The Lawfare Podcast

Live from the #NatSecGirlSquad Conference in Washington, DC, on December 12, 2019, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Danielle Citron, professor of law at Boston University, VP of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, and MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow. Ben and Danielle talked about technology, sexual privacy, sextortion, and the previously unexplored intersections of feminism and cybersecurity.

Direct download: Episode_490.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00am EDT

On Thursday, December 19, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Before that vote, the Brookings Institution's Governance Studies program assembled an all-star panel—Sarah Binder, William Galston, John Hudak, Molly Reynolds, and Lawfare's own Benjamin Wittes—to talk through how we got here and just what might happen next.

Direct download: Episode_489.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:10pm EDT

This week, following a resounding victory by Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party in British elections, Members of Parliament have backed Johnson’s plan to withdraw from the EU by January 31. But before they did that, Benjamin Wittes got on the phone from an undisclosed location with Brookings senior fellow and Brexit expert Amanda Sloat—who was here in the Jungle Studio—to discuss Britain’s recent election, what it means for Brexit, and what it might portend for the future of the United Kingdom.

Direct download: Episode_488.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00am EDT

In this episode of our Arbiters of Truth series, Alina Polyakova and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Peter Pomerantsev, a research fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the author of "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." The book explores how the nature of propaganda has shifted as authoritarian governments move from silencing dissent to drowning dissent out with squalls of disinformation. Pomerantsev argues that this transformation traces back to the cynicism and chaos in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, but now it's become all too familiar around the world.

Direct download: Episode_487.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:05pm EDT

You probably know Peter Bergen from his work at CNN, his books on terrorism and national security, or perhaps his role as vice president at New America. Now, he's turned his reporting and analysis to President Trump, to President Trump's advisors, and to the impact of those relationships on U.S. national security. David Priess sat down with Peter to talk about his new book: "Trump and His Generals," the president's confusing mix of attraction to senior military leaders and disdain for their advice, and what it all means for foreign policy in Washington.

Direct download: Episode_486.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:13pm EDT

Recently, former CIA officer Jerry Lee was arrested and sentenced for his role in misusing classified information. At the same time, reporting indicates that CIA officers in China have been arrested or turned by Chinese authorities. What's the connection between these two? And what does it mean for Chinese counterintelligence work overall? David Priess sat down with John McLaughlin, practitioner-in-residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Shane Harris, intelligence and national security reporter for The Washington Post whose reporting covered much of the Jerry Lee case. They talked about, of course, the Jerry Lee case, counterintelligence in China, and the impact on the U.S.-China relationship.

Direct download: Episode_485.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00am EDT

In this episode from Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation in the run-up to the 2020 election, Quinta Jurecic, Evelyn Douek, and Alina Polyakova spoke with Tiffany Li, a visiting professor at Boston University and a fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Tiffany writes on all the issues discussed on this podcast—disinformation, misinformation, and platform governance—but with an additional twist. She’s also a privacy scholar. They talked about how privacy law can inform platform governance, and how prioritizing privacy might help tackle disinformation—as well as what tensions there might be between those two goals.

Direct download: Episode_484.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:29pm EDT

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss his recently released report on the Russia investigation. The hearing was contentious and occasionally devolved into speechify-ing. But we cut out all the unnecessary repetition and theatrics to leave you with just the questions and answers that you need to hear.

Direct download: Horowitz20v20Committee.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:25pm EDT

We have articles of impeachment. We have a very long inspector general report on the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation. And we have a Lawfare Podcast that you won't want to miss.

Benjamin Wittes spoke with Margaret Taylor, Quinta Jurecic, Jack Goldsmith, and David Kris about the new articles of impeachment unveiled today and the inspector general's investigation. They talk about where the report vindicates the FBI, where it severely criticizes the FBI, and those very peculiar statements from the attorney general and John Durham, the U.S. attorney from Connecticut.

Thanks to Grammarly for supporting The Lawfare Podcast. For 20% off a Grammarly premium account, go to Grammarly.com/lawfare.

Direct download: Episode_483.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:15pm EDT

In a marathon day, the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Judiciary and Intelligence Committee staffers Barry Berke, Daniel Goldman and Steven Castor. The hearing was contentious and filled with interruptions, but we cut out all the grandstanding and theatrics to leave you with just the questions and answers that you need to hear.

00:00:30: Berke

00:30:30: Castor I

00:56:00: Goldman

1:41:00: Castor II

2:27:30: Rep. Nadler/Majority Counsel

3:14:00: Rep. Collins/Minority Counsel

3:52:00: Member questions

Direct download: HPSCI20v20Judiciary.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:44pm EDT

Wargaming has long been a staple of military strategizing, but how do we plan for the future in cyberspace, a realm where governments do not hold a monopoly on capabilities? A new report from the Atlantic Council argues that "visualizing and describing the evolution of cyber capabilities and strategic competition require envisioning multiple futures," and the report sets out to do exactly that. This week, Lawfare's Susan Hennessey sat down with John Watts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Skowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and JD Work, the Bren Chair for Cyber Conflict and Security at the Marine Corps University, who are authors of "Alternate Cybersecurity Futures," along with Nina Kollars, Ben Jensen, and Chris Whyte. They talked about the behind-the-scenes of strategic policy planning, the value of creativity, and what scenarios emerge when you ask cybersecurity experts to predict the future.

Direct download: Episode_482.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:00am EDT

It's another week of impeachment, and we thought it warranted gathering everyone around the table to talk about it. Margaret Taylor, David Priess, Susan Hennessey, and Scott R. Anderson joined Benjamin Wittes in the Jungle Studio to talk about the Schiff report, the Nunes/Jordan pre-rebuttal report, the House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday with a bunch of law professors, and Nancy Pelosi's message on Thursday afternoon that impeachment was going forward.

Direct download: Episode_481.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:01pm EDT

For this episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation in the run-up to the 2020 election, Quinta Jurecic and Evelyn Douek spoke with David Kaye, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. David has argued that social media companies should adopt international human rights law as the standard for content moderation, an idea that's becoming increasingly popular in recent years. And, he has a new book: "Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet." They talked about international law, fake news, and the pitfalls and promises of internet governance.

Direct download: Episode_480.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:42am EDT

Senator Tim Kaine is perhaps best known as Hillary Clinton's 2016 vice presidential running mate. For purposes of Lawfare, however, he is better understood as the Senate's leading exponent of congressional authority in the war powers domain. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senator Kaine in the Senate Russell Office Building to talk about all things war powers. They talked about the United States' new military deployment to Saudi Arabia, congressional anxieties about it, the administration's unwillingness to go to Congress for authorization, and the larger drift of congressional war powers to the executive branch. They also talked, of course, about impeachment—just a little bit.

Thanks to Grammarly for supporting The Lawfare Podcast. For 20% off a Grammarly premium account, go to Grammarly.com/lawfare.

Direct download: Episode_479.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:46pm EDT

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