From August 28, 2024: On today’s episode, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors, Co-Director of the Africa Security Initiative, and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution joins Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to help make sense of the recent skirmishes in northern Mali between the junta, separatist groups, Islamists, and Russian mercenaries. 

They discuss what the recent ambush in Mali portends for Russian and Russian-aligned mercenaries' activities in Africa and look back at how Moscow has restructured and reframed the Wagner Group in the year since the death of its former head, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

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Peter E. Harrell, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to examine the White House’s announcement that it will take a 10% share of Intel. They dive into the policy rationale for the stake as well as its legality. Peter and Kevin also explore whether this is just the start of such deals given that President Trump recently declared that “there will be more transactions, if not in this industry then other industries.”

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On today’s episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Eric Ciaramella, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Lawfare Contributing Editor, to discuss the history of American security commitments abroad and how it can help inform the debate around security guarantees for Ukraine.

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This week, Scott sat down with old and new Lawfare colleagues—Benjamin Wittes, Renée DiResta, and Michael Feinberg—to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including:

• “An Old Fashioned Anti Raid.” Former Trump National Security Advisor (turned Trump critic) John Bolton got a rude awakening this past week when the FBI conducted a raid at his home, reportedly on the grounds that he is believed to have retained classified information from his time in office. It’s the latest in a recent spate of (well publicized) investigations targeting Trump’s critics and enemies, including a series of mortgage fraud investigations into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook (who Trump now purports to have removed for cause), New York Attorney General Letitia James (which coincided with a photo shoot that Justice Department official Ed Martin did, uninvited, outside of her home), and Senator Adam Schiff. How big a threat are such investigations to Trump’s enemies? And what will their long-term implications be for the Justice Department?
• “Uncleared and Present Danger.” Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard pulled security clearances from 37 current and former intelligence officials on the purported grounds that they had “abused the public trust by politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization, and/or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards.” Those affected range from current senior intelligence officials to former officials who have been out of government for years to current senior congressional staffers. What are the consequences likely to be of Gabbard’s actions and what does it show about the Trump administration’s approach to national security agencies?
• “Blue Sky Thinking.” In response to a state law mandating age verification for anyone seeking to use social media platforms, Bluesky has opted to shut down its services in the state of Mississippi. What does this sort of response tell us about the trajectory of state and federal regulations, and what the impact might ultimately be on the internet?

In Object Lessons, Ben is letting The Algorithm light his way—literally—with solar-powered sunflower lights. Renée, not to be outdone, also bows before our algorithmic overlord and wants you to stream Red Bull’s YouTube dance battles. Scott is using his green thumb to plant the seeds of some versatile green fruit. And Michael is going less horticultural, more horrifying, by planting horror movie props around his house—because nothing says “I love you” like a severed head in the fridge.

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Matthew Ford, Associate Professor at Swedish Defence University and author of “War in the Smartphone Age: Conflict, Connectivity, and the Crises at Our Fingertips,” joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss the role of smartphones and related technologies in war, how social media contributes to a collapse of context in the war content we see online, and how smartphones and other devices are reshaping open-source intelligence (OSINT) and open-source investigations (OSINV) vis-a-vis conflicts and violence from Syria to Ethiopia to Ukraine. They also discuss the tech stack in war, how the military “kill chain” is evolving with ever-greater digital connectivity, the current state and future of “participatory warfare,” and how we can become better consumers—and sharers—of war-related content online.

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Lawfare Contributor Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Michael O'Hanlon, Director of Foreign Policy Research and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Chairman of the Centre for Defence Strategies in Kyiv, a former Ukrainian Defence Minister, and a nonresident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss ways of defending Ukraine from present and future Russian attacks in the absence of NATO membership.

Please see the following policy proposals relevant to the discussion: 

• “Defending Ukraine in the Absence of NATO Security Guarantees,” by Paul B. Stares and Michael O'Hanlon
• “Ukraine's New Theory of Victory Should be Strategic Neutralization,” by Andriy Zagorodnyuk
• “Exploring Ukraine’s Armed Neutrality or Nonalignment: Legal and Policy Considerations,” by Mykhailo Soldatenko

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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 James Pearce to discuss the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at John Bolton’s house, a federal judge ruling that Alina Habba was unlawfully serving as a U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss his indictment for selective prosecution and his return to Maryland, a decision voiding the fine in the civil fraud case against President Trump, the Supreme Court’s ruling in NIH v. APHA, 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 August 1, 2024: Anastasiia Lapatina is a Kyiv-based Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare. Marcel Plichta is a Fellow at the Centre for Global Law and Governance at the University of St. Andrews, and a former analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense who currently works as an instructor at the Grey Dynamics Intelligence School. 

For this episode, Lapatina sat down with Plichta to discuss Ukraine’s ongoing drone campaign against Russia, Ukraine’s choice of targets deep inside Russian territory, and the future of drone warfare around the world.

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From May 3, 2024: Over the past several years, governors around the country from both political parties have used their respective National Guards for an increasingly unconventional array of domestic missions, ranging from teaching in public schools to regulating immigration at the southern border. To discuss how this trend may impact the National Guard—and our broader democracy, particularly in this pivotal election year—Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson recently sat down with a panel of senior former National Guard and Defense Department officials, including: General Craig McKinley, General Joseph Lengyel, Brigadier General Allyson Solomon, Major General Daryl Bohac, and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Paul Stockton. 

A video recording of the panel is available at https://www.brookings.edu/events/domestic-deployment-of-the-national-guard/. 

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For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor and General Counsel Scott R. Anderson sits down with Lawfare Contributing Editor and Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Asaf Lubin and Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Deborah Housen-Couriel to talk over the European Court of Human Rights' recent decision in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia.

Together, they discuss how the opinion lays new ground in discussing digital rights in wartime, what issues still need to be developed further, and what it all might mean for warfare in the future, both good and bad.

For more, read Asaf and Deb’s latest piece on Lawfare, “Digital Rights in Armed Conflict and the Ukraine v. Russia Decision.”

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