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Episodes from The Lawfare Podcast
Lawfare Archive: A World Without Caesars
From March 14, 2025: This episode of the Lawfare Podcast features Glen Weyl, economist and author at Microsoft Research; Jacob Mchangama, Executive Director of the Future of Free Speech Project at Vanderbilt; and Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall School Neely Center. Together with Renee DiResta, Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and Contributing Editor at Lawfare, they talk about design vs moderation. Conversations about the challenges of social media often focus on moderation—what stays up and what comes down. Yet the way a social media platform is built influences every...
Lawfare Archive: How to Steal a Presidential Election
From March 4, 2024: As the 2024 presidential election approaches, a vital question is whether the legal architecture governing the election is well crafted to prevent corruption and abuse. In their new book, “How to Steal a Presidential Election,” Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman argue that despite the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, serious abuse of the presidential election rules remains a live possibility. Jack Goldsmith sat down with Lessig to learn why. They discussed the continuing possibility of vice presidential mischief, the complex role of faithless electors, strategic behavior related to recounts, and the threat of rogue governors. They also pondered whet...
Lawfare Daily: The Privacy Law That's Supposed To Be Protecting Us Online Turns 40
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which is designed to protect users' privacy—including privacy online—turned 40 this year. On March 6, Lawfare hosted an event at Georgetown Law marking the event and featuring panel discussions with the authors of our paper series, Installing Updates to ECPA, in which experts from various disciplines reflected on the law, what’s changed over the last 40 years, and how ECPA should be updated to meet today’s realities. On today's podcast, we're sharing the opening remarks from that event, featuring legendary Supreme Court advocate Michael Dreeban, who argued many of the landmark ECPA cases. He talke...
Rational Security: The "Chicken Sh*t Bingo" Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Senior Editors Anna Bower, Kevin Frazier, and Kate Klonick to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:“The X Post Facto Rule.” The Justice Department and lawyers representing Anthropic faced off last week in a Northern California courtroom over whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s X post and som related communications amounted to an official order and if the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation retaliated against the company’s First Amendment-protected views, among other issues. On March 26, Judge Rita Lin, in that case, stayed the supply c...
Lawfare Daily: Beyond the Headlines: A History of U.S.-Iran Relations
In this episode, Ariane Tabatabai sits down with historian, John Ghazvinian, the author of, “America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present,” to discuss U.S.-Iran relations. They take a step back from the current conflict to talk about the key events that have shaped the relationship between the two countries and their perceptions of one another. 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.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Host...
Lawfare Daily: Joel Braunold on West Bank Violence and Israel’s New Lebanon Offensive
For today’s episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Joel Braunold, the Managing Director of the Center Project, for the latest in their regular series on recent developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Together, they dig deep into the spike in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel’s new military offensive in southern Lebanon, how they both relate to the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Iran, and what Israel’s expanding range of hostilities may mean for the Israeli parliamentary elections scheduled for later this year.To receive ad-free podcasts, become...
Lawfare Daily: What’s Influencing Politics Online? X’s Algorithm, Creators, and the New Persuasion Machine
In this episode, Lawfare Contributing Editor Renée DiResta speaks with Nathaniel Lubin, co-author of “How Social Media Creators Shape Mass Politics,” and Philine Widmer, co-author of a recent Nature paper, “The Political Effects of X’s Feed Algorithm.” Together, they discuss two different layers of online influence—a platform’s algorithms and the trusted voices inside it—and their implications for mass politics.The conversation explores what happens when recommendation systems shape what people see, and what happens when creators shape how people interpret it. They discuss whether algorithms move political attitudes by shifting exposure and salience, whether...
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 27
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff, discuss a judge granting a preliminary injunction in Anthropic’s suit challenging its supply chain designation, a Friday morning hearing in Fulton County’s suit over the federal government seizing ballots from 2020, a new push from the Trump administration to investigate New York AG Letitia James, 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 Bluesk...
Lawfare Archive: Tom Kent on the Dismantling of American Government Broadcasting
From March 25, 2025: Tom Kent ran Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is a longtime Russia watcher. He talks to Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes about President Trump’s executive order dismantling Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.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-institutSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: The New Syrian Government and Its Problems
From March 19, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviewed Steven Heydemann, the Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Smith College, to assess the fast-changing developments in Syria today. Heydemann discusses the surge in communal violence in Syria, the deal between the new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led government and Syria's Kurds, Israel's counterproductive interventions, and U.S. policy toward the new regime in Damascus. 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.Support...
Lawfare Daily: How Two Intelligence Community Veterans View the Iran Conflict, with Chip Usher and Aaron Faust
On today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with two veterans of the intelligence community to get their take on the ongoing Iran conflict.Before leaving government last year, Aaron Faust was a senior official in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), where he had previously served as Division Chief for Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. William "Chip" Usher, meanwhile, is the Senior Director for Intelligence at the Special Competitiveness Studies Project and a professor of practice at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at...
Rational Security: The “Authentic Flavors, Real Fruit” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Molly Roberts, Tyler McBrien, and Renée DiResta to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including:“The Meta-verse of Madness.” On Tuesday, a New Mexico jury reached a $375 million verdict against Meta after a seven-week trial that focused on whether the social media company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and facilitated child sexual exploitation through its algorithms. And just before recording, another verdict came down in a jury trial in California about whether Facebook and YouTube are too addictive in a way that harms an indivi...