The Triple Entente Beer Summit was a great success, with an audience that filled the Washington Firehouse loft and a cast that mashed up Lawfare, Rational Security, and the Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast.  We attribute the podcast’s freewheeling interchange to the engaged audience, our profound respect for each other, and, mostly, the beer. After a discussion of between the combined panels, we throw the event over to the audience, which demonstrates that we could have produced almost as good a program by randomly selecting audience members to appear on the panel with us.

This week, following the New York Times revelation of the purported identities of three covert CIA agents, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governmental Studies, along with the James Madison Project and Just Security, hosted an entitled “Whistleblowing and America’s Secrets: Ensuring a Viable Balance,” which with the support of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins, we now present to you in full. In the discussion, Bob Litt, General Counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with Ken Dilanian of the Associated Press, Dr. Gabriel Schoenfeld of the Hudson Institute, and Lawfare’s own Steve Vladeck, tackle the important legal and policy questions surrounding classified leak prosecutions, the responsibilities of the press, whistleblower protections, and the future of the Espionage Act.

Mark Zaid, the Executive Director of the James Madison Project moderated the discussion.

This week, Benjamin Wittes spoke at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas on his and Gabriella Blum's new book, The Future of Violence. Robert Chesney introduces Wittes in what turns into a lively discussion with an engaged audience. 

A few weeks ago, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Brookings for a public address on the current priorities and future prospects for U.S. engagement in Central Asia. With the draw-down in Afghanistan on the horizon, Mr. Blinken makes clear that the United States is not relinquishing its interests in the region. Blinken stresses that the security of the United States is enhanced by a more secure Central Asia, and a stable Central Asia is most likely if the nations there are sovereign and independent countries, connected with one another, and fully capable of defending their own borders. He concludes that investing in connectivity can spur commerce from Istanbul to Shanghai while serving as a stabilizing force for Afghanistan's transition. 

Senior Fellow Fiona Hill introduced Mr. Blinken, and Brookings President Strobe Talbot moderated the conversation. 

When Oula Abdulhamid Alrifai was nearly 19, her family fled Damascus for Washington under death threats from the Bashar Assad regime. Since she left, she has watched as her country has fallen apart. 

With a tenuous ceasefire holding in Ukraine, we asked Fiona Hill onto the show to discuss the man behind the unrest: Vladimir Putin. Fiona is the co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. On the Lawfare Podcast, Fiona tackles the hard questions about Putin. Who exactly is he? What does he want? Is Putin an unhinged madman obsessed with personal appearances or a shewed realist with a nuanced understanding of the geopolitical challenges his country faces? And, how should the West respond to Russian aggression based on what we know about its leader?

It's an important look at an often caricatured but rarely understood man--The Lawfare Podcast: Who is Vladimir Putin? 

This week, Brookings hosted a book launch with Jessica Stern and co-author Brookings Fellow J.M. Berger for their new book, ISIS: The State of Terror. The panel, which also featured Brookings Fellow William McCants, details ISIS’s strategies and techniques--its unprecedented mix of brutality, media savvy, territorial gain, and recruitment. The authors also outline their recommendations for how the United States and its allies should respond to the ISIS threat.

This week, we invited Major General Michael Lehnert (Ret.), the first commander of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, onto the show. In January 2002, General Lehnert deployed to Guantanamo Bay as Commander of Joint Task Force 160 with the mission to construct and operate the detention facilities for Taliban and Al Qaeda Detainees. He is now one of the most prominent voices calling for the closure of the prison facility. In the interview, Gen. Lehnert describes those early days before GITMO became GITMO, how he managed the facility, and what he thinks should be done with the remaining detainees. In the end, he offers advice for avoiding mistakes when conducting critical missions and making hard national security choices. 

This week, Brookings hosted a book launch with Harvard Law Professor Gabriella Blum and co-author Benjamin Wittes for their new book, The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones—Confronting a New Age of Threat. The panel, which also featured Senior Fellow William Galston and the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, explored the book’s themes surrounding the potential dangers of modern technology in a world of many to many threats and defenses. What does technological proliferation mean for the framework of state and global security? How should we think about the interaction of liberty, security, and privacy? And, does this world of empowered individuals challenge the foundations of the liberal state?

This week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a controversial address to a joint session of Congress over US President Barack Obama's objections. The speech, repeatedly interrupted by thunderous applause focused heavily on the nature of the developing nuclear accord between the P5+1 and Iran, and insisted a better deal was possible. The speech was also heavily colored by its proximity to the upcoming Israeli elections, with many Israel watchers wondering whether it was meant to play more to Israel voters than to Congress.

Just after Netanyahu's address, we invited Brookings Fellow Natan Sachs into the Lawfare studios to unpack the speech, including what it means for the US-Israeli relationship, the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, and Bibi's chances in the upcoming election.