In the past 24 hours, the Financial Times reported that Russian lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin testified before Robert Mueller's grand jury; Politico carried that the Mueller team is cooperating with the New York Attorney General to investigate Paul Manafort; and the Wall Street Journal broke that the President's lawyers have provided memos to the Special Counsel arguing that the president cannot commit obstruction of justice and questioning Jim Comey's credibility. Shane Harris and Paul Rosenzweig joined Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes to discuss the recent developments.

Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes answer listener questions about Lawfare, the podcast, and current events in law and national security.

Friday morning, the White House announced it will elevate Cyber Command to a full unified combatant command. Within 60 days, the Secretary of Defense will recommend whether Cyber Command should also split from the National Security Agency. On Thursday, as rumors of the announcement surfaced, Susan Hennessey spoke to Bobby Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-founder of Lawfare, and Michael Sulmeyer, Director of the Cyber Security Project at the Belfer Center, about the organizational and operational consequences of elevating and splitting Cyber Command.

Filmmaker and cyclist Bryan Fogel talks about his new movie, Icarus, about Russian subversion of international doping rules in sports—and how it relates to the current investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The growing threat from North Korea has intensified during the past few weeks after a series of missile tests demonstrated that the Kim regime may soon be able to strike the continental United States. This week, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Mira Rapp-Hooper, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and Stephan Haggard, a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, to discuss recent events on the Korean peninsula and the path forward for the United States and the international community. They addressed the diplomatic and military options for addressing the North Korean threat, the likelihood that the Kim regime will respond to traditional deterrence strategies, and how a new administration in the U.S. changes the dynamics in the region. 

On December 31, 2017, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act will sunset. Officials insist that the provision authorizes critical intelligence gathering, but as of yet, Congress has not signaled whether it will give a clean reauthorization of the bill, pass it with amendments, or allow it to lapse altogether. In this week's podcast, Susan Hennessey sits down with FBI General Counsel Jim Baker and the Bureau's Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch Carl Ghattas to discuss the legal and operational elements of Section 702. 

This week on the Lawfare Podcast, Jack Goldsmith interviews Graham Allison at the Hoover Book Soiree about Allison's new book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?.  The conversation covers the history of rising and declining powers, how the North Korean regime affects the security dynamic between U.S. and China, and how to preserve peace where Thucydides would predict war.

At this point, it’s widely accepted that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election; the question now is what the United States should do about it. At Third Way, Mieke Eoyang, Evelyn Farkas, Ben Freeman, and Gary Ashcroft have a new paper on the subject, titled “The Last Straw: Responding to Russia’s Anti-Western Aggression.” Mieke and Evelyn came to the studio to talk with Benjamin Wittes about their proposals, which range from sanctions to FARA reforms.

This week, Ben discusses recent events in cybersecurity with Matt Tait. Matt shared his views on WannaCry, NotPetya, and what companies and governments can do to protect against such attacks in the future.

Today, Shane Harris of The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn." He sat down with Benjamin Wittes to discuss the story in this special edition of the podcast.