The Lawfare Podcast

From October 24, 2022: Last month, the George Washington University Program on Extremism published a report called, “Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States.” To talk through that report and a recent Lawfare article on the topic, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Ilana Krill, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism, and Seamus Hughes, the program's deputy director. They discussed the white supremacists and Salafi-jihadists who make up these movements, the encrypted channels through which propaganda and plans are spread, and what's to be done to protect critical infrastructure in t...

From September 28, 2021: Over the weekend, Germany held elections to see who will succeed Angela Merkel as Germany's chancellor. The results are in, but there's still a lot of coalition building to go. To break it all down, Jacob Schulz sat down with Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Yascha Mounk, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, both of whom are experts in German politics. They talked about the election, how to make sense of the results, and w...

From March 29, 2023: We live in a time of seemingly constant catastrophes, and we always seem a step behind and still fumble when they occur. It's no longer about preventing disasters from occurring, but learning how to use the tools at our disposal to minimize the consequences when they inevitably do.Juliette Kayyem has just written a book about it all called, “The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters.” Juliette is a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a CNN national security analyst, and David Priess sat down with her to t...

When Congress passed the CHIPS Act in 2022, it was the first major piece of U.S. industrial policy legislation in decades and was intended to expand America's ability to manufacture the computer chips that are vital for everything from AI to phones and modern automobiles. Mike Schmidt, distinguished visitor at Princeton University's Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies and a non-resident senior fellow at the Institute for Progress, was the first employee of the Commerce Department office tasked with turning the CHIPS Act into an actual program that is today supporting the construction of hundreds of billions of dollars...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Senior Editors Molly Roberts and Eric Columbus, and Contributing Editor Renée DiResta, to talk through the week’s big domestic news stories, including:“Signed, Sealed, Undelivered.” As the first mail ballots of the 2026 midterms go out this week, a fast-moving legal fight over President Trump’s effort to reshape mail-in voting is racing toward the Supreme Court. At issue is a new U.S. Postal Service rule—stemming from a Trump executive order—that requires states to submit absentee voters’ information to a federal portal before USPS will deliver their m...

Peter Salib, Associate Professor at the UH Law Center and co-Director of the Center on AI Law & Risk, joins Kevin Frazier, Director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to break down the postmortems produced by METR and Redwood Research and OpenAI on the lab’s failure to contain AI agents undergoing testing, which resulted in a hack of Hugging Face.The duo briefly cover the timeline of what exactly transpired and explore the technical reasons and policy decisions that allowed the hack to tr...

In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Molly Roberts and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court granting a stay of the district court's preliminary injunction, allowing President Trump to continue to build the White House ballroom while litigation is ongoing, and the information about the U.S. Postal Service's system for handling mail ballots released by a whistleblower to Senator Blumenthal.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s homepage on the litigation, Bluesky account, and WITOAD merch....

Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Tricia Bacon, professor at American University, and Antonia Juelich, International Security Lead at the Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy (CASP), to talk about how different terrorist groups are using artificial intelligence and how governments are employing AI to fight them. They discuss how Boko Haram and other terrorist groups are using AI to become more deadly, terrorist group problems with using AI, the risk of catastrophic AI-enabled terrorism, and what governments and companies need to do better.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at...

In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, Kate Klonick, and Eric Columbus to discuss a judge finding the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation of Anthropic unlawful, significant developments in the litigation challenging President Trump’s mail in ballot executive order, the prosecution of Representative LaMonica McIver, a filing from Trump suggesting that the Kennedy Center may be torn down, a district judge denying Minnesota’s motion to extradite an indicted ICE agent, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump...

From March 5, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare general counsel and senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy within Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, to discuss his new book: "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare."They discussed Fishman's own career at the cutting edge of economic statecraft, the evolving toolkit it has come to present U.S. policymakers, the role he thinks it will play in our new era of major power competition, and what it may all mean...

From February 11, 2022: Over the past few weeks, Canada has been living through its own insurrectionary moment, as a series of trucker convoys have used tractor trailer trucks to occupy much of downtown Ottawa, launch protests in other major Canadian cities, and block points of entry along the country's southern border with the United States. While nominally objecting to Canadian vaccination mandates, particularly as applied to truckers, the convoy movement has at times made even more ambitious demands, including the dissolution of the Trudeau government, and it has close ties to far right-wing nationalists and ethno-nationalist organizations, both in Canada...

Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, to discuss who is likely to win the October 27 Israeli elections and what the consequences might be for wars in Gaza and Iran as well as Israeli domestic politics. They also talk about the role of small parties and how Trump might sway the vote.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes, Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Contributing Editor Alex Zerden to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:“Skynet’s the Limit.” A Russian drone guided entirely by onboard artificial intelligence—with no human directing the final strike—appears to have killed three civilians at a gas station in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on July 6, in what experts believe may be the first killings carried out by a fully autonomous Russian weapon. As both armies race toward greater battlefield autonomy—driven in part by electr...

Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law and a member of Meta’s Oversight Board, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and guest co-host Lawfare Senior Editor Kate Klonick, to discuss what frontier AI companies can learn from the Oversight Board. Yoshino recently co-authored a Tech Policy Press piece with fellow Board member Ronaldo Lemos arguing that meaningful AI oversight should feature independent and representative overseers, external standards, and transparent, reasoned de...

Lawfare Public Service Julia Curlee has written an article on the incentives facing intelligence community members when they are purged from government. Entitled “The Censorship Machine: Silencing the National Security Workforce,” and published on August 26, the piece explains why more former public servants are not speaking out about what they saw in government. She and former FBI Special Agent Mike Feinberg, now a Lawfare senior editor, joined Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes to discuss the article, the pressures former officials are facing not to talk, and the sheer numbers who are keeping quiet.To receive ad-free podcasts, beco...

Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Andrew Yeo, senior fellow and the Korea Foundation Chair at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies and professor of politics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to talk about Trump's decision to engage in talks with North Korea's leader while curtailing military exercises with South Korea. They discuss what might be expected from negotiations with North Korea, how Seoul perceives Trump's policy changes, and how curtailing military exercises will affect South Korean and U.S. capabilities.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfar...

From September 13, 2023: On August 30, soldiers and high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of Gabon seized control of government buildings and communication channels in the capital city of Libreville, detaining Gabon’s President Ali Bongo in his residence and declaring an end to the Bongo family’s 56-year rule. It was a coup—one of nine in the last three years in West and Central Africa, including in Niger just one month prior.  Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien spoke with Naunihal Singh, author of the book Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, to discuss the spate of coups...

From April 11, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviewed Tom Karako, the Director of the Missile Defense Program at CSIS, to discuss the Trump administration's missile defense proposals known as "Golden Dome." Karako explains the purpose of Golden Dome, its feasibility and cost, the likely reactions of China and Russia, and what realistic success would look like.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast...

In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, and Eric Columbus to discuss Chief Justice Roberts issuing a stay of the injunction preventing the construction of the White House ballroom, updates in the prosecution of Don Lemon, two courts of appeal ruling against acting U.S. attorneys, developments in the Kennedy Center litigation and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch....

Matt Abrams, technologist, investor, and co-founder of $1 Billion for Trust, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the collapse of institutional trust and how AI may accelerate—or potentially help reverse—that trend.The conversation explores Matt’s work to rebuild trust in information ecosystems, interpersonal relationships, and major institutions. Along the way, the duo examine the relationship between AI, information integrity, labor disruption, institutional legitimacy, and democratic resilience.Find Scaling Laws on the Lawfare website, and subscribe to nev...