The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
<p>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.</p><p>Support this show <a target="_blank" rel="payment" href="http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare">http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare</a>.</p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
Recent Episodes
20 episodesLawfare Daily: What Do the Russians Actually Think About the War?
On today’s episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina talks to Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about how the Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy sites are shifting attitudes towards the war inside Russia. They also discuss Maria’s latest report, co-authored with Jade McGlynn, called “Russian Attitudes Are Shifting as the War’s Effects Come Home.”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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: AI Targeting Systems Are Coming—But Not as Fast as You Think
On this episode, Senior Editor Kate Klonick speaks with Steve Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about his recent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists essay on AI targeting systems. Feldstein argues that the conventional wisdom about AI warfare has it backwards: the technology's battlefield debut in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza is real and consequential, but AI targeting is not a model you download—it's a stack of surveillance infrastructure, data pipelines, battle management software, and strike capacity that takes decades and billions to build, which means it will spread far more slowly and unevenly than the common narrative suggests.Among the things they discuss: what the Iran War's staggering Maven numbers do and don't prove, how Israel became the case study in what it actually takes to build an AI kill chain, why the same handful of American tech companies that govern online speech now supply the infrastructure of targeting—and who is accountable when they do, whether the UAE is next, and whether export controls, or norms, can realistically slow any of it down.Additional resources:Steve Feldstein, “Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalry, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare” (St. Martin's Press, September 2026)Steve Feldstein, "Anthropic-Pentagon Feud Over AI Technology Is a Bad Sign" (Foreign Policy, February 2026)Steve Feldstein, “The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance” (Oxford University Press, 2021)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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Taking Stock of the Ukraine-Russia Talks
Lawfare Contributing Editor Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Eric Ciaramella, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Samuel Charap, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, to take stock of the U.S.-led negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. They discuss the improvements in Ukraine's position, the structure of negotiations, territorial questions, and security commitments to Ukraine.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, Jul 10
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Justice Department settling a second suit with Michael Flynn, developments in the E. Jean Carroll litigation, the D.C. Circuit denying a stay pending appeal of the order to take Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center, 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.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: How CISA Is Working to Protect the Election
From October 30, 2024: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has taken a leading role in coordinating efforts to secure the 2024 election—from ensuring the physical security of election workers, to protecting election systems from cyber threats, to identifying foreign influence campaigns and preparing for deepfakes. With a week until Election Day, Senior Editors Quinta Jurecic and Eugenia Lostri spoke with CISA’s Cait Conley, Senior Advisor to the agency’s director, about how CISA is working to protect 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 show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: What French Politics Means for Europe and the United States
From April 10, 2025: On today's episode, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke with Tara Varma, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, about the latest in French politics. On March 31, far-right leader Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzlement and banned from politics, though polling showed her in the lead for the 2027 presidential elections. In the last few weeks, current French president Emmanuel Macron has been carving out a place for French leadership amidst the upheaval in Europe’s relationship with the United States. Meanwhile, the push to build European defense capacity—and Trump’s new tariffs—are raising a lot of complicated questions.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Prophecy, Prediction, and Power with Carissa Véliz
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as well as a tutorial fellow at Hertford College, at the University of Oxford. They speak about Véliz’s paradigm-shifting, free-ranging new book, “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI,” including discussions on the history of prediction, why a healthy democracy—and a life well lived—requires uncertainty, and Véliz’s belief that “artificial intelligence is the new Oracle of Delphi and tech executives the new prophets.”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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rational Security: The “Scoot Over” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Editor in Chief and co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes and Senior Editors Anna Bower and Michael Feinberg to talk through the latest in national security news, including:“Humphrey’s Executioner.” On June 29, the Supreme Court closed out its term with a trio of decisions on the president’s power to fire officials at supposedly independent agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, a 6–3 majority upheld Trump’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and overruled the 90-year-old precedent Humphrey’s Executor, handing the president at-will removal power over roughly two dozen multimember agencies. The same day, in Trump v. Cook, the Court refused 5–4 to let Trump remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, carving out a special exemption for the central bank. And a day later, in Blanche v. Perlmutter, the justices declined to let Trump oust Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, whose office sits within the legislative branch. Taken together, what do these cases tell us about the unitary executive and the future of agency independence?“For Your Lies Only.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in freefall. Since Bill Pulte—a housing-finance official with no intelligence background—took over as acting DNI on June 19, he has demanded a roster of every employee, fired the head of the office that oversees the President’s Daily Brief, and all but liquidated the National Intelligence Council. The fight over his appointment has already cost the government its Section 702 surveillance authority, which lawmakers let lapse rather than leave in his hands, and Trump abruptly canceled the confirmation hearing for his own permanent nominee, Jay Clayton, to keep the “less shackled” Pulte in place. How did the nation’s top intelligence coordinator get here—and how much damage can a politicized ODNI actually do?“Fixer Upper.” In one of the stranger turns of the Trump era, Michael Cohen—the former “fixer” whose testimony helped convict Trump of 34 felonies—says he and the president have reconciled. Cohen, who once vowed to flee the country if Trump won, said that the ice between them “didn’t just melt, it broke,” and he is now taking a weekend slot on a conservative station with what he says was Trump’s “glowing recommendation.” The thaw arrives as Trump’s appeal of his New York conviction and related civil fraud judgment grind forward—and after Cohen publicly claimed he felt “pressured and coerced” to testify. What might Cohen’s turn mean for that pending appeal?In object lessons, everyone is in a unifying mood. Ben demonstrates how RAGtime, his co-creation with AI overlord Claude to develop and analyze datasets, can find common cause between this week’s co-hosts. Mike is enthusiastic about the new Criterion Collection bringing together all of Stanley Kubrick’s works. Scott is reaching for perhaps humanity’s greatest unifier—a certain beverage that can be enjoyed across political persuasions and coasts alike. And Anna is bringing us all to the world of personal essays with Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter.” 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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Nuclear Weapons in the Age of AI, with Joshua Keating
For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Vox Senior Correspondent Joshua Keating to discuss his special new series on how artificial intelligence is impacting the use and development of nuclear weapons. Together, they explore what AI may mean for nuclear command and control moving forward, how it is impacting nuclear arms development, how these trends are intersecting the breakdown of the global nonproliferation regime, and what it all means for the risk of nuclear escalation moving forward.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Military, Elections, and the Law
Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes talks with Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Senior Editors Loren Voss and Molly Roberts about the limits the Constitution and statutes put on the use of military in U.S. elections—as well as the arguments an eager executive might make to skirt those restrictions. They discuss how the history of domestic deployment law shows that legislators have long believed voting deserves special protection from military involvement. They also explain why, ahead of the 2026 midterms, that isn't as reassuring as it might sound.For more on this topic, see two recently published articles by Orpett, Voss, and Roberts in Lawfare on how the law does—and doesn’t—keep the military out of elections.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: What's Happening at ODNI?
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Lawfare Senior Editor Mike Feinberg and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee about the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which was created to oversee the intelligence community. But much like the IC itself, the ODNI is somewhat mysterious to the general public—which makes it difficult to tell when something is going wrong. They talk about what ODNI does, why it exists at all, and how recent developments are undermining its mission.Read more of Mike and Julia’s analysis in their recent article in Lawfare, “Gradually, and Then Suddenly: The Decline and Fall of ODNI.”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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, July 2
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Kate Klonick, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s rulings in the birthright citizenship case and Slaughter, indictments over purported vandalism at the Reflecting Pool, former CIA Director John Brennan’s civil suit against the Department of Justice, geofencing warrants, 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.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: The National Intelligence Strategy with Michael Collins of the National Intelligence Council
From September 1, 2023: The National Intelligence Strategy is out, and David Kris, a founder of Culper Partners, sat down to talk about it with Michael Collins, the acting head of the National Intelligence Council. They discussed many aspects of U.S. national security, defense, cyber, and intelligence strategy, including the increasing geopolitical significance of non-state entities, and even the meaning of the word intelligence itself. They also cover Mike's long and illustrious career inside the U.S. intelligence community and his thoughts about the future of U.S. intelligence.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: Civil Military Relations in the Trump Administration
From July 2, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviews Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the Naval War College and Columbia University, to discuss the Trump administration's handling of the U.S. military. Cohn discusses the firings of senior military officials, military parades, and the U.S. military at the U.S-Mexico border and in Los Angeles. She also assesses which policies are of genuine concern and which are overstated. 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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: Exploding Pagers and Air Strikes
From September 24, 2024: Israel and Hezbollah seem to be headed for a major war. Over the past several weeks, Israel has taken a series of escalatory steps along its northern border, targeting major Hezbollah figures, blowing up pagers used by thousands of Hezbollah operatives, and—most recently—hitting targets all over southern Lebanon associated with Hezbollah. Will it lead to all-out war? Lawfare’s Editor-in-Chief, Benjamin Wittes, sat down with Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson and Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman to talk over the latest developments between Israel and its most capable military foe.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: What the Supreme Court Said About the President's Power Over Independent Agencies
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Nick Bednar, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and a contributing editor at Lawfare. They talk about two Supreme Court cases issued last week that will have a huge impact on the president's authority over agencies that Congress set up to be independent. In Slaughter v. Trump, the Court held that the president has the power to remove members of independent agencies who had previously been understood to have employment protections that forbade the president from firing them. In Cook v. Trump, the Court carved out a special exception to that rule for the Federal Reserve. They discuss Nick's recent article for Lawfare, what the opinions say, what they fail to say, and what it means for the workforce that makes the federal government function.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Trump's Cuba Problem
Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Professor Javier Corrales, Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Science and Department Chair of Political Science at Amherst College, to discuss the Trump administration's efforts to pressure Cuba and support regime change there. They discuss why the Cuban regime stays in power, the effectiveness of different U.S. policy instruments used against Cuba, why Professor Corrales thinks that the Venezuela approach probably would not work in Cuba, and what a post-communist Cuba might 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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: ‘The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI’—A Conversation with Cory Doctorow
On this episode of Lawfare Daily, Senior Editor Kate Klonick and Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein speak with Cory Doctorow—science fiction author, activist, journalist, adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the writer who coined "enshittification"—about his new book, “The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.” Doctorow argues that the most important thing about the AI boom isn't what the technology can or can't do, but the historic investment bubble and the new arrangements of work being built on top of it—the same analytic lens he brought to platform decay, now turned on AI.They discuss whether the AI bubble will actually burst or merely deflate, and the unit economics underneath it; the "reverse centaur," the worker conscripted to serve the machine; and how it maps onto a broader culture and questions of AI "knowledge collapse," the human analogue to AI model collapse.Additional Resources:Cory Doctorow's daily newsletter, Pluralistic Ed Zitron, "The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble," (Where's Your Ed At, 2025)Andrew J. Peterson, "AI and the Problem of Knowledge Collapse" (arXiv, 2024)Benjamin Recht, “The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us” (Princeton University Press, 2026)This episode also ran as an episode of Scaling Laws with an introduction from Alan Rozenshtein. Find Scaling Laws on the Lawfare website, and subscribe to never miss an episode.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, June 26
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s decisions on TPS for Haitians and Syrians and in an asylum processing case, a federal judge squashing portions of President Trump’s election executive order, John Bolton pleading guilty, an update in the criminal prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center, 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.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: How's the Iran Deal Really Going?
From June 4, 2016: This week, the Brookings Institution held an event on a new Brookings report on implementation of the Iran Deal: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) adopted by Iran and the P5+1 partners in July 2015 was an effort not only to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons but also to avert a nuclear arms competition in the Middle East. But uncertainties surrounding the future of the Iran nuclear deal, including the question of what Iran will do when key JCPOA restrictions on its nuclear program expire after 15 years, could provide incentives for some of its neighbors to keep their nuclear options open.In their Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Series monograph, “The Iran Nuclear Deal: Prelude to Proliferation in the Middle East?,” Robert Einhorn and Richard Nephew assess the current status of the JCPOA and explore the likelihood that, in the wake of the agreement, regional countries will pursue their own nuclear weapons programs or at least latent nuclear weapons capabilities. Drawing on interviews with senior government officials and non-government experts from the region, they focus in depth on the possible motivations and capabilities of Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates for pursuing nuclear weapons. The monograph also offers recommendations for policies to reinforce the JCPOA and reduce the likelihood that countries of the region will seek nuclear weapons.On May 31, the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative hosted a panel to discuss the impact of the JCPOA on prospects for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Brookings Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Foreign Policy Suzanne Maloney served as moderator. Panelists included H.E. Yousef Al Otaiba, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States; Derek Chollet, counselor and senior advisor for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund; Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Einhorn; and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Richard Nephew.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.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.