The Lawfare Podcast

From April 8, 2022: Last week on Lawfare Live, Jacob Schulz sat down with Andrew Mines, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mines helps lead the Program on Extremism's efforts to keep track of criminal charges resulting from the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill siege. They talked about the U.S military’s efforts to counter extremism within its ranks. Mines is the recent author of a Lawfare piece on the subject, and they talked through the history of the problem, the history of Defense Department efforts to fix it and where the department is still coming up short.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.

On today's podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett is joined by Brian Hoxie to get an update on the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA). The legislation was passed in 2021 in response to reports that the Chinese government was committing major human rights abuses against its Uyghur population, including disappearances and forced labor. Three years later, where do things stand?Hoxie is the director of the Forced Labor Division at U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Trade, which is the office charged with enforcing the law. He explained what the law does, how it's implemented on the ground, and what the U.S. government is doing to combat forced labor.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.

It's time for Lawfare's annual "Ask Us Anything" podcast.You called in with your questions, and Lawfare contributors have answers! Benjamin Wittes, Kevin Frazier, Quinta Jurecic, Eugenia Lostri, Alan Rozenshtein, Scott R. Anderson, Natalie Orpett, Amelia Wilson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff addressed questions on everything from presidential pardons to the risks of AI to the domestic deployment of the military.Thank you for your questions. And as always, thank you for listening.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.

For the podcast’s annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-hosts emeritus Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including:How will the collapse of the Assad regime impact the region? And can the United States help create a secular, democratic Syria?How is the pending TikTok ban even enforceable (if it is)?What national security story from 2024 deserved more attention?Won’t the Fifth Circuit’s recent Tornado Cash opinion simply lead the Treasury Department to sanction the cryptocurrency Ethereum as a whole?What are the most underrated threats to U.S. national security in the last half of this decade?What will be the Trump administration’s first major national security misstep?How worried should the United States be about the BRIC countries’ recent discussions of forming their own reserve currency?For object lessons, Trevor recommended insightful indie video games for our three hosts based on their interests: “Bury Me, My Love” for Scott; “We. The Revolution” for Alan; and “Not for Broadcast” for Quinta. Thomas endorsed the podcast and associated media company “Popular Front” on uncovered conflict issues. Keith threw his support behind the podcast “It Did Happen Here” about Portland’s anti-racist skinhead movement. Connor recommended the books “The Queen of Cuba,” by Peter Lapp, and “The President’s Book of Secrets,” by Lawfare alum David Priess, as well as the docuseries “FBI True.” Keenan followed up with another book recommendation, Daniel Immewahr’s “How to Hide an Empire.” And Liz endorsed Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s “Ashley’s War,” about women who deployed to Afghanistan as cultural support teams for special operations units.And that’s it for 2024! But don’t worry, Rational Security and the whole Lawfare team will be back with you in the new year to help make sense of what’s to come in national security in 2025—now back at our old release day and time, at midday on Wednesdays (D.C.-time) every week!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.

From August 8, 2023: Just weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the life sentence of a Yemeni national serving out his time at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. He had appealed this life sentence, in part on the grounds that his conviction was based on evidence obtained by torture. Meanwhile, at the Guantanamo military commissions, another detainee tried to appeal charges against him on the basis that torture-obtained evidence was used in his referral for trial by the military commissions—but in June, the body that reviews referrals for trials at Guantanamo denied this appeal. He and his co-defendants are currently set to have pre-trial hearings in October. All of this is happening despite the fact that in 2022, in a case about a different Guantanamo detainee, the Biden administration’s Justice Department committed to a reinterpretation of a key statute that blocks the use of torture-obtained evidence in Guantanamo litigation and reaffirmed that it would not try to admit statements that the detainee gave while in CIA custody. So how and why is it that torture-obtained evidence still seems to be being used in certain GTMO cases? To understand the issues, Lawfare Associate Editor Hyemin Han spoke to Scott Roehm, Director of Global Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Victims of Torture, and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School. They talked about the history of torture evidence at GTMO, dove into a few cases in context of the Justice Department’s 2022 re-interpretation, and discussed what this all might mean for other GTMO detainees 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.

After more than three years, Chatter is ending its run. In this episode, Shane and David reflect on the diverse range of topics at the frontiers of national security that this podcast has explored—from spy fiction to lessons of history, from climate change to the visual and musical arts, and from sports and culture to the practice of intelligence.Along the way, they refer back to many of the podcast’s brilliant guests while lamenting conversations yet unrealized and specific issues yet unaddressed. And they finally ask *each other* several questions from the Chatterbox before closing it. (Forever?)Works mentioned in this episode: Many too many to list. Goodbye, and thank you for listening.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

Daniel Holz, professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the founding director of the Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab), joins Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to discuss existential risks, the need for greater awareness and study of those risks, and the purpose of the Doomsday Clock operated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.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.

From December 14, 2021: Syria’s decade-long civil war has left the state and economy shells of their former selves. But a new industry is stepping in to fill the void: the manufacture and export of illicit drugs, specifically Captagon, a type of amphetamine that has a growing global market. To better understand Syria’s emerging role in the global Captagon trade, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Caroline Rose of the New Lines Institute, who has been tracking this industry's development for several years and is preparing to release a major report on the topic. They discussed the origins of Captagon, how it came to Syria, and how it is being used by the Assad regime, its allies and their proxies across the region.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.