The Lawfare Podcast

From August 20, 2020: This week on Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former chief security officer of Yahoo and Facebook. Alex has appeared on the podcast before, but this time, they discussed a new coalition he helped set up called the Election Integrity Partnership—a coalition focused on detecting and mitigating attempts to limit voting or delegitimize election results. Disinformation and misinformation around the U.S. presidential election has already started popping up online, and it’s only going to increase as November draws closer. The coalition aims to counter this in real time. So how will it actually work?They also asked Alex for his hot takes on TikTok—the popular video sharing platform facing pressure over concern about influence from the Chinese government.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/c/trumptrials.

The recently released International Cyberspace and Digital Strategy focuses on building digital solidarity as an alternative to digital sovereignty policies. Lawfare's Fellow in Technology Policy and Law, Eugenia Lostri, spoke with Pablo Chavez, Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security’s Technology and National Security Program. Pablo first promoted the idea of digital solidarity in a Lawfare article in 2022. They talked about the range of policies that can fall under the digital sovereignty category, how digital solidarity offers an alternative position, and the evolution of the term from his 2022 article to the international strategy.The article Eugenia and Pablo reference in their conversation is “Defending the ‘S Word’: The Language of Digital Sovereignty Can be a Tool of Empowerment,” by Arindrajit Basu.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/c/trumptrials.

It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 16. Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, and Tyler McBrien to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to go over the week’s big national security news, including:“Does NSM Stand for No Such Memo?” Last week, in a long-awaited report required by National Security Memorandum 20 that President Biden issued earlier this year, the Biden administration concluded that there were credible reasons to believe that Israel may well have violated international law and obstructed U.S.-backed humanitarian flows in its conduct of the war in Gaza. But it still declined to find Israeli assurances to the contrary lacking in credibility enough to interrupt U.S. security assistance. What does this tell us about the state of U.S. support for Israel—especially as Israeli forces appear increasingly set to pursue an offensive on Rafah that Biden has openly opposed?“What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting.” A sharp global decline in birth rates—often below replacement levels, especially (but not exclusively) in highly developed countries—has some academics and policymakers panicking about everything from the global balance of power to the future of social support systems. But are these concerns misplaced? And how (if at all) should we be thinking about the relationship between national security and family planning?“AzerbaiSCAM.” The Justice Department has indicted a second Democratic legislator—Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas—for working as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, this time that of Azerbaijan, even as a federal court in New York seats a jury for the prosecution of Sen. Bob Menendez for allegedly doing the same on behalf of Egypt and Qatar. Is this reflective of a broader problematic trend? And what should policymakers be doing about it?For object lessons, Alan lamented the passing of great Canadian Alice Munro. Quinta celebrated the semi-resolution of a long-running mystery involving Prague. Scott renewed his call for people to grill more pizza this summer and shared some tips before handing the mic to producer Noam, who shared that he’s performing at the DC Improv on May 23. And Natalie reminisced fondly (?) on her time living in New York. 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/c/trumptrials.

This episode of “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” was recorded on May 15 in front of a live audience on YouTube and Zoom. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, and Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower about the lack of action in Fulton County, the Southern District of Florida and D.C. They then took a deep dive into the New York City Trump trial and looked ahead to whether there are witnesses left in the case. And of course they took audience questions from Lawfare Material Supporters on Zoom.To be able to submit questions to the panelists and 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/c/trumptrials.

After the 2020 Presidential Election, a plan was hatched in seven swing states that had voted for Joe Biden. Lawsuits challenging the election outcomes in those states continued to fail, but this plan attempted to find another path to keep Trump in office—using the Electoral College process. The idea was to create slates of electors for Trump that would oppose the duly-elected Biden electors, and to send those slates of electors to DC to be counted on Jan. 6. Then, Vice President Mike Pence was supposed to either choose the Trump electors, thereby overturning the 2020 election results, or kick the competing slates back to the states to be sorted out, thereby delaying Congress's certification of the election. It's a plan that the Jan. 6 Committee would later dub "the fraudulent electors scheme." The whole scheme relied on specific individuals in each state—the fake electors themselves. So, three and a half years later, what has happened to them? Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett spoke with Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic, who has been closely following the issue from the beginning. Last month, she published an article explaining what happened to the fake electors in these seven states with Lawfare Student Contributors Hunter Evans, Adam George, and Emma Plankey.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/c/trumptrials.

It's Trump's Trials and Tribulations, New York Trial Dispatch, May 14 Roger Parloff sat down with Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, and Tyler McBrien to discuss what happened in the courtroom today.The podcast was edited by Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music.

Migration has always been a part of humanity's story. It will continue to be so long after any of us now living are gone. Population shifts in the coming century, spurred by climate change, are on track to become more extreme than at any point in our history--with hundreds of millions, probably billions, of people on the move. For this episode, David Priess spoke with Gaia Vince, self-described former scientists and author of the book Nomad Century (among other works), about various aspects of climate change-driven mass migration, including perceptions of borders across history, attitudes toward climate change mitigation vs. adaptation, why the "Dubai model" isn't a global solution, demographic shifts in the global north, migration as a cause of evolutionary and cultural development, myths about migrants and jobs and wages, nurses from the Philippines as a case study, how enlightened leadership can guide the most productive migration outcomes, and much more.Works mentioned in this episode:The book Transcendence by Gaia VinceThe book Nomad Century by Gaia VinceChatter 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.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that the United States lost a record $12.5 billion to various types of cyber crime in 2023. Law enforcement hacking is one tool increasingly used to combat transnational cyber crime. Stephanie Pell, Senior Editor at Lawfare, sat down with Gavin Wilde, Senior Fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Emma Landi, Research Assistant in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to talk about their new paper exploring law enforcement efforts to “hack the hackers” in the fight against cyber crime. They talked about the types of hacking operations performed by law enforcement, when law enforcement may be better suited to address the actions of malicious cyber actors as compared with the military and private sector, and some of the major policy questions posed by law enforcement hacking.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/c/trumptrials.