The Lawfare Podcast

Earlier this week, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel on Russia’s place in the international order in the light of recent more aggressive turns in its foreign policy. As the crisis in Ukraine continues to evolve, the United States is seeking to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin. But, what is his ultimate goal? Is Russia attempting to free itself of the Western dominated world order? Is this a new Cold War? And specifically, what are the potential consequences to the global economy, counter-terrorism efforts, and the non-proliferation regime? Thomas Wright, fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy (IOS), moderated the conversation with Brookings President Strobe Talbott, Senior Fellow Clifford Gaddy of Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) and Susan Glasser, editor at Politico Magazine. 

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Washington was abuzz this week as more than 50 African leaders were in town for the first U.S.-Africa Summit. Yesterday, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the President of Somalia, spoke at Brookings on the future of his country. In his talk, President Mohamud addressed the challenges to democracy that Somalia faces, and how Somalia, the African Union, and other international partners can work together to ensure security, foster development, and promote stable state-building in the country. President Mohamud also addressed the challenges his state faces in its ongoing battle against Al-Shabab militants - a mission that the U.S. has contributed more than half a billion dollars to since 2007. President Mohamud provides a realistic assessment of that threat, while highlighting the efforts his country is taking to bring democracy to Somalia. Michael E. O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the conversation.

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Benjamin Wittes discusses the ongoing crises in Gaza with Brookings scholars Natan Sachs, Khaled Elgindy, and Tamara Cofman Wittes. 

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Last week, Professor Fernando Reinares, a senior analyst on International Terrorism at the Elcano Royal Institute, delivered a talk on his new book, entitled in English, “Kill Them! Who was Behind 3/11 and Why Spain was Targeted.” The talk covered the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings, the rise and shape of jihadist networks in Spain, and the evolution of terrorism in Western Europe. In his speech, Reinares provides evidence that the decision to attack Spain was made not in response to the Iraq War, but instead in December 2001 in Pakistan by Moroccan Amer Azizi – previously a charismatic member of Al Qaeda’s Spanish Abu Dahdah cell – and that the Madrid bombing network began its formation in March 2002, more than one year before the start of the Iraq war. He highlights that like much of the West, today Spain battles the challenge of jihadist radicalization and recruitment networks that are sending fighters to join the wars in Syria and elsewhere.

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Benjamin Wittes, Wells Bennett, and Steve Vladeck sit down to talk aboout the D.C. Circuit Court's recent decision in the Al Bahlul case and what it means for the future of US military commissions. 

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As the election crisis in Afghanistan comes to a head, all eyes are once again on the future of Afghan democracy. But, America’s history in the region extends back much further than its nation-building efforts since September 2001. On Tuesday,  at a Brookings launch of his newest book entitled, “What We Won: America’s Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-1989,” Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow and Director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution, discussed lessons the United States can learn from its successful efforts in the 1970s and 1980s in Afghanistan. In his talk, Riedel discusses the why the American intelligence operation in Afghanistan in the 1980s was so successful, and what, if any lessons, the United States can apply to its ongoing operations in the country. Riedel also explored the complex personalities and individuals who shaped the war, and explains how their influence still affects the region today. Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott provided introductory remarks and moderated the conversation. 

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Brad Smith, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Microsoft, gave a keynote address last week at Brookings entitled “The Future of Global Technology, Privacy, and Regulation.”

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Brookings Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney talks about Iran: common interests with the United States in Iraq and the fight against ISIS, attitudes toward working with the United States, and the prospects for a nuclear deal in the coming weeks and months.

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Brookings scholars Ken Pollack, Mike O’Hanlon, and Suzanne Maloney spoke about Iraq’s security crisis.

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On Tuesday, at the 2014 Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, a panel of experts debated the pros and cons of adding outside lawyers to litigation before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Generally proceedings at that court are held in secret and ex parte, with only the government arguing its position. But, in the wake of the Snowden revelations, many have called for reform, and for greater participation by non-government attorneys. 

The panel---comprised of Marc Zwillinger, Alex Abdo, Amie Stepanovich, and moderator Steve Vladeck---discussed the question of whether, and how, to add more adversarial process to FISC proceedings.  

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On June 5, the anniversary of the first Snowden disclosures, Governance Studies at Brookings held a debate on the future of U.S. intelligence collection authorities. The resolution was “U.S. surveillance authorities require fundamental reform.” Arguing in favor were Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU and Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute. Arguing in opposition were John “Chris” Inglis, former NSA deputy director, and Carrie Cordero, director of national security studies at Georgetown Law. Brookings Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes moderated the event.

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Many within the United States and others abroad continue to question the United States’ role in the world. Understandably, Americans have grown wary of the country’s role in the world, some asking whether the U.S. still has the power and influence to lead the international community, while others question why the United States must still take on this seemingly singular responsibility. On the eve of a major speech by President Obama addressing these questions, Senior Fellow Robert Kagan released a new essay entitled, "Superpowers Don't Get to Retire: What Our Tired Country Still Owes the World," which was published in the latest edition of The New Republic. Kagan argued that the United States has no choice but to be “exceptional.” On May 27, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and The New Republic hosted an event to mark the release of the Kagan essay and in advance of President Obama’s address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Kagan, a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at Brookings, was joined by The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier and The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt. After the program, the panelists took audience questions.

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John Carlin, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice, spoke at Brookings this week on “Defending our Nation by Prosecuting State-Sponsored Cyber Theft.”

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“At the Nexus of Public Policy and Cybersecurity: Some Basic Concepts and Issues.”

That’s the title of a new report co-edited by Herb Lin, chief scientist at National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.  This week, Lin sat down with our own Ben Wittes.  Their engaging discussion, together with the report itself, offers an excellent primer on the day's most pressing cyber concerns---and strongly suggests that policymakers haven’t yet begun to address them with sufficient urgency.  Enjoy.

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Michael O'Hanlon and Jim Steinberg discuss their new book, Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century at a Brookings event moderated by Michael Green.

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Ben sat down with Cmd. Michael Adams, deputy legal adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the Pacific Command conference in Manila this week, to talk about his new paper on "Jus Extra Bellum."

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Ben Wittes and Rosa Brooks discuss the future of the AUMF at a panel moderated by Greg McNeal at Pepperdine University School of Law.

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Benjamin Wittes interviews John Rizzo, former CIA acting general counsel, about his new book, Company Man, the persistence of the enhanced interrogation controversy, and the current debate over NSA surveillance.

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Bruce Schneier of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School gave a keynote address on April 3, 2014 during the “National Security Agency at the Crossroads” conference at UT-Austin. He spoke about the challenges to maintaining privacy in the evolving digital environment and the big picture that has emerged from almost a year of NSA revelations.

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This week, the University of Texas at Austin hosted a two day conference, "The National Security Agency at the Crossroads." Former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis gave an address; afterwards, Inglis joined Lawfare's Ben Wittes for a wide-ranging discussion about (among other things) the NSA's recent controversies, and proposals to reform its surveillance programs.  

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John Carlin, the Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice, gave a keynote address on cybersecurity at American University’s Washington College of Law.

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On March 19, the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) hosted NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for a Statesman’s Forum address on the importance of the transatlantic alliance and how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is evolving to address new common security challenges. As the crisis in Ukraine shows that security in the Euro-Atlantic area cannot be taken for granted, the secretary-general discussed NATO’s essential role in an unpredictable world. He outlined the agenda for the September NATO summit in Wales as a critical opportunity to ensure that the alliance has the military capabilities necessary to deal with the threats it now faces, to consider how NATO members can better share the collective burden of defense and to engage constructively with partners around the world.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen took office as North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 12th secretary-general in August 2009. Previously, he served in numerous positions in the Danish government and opposition throughout his political career, including as prime minister of Denmark from November 2001 to April 2009.

Brookings Senior Fellow and CUSE Director Fiona Hill provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

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Shane Harris of Foreign Policy magazine sits down with Benjamin Wittes to discuss two major news events of the week: the CIA-SSCI flap and the back-and-forth between NSA and the courts over whether it can, may, or must retain telephony metadata past the five year deadline for its destruction.

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Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and ACLU Chief Anthony Romero go mano a mano at a Federalist Society Event over Edward Snowden, metadata collection, standing in national security cases, and other thing--and find some surprising areas of agreement. Moderated by Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post.

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Ten years after the Iraq War and five years after the global financial crisis, the state of the international order is decidedly mixed. The international system faces a new and increasingly complex set of challenges. While the past decade has seen some successes in international cooperation – most notably the response to the financial crisis – core questions remain about whether the established and emerging powers will be able to sustain the peace, foster a system for shared prosperity and make progress on democracy, justice and human security. Brookings scholars Ted Piccone, Bruce Jones, Robert Kagan, Thomas Wright, and Jeremy Shapiro discuss.

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On February 19, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion evaluating the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework.

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Conor Friedersdorf and Benjamin Wittes debate the ethics of drone warfare at the University of Richmond in November 2013.

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A discussion at the Berkman Center: In the wake of the disclosures about government surveillance and the rise of corporate-run applications and protocols, is the idea of an “unowned” Internet still a credible one? The Berkman Center’s Jonathan Zittrain moderates a panel, incluing Yochai Benkler (Harvard Law School), Ebele Okobi (Yahoo!), Bruce Schneier (CO3 Systames), and Benjamin Wittes (Brookings Institution) to explore surveillance, and the potential for reforms in policy, technology, and corporate and consumer behavior.

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DNI General Counsel Robert Litt talks about implementation of President Obama's NSA reforms, privacy rights for foreigners in espionage, spying on foreign heads of state, and amnesty for Edward Snowden.

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The Brookings Intelligence Project hosted Foreign Service Officer Yaniv Barzilai on January 23, 2014 to discuss his new book, 102 Days of War---How Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban Survived 2001. Bruce Riedel moderated the discussion.

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President Obama delivered a major address this morning---and released an accompanying policy directive---in response to the recommendations of his surveillance review group. He announced limited reforms to the NSA's surveillance activities, defended the larger role and activities of the intelligence community, and suggested that limited privacy protections extend to non-Americans. Lawfare convened a roundtable discussion by phone to discuss the president's highly-anticipated speech; the discussion featured Benjamin Wittes, Robert Chesney, and Carrie Cordero of Georgetown University Law School. Lawfare's managing editor, Wells Bennett, moderated the conversation.

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Are there parallels between insurgencies and illness? Or between healthy bodies and healthy nations? Innovative new thinking argues that indeed there are. As understanding in various related disciplines grows, targeted responses are often able to alleviate at least some of the problems.

On December 19, two Yale University professors, Stanley McChrystal (retired General, U.S. Army) and Kristina Talbert-Slagle, an associate research scientist at Yale Global Health Leadership Institute, presented their model of counterinsurgency warfare that likens that mission to the way in which the human body fights infectious disease. The presentation was not intended to produce specific recommendations for any particular ongoing or prospective operation abroad, but it did have interesting and potentially significant implications for the future of counterinsurgency warfare and for how the U.S. government prepares for such possible future missions.

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In the final episode in our series, "Inside NSA: We Brought In a Recording Device So You Don't Have To," Benjamin Wittes interviews the agency's executive director--and now its acting deputy director--Fran Fleisch about openness and transparency in signals intelligence, the NSA's culture, and how the agency would respond to a major policy change from Congress.

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The U.S. technology sector is pretty upset with NSA these days. Anne Neuberger, who manages the agency's relations with the private sector, is on the front lines of this tense relationship. Bobby Chesney and Benjamin Wittes sat down with her to discuss encryption, industry calls to rein in spying, and the difficult place the Snowden disclosures have put industry in with respect to their many foreign customers. 

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Bobby Chesney and Benjamin Wittes sit down with the head of IT at NSA and talk about how Edward Snowden did it, and what's being done to make sure the next Edward Snowden can't do it again. We talked about why NSA is different from other government agencies in technology development. And we talked about what would have happened had NSA built the health care web site. 

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In the second episode of our series, "Inside NSA: We Brought In a Recording Device So You Don't Have To," Robert Chesney and Benjamin Wittes talk to John DeLong, the agency's chief of compliance. They discuss the history and development of NSA's compliance program and whether the agency's problem is compliance with the rules--or whether it's the rules themselves.

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The first episode in our series, "Inside NSA: We Brought in a Recording Device So You Don't Have To": An interview with NSA General Counsel Rajesh De.

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After more than four decades of conflict, Colombia has made substantial progress under the Uribe and Santos administrations in combating drug trafficking and insurgents and demobilizing paramilitary groups. In recent years, Colombians have seen prosperity increase and reductions in violence in many parts of their county. Today, the Santos administration is engaged in a peace process with the FARC insurgency that has recently shown promise, but now the administration faces the challenge of managing peace talks and an election at the same time. What lessons can Colombia offer for improving security and economic development within a democratic context, and for sharing the lessons it has learned with other states of the region?

On December 2, the Latin America Initiative (LAI) and the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence (21CSI) at Brookings hosted Colombian Minister of National Defense Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno for a discussion of Colombia’s security accomplishments, current challenges, and future needs at this crucial juncture in the nation’s history. LAI Director and Senior Fellow Harold Trinkunas provided introductory remarks. Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon of 21CSI then interviewed Minister Pinzón.

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The exponential rate of change in the present global environment makes today’s security landscape particularly challenging, and projections promise that the challenges will only increase. In this complex and uncertain future, intelligence, cyber, Special Operations Forces and international partnerships will take on more prominent and critical roles in the nation’s defense and warfare for decades to come.

On November 20, the Intelligence Project at Brookings and the National Intelligence University co-hosted a discussion with Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to examine this uncertain future, DIA’s role in this complex security environment and a new model for defense intelligence that ensures preparedness to address these challenges and the crises of tomorrow. Flynn has also served as the director of intelligence at the U.S. Central Command, director of intelligence for the Joint Staff and director of intelligence for International Security Assistance Force-Afghanistan and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.

Brookings Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project, and President of the National Intelligence University, David Ellison, provided introductory remarks, and Riedel moderated the discussion.

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In an panel discussion at NYU, a former White House Counsel, a former chief of staff to the CIA director and Secretary of Defense, a former FBI general counsel, and a former head of NCTC discuss law and lawyering and national security strategy.

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In the third and final installment of our series of sessions from the October 25 Hoover Media Colloquium, Jack goes mano a mano with the press corps on national security leaks and journalism. 

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Matthew Waxman and Kenneth Anderson speak at the Hoover Institution on autonomous weapons before a group of journalists.

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Benjamin Wittes speaks on his and Kenneth Anderson's book, Speaking the Law, at an October 25 media colloquium at the Hoover Institution. 

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Congressional scholars Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute discuss the arguments in their book It's Even Worse Than It Looks, the government shutdown and the effects of political dysfunction on national security.

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Bruce Riedel, Director of the Intelligence Project at Brookings, hosted Matt Apuzzo of the AP for a discussion of his new book with Adam Goldman, entitled “Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America.” The book is about the 2009 plot to attack the New York City subway system, led by Afghan-American Najibullah Zazi. During this conversation, Bruce and Matt discussed the plot, the current state of Al Qaeda, and whether the NSA’s surveillance programs directly led to thwarting this terrorist attack.

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Benjamin Wittes, Steven Vladeck, and Orin Kerr debate NSA surveillance and the Snowden leaks at an event hosted by the George Washington University chapter of the Federalist Society.

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Lawfare veteran Steve Vladeck and NYU law professor Ryan Goodman discuss their new national security blog, Just Security--which launches today.

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Polymathic technology businessman Nathan Myhrvold discusses his paper, "Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action."

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On Thursday, Brookings hosted an event on possible U.S. military intervention in Syria.  Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon lead the discussion, in which Brookings scholars debated the strategic, legal and moral wisdom behind a strike against the Assad regime.  

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Ben interviews Laura Dean, Lawfare's Cairo Diarist, about the coup in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, and freelancing the revolution.

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