The Lawfare Podcast

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:"The Xi-Quel." This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for a three-day state visit—his first to the U.S. capital in more than a decade, and the second Trump-Xi summit of 2026 after the president’s own trip to Beijing in May. The pageantry will be considerable: Trump plans to greet Xi personally at Joint Base Andrews, followed by a Rose Garden honor guard, a bilateral meeting, and a state dinner. But the substance is heavier than the ceremony. With a 90-day tariff truce set to expire on November 10, China’s rare-earth export controls hanging over global supply chains, a pending $14 billion arms package for Taiwan, and questions about Beijing’s economic lifeline to Iran, the two leaders face a crowded and contentious agenda. What can we actually expect from this summit? Is anyone anticipating a breakthrough—or just a managed continuation of what one analyst called a “managed stalemate”?"A Fjord in the Road." On Friday, President Trump announced that the United States, Denmark, and Greenland had reached an agreement giving Washington what he described as “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in Greenland—capping a year of tension in which Trump had repeatedly threatened to take the Arctic island by economic or even military force. Denmark and Greenland insist the deal respects Greenlandic sovereignty and territorial integrity even as it clears the way for a major expansion of the U.S. military footprint and bars adversaries like Russia and China from establishing bases or making “sensitive investments” there without U.S. approval. Does the deal really give Trump the “permanent control” he is touting? And how did a standoff that once looked like an existential crisis for a NATO ally end up here?"Contempt of Court." World leaders are gathering in New York this week for the annual high-level session of the UN General Assembly. In his speech before the body, President Trump reiterated a number of standard talking points, notably claiming to be a peacemaker even as he again threatened Iran with annihilation. But his administration may be planning something more dramatic: according to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, the administration has drafted sanctions measures targeting the entire International Criminal Court—not just individual judges and prosecutors, as before—that could aim to cut the Hague-based tribunal off from the global financial system. The implications reach well beyond The Hague, raising hard questions about the weaponization of dollar dominance and the geoeconomic fallout for the banks, contractors, and allied governments that deal with the court. What is Washington trying to accomplish at Turtle Bay—and at what cost?In object lessons, Natalie, following in the footsteps of others before, has found a heartwarming use for AI, relatively speaking. Scott continues to nerd out over treaty law and the museums that love it. And Julia has a slightly less uplifting AI story—but one that could come with merch!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 today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviews Gregory Johnsen, non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf State Institute, to discuss the current war in Yemen. The two discuss the latest developments in the war, the reasons for the Houthis' successes so far, the dilemmas facing Saudi Arabia, and why the situation has gone from bad to worse.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.

Emily Benson is the Head of Strategy at Minerva Technology Futures, a strategic consulting firm that advises companies on how geopolitics impacts their business. She has also spent time at CSIS and at the Department of Commerce, and has spent more time thinking about economic statecraft than most of us. Emily joins Lawfare Contributing Editor and host of the Security Economics podcast Peter Harrell to discuss what economic security actually is and how we should think about it. She recently moved to Europe, and that gives her an interesting perspective on the issue, including whether Europe needs to diversify away from U.S. technology because of U.S.-related economic security risks. They also discuss China and how the U.S. and China are wielding economic security tools against each other. This episode is part of the Security Economics podcast series, in which Peter Harrell and guests explore the intersection of economics and national security, how countries manage their economies to support national security, and how they deploy economic tools in support of geopolitical objectives. 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.

Lee Gelernt, the chief ACLU litigator on Alien Enemies Act cases, speaks to Senior Editor Roger Parloff about two upcoming DC Circuit arguments he’ll be making relating to the March 15, 2025, removals of 137 Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act.In one, the en banc court will grapple with whether to permit Judge James Boasberg to conduct fact-finding on whether to seek contempt charges against high-level Trump administration officials, including current Attorney General Todd Blanche and current U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Emil Bove.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.

In a conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff to discuss the First Circuit rejecting the Trump administration’s third country deportation policy, former fugitive ICE agent jailed in Minnesota, oral argument in the Fourth Circuit over the dismissal of the first indictment against James Comey, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.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 May 22, 2025: Page Hedley, Senior Advisor at Forecasting Research Institute and co-author of the Not for Private Gain letter urging state attorneys general to stop OpenAI’s planned restructuring, and Gad Weiss, the Wagner Fellow in Law & Business at NYU Law, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare, to analyze news of OpenAI once again modifying its corporate governance structure. The group break down the rationale for the proposed modification, the relevant underlying law, and the significance of corporate governance in shaping the direction of AI development.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 July 23, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson shares some of the conversations he had with leading policy experts and practitioners on the margins of this year's Aspen Security Forum, which took place last week. First he sat down Shashank Joshi, the Defence Editor for The Economist to discuss the new dynamics surrounding European security, as well as the path toward (and implications of) a Europe less dependent on the United States for its security.Scott then talked with Iris Ferguson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was until recently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience, about the strategic significance of the Arctic and how it plays into the modern dynamics of major power competition.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.

Senior Editor Michael Feinberg talks with Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee and former CIA Case Officer John Sipher about John Ratcliffe’s tenure as the Director of Central Intelligence and cultural changes in the intelligence community writ large.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.

This week, Scott sat down with his colleagues Lawfare Senior Editors Kevin Frazier and Roger Parloff, and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ariane Tabatabai, to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including:“P(doom) and Gloom.” Last week, a wonky corner of the tech world became national news when Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old pretraining researcher, resigned from Anthropic and posted a viral thread accusing his employer and its rival OpenAI of racing toward self-improving superintelligence and “gambling with our lives.” His warning was quickly amplified by current Anthropic staff—and, days later, by CEO Dario Amodei himself, who published a lengthy essay urging the industry to slow down, drawing rare public agreement from Sam Altman and Elon Musk, a slide in AI stocks, and fresh calls for regulation in Washington. Is this the moment AI-safety fears finally broke into the mainstream? And should the rest of us be as worried as the people building these systems say they are?“Trains, Planes, and Provocations.” Tensions along NATO’s eastern flank are spiking over an increasing number of Russian provocations in and near NATO territory relating to the Ukraine conflict. Recent examples have included an explosives-laden drone at a German airport, another drone shot down in Lithuanian airspace, and repeated incursions into Poland and Romania related to border and port facilities adjacent to Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte pledged to bolster the alliance’s defenses and insisted the West won’t be “scared” off of supporting Kyiv, even as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that the coming months could bring intensified Russian action and possible spillover onto NATO soil. Is this a deliberate campaign by Russia to test and divide the alliance? And how much escalation risk does it actually carry?“Seeking the Plane Truth.” On September 29, the full D.C. Circuit will hear en banc arguments in what may be one of the most consequential rule-of-law fights of Trump’s second term: whether Chief Judge James Boasberg may investigate who in the administration defied his March 2025 order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s CECOT prison under the Alien Enemies Act. While Boasberg found probable cause for criminal contempt, panels dominated by Trump appointees have twice blocked him from doing so—with the Justice Department, whose own senior officials are reportedly implicated in some of the relevant discussions, arguing that all a judge may do is refer the matter to the Department itself to decide whether to investigate and prosecute. What is really at stake when the branch accused of contempt gets to decide whether anyone is charged? And how is the full court likely to rule?In object lessons, Kevin is putting the “community” in community college with high praise for the AI Literacy initiative in Alabama. Roger seams to think that the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum in London is knot your average exhibit. Scott finds weekend mornings watching Hilda with his kids to be a magical, enchanted adventure. And Ari is decidedly not in the Middle of Nowhere with her love for the new Kacey Musgraves album. 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.