The Lawfare Podcast

Whatever the President-elect might say on the matter, the question of Russian interference in the presidential election is not going away: calls continue in the Senate for an investigation into the Kremlin's meddling, and the security firm CrowdStrike recently released new information linking one of the two entities responsible for the DNC hack with Russia's military intelligence agency. So how should the United States respond?

In War on the Rocks, Evan Perkoski and Michael Poznansky recently reviewed the possibilities in their piece "An Eye for an Eye: Deterring Russian Cyber Intrusions." They've also written on this issue before in a previous piece titled "Attribution and Secrecy in Cyber Intrusions." We brought them on the podcast to talk about what deterrence of Russian interference would look like and why it's necessary. 

Direct download: Episode_202.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:27pm EDT

The annual Cato Surveillance Conference kicked off this week with a panel on "Intelligence Under a Trump Administration," featuring former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olsen and Lawfare's own Susan Hennessey, Timothy Edgar, and Carrie Cordero. In a discussion moderated by Shane Harris of The Wall Street Journal (and Rational Security), the group discussed how Trump's antagonistic approach to the intelligence community and his dismissive attitude toward intelligence briefings will shape the coming administration. 

 

Direct download: Episode_201.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:18pm EDT

The Lawfare Podcast has made it to our 200th episode! Thank you to all our listeners, old and new.

This week at the Hoover Book Soiree, Jack Goldsmith interviewed Christopher Moran, a professor at the University of Warwick, on his book Company Confessions: Secrets, Memoirs, and the CIA. Moran's work is a history of CIA memoirs, but it's also a history of the Agency itself and its efforts to shape its image in the public eye. How does an organization whose work depends on keeping secrets justify its efforts within a democratic society?

Direct download: Episode_200.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:04pm EDT

Earlier this week, the New York Times published a story by Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, and Mark Mazzetti informing us that the Obama administration had changed its interpretation of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force to more broadly cover the use of force against al-Shabaab, expanding its previous reading of the AUMF as only authorizing force against members of al-Shabaab individually linked to al-Qaeda. Bobby noted the story on Lawfare and provided a few comments. While the news has been somewhat drowned out amidst the hubbub of the presidential transition, the significance of this change in legal interpretation shouldn't be lost—so we brought Bobby and Charlie Savage on the podcast to talk with Benjamin Wittes about where this change came from and what it might mean.

Direct download: Episode_199.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:31pm EDT

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