The Lawfare Podcast

This week, Scott sat down with his colleagues Anna Bower, Chris Mirasola, and Mykhailo Soldatenko to talk through the week’s big national security news, including:

• “Wings and a Prayer.” The Ukraine conflict has been the subject of intense shuttle diplomacy over the past week, as President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to a meeting in Alaska last Friday, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a cadre of European leaders to fly to Washington, DC, to meet with Trump yesterday at the White House. What do we know about their conversations? And could this be a turning point in the conflict?
• “Capital Offense.” It’s been more than a week since President Trump chose to make law enforcement in Washington, DC—a city he has derided as “taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals”—a national priority, by deploying hundreds of National Guard personnel and federal law enforcement officers to the streets and seeking to assert federal control over the police department, in ways that triggered a legal challenge by the city. What is motivating this major policy effort? And where does it seem likely to lead?
• “The Ep Files: I Want to Believe.” The Trump administration is reportedly installing a new “co-”deputy director at the FBI, in part because of controversy the current incumbent—former right-wing radio host Dan Bongino—has courted relating to the release of the so-called “Epstein Files.” And it’s indicative of the major problems that these files—and the potential that they may say something about President Trump’s relationship with the notorious sex offender for whom they are named—are causing President Trump and his administration. What’s driving this rare point of dissent among the president’s core supporters? And what ramifications could it have for our justice system?

In object lessons, Anna hyped a new Kelce brothers podcast episode that featured some girl that Travis is dating. Chris recommended a crafty parenting hack: taking your kid to Michael’s for some unplugged, creative fun. Scott channeled his inner influencer, telling you where you can find the newest, hippest dog shirts. And Mykhailo brought us back down to Earth with a recommendation of Timothy Snyder’s YouTube series, The Making of Modern Ukraine, for a dive into the context and real causes for the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

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Adam Chan, National Security Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and inaugural Director of the FCC’s new Council on National Security, joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss the FCC’s rulemaking on submarine cables and national security. They discuss the FCC’s new submarine cable rules, the role of submarine cables in the U.S. telecommunications supply chain and in the data and AI era, and the national security risks facing submarine cable infrastructure. They also discuss new requirements for submarine cable license applicants to make physical security and cybersecurity certifications, the objective of limiting Chinese influence on U.S.-tied submarine cables, and the future of how the FCC is thinking about threats, responses, and engagement with industry to address them.

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In a live conversation on August 18, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke to Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko, Lawfare Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina, and Carnegie Senior Fellow Eric Ciaramella about President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting in Alaska on Aug. 15, Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other European leaders, in the White House on Aug, 18, and what it all means for the future of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

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In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff, and Lawfare contributor Chris Mirasola to discuss D.C.’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to assume control of the Metropolitan Police Department, litigation over the freezing of federal funds, the 3-day bench trial in Newsom v. Trump on the federalization of the California National Guard,updates in lawsuits over the president’s immigration policies, 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.

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From July 31, 2024: For this episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook to discuss his new book, “The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.” Together, they examined the United States’ long history in the Middle East, how it successfully (and unsuccessfully) pursued its interests there, and what should come next after the failed transformations of the post-9/11 era. 

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From August 14, 2024: Over the past week, Ukrainian forces have launched a major incursion into Russia proper, occupying 1,000 square kilometers in Kursk Oblast, which borders Ukraine. The operation, which caught both Russia and the United States by surprise, is the first major Ukrainian offensive in more than a year. In this episode, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Lawfare's Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to discuss the operation. What do we know amidst the Ukrainian media blackout? What is Ukraine trying to achieve militarily? How will the Kursk operation affect the other fronts in the ongoing war, in which Russia has been on the offensive? And what are the political implications of Ukraine occupying Russian territory?

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In this episode of Scaling Laws, Dean Ball, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and Research Director at Lawfare, to share an inside perspective of the Trump administration’s AI agenda, with a specific focus on the AI Action Plan. 

The trio also explore Dean’s thoughts on the recently released ChatGPT-5 and the ongoing geopolitical dynamics shaping America’s domestic AI policy.

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On today’s episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with a member of the Ukrainian parliament, Anastasiia Radina, to discuss the Ukrainian government’s attack on the country’s independent anti-corruption agencies, which sparked the first country-wide protests since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

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This week, a rejuvenated Scott returned from vacation to sit down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes, Daniel Byman, and Kate Klonick to talk through some of the week’s big national security news, including:

• “Occupational Hazards.” The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated its intent to occupy Gaza City, the last segment of Gaza not under Israeli military control, and displace its civilians to “designated safe areas.” In an apparent response to both domestic and international outrage at the plan, Netanyahu later disavowed any intent to annex Gaza—even as he acknowledged calls to do so from within his coalition—and finally laid out a rough Israeli end-goal for Gaza: namely, a non-Israeli governing entity, led by neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, operating under complete Israeli security control. But will this be enough to assuage these concerns? And what does it tell us about where the Gaza conflict may be headed?
• “The Rake.” The Trump administration has struck a deal with chip manufacturers NVIDIA and AMD, allowing them to export certain high-end (but not frontier model) chips to Chinese companies engaging in AI research, among other relevant activities, so long as they share 15% of the profits with the government. It’s a move that has both Democrats and Republicans worried about major power competition with China crying foul, and lawyers raising serious doubts as to its legal viability. What appears to be driving this recent about-face? And what does it say about the trajectory of U.S. policy on AI (and China)?
• “The War on Drugs. But, Like, Actually.” According to the New York Times, President Trump has reportedly signed a secret order authorizing the use of military force against drug cartels his administration has designated as terrorist organizations. Exactly what sort of military action may result is not yet clear, but it already has legal and policy experts raising concerns on a number of different fronts. How big a move is this, and what actions might it yield?

In object lessons, Dan, in learning more about 18th-century rivalries, recommends the game Imperial Struggle. Ben, in cheerful outrage, revealed his plans for 100lbs of blue and yellow marking chalk. Scott, in humble apology, reveled in his new-found love of pizza beans. Kate, in cheerful anticipation, expects a weekend of reverie with 14 pounds of fruit and vegetables.

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In their new book, “Command of Commerce: America’s Enduring Economic Power Advantage Over China,” Steve Brooks and Ben Vagle argue that the United States’ economic advantage over China is much larger than is commonly believed. They contend that if the United States were to cut China off from the U.S. economy and from the economies of U.S. allies, China would suffer significantly more than the United States. 

Matt Gluck, Executive Editor at Executive Functions, spoke with Brooks and Vagle about the size and nature of the gap in economic power between the two countries, the importance of U.S. alliances in maintaining economic leverage over China, why decoupling from China now would undermine this leverage, and more. 

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On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Seth Harp, an investigative reporter, U.S. Army Reserve veteran, and a former Assistant Attorney General for the state of Texas to discuss Harp’s new book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces.” 

They discuss Harp’s experiences reporting on the murder of two special forces operators at Fort Bragg—one of whom belonged to the secretive Delta Force unit—as well as the epidemic of PTSD, addiction, drug trafficking, violence, criminality, and impunity he uncovered across these elite U.S. military organizations in the shadow of the post-9/11 wars.

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In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff, and Lawfare contributor Peter Harrell to discuss the D.C. Circuit vacating Judge Boasberg’s probable cause of contempt by the Trump administration, where the legal challenges to President Trump’s IEEPA tariffs stand, and the legal battle unfolding in Texas over the Democratic lawmakers leaving the state to prevent Republicans from redistricting the state.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.

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From August 6, 2024: A new film from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines series called “The Night Won’t End” profiles three Palestinian families as they try to survive the war in Gaza.

On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien speaks to the documentary’s director, Kavitha Chekuru, along with a few of the journalists and researchers who came together to work on the project, including Emily Tripp, Director at Airwars; Samaneh Moafi, Assistant Director of Research at Forensic Architecture; and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Founder and Director of investigations at Earshot.

They discuss the three families at the center of this story, other investigations into the killings of civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza, and the role of the United States in the war since Oct. 7.

Please note that this episode contains content that some people may find disturbing, including depictions of war and violence against children. Listener discretion is advised.

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From June 7, 2023: On January 1, 2023, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as president of Brazil. A week later, insurrectionists in Brazil stormed government buildings, including the president’s palace, the Supreme Federal Court, and the National Congress building to violently disrupt the democratic transition of power and challenge the results of the election. Lula, however, remained undeterred and forged ahead. 

It’s been roughly 150 days since those events, and Lawfare Legal Fellow Saraphin Dhanani sat down with Brian Winter, Editor-in-Chief of Americas Quarterly and a journalist with over a decade of experience living and reporting across Latin America, to discuss how Lula has fared in his first 100 days in office, his vision for reviving Brazil’s place in the world, and the political forces he’s up against. 

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Brian Fuller, a member of the Product Policy Team at OpenAI, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to analyze how large AI labs go about testing their models for compliance with internal requirements and various legal obligations. They also cover the ins and outs of what it means to work in product policy and what issues are front of mind for in-house policy teams amid substantial regulatory uncertainty.

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Sam Bresnick, Research Fellow and Andrew W. Marshall Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss his recently published report, “Big Tech in Taiwan: Beyond Semiconductors.” They discuss a previous report Sam coauthored with Georgetown CSET colleagues, “Which Ties Will Bind?,” looking at U.S. Big Tech companies’ exposure to China; Sam’s recent report on the 17 examined companies’ Taiwan entanglements; and how greenfield foreign direct investments (FDI), research and development (R&D) centers, data centers, supply chains, and more expose the studied U.S. companies to Taiwan. They also discuss how companies think about the geopolitical and security threat space, perspectives on “derisking” versus “decoupling” from Taiwan or China, and how U.S. policymakers could better track, identify, and potentially mitigate the risks.

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Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Oona Hathaway, Yale Law Professor and President-elect of the American Society of International Law, to discuss how the current world events are harming the norm prohibiting the use of force in international relations, why that's troubling, and what to do about it. They chat about the current U.S. administration's policies, recent strikes on Iran, and the implications for the norm from a potential negotiated settlement in the Russia-Ukraine war. 

You may want to look at the following pieces relevant to the discussion: 

• “Might Unmakes Right: The Catastrophic Collapse of Norms Against the Use of Force,” by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
• “There’s Still No Reason to Think the Kellogg-Briand Pact Accomplished Anything,” by Stephen M. Walt
• “Trump's Strikes on Iran Were Unlawful. Here's Why That Matters,” by Oona A. Hathaway

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On today’s episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Minna Ålander, an associate fellow at Chatham House Europe Programme, and Max Bergmann, the Director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss NATO’s historic decision to increase its member state’s defense spending to 5% of their Gross Domestic Product. 

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In a live conversation on Aug. 1, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Lawfare Legal Fellow James Pearce, and Lawfare contributors Michael Feinberg and Renee DiResta to discuss the politicization of the Justice Department, including the attorney general’s misconduct complaint against Judge Boasberg, the legal challenges to Alina Habba’s appointment to be U.S. attorney, a lawsuit by Democratic Congress members against ICE over restrictions on visiting detention facilities, agreements by universities with the Trump administration, 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.

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From June 13, 2024: On today’s episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Gabor Rona, Professor of Practice at Cardozo Law, and Natalie Orpett, Lawfare’s Executive Editor, to discuss their recent Lawfare piece examining whether a state pursuing an armed conflict in compliance with international humanitarian law could nonetheless violate the Genocide Convention. They discussed how these two areas of law intersect, their relevance to the ongoing proceedings over Israel’s conduct in Gaza before the International Court of Justice, and what the questions their analysis raises might mean for the future of accountability for genocide.

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From December 27, 2023: The Supreme Court last month heard oral arguments in United States v. Rahimi, in which the Court will decide the constitutionality of a federal law that criminalizes the possession of firearms by individuals on whom state courts have imposed domestic violence protective orders. This case came to the Court following its June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In that case, the Court determined that whether a law violates the Second Amendment depends on whether there is a “representative historical analogue” for the contemporary law. 

Amanda Tyler, the Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, argued in a recent article in Lawfare that the many laws disarming loyalists that existed at the time of the Founding serve as a set of “historical analogues” required by Bruen to demonstrate the constitutionality of the statute at issue in Rahimi—a claim which has been disputed by Rahimi’s lawyers. Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck sat down with Tyler to discuss the Rahimi case, the nature of the Founding-era laws that stripped loyalists of their firearms, whether loyalists were members of the American political community, why that question matters for the Court’s ruling in Rahimi, and more. 

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Renée DiResta, an Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare, and Alan Rozenshtein, an Associate Professor at Minnesota Law, Research Director at Lawfare, and, with the exception of today, co-host on the Scaling Laws podcast, join Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to take a look at the Trump Administration’s Woke AI policies, as set forth by a recent EO and explored in the AI Action Plan.

• Read the Woke AI executive order
• Read the AI Action Plan
• Read "Generative Baseline Hell and the Regulation of Machine-Learning Foundation Models," by James Grimmelmann, Blake Reid, and Alan Rozenshtein

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For today's episode, Lawfare General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, for another of their regular updates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This time, they discussed the brutal famine afflicting Gaza, how the broader military conflict between Israel and Hamas has contributed to it, and what the rising global pressure on Israel to address it—including from the Trump administration—may mean for the trajectory of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

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This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Natalie Orpett, Kevin Frazier, and Tyler McBrien to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including:

• “Feeding Frenzy.” The crisis in Gaza has reached a new, desperate stage. Months of a near total blockade on humanitarian assistance has created an imminent risk, if not a reality, of mass starvation among Gazan civilians. And it finally has the world—including President Donald Trump—taking notice and putting pressure on the Israeli government to change tack, including by threatening to recognize a Palestinian state. Now the Israeli government appears to be giving an inch, allowing what experts maintain is the bare minimum level of aid necessary to avoid famine into the country and even pursuing a few (largely symbolic) airlifts, while allowing other states to do the same. But how meaningful is this shift? And what could it mean for the trajectory of the broader conflict?
• “Hey, It Beats an AI Inaction Plan.” After months of anticipation, the Trump administration finally released its “AI Action Plan” last week. And despite some serious reservations about its handling of “woke AI” and select other culture war issues, the plan has generally been met with cautious optimism. How should we feel about the AI Action Plan? And what does it tell us about the direction AI policy is headed?
• “Pleas and No Thank You.” Earlier this month, the D.C. Circuit upheld then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s decision to nullify plea deals that several of the surviving 9/11 perpetrators had struck with those prosecuting them in the military commissions. How persuasive is the court’s argument? And what does the decision mean for the future of the tribunals?

In object lessons, Kevin highlighted a fascinating breakthrough from University of Texas engineers who developed over 1,500 AI-designed materials that can make buildings cooler and more energy efficient—an innovation that, coming from Texas, proves that necessity really is the mother of invention. Tyler took us on a wild ride into the world of Professional Bull Riders with a piece from The Baffler exploring the sport’s current state and terrifying risks. Scott brought a sobering but essential read from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about how synthetic imagery and disinformation are shaping the Iran-Israel conflict. And Natalie recommended “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” by Olga Tokarczuk, assuring us it’s not nearly as murder-y as it sounds.

Note: We will be on vacation next week but look forward to being back on August 13!

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Candace Rondeaux, Senior Director of New America’s Future Frontlines program, Director of its Planetary Politics initiative, and professor of practice at Arizona State University joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss her recently published book, "Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos." They discuss Yevgeny Prigozhin and his founding of the Wagner Group, the Russian private military company (PMC); his rise, ranging from post-Soviet 1990s Russia to growing relationships with Putin and other power figures; and Wagner’s role in Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and other Russian objectives abroad. They also discuss Wagner and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Prigozhin’s “march on Moscow” in 2023 and his subsequent death, the research techniques that go into studying a group like Wagner, and what role PMCs will play in the future of Russian power.

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Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor and Research Director at Lawfare, sits down with Sezaneh Seymour, Vice President and head of regulatory risk and policy at Coalition and a former Senior Adviser on the National Security Council staff, and Brandon Wales, Vice President for cybersecurity strategy at SentinelOne and the former Executive Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), to discuss their new Lawfare Research Report, “Partners or Provocateurs? Private-Sector Involvement in Offensive Cyber Operations.”

They talk about why, in the face of escalating cyber threats from state and criminal actors, U.S. officials are reevaluating the policy that currently reserves offensive cyber operations as a government-only function. Rather than endorsing a change, Seymour and Wales propose a structured framework to guide the policy debate. This framework is built on three key factors: first, defining the core policy objectives for involving the private sector; second, determining the appropriate scope of authorized activities, including what actions are permissible and who can be targeted; and third, addressing the complex legal and liability considerations, especially when operations cause harm to innocent third parties. They conclude by weighing the potential for private actors to augment U.S. capabilities against the significant risks of escalation and diplomatic fallout.

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In a live conversation on July 25, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott Anderson and Roger Parloff and Lawfare Legal Fellow James Pearce to discuss the the Supreme Court’s rulings allowing the removal of executive officials of independent agencies, the ongoing dismantling of executive agencies like the Voice of America and U.S. Institute of Peace, developments in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s criminal case, and so much 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

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From May 6, 2017: Three months into the Trump presidency, where does the relationship between the president and the intelligence community stand? Donald Trump is no longer quite so regularly combative in his tweets and public comments about the various intelligence agencies, but the White House-intelligence community relationship is still far from normal under this very unusual presidency. Here to ponder the question are former NSA and CIA director General Michael Hayden, former acting and deputy director of CIA John McLaughlin, and former deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism Juan Zarate, who spoke with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius in a recent event at the Aspen Institute. 

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From July 23, 2024: Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Matt Perault, the Director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sat down with Alexander Macgillivray, known to all as "amac," who was the former Principle Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States in the Biden Administration and General Counsel at Twitter.

amac recently wrote a piece for Lawfare about making AI policy in a world of technological uncertainty, and Matt and Alan talked to him about how to do just that.

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Janet Egan, Senior Fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security; Jessica Brandt, Senior Fellow for Technology and National Security at the Council on Foreign Relations; Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy at Abundance Institute; and Tim Fist, Director of Emerging Technology Policy at the Institute for Progress join Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare for a special version of Scaling Laws.

This episode was recorded just hours after the release of the AI Action Plan. About 180 days ago, President Trump directed his administration to explore ways to achieve AI dominance. His staff has attempted to do just that. This group of AI researchers dives into the plan’s extensive recommendations and explore what may come next.

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For today's episode, Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson is sharing more 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 is joined by Ali Nazary, the head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, to discuss the Front's position nearly four years after the collapse of Kabul—and what Russia's recent recognition of the Taliban may mean for Afghanistan's future.

Scott then sat down with Sam Charap, the Distinguished Chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy at the RAND Corporation, to discuss Trump's recent pivot on support for Ukraine and where the conflict may be headed next.

This is part two of two. So if you missed them earlier this week, look back in this podcast feed for more conversations from Aspen.

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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.

This is part one of two, so be sure to tune in later this week for more conversations from Aspen.

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Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor at Lawfare and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, speaks with Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, about the Supreme Court's recent decision to greatly limit the practice of universal injunctions. The ruling came in a case involving a Trump administration executive order on birthright citizenship, and while many commentators have viewed the decision as a dangerous loss for the rule of law, Noah argues that the Court might be playing a strategic "long game."

Alan and Noah discuss Noah's central thesis: that the Supreme Court's primary job in the Trump era is to protect the rule of law by avoiding a direct constitutional crisis with the executive branch that the judiciary is likely to lose. From this perspective, eliminating universal injunctions—a tool that allows a single district judge to start a major fight—is a way for the Court to control when and where it confronts the administration. They also address the legal merits of Justice Barrett's majority opinion, which Noah argues was a flawed use of originalism that misinterpreted the flexible, problem-solving nature of equity. Finally, they explore the legal avenues for relief that remain, such as class actions, and consider what it means for the judiciary to truly "win" or "lose" a confrontation with a president who is undeterred by political norms.

Note that this discussion was recorded in early July, before a lower court certified a class action in the birthright citizenship litigation and before the Supreme Court's recent unsigned opinion allowing the Trump administration to begin mass firings at the Department of Education, which Noah has since criticized.

Mentioned in this episode:

• "The Supreme Court’s Majority Is Playing the Long Game,” by Noah Feldman in Bloomberg Opinion
• "The Supreme Court’s Silent Opinions Undermine Its Legitimacy,” by Noah Feldman in Bloomberg Opinion

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Scott recorded this week’s special episode live from the 2025 Aspen Security Forum, where he sat down with a panel of top national security journalists—including co-host emeritus Shane Harris of The Atlantic, Mark Goldberg of the Global Dispatches podcast, and Alex Ward of the Wall Street Journal—to talk about some of the issues that have emerged at and around this year’s Forum, including:

• “Putting the Ass in Aspen.” Twenty-four hours before the Aspen Security Forum was set to begin, the Defense Department barred more than a dozen officials who had been publicly set to participate, for months, on the grounds that the Forum promotes “the evils of globalism.” What does this tell us about the Trump administration’s relationship to the foreign policy establishment?
• “Rolling Alone.” While U.S. officials were in short supply at the Forum, foreign officials were not, as foreign ministers and other officials from Europe, Asia, and other corners of the world had a heavy representation on the panels. And while those panels often addressed different topics, at least one common theme tended to emerge across them: the challenges of the new era of major power competition, especially at a moment when the United States seems especially skeptical of traditional alliances and multilateral institutions. What did we learn about the challenges these countries are facing? And what does it mean for the United States’ ability to strategically compete?
• “Deus Ex Machina.” If there is one topic that was represented at almost every panel at this year’s Forum, it is the question of Artificial Intelligence — how important it is, what it will do to solve the world’s problems, new problems it will cause, and all it will cost to win the race to perfecting it. But is AI really that important? Or does its ubiquity in national security conversation reflect more hype than substance?

For object lessons, Shane shared his latest piece for The Atlantic about an old man, a dog, and the CIA’s efforts to keep them apart. Scott endorsed the Aspen Security Forum itself and urged those not in attendance to check out Aspen’s recordings of the event—as well as the recordings of various side conversations he made, which will be up on the Lawfare Daily feed later this week. Mark recommended his new podcast with Anjali Dayal on the United Nations, To Save Us From Hell, which they release as part of his U.N. Dispatch newsletter. And Alex shared his quest to read a book about each U.S. president, what it’s taught him about how weird the presidents are, and the online community that’s helping him get through it.

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In a live conversation on July 18, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff and Lawfare Contributor Nicholas Bednar to discuss the Supreme Court’s rulings in Trump v. AFGE and McMahon v. New York, which allows for the mass terminations of federal employees, what happened in the hearing this week in the criminal case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, politicization of the Justice Department, and more.

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From December 28, 2022: In the last few weeks, over a dozen U.S. states have banned TikTok from government devices, citing national security concerns. A similar bill was included in the omnibus spending bill, requiring the social media video app to be removed from the devices used by federal agencies. But addressing the concerns over how the Chinese government could coerce TikTok’s parent company to get access to Americans' data raises interesting questions about the existing data protection and privacy frameworks in the U.S.

To discuss what is going on, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Caitlin Chin, a fellow with the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has been closely following these developments. They discussed why TikTok is considered a national security threat to the United States, why a ban might not be the right solution to this problem, and her recommendations for what a comprehensive data protection framework should look like.

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From February 14, 2023: Last month's brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police has once again sparked a national conversation about the causes of and remedies for persistent police misconduct and abuse. To explore this issue, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA School of Law, who is the author of a new book called, “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.” The book argues that police abuse is a result of pervasive pathologies in the legal system that shield from accountability not just police officers, but also their supervisors and the local governments for which they work.

Joanna and Jack discussed the many accountability gaps in the legal regime governing police abuse. Like her book, they focused on problems of achieving justice through the civil rights system, problems that include the high bars to finding a lawyer and to convincing a judge to hear the case, Fourth Amendment doctrine, qualified immunity, and the challenges of municipal liability. They also discussed the best path to reform and the prospects of reform.

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In this Scaling Laws Academy "class," Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, speaks with Eugene Volokh, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and long-time professor of law at UCLA, on libel in the AI context. The two dive into Volokh's paper, “Large Libel Models? Liability for AI Output.” 

• Extra credit for those who give it a full read and explore some of the "homework" below:
• “Beyond Section 230: Principles for AI Governance,” 138 Harv. L. Rev. 1657 (2025)
• “When Artificial Agents Lie, Defame, and Defraud, Who Is to Blame?,” Stanford HAI (2021)

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Since Jan. 20, 84% of U.S. Agency for International Development grants and contracts have been terminated and 93% of agency staff have been fired. On July 1, the State Department absorbed the remaining staff and grants. On Lawfare Daily, Lawfare Associate Editor for Communications Anna Hickey spoke to New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof about the global impact of the Trump administration's dismantling of the USAID and foreign assistance cuts. They discussed what Kristof saw in his reporting trips to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Sudan, and how the cuts to foreign assistance put U.S. national security at risk. 

Please note that this episode contains content that some people may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. 

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This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Benjamin Wittes and Eric Ciaramella to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including:

• “With Arms Wide Open.” After years of open skepticism toward Ukraine (and uncharacteristic deference to Russia), it seems President Trump may have turned a page. His rhetoric has grown cooler toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he has proven more willing to provide arms to Ukraine, even over contrary efforts by some of his advisers—including an agreement to provide Ukraine with Patriot missiles and other U.S.-made, Europe-funded weapons. What explains this switch? And how durable is it likely to prove?
• “Hitting Foggy Bottom.” Just days after the Supreme Court removed a preliminary injunction, the State Department went forward with substantial personnel cuts, RIFing 1,350 foreign and civil service personnel in Washington, D.C. It’s all part of a much broader reorganization that State Department leadership claims will make the Department leaner or more efficient, even as it guts personnel working on issues disfavored by the Trump administration. 
• “Waiting for the Intel Impressment.” Since the Trump administration’s June 21 airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a heated debate has raged over their effects. The administration maintains the strikes were “historically successful” and permanently set back the Iranian nuclear program. But media reports source to people within the intelligence community have suggested a much more limited effect. How should we weigh these competing claims? And when will we know the truth?

In object lessons, Ben asks for your public service in supporting Lawfare’s Public Service Fellowship. Scott pulled a Quinta with his recommendation of the New Yorker essay “Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil Are in on the Joke,” by Hanif Abdurraquib. And Eric makes his summer travels epic by listening to the podcast, The Rest is History.

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Lawfare Legal Fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko and Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sit down with Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, Executive Director of the Register of Damage for Ukraine at the Council of Europe and a former legal advisor of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and Patrick W. Pearsall, an international arbitration and disputes partner in the Washington D.C. office of Gibson Dunn and Global Co-Chair of the Geopolitical Strategy and International Law practice who directs the International Claims and Reparations Project at Columbia Law School. Markiyan and Patrick played a key role in proposing and designing Ukraine's reparations strategy soon after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They discuss how they came up with the idea and pitched it to President Zelensky, the G-7, and the UN General Assembly; the proposed reparations mechanism; the fate of frozen Russian assets; and the relevance of the reparations to the Ukraine-Russia talks. 

You may want to look at the following materials relevant to the discussion. 

• UN General Assembly Resolution on "Furtherance of remedy and reparation for aggression against Ukraine"
• Chiara Giorgetti, Markiyan Kliuchkovsky, Patrick Pearsall, and Jeremy K. Sharpe, “Historic UNGA Resolution Calls for Ukraine Reparations”
• Scott R. Anderson, “Understanding the G7’s New Plan for Funding Ukraine”

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Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor and Research Director at Lawfare, sits down with David Noll, a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, to discuss his new Lawfare Research Report, “Civil Contempt Against a Defiant Executive.” They talk about the widespread assumption that the judiciary is powerless if the executive branch chooses to defy court orders, largely because enforcement mechanisms like the U.S. Marshals Service reside within the executive branch.

Noll argues that this view is mistaken and overlooks the significant enforcement powers the courts possess that are independent of the executive. Noll and Rozenshtein discuss non-custodial sanctions like stripping officials of immunity, levying substantial personal fines, and imposing professional discipline. They also explore the arrest power, noting that the U.S. Marshals have a statutory duty to enforce all lawful court orders that may supersede a presidential directive, and that courts retain a historical power to appoint their own deputies to enforce contempt citations if the Marshals were to refuse. Noll concludes that a conflict between the branches would likely be more protracted and contested than is commonly believed.

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In a live conversation on July 11, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Scott Anderson, Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. AFGE, which allows for the mass terminations of federal employees, what happened in the multiple hearings in the criminal and civil cases involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a nationwide injunction on President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, and more.

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From April 12, 2019: Julian Mortenson, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, is the author of a remarkable new article entitled "Article II Vests Executive Power, Not the Royal Prerogative," forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review and available on SSRN.

Recently, Benjamin Wittes spoke with the professor about the article, which Mortenson has been working on for years—as long as the two have known each other. The article explores the history of exactly three words of the U.S. Constitution—the first three words of Article II, to be precise: "the executive power."

Huge claims about presidential power have rested on a conventional understanding of these three words. Julian argues that this conventional understanding is not just partially wrong, or mostly wrong, but completely wrong, as a matter of history. And, he tries to supplant it with a new understanding that he argues is actually a very old understanding of what those words mean.

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From April 9, 2024: In the early morning on March 26, a Singapore-flagged cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The bridge collapsed, resulting in the death of six of the eight individuals conducting maintenance on the bridge. The incident has disrupted commuter traffic and the transport of hazardous materials, and it has halted shipping traffic at the Port of Baltimore, among other effects.

Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck discussed the bridge’s collapse, how authorities responded to it, and what it all means for the resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure and the state of crisis response with Juliette Kayyem, a professor of international security at the Harvard Kennedy School—who recently wrote a book on disaster management. Was the bridge adequately protected? How should governments and the private sector prepare to both prevent crises, but perhaps more importantly, prepare for the aftermath when they inevitably occur? 

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John Keller, now a partner at Walden, Macht, Haran, & Williams, channeled his experience as the former chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice to talk about bribery with James Pearce, Lawfare Legal Fellow. After explaining the basics of bribery law and whether a current or former president could face a bribery prosecution, Keller analyzed whether three episodes from the first six months of the second Trump administration could plausibly be characterized as bribery: Paramount’s $16 million settlement of Trump’s lawsuit while Paramount awaits federal approval of a merger, law firms agreeing to provide pro bono legal services to causes favored by the administration to rescind or avoid targeted executive orders, and the dismissal of the criminal indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams’s agreeing to further the administration’s immigration agenda.

For more on this topic, read John Keller’s recent article on Lawfare.

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On July 8, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down for a bonus edition of Lawfare Live with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Roger Parloff to discuss Kilmar Abrego Garcia's July 7 hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

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Ethan Mollick, Professor of Management and author of the “One Useful Thing” Substack, joins Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, and Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to analyze the latest research in AI adoption, specifically its use by professionals and educators. The trio also analyze the trajectory of AI development and related, ongoing policy discussions.

More of Ethan Mollick's work: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/

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This week, Scott sat down with fellow Senior Editors Molly Reynolds and Alan Rozenshtein to talk through the week’s big national security news, including:

• “One Bill to rule them all, One Bill to find them, One Bill to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” Republicans in Congress narrowly enacted President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” last week, just in advance of the July 4 deadline he had set early in the year. What will its contents mean for elements of Trump’s national security agenda, including his immigration policies? And what does it say about his influence over fellow Republicans in Congress?
• “Even a Stopped Clock is Right More Often Than This Letter.” In response to a FOIA lawsuit, the Justice Department has released copies of the letters that it sent to tech companies regarding President Trump’s pause on the enforcement of a statute intended to curtail TikTok’s availability in the United States. In the letter, the Trump administration not only suggests that the law may unconstitutionally interfere with the president’s authority over foreign affairs, but suggests that the president can “waive” the enforcement of civil penalties and otherwise commit not to enforce the law for certain periods of conduct. How persuasive are these legal arguments? And what explains tech companies’ willingness to rely on them?
• “Nationwide, Not On Your Side.” At the end of its term last week, the Supreme Court issued a long-awaited decision in the birthright citizenship cases, wherein it sided with the Trump administration in ending the practice of “universal” (or nationwide) injunctions pursued by lower courts in many cases regarding challenges to government conduct. What with this holding mean, both for the birthright citizenship cases and for the broader legal system moving forward?

In object lessons, Alan marveled at the majesty of Cranbrook Schools during a recent trip to Michigan. Scott’s been here the whole time with a recommendation of Dropout TV’s Game Changer. And Molly took us down a dark and dirty, Danish-derived, detective direction with Dept. Q on Netflix.

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Lawfare Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein sits down with Ashley Deeks, the Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, to discuss her new book, “The Double Black Box: National Security, Artificial Intelligence, and the Struggle for Democratic Accountability.” They talk about the core metaphor of the book: the idea that the use of artificial intelligence in the national security space creates a "double black box." The first box is the traditional secrecy surrounding national security activities, and the second, inner box is the inscrutable nature of AI systems themselves, whose decision-making processes can be opaque even to their creators.

They also discuss how this double black box challenges traditional checks on executive power, including from Congress, the courts, and actors within the executive branch itself. They explore some of Deeks's proposals to pierce these boxes, the ongoing debate about whether AI can be coded to be more lawful than human decision-makers, and why the international regulation of national security AI is more likely to resemble the fraught world of cyber norms than the more structured regime of nuclear arms control.

Mentioned in this episode:

• "National Security AI and the Hurdles to International Regulation" by Ashley Deeks on Lawfare
• "Frictionless Government and Foreign Relations" by Kristen Eichensehr and Ashley Deeks in the Virginia Law Review

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