation, howls of rage and serious questions. To discuss it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, former FBI agent Pete Strzok, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic and Berkeley law professor and Lawfare contributing editor Orin Kerr. They talked about what we really know about these stories and what happened in these investigations. Was it all legal? Was it legitimate? How should it be investigated and by whom? And what does it mean that none of the prior attorneys general or deputy attorneys general seem to remember it? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Public discourse is in bad shape these days. We all yell at and cancel each other on social media and college campuses, and politicians—especially those on the Trumpist right—lie so much that the very notion of truth threatens to lose any meaning. But, Jonathan Rauch is optimistic that this can change for the better. Jonathan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of, most recently, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth." Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Jonathan about his book, his diagnosis of our present condition and his hopes for the future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel Richman and Sarah Seo are professors at Columbia Law School, and they are co-authors of a recent article on Lawfare entitled, "Toward a New Era for Federal and State Oversight of Local Police." Benjamin Wittes sat down with them to discuss the article, the history of the federal-state relationship in law enforcement, how the feds came to play an oversight role with respect to police departments, the limits of that role inherent in the cooperative relationship that law enforcement agencies engage in for other reasons, the role that the feds might play under new legislation and the role that state governments may play as well. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bibi Netanyahu may be out of a job. Alleged drug lords and contract killers thought they were using a secure messaging app but WOOPS, they were talking to the cops. And there’s no evidence it's aliens, but the USG doesn’t know WTF is flying around in our airspace. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For years, Congress and the Defense Department have debated how best to handle the pernicious problem of sexual assault in the military. Now, a bipartisan majority in the Senate appears to have settled on a set of reforms that would make unprecedented changes to the military justice system. But do these changes actually get at the root cause of the military sexual assault problem? Or do they simply put at risk the command structure that is often seen as a pillar of military effectiveness? To discuss these issues, Scott R. Anderson sat down on Lawfare Live with legal expert Michel Paradis, who teaches a course on the military and the law at Columbia Law School. They talked about the impetus behind these latest reforms, what the consequences might be for the military justice system and whether they promise to finally provide the protection against sexual assault that those serving in the military need and deserve. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been more than a year since the first contact tracing and exposure notification apps for the novel coronavirus have appeared, and the apps have not at all lived up to the hype. In fact, they've almost invariably stumbled or not really worked at all. Jacob Schulz sat down with Alan Rozenshtein, associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota School of Law and a senior editor at Lawfare, and Susan Landau, a computer science professor at Tufts and a senior contributor for Lawfare, to talk about digital disease surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic. What went wrong, and what are the lessons to be learned?Support Lawfare through Patreon to get access to our ad-free podcast feed and other exclusive content Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bryce Klehm sat down with Ryan Hass, a senior fellow and the Michael H. Armacost Chair in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Ryan is the author of the new book, "Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence." The book is informed by Hass's experience as a foreign service officer in China and by his time in the Obama administration, where he served as the director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the National Security Council. They had a wide-ranging discussion about the United States's China policy, including about President Biden's relationship with Xi Jinping, forced labor in Xinjiang, China's perception of the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan and much more.Support Lawfare through Patreon to get access to our ad-free podcast feed and other exclusive content. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tensions between major social media platforms and the Indian government have reached a new high. In recent months, India has demanded that Twitter remove a range of content critical of the government and has even sent police to Twitter’s offices in New Delhi in what Twitter has called “intimidation tactics”. The government recently instituted new rules that exert strong control over how companies operating in India govern their platforms—rules that have already prompted a legal challenge from Whatsapp in Indian court. On today’s episode of the Lawfare Podcast's Arbiters of Truth series on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Nikhil Pahwa to put these latest clashes between platforms and the Indian government in context. Nikhil is a technology journalist and digital rights activist and the founder of the Indian technology publication MediaNama—and he’s been watching this story closely. Whatever happens, this showdown in the world’s largest democracy will have lasting implications, not only within India but around the globe as well. It’s a geopolitical battle over who gets to assert sovereignty over the internet, and how.Listeners who want more background on the subject of today’s episode might also be interested in this episode with Chinmayi Arun on the Indian government’s clashes with social media, from February 2021. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Violence escalates in Afghanistan as U.S. troops withdraw. President Biden directs intelligence agencies to look for more evidence that a lab leak may have started the covid pandemic. And a ransomware attack targets the world’s largest beef processor. Plus, special guest Madiha Afzal of the Brookings Institution joins the gang. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.