The Lawfare Podcast
by The Lawfare Institute
The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law, we have doubled down on seriousness at a time when others are running away from it. Visit us at www.lawfaremedia.org.
Episodes
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Lawfare Daily: ‘Little Blue Dot’ and GPS in War and the World with Katherine Dunn
Katherine Dunn, author of the new book “Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World,” and a business reporter and editor based in London, joins Lawfare Contributor Justin Sherman to discuss navigation technologies and bombing in World War II, satellites and the Cold War, and the birth and...
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Lawfare Daily: Why Kyiv Is So Vulnerable to Russian Energy Strikes
In this episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with with Anton Antonenko, the vice president of a Ukrainian energy think tank, DiXi Group, to discuss the energy infrastructure in Kyiv, and why the upcoming winter may be the toughest yet for the Ukrainian capital. To…
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Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 30
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, and Eric Columbus to discuss developments in litigation against Trump administration’s policies, including former FBI Director James Comey being charged for a…
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Lawfare Archive: Natan Sachs on the Latest Israeli Political Crisis
From June 12, 2024: Natan Sachs is the Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He joined Lawfare's Editor in Chief, Benjamin Wittes, to discuss the resignation of Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz, the fate of Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government…
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Lawfare Archive: What Impact did Facebook Have on the 2020 Elections?
From September 11, 2023: How much influence do social media platforms have on American politics and society? It’s a tough question for researchers to answer—not just because it’s so big, but also because platforms rarely if ever provide all the data that would be needed to address the problem. A...
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Lawfare Daily: Sander Tordoir on Europe's Strategic Choices
Sander Tordoir is the Chief Economist of the Center for European Reform (CEPR) and a prominent European voice in the E.U.'s debate over its economic and technological relationship with China. With European trade policy toward China shifting over the past two years from integration towards managed...
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Lawfare Live: Ex-FBI Agents Charged Over Lying to Congress Hearing Dispatch
Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss three-day preliminary hearing before magistrate Judge Faruqui in the criminal case of former FBI analysts charged with false statements to Congress and obstruction. To receive ad-free...
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Rational Security: The “Not So Super Tuesday” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Senior Editors Michael Feinberg and Molly Roberts to talk through the week’s big international news stories, including: “Full Metal Ballot.” For more than 160 years, federal law has made it a crime to bring...
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Lawfare Daily: The Israeli Elections—What Does it All Mean?
For today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett is joined by Natan Sachs of the Center for Middle East Policy, Joel Braunold of the Center Project, and Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk about the Oct. 27 elections in Israel. After record turnout by Israeli voters, especially…
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Lawfare Daily: FCC’s Bad Labs Rulemaking with FCC’s Andy Hendrickson and Alice Jou
Andy Hendrickson, the chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET), and Alice Jou, the chief of staff and deputy chief of OET, join Lawfare Contributor Justin Sherman to discuss the process for testing and certifying devices in the United States, the offshoring of that apparatus,...
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Lawfare Daily: Escalate to What End? Trump's Plan for the Iran War After the Midterms
Former NSC staffers Cole Bucy and Nate Swanson join Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ari Tabatabai and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee to discuss the Iran war eight months in and the…
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Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 23
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Loren Voss, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss developments in the litigation over the Trump administration’s plan for the East Potomac Park and Arch, the 9th...
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Lawfare Archive: Bribery and the Second Trump Administration with John Keller
From July 11, 2025: John Keller, now a partner at Walden, Macht, Haran, & Williams, channeled his experience as the former chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice to talk about bribery with James Pearce, Lawfare Legal Fellow. After explaining the basics of bribery law…
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Lawfare Archive: Ukraine, ATACMS, and Putin’s Nuclear Threats
From November 22, 2024: After more than a year of pleas from Kyiv, the U.S. finally let Ukraine use Western long-range weapons for attacks inside Russia. Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, to talk about...
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Lawfare Daily: What We're Worried About for the Elections
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie K. Orpett talks with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts and Loren Voss, Contributing Editor Renée DiResta, and Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee about what they're watching in the run-up to the midterm elections. Each of them is focused on different...
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Rational Security: The "Snifting Up to Boston" Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes; Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ariane Tabatabai; and Contributing Editor and Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center...
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Lawfare Daily: AI, Child Safety, and the Law
For today’s episode, Lawfare’s Renée DiResta sits down with Riana Pfefferkorn, a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and Cyndie Demeocq, a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, to discuss their new research...
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Lawfare Daily: Investigating AI Cyber Risks, with Asad Ramzanali
With the rise of AI-driver cybersecurity incidents, the conversation on how to monitor and assess these incidents is increasingly on the rise. Lawfare Senior Editor Kevin Frazier sits down with Asad Ramzanali, the Director of Artificial Intelligence & Technology Policy at the Vanderbilt Policy...
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Lawfare Live: East Potomac Park Hearing Dispatch
On October 20 at 9 a.m. ET, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Molly Roberts and Roger Parloff to discuss the October 19 hearing over President Trump's renovation plans at East Potomac Park.
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Lawfare Daily: The Coming Winter and the Latest Betrayal of Ukraine
Jimmy Rushton of the Kyiv Independent and Anastasiia Lapatina, Lawfare’s Ukraine fellow, join Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the latest news from Kyiv: the grave rupture in U.S.-Ukrainian relations, reported breaks in intelligence sharing and in Ukrainian access to Starlink, the…
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Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 16
Benjamin Wittes is joined by Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, and Eric Columbus for a fast-moving tour of the week’s most important Trump-era litigation. You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the...
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Lawfare Archive: Paul Massaro on the United States’ Latest Efforts to Combat Corruption
From April 5, 2022: On June 3, President Biden issued a national security memorandum that established the “Fight Against Corruption” as a core national security interest for the United States. The memo described the staggering costs of corruption, with it being “estimated that acts of corruption...
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Lawfare Archive: An Investigation into Russian State Media and Disinformation
From December 29, 2022: On December 15, the New York Times published an article that detailed an investigation conducted by three of its reporters into how Russian state media uses American right wing and Chinese media to portray the ongoing war in Ukraine to Russian citizens. The investigation...
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Lawfare Daily: The New Command Economy with Kristen Eichensehr and Ashley Deeks
Over the past decade, the U.S. has expanded its use of measures including tariffs, sanctions, export controls, and investment screening to regulate the economy in the name of national security. It has also embraced new ones such as government-owned equity stakes in private companies and new...
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Rational Security: The “Cooking With Gas!” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman and Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Contributing Editor and partner at Steptoe LLP Michel Paradis, to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Fuel Me Once, Shame On…
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Lawfare Daily: Breaking Down Trump’s Diesel Deal with Russia
For today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Rachel Alpert, a partner at Jenner & Block and former chief counsel for the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and Peter Harrell, a visiting scholar at Georgetown’s Institute of...
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Lawfare Daily: The Spy Who Changed the Cold War in the Middle East
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with author and journalist Ben Macintyre to discuss his new book, “Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy,” which details a little known intelligence coup from the Cold War that changed the strategies of great powers in the…
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Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 9th
Benjamin Wittes is joined by Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, and Eric Columbus for a fast-moving tour of the week’s most important Trump-era litigation. They break down the CNN v. Trump press-pool case and why Judge Kelly may be headed for a due-process ruling; the twin Harvard cases…
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Lawfare Archive: Energy Security, Data Centers, and AI
From November 18, 2024: Christie Hicks, the Managing Attorney overseeing Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program, and Mandy DeRoche, a Deputy Managing Attorney in Earthjustice's Clean Energy Program, join Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of...
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Lawfare Archive: President Trump’s Peace Plan for Gaza
From October 2, 2025: In a live conversation on October 1,Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson spoke to Managing Director at S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace Joel Braunold about President Trump’s proposed peace plan for Gaza and what it means for the future of Iraeli-Palestinian...
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Lawfare Archive: National Security and the 2024 Election, Election Management
From September 16, 2024: On Sept. 24, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes moderated a panel discussion featuring Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Fellow Scott R. Anderson, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds, Lawfare Senior Editor and Brookings Fellow Quinta...
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Lawfare Daily: The U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq and the Future of the Iraq-U.S. Relationship
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Dr. Omar Mohammed, a senior researcher with the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University and the author of the blog Mosul Eye, which anonymously documented life under ISIS control in Iraq; Amb. Doug...
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Rational Security: The “Too Much Molly” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Editor in Chief and cohost emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Roberts, and Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution Molly Reynolds to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:...
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Lawfare Daily: Gulf Countries Hedging Amid Iran War Debacle
Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee talks with former CIA analyst Shawn Howard and Ariane Tabatabai of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs about Shawn’s new Foreign Policy essay on how the Gulf states are coping with a war they didn’t start. They discuss why U.S. protection has made the...
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Lawfare Daily: ‘Crossing the Red Line’ in Gaza with Akbar Shahid Ahmed
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Akbar Shahid Ahmed, the diplomatic correspondent at The Washington Sun, to discuss Ahmed’s new book “Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza.” They talk about the top officials in the...
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Lawfare Daily: A Progress Report on the War on Terrorism with Peter Bergen
Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Peter Bergen, author of “All the Presidents' Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America's War on Terror,” to discuss counterterrorism in the 25 years after 9/11, reviewing the many mistakes the United States and al-Qaeda made, as well as some of…
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Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, October 2
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss a legal challenge addressing the president’s authority to wage the Iran war, litigation over the…
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Lawfare Archive: Nayib Bukele's Crackdown on Dissent in El Salvador
From May 20, 2025: El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has made a lot of headlines recently in the United States for his partnership with the Trump administration. Bukele has helped enable President Trump’s scheme to remove supposed Venezuelan gang members from the U.S. under the Alien Enemies...
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Lawfare Archive: Reparations for Russia's Aggression Against Ukraine with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi and Patrick Pearsall
From July 16, 2025: Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sit down with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, Executive Director of the Register of Damage for Ukraine at the Council of Europe and a former legal advisor of the Office of the President of Ukraine…
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Lawfare Daily: The Trump-Xi Summit and U.S.-China AI Competition
Martin Chorzempa is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a leading U.S. expert on China's economy and tech sector. In this week's episode, Peter and Martin unpack President Trump's September 24 summit with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping, talk...
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Rational Security: The “Techs Appeal” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Senior Editors Anna Bower and Michael Feinberg to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including: “Third Country’s the Charm.” On Tuesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way—for the third...
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Lawfare Daily: The Remaking of the Department of Defense
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sits down with Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, to talk about the many ways in which the Trump administration has been remaking DoD. Some changes are announced…
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Lawfare Daily: Did Washington Walk Into Beijing’s Trap? Xi’s State Visit with Jonathan Czin
Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee sits down with Jonathan Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, to unpack Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington, his first in 11 years. The two former…
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Lawfare Live: Debriefing the D.C. Circuit's Argument Over Contempt Inquiry
On September 29 at 9:30 a.m. ET, the full D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument over Judge Boasberg's inquiry into whether top Trump administration officials committed criminal contempt when they sent 137 Venezuelans to CECOT, a notorious El Salvador prison. Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes...
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Lawfare Daily: The Policy Implications of the AI Vibe Shift
Lawfare Senior Editor Kevin Frazier is joined by Scaling Laws co-host Assemblyman Alex Bores of New York, AVERI Director of U.S. Policy Nat Purser, and Institute of Law and AI Managing Director of U.S. Law Mackenzie Arnold to discuss recent developments in the AI risk environment, what led us…
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Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, September 25
In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff discussed the D.C. Circuit rejecting Anthropic’s challenge to the Pentagon’s exclusion of Claude from its supply chain, the Supreme Court allowing the Department of Homeland Security…
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Lawfare Archive: Mikhail Zygar on Putin, the Russia-Ukraine War, and Press Freedom
From April 23, 2025: On today's episode, Mikhail Zygar, a renowned Russian journalist living in exile in the U.S. and the author of multiple books on Vladimir Putin, joined Lawfare Associate Editor Olivia Manes to discuss his experience as the founder of one of the last independent Russian media...
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Lawfare Archive: Robert Mahari on Addictive Intelligence, Digital Attachment Disorders, and Other AI-related Concerns
From October 1, 2024: Robert Mahari, a joint JD-PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to explain how increased use of AI agents may lead humans to form…
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Lawfare Daily: Iran War Update—and How We Got Here
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett is joined by Ariane Tabatabai and Julia Curlee. Ari is Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare, and Julia Curlee is a Public Service Fellow at Lawfare. They...
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Rational Security: “The Right Kind of American for Rational Security” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including: "The Xi-Quel." This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for a three-day state...
About this show
The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law, we have doubled down on seriousness at a time when others are running away from it. Visit us at www.lawfaremedia.org.
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