The Lawfare Podcast

In the fourth episode of “After Trump,” the six-part limited podcast series based on the book, "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency," by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, we explore how and when a president is held to account for wild and sometimes criminal behavior.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When President Biden entered office, he inherited a bilateral relationship with Turkey that was strained to the limits by the growing independent streak in that country's foreign policy—and one that had been pushed in unfamiliar directions by his predecessor's direct and often unpredictable personal relationship with Turkey's longstanding president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This past week, the Biden administration made its first major move on the U.S.-Turkey relationship by recognizing the atrocities committed against Armenians by Ottoman authorities in the early 20th century as a genocide, a move that prior presidents had avoided for fear of how Turkey might react.To discuss what these developments may mean for this key bilateral relationship, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Nicholas Danforth of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy and Asli Aydıntaşbaş of the European Council on Foreign Relations. They discussed how Turkey views its place in the world, what this means for its alliance with the United States and how the Biden administration is likely to respond moving forward.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Odds are, you probably haven’t heard of the Israeli government’s “Cyber Unit,” but it’s worth paying attention to whether or not you live in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It’s an entity that, among other things, reaches out to major online platforms like Facebook and Twitter with requests that the platforms remove content. It’s one of a number of such agencies around the globe, which are known as Internet Referral Units. Earlier in April, the Israeli Supreme Court gave a green light to the unit’s activities, rejecting a legal challenge that charged the unit with infringing on constitutional rights.This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic talked to Fady Khoury and Rabea Eghbariah, who were part of the legal team that challenged the Cyber Unit’s work on behalf of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab and Minority Rights in Israel. Why do they—and many other human rights activists–find Internet Referral Units so troubling, and why do governments like the units so much? Why did the Israeli Supreme Court disagree with Fady and Rabea’s challenge to the unit’s activities? And what does the Court’s decision say about the developing relationship between countries’ legal systems and platform content moderation systems?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Biden administration has now responded to two major cyberattacks—one from Russia, the SolarWinds attack, and the other from China, the so-called Hafnium Microsoft Exchange Server attack. Recently, Lawfare has run articles on both of these incidents—a piece from Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike, and a piece from Alex Iftimie, a former Justice Department official and a lawyer at Morrison & Foerster. They joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the Biden administration's response to the attacks. Were they appropriate, both in absolute terms and in relation to each other? Do they send the right messages to the countries in question? Do they go far enough? And what more do we want to see? Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Russian GRU Unit 29155 is in the news again. Czech authorities pin the blame on it for a series of explosions in 2014 that killed two people, and then they expelled an unusually high number of Russian diplomats, dramatically reducing Russia's diplomatic presence in Czechia and perhaps harming its intelligence efforts across Central Europe.To talk about it, David Priess sat down with Michael Schwirtz, an investigative reporter with the New York Times based at the United Nations whose most recent reporting has shed important light on the events of this shadowy Russian military intelligence unit, and John Sipher, the co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment and a retired 28-year veteran of the CIA with significant experience against the Russian target. They discussed this Russian military unit's active measures, Putin's motivations and possible miscalculations, and intelligence collection against and cooperation to thwart this unit, along with the bigger picture of Western relations with Russia.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the third episode of “After Trump,” the six-part limited podcast series based on the book, "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency," by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, we explore the pardon power and what happens when a president abuses it.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim Maurer is a senior counselor for cybersecurity to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Jennifer Daskal serves as deputy general counsel at DHS focused on cybersecurity. And Eric Goldstein serves as the executive assistant director for cybersecurity for CISA, DHS's cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. They joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about what the Biden administration's priority is in cybersecurity domestically, how DHS is using its new authorities that it has received in the National Defense Authorization Act, how CISA has grown as an agency and what success looks like if the administration pursues its goals effectively.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic talked to Sean Li, who until recently was the head of Trust and Safety at Discord. Discord is experiencing phenomenal growth and is an established player in a space that is the new hot thing: audio social media. And as the head of Trust and Safety, Sean was responsible for running the team that mitigates all the bad stuff that happens on a platform. Evelyn and Quinta asked Sean what it’s like to have that kind of power—to be the eponymous “arbiter of truth” of a slice of the internet. They also discussed what makes content moderation of live audio content different from the kind we normally talk about—namely, text-based platforms. As almost every social media platform is trying to get into audio, what should they be prepared for?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week for the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government, David Priess moderated a virtual event called, "Spy Writing in the Real World." The event featured three authors of espionage fiction, two with previous experience working inside the U.S. intelligence community: Brad Thor, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 21 thrillers; Karen Cleveland, a former CIA analyst and New York Times bestselling author of "Need to Know" and "Keep You Close"; and award-winning author and former NSA and CIA officer Alma Katsu, who had written five novels prior to her first new spy novel, "Red Widow." They talked about the spy thriller genre, their challenges within it, their research and their experience with prepublication classification review.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jack Goldsmith sat down with Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, and Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levy Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, to discuss their new book, "National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On." They discussed the holding and legacy of the Pentagon Papers case, as well as some of the many challenges of applying the Pentagon Papers regime in the modern digital era that is characterized by massive leaks and a very different press landscape than the one that prevailed in 1971.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second episode of "After Trump," the six-part limited podcast series based on the book, "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency," by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, we consider the problem of foreign interventions in American political campaigns—and what to do about it.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Wednesday, President Biden announced a full withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, an announcement that comes as the U.S. and Afghan governments have been trying to reach a power sharing agreement with the Taliban. Prior to the withdrawal announcement, Bryce Klehm spoke with Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a New York Times correspondent based in the Kabul bureau and a former Marine infantryman, who walked us through the situation on the ground in Afghanistan over the last year. Following Biden's announcement, Bryce spoke with Madiha Afzal, the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, who talked about the broader implications of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jameel Jaffer and Ramya Krishnan of the Knight First Amendment Institute. What do facial recognition software and President Trump’s erstwhile Twitter habits have in common? They both implicate the First Amendment—and hint at how old doctrines struggle to adapt to new technologies. Evelyn and Quinta talked to Jameel and Ramya about the long-running lawsuit by the Knight Foundation over whether it violates the First Amendment for the president to block people on Twitter—a lawsuit that the Supreme Court just ended. They also asked Ramya and Jameel about the controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI, in light of recent reporting showing just how much law enforcement uses that technology. Clearview is now confronting multiple lawsuits on the grounds that the company’s practices violate privacy laws, and its defense is that its activities are protected by the First Amendment. These cases don’t neatly fit into existing First Amendment categories, so Evelyn and Quinta asked Jameel and Ramya about the possible paths the law might take to adjust to the digital age.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A lot of people are expressing anxiety about white supremacist violent terrorism, yet in a new Brookings paper entitled "Identifying and Exploiting the Weaknesses of the White Supremacist Movement," Daniel Byman, Lawfare's foreign policy editor and a senior fellow at the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, and Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, say that while the threat is real, these movements have weaknesses that other terrorist groups do not. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Byman and Pitcavage to talk about these weaknesses, how white supremacist groups are vulnerable and how law enforcement in the United States can exploit them to reduce the threat.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the countless attacks on ethnic and religious minorities that have taken place in recent months to the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, acts of violence and domestic terrorism are on the rise here in the United States. And a major driver behind many of these actions is a growing hostility toward members of racial and religious minorities among white Americans and a growing willingness to turn to violence as a result. Last week, the Lawfare team was hosted by the National Security Law Society at the Georgetown University Law Center for a live discussion of what this disturbing trend means for U.S. national security. Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare deputy managing editor Jacob Schulz and Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson joined Elizabeth Neumann, a former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration, and Ryan Greer, the national security director for the Anti-Defamation League, to discuss how white extremism and domestic terrorism relate to each other, what's driving radicalization among white Americans and steps the Biden administration, among others, can take to combat it.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this special edition of the Lawfare Podcast, we're turning over our feed to the new podcast series, "After Trump," produced by Lawfare in collaboration with Goat Rodeo and hosted by Virginia Heffernan of Slate's "Trumpcast." "After Trump," based on the "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency" book by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, is a six-part limited series that dives into some of the major themes of the book, outlining Bob and Jack's proposal of reform to our government in the fallout of the Trump Administration. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Virginia Heffernan to introduce the series before "After Trump, Episode 1: Follow the Money," plays in full.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tensions are heating up between Russia and Ukraine, seven years after the seizure by the Russians of the Crimean Peninsula and the incursions into Eastern Ukraine. With troop movements and some saber rattling, is Vladimir Putin trying to send a message to Joe Biden, or perhaps to Ukrainian President Zelensky? Is he trying to satisfy domestic constituencies or distract them? Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alexander Vindman to talk about what Russia is doing and why, and what the Biden administration should do about it.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’re listening to this podcast, the odds are that you’ve heard a lot about QAnon recently—and you might even have read some alarming reporting about how belief in the conspiracy theory is on the rise. But is it really? This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Joseph Uscinski, an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories. He explained why conspiracy theories in America aren’t actually at a new apex, what kinds of people are drawn to ideas like QAnon and what role—if any—social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter should have in limiting the spread of conspiracy theories.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This past weekend, an exceptional series of events rocked the normally quiet nation of Jordan as an apparent schism between members of the country's royal family led to the detention of the country's former crown prince, Prince Hamzeh, and the arrest of several of his associates on allegations that they were undermining the country's national security—potentially in coordination with certain foreign interests. Hamzeh responded with a series of leaked videos in both Arabic and English, accusing the government led by King Abdullah II of ineffectiveness and corruption, dragging the royal family's internal tensions even further into the light of day. To talk through this unexpected crisis, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Bessma Momani of the University of Waterloo and Ghaith al-Omari of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. They discussed the history of royal succession in Jordan, how this latest crisis maps onto Jordan's changing political dynamics and what it all might mean for the broader region.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Natan Sachs is a Brookings senior fellow and the head of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Brookings Foreign Policy program. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Natan to talk about the results of the Israeli election, which are still unclear amid a haze over the entire political system. They talked about what the dispute between the camps is about, the many different factions and what they want, and why they can't sit together easily in a government. They also talked about the fact that Israel doesn't have a budget for the second year in a row, and they discussed whether anyone will be able to prevent the fifth election in two years.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two years ago, a gunman opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing dozens of innocent people. Last December, the government of New Zealand issued a lengthy report on the subject, which Lawfare deputy managing editor Jacob Schulz and Justin Sherman of the Atlantic Council analyzed in a piece on Lawfare. The report is a particularly detailed catalog of how one user of the internet used it to radicalize, to threaten people and to celebrate racist celebrities. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Jacob and Justin to talk about the report of the shooter's internet use and what it all means for content moderation and the discussions about it that we're having today.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Derek Chauvin trial is underway in Minnesota, and the city of Minneapolis last week settled with the family of George Floyd for $27 million. Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Rashawn Ray, the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, to talk about civil settlements. Rashawn is the author of a recent Lawfare article about how to reform the civil settlement system to make it more effective in deterring police misconduct, and they discussed the series of reforms that Rashawn recommends.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Issie Lapowsky, a senior reporter at the tech journalism publication Protocol. They discussed last week’s hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee with the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter—the first time the companies had been called to testify on the Hill after the Capitol riot, which focused public attention on the content moderation policies of tech platforms when it comes to domestic extremism. The hearing produced some interesting takeaways, but also a lot of moments when the CEOs were awkwardly forced to answer complicated questions with a simple "yes" or "no" answer. They also discussed Issie’s reporting on how tech companies have struggled to figure out how to address far-right extremism in the United States as opposed to Islamist extremism. And they talked about Section 230 reform and what it’s like reporting on the tech space.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alvaro Marañon sat down with Erik Larson, a computer scientist, tech entrepreneur and author of the new book, "The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do." They talked about his background and expertise with artificial intelligence, what shaped our modern perception of AI and why the next big break in AI always appears to be 10 or 20 years away. They also discussed the current limitations of artificial intelligence, whether there are any dangers to our current approach and whether AI's advancement to super intelligence is really inevitable.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anti-Asian violence in the United States seems to be on the rise. On March 16, a shooter killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women, at several Atlanta businesses. Across the country, Asian-Americans have shared stories of attacks and harassment, some of which involved racist language in connection with the coronavirus pandemic. Yet there is very little data available that could help journalists and policymakers make sense of this apparent trend. To understand why, Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and the co-founder of AH Datalytics, who recently wrote for Lawfare on why there’s so little reliable data on anti-Asian violence—or on any other kind of hate crime. Jeff discussed the patchwork system by which the FBI currently collects data on hate crimes, what other factors might explain why the data is so unreliable and how improved data could help guide the response to anti-Asian attacks.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held an open hearing that reviewed U.S. Cyber Command's and Special Operation Command's Defense Authorization Requests for fiscal year 2022. The committee heard open testimony from the head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, General Paul Nakasone; the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, General Richard Clarke; and the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, Christopher Maier. The hearing covered a range of issues, from the SolarWinds cyberattack to increased violence in Afghanistan. We stripped out all of the nonsense, speechifying and repetition to bring you just the questions and answers you care about, only once.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexander Reinert is the Max Freund Professor of Litigation & Advocacy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he teaches and conducts research in civil procedure, constitutional law and federal courts. He is the author of the recent article, "Qualified Immunity on Appeal," an empirical assessment, which provides the most comprehensive study so far of the actual way that courts of appeals have handled qualified immunity cases. He wrote about it in an article on Lawfare entitled, "Unpacking a Decade of Appellate Decisions on Qualified Immunity." He joined Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare Live to discuss qualified immunity, what the doctrine is and where it comes from, how courts handle qualified immunity cases in practice, whether it is as much of a shield as it seems to be for cops, if there is any prospect to reform it at the state or federal level and what the future looks like for the doctrine.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic sat down with Brendan Nyhan to discuss the crucial platform that often seems to slip under the radar in discussions of mis- and disinformation: YouTube. Brendan is a professor of government at Dartmouth College, who has just co-authored a report with the Anti-Defamation League on “Exposure to Alternative and Extremist Content on YouTube.” There’s a common conception that YouTube acts as a radicalization engine, pushing viewers from mainstream content to increasingly radical material. But Brendan and his coauthors found a somewhat different story: YouTube may not funnel all viewers toward extreme content, but it does reliably recommend that content to users who are already viewing it. They discussed his findings and how we should understand the role that YouTube plays in the information ecosystem.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been a big week for the seditious conspiracy statute, which has long been on the books, quietly forbidding violent interference with the lawful functions of the United States government. But on 60 Minutes this weekend, the former chief prosecutor supervising the January 6 investigation hinted not too subtly that the seditious conspiracy statute might come out of obscurity and enter into action. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Jacob Schulz, Lawfare's deputy managing editor who has written a series of articles for Lawfare on recent deployments of the seditious conspiracy statute, to talk through the law's recent enforcement history.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our constitutional system involves the written document, plus two and a half centuries of judicial decisions interpreting it. But these two things only scratch the surface. It also involves our constitutional norms, the unwritten rules that govern how actors in our political system behave. For decades, commentators have observed the steady erosion of many of these norms, and in the four years of the Trump administration, the trickle of norm violations became a torrent. As a response, many in academia, the media and politics have called for Congress to pass legislation that would codify what had previously been unwritten norms of behavior, from requiring that presidential candidates disclose their tax returns to limiting the president's pardon power. In a forthcoming article in the Georgetown Law Journal, Jonathan Gould, assistant professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzes many of these proposals and points out the potential unintended consequences of trying to commit unwritten norms to legislative language. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Jonathan about the importance and erosion of constitutional norms, especially within the executive branch, and how best to repair them.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and Alan Rozenshtein, a Lawfare senior editor and professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, to talk about the group of cases that have been filed in connection with the January 6 riot and insurrection. They talked about the database that Hughes is building and maintaining of cases, defendants and charges filed in connection with January 6; the pattern of charges; what the picture looks like so far; if it is likely to get closer to the president and his inner circle and if it will result in a series of seditious conspiracy charges.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jack Goldsmith spoke with New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth about her new book, "This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race." They discussed the dark world of markets for zero-day vulnerabilities that are so vital in offensive cyber operations, the history of the markets, how they work, who the players are and why the United States doesn't control as much as it used to. They also discussed broader issues of U.S. cybersecurity policy, including the recent SolarWinds hack.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and an expert on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statute that shields internet platforms from civil liability for third-party content on their websites. The statute has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, and both President Trump and President Biden separately called for its repeal. So what should we expect in terms of potential revision of 230 during the current Congress? What does Daphne think about the various proposals on the table? And how is it that so many proposals to reform 230 would be foiled by that pesky First Amendment?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Kris sat down with David Robarge, the chief historian at the Central Intelligence Agency, to discuss covert action. All together, around 50 covert actions have been declassified over the years, and Kris and Robarge discuss several of them, involving the Middle East, Western Europe, Africa and Central America. They also talked about the legal and policy rules governing covert action, the process by which covert action is reviewed and approved and the famous "Washington Post test."Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dmitri Alperovitch is the executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, and he's the co-founder and former chief technology officer at CrowdStrike. With Ian Ward, he is the author of the recent article on Lawfare, entitled, "How Should the U.S. Respond to the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Hacks?" Benjamin Wittes sat down with him to discuss the article and the hacks. They talked about how they were similar to one another and how they were different, why the SolarWinds hack has received so much more attention than the much more damaging Microsoft Exchange hack, and whether the U.S. should come down hard on Russia for its activities or if it go easy on the Russians.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex Vindman sat down with retired Admiral James Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman, the authors of "2034: A Novel of the Next World War." Admiral Stavridis spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of four-star admiral and who served as the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO. Elliot Ackerman is the author of several novels, including "Dark at the Crossing," which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and most recently, "Waiting for Eden." They discussed the objective for writing a novel on the next world war, the lessons the novel offers national security professionals and policymakers, and key points in the backstory that precipitated the march to this fictional but highly realistic portrayal of the next world war.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President Joe Biden has conducted military strikes in Syria, has articulated legal theories under which the series of strikes were proper and has temporarily reined in the use of drone strikes. To talk about Biden and war powers, Benjamin Wittes sat down with John Bellinger, who served as the legal adviser at the State Department and the legal adviser for the National Security Council in the Bush administration; Lawfare senior editor Scott Anderson, who worked in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser, as well as in the Iraqi embassy; and Rebecca Ingber, who also worked in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser and is currently a professor at Cardozo Law School. They talked about how the Biden administration justified the strikes in Syria, the reports it has not yet given on its legal and policy framework for counterterrorism, whether this is the year that AUMF reform might finally happen and which authorizations to use military force might finally see reform.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Genevieve Lakier, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School and First Amendment expert. It’s basically impossible to have a conversation about content moderation without someone crying, “First Amendment!” at some point. But the cultural conception of the First Amendment doesn’t always match the legal conception. Evelyn and Quinta spoke with Genevieve about what First Amendment doctrine actually says, how its history might be quite different from what you think and what the dynamism of the doctrine over time—and the current composition of the Supreme Court—might suggest about the First Amendment’s possible futures for grappling with the internet.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wesley Morgan is a former military affairs reporter at Politico and the author of the new book, "The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley." Bryce Klehm sat down with Wesley to talk about the evolution of the war in Afghanistan, from the United States's early hunt for Osama bin Laden, to the increased use of drone strikes during the Obama and Trump administrations. They also discussed the current state of the war in Afghanistan, including the fight against the Islamic State's Afghanistan affiliate.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since 2014, the civil war in Syria has involved an incredibly diverse and complex array of actors representing all manner of ideology and sectarian identity. But one group has captured the public imagination more than perhaps any other: the all-female Women's Protective Units, or YPJ, that have played a central role in the fight against the Islamic State and are continuing to fight for political communities, premised, in part, on gender equality. In her new book, "The Daughters of Kobani," journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon details the journey of several of the young Kurdish women involved in the YPJ and the role they have played thus far in the broader Syrian civil war. Scott R. Anderson sat down with her to talk about the origins of the YPJ, how they have weathered the end of the counter Islamic State campaign and what role they may play in a future Syria.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawfare founder Bobby Chesney and Lawfare contributing editor Steve Vladeck host the weekly National Security Law Podcast from the University of Texas Law School, a discussion of current national security law developments. In their most recent episode, Bobby and Steve discuss a range of topics that we thought would be of interest to listeners, so we are bringing you a distilled version of their conversation. Bobby and Steve talk about recent U.S. air strikes and the Biden administration's war powers report, updated reporting on Islamic State detainees in Iraq and Syria, the report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and a collection of other national security law issues.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Rules Committee held their second hearing to examine the January 6 attack on the Capitol. What explains the delay in deploying National Guard troops? What reforms are the agencies planning to implement in order to better handle the threat posed by domestic extremist violence and white supremacist groups? And why was the intelligence reporting late and insufficient? Four officials from different agencies testified: Melissa Smislova, who performs the duties of the undersecretary of homeland security for intelligence and analysis; Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI counterterrorism division; Robert Salesses, who performs the duties of the assistant secretary for homeland defense and global security at the Defense Department; and Major General William Walker, the commanding general of D.C.'s National Guard. We took out all the nonsense, the opening statements and the repetition, and brought you every question and every answer, only once.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray faced the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to talk about the January 6 riot and insurrection. The hearing covered whether the FBI had intelligence that the riot was planned for January 6 and how it communicated what it knew to the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police, as well as topics from SolarWinds to diversity at the FBI. We cut out all of the nonsense and all of the repetitive questions to bring you only what you need to hear.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many scholars have written about the police, but almost all have done so from the outside. Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University, is one of the few exceptions. In 2016, Brooks—already a successful scholar of national security law and a former official in the Department of Defense—joined Washington, D.C.'s volunteer Police Reserve Corps as a sworn police officer. For several years, she patrolled in some of D.C.'s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, an experience she has chronicled in her new book, "Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City." Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Brooks about her time in law enforcement, the structural challenges facing police in the United States and the prospects for reform.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United States hit targets in Syria associated with two Iraqi militias last week in the first military operations of the Biden administration. To catch up on the situation on the ground in Iraq, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Lawfare Live with Lawfare senior editor Scott Anderson, who served in the embassy in Iraq, and Marsin Alshamary, a postdoctoral fellow with the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy program and an expert in domestic Iraqi politics. They talked about the groups that the U.S. attacked, the constellation of forces in the current Iraqi government, the legal authority for the attack and where Iraqi politics go from here.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 immunizes platforms for the behavior of their users. It's been called by some the Magna Carta of the internet—but how foundational is it? Mary Anne Franks, a professor of law and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami, thinks that Section 230 is indeed a cornerstone of the modern internet, but not in a good way. As part of Lawfare's ongoing Digital Social Contract research paper series, she recently published a paper entitled, "Section 230 and the Anti-Social Contract," in which she argues that far from expanding freedom, Section 230 has simply continued a long tradition of marginalizing the most vulnerable among us. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with her about her paper, about how Section 230 fits into the broader history of American political thought and about her ideas for a better internet.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the director of the Reuters Institute and professor of political communication at the University of Oxford, about the fight between Australia and Facebook. After Australia proposed a law that would force Facebook to pay for content linked on its platform from Australian news sites, Facebook responded by blocking any news posts in the country. The company and the Australian government have since resolved the spat—for now—but the dust-up raises bigger questions about the relationship between traditional media and social media platforms and the future of the media industry. They talked not only about Australia, but also about the role of social media in contributing to political polarization, the outlook for various business models funding journalism and what political solutions—other than Australia’s—might look like.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland faced the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday for a multi-hour session of questions and answers from senators. There were opening statements, there was a lot of speechifying, and there was posturing on the part of senators of both parties. We stripped it all out to bring you just the questions and the answers with no repetition. The committee covered a lot of ground: How will Merrick Garland handle the John Durham investigation? How will he handle white supremacist violence? How will he handle antifa? And will he answer—finally—questions from senators on the committee?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For more than a week now, Texas has been struggling with a massive power outage caused by record low temperatures. Millions have been without power, heat and running water, and at least dozens have been confirmed to have died as a result. All states are confronting extreme weather, but Texas is unique in that its electricity is almost completely independent from the rest of the United States' grid. This has at times lowered costs and increased innovation in the Texas energy markets, but as the current crisis shows, Texas's energy exceptionalism comes at a cost. Alexandra Klass is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and a nationally recognized expert on energy law and policy who recently wrote about the Texas energy crisis for Lawfare. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with her about the current situation and the future of energy policy, both for Texas and for the United States.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.