The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

By The Lawfare InstituteBusinessNewsGovernment
Download on the App Store

The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition episodes

  • The Legislative Dog That Hasn’t Barked
    The period after Watergate and President Nixon's resignation saw an unprecedented barrage of congressional efforts at reforming the executive branch. The period after Donald Trump's departure from office has seen no comparable spree of legislative action—at least not yet. In a recent Lawfare article, Quinta Jurecic and Andrew Kent explored the disparity and the reasons for it, and they analyzed whether any of the legislative reforms that have been so far proposed have any prospect of passage. They joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about why things are so different today than they were in the late 1970s, what happened in that period and whether Congress will actually be able to do anything now.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    48 min
  • Lawfare Archive: Peter Pomerantsev on the War Against Reality
    From December 19, 2019: In this episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series, Alina Polyakova and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Peter Pomerantsev, a research fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the author of "This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality." The book explores how the nature of propaganda has shifted as authoritarian governments move from silencing dissent to drowning dissent out with squalls of disinformation. Pomerantsev argues that this transformation traces back to the cynicism and chaos in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, but now it's become all too familiar around the world.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    42 min
  • Lawfare Archive: Yemen's Ongoing Tragedy
    From August 26, 2020: Yemen is home to the most tragic circumstances imaginable right now—years upon years of war, environmental disasters and severe humanitarian plight, exacerbated by cholera, diphtheria and now COVID-19. To discuss the ongoing situation, David Priess sat down with Elisabeth Kendall, a senior research fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Pembroke College, Oxford University, who has spent extensive time on the ground in Yemen, and Mick Mulroy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. They talked about the roots of the Yemeni war and its humanitarian toll, its evolution through conflict and COVID-19, and prospects for improved conditions.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    41 min
  • Countering Extremism Within the Military
    Last week on Lawfare Live, Jacob Schulz sat down with Andrew Mines, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mines helps lead the Program on Extremism's efforts to keep track of criminal charges resulting from the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill siege. They talked about the U.S military’s efforts to counter extremism within its ranks. Mines is the recent author of a Lawfare piece on the subject, and they talked through the history of the problem, the history of Defense Department efforts to fix it and where the department is still coming up short.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    49 min
  • How the Press and the Platforms Handled the Hunter Biden Laptop

    We’re taking a look back at one of the stranger stories about social media platforms and the role of the press in the last presidential election. In the weeks before the 2020 election, the New York Post published an “October Surprise”: a set of stories on the business and personal life of Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, based on emails contained on a mysterious laptop. A great deal was questionable about the Post’s reporting, including to what extent the emails in question were real and how the tabloid had obtained them in the first place. The mainstream press was far more circumspect in reporting out the story—and meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook sharply restricted circulation of the Post’s stories on their platforms. 

    It’s a year and half later. And the Washington Post just published a lengthy report verifying the authenticity of some of the emails on the mysterious laptop—though a lot still remains unclear about the incident. In light of this news, how should we understand Facebook and Twitter’s actions in 2020? 

    Washington Post technology reporter Will Oremus weighed in on this question in his own reflection for the paper. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic asked him on the show to discuss the story. Did the social media platforms go too far in limiting access to the New York Post’s reporting? How did the mainstream press deal with the incident? What have we learned from the failures of how the press and social media responded to information operations around the 2016 election, and what can we learn from how they behaved differently in 2020?

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 hr
  • How Russia's War in Ukraine Affects Energy and Climate Security

    In the last few weeks, much has been said about how energy issues are playing into Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. It's especially coming up in the context of sanctions regimes against Russia, whose economy relies so heavily on energy production. But the war has serious implications for energy security more broadly.

    Natalie Orpett sat down with Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security, to talk about how the events in Ukraine are both exposing and exacerbating threats to energy security and climate security. They discussed the effect of European dependence on Russian oil and gas, how ecological damage is causing both immediate crises and long-term threats, why the conflict is causing food insecurity at a global scale, and what, if anything, can be done about it.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    46 min
  • Paul Massaro on the United States’ Latest Efforts to Combat Corruption

    On June 3, President Biden issued a national security memorandum that established the “Fight Against Corruption” as a core national security interest for the United States. The memo described the staggering costs of corruption, with it being “estimated that acts of corruption sap between 2 and 5 percent from global gross domestic product.” The memo also directed U.S. officials to develop a comprehensive presidential strategy focused on anti-corruption.

    Alvaro Marañon sat down with Paul Massaro, the senior policy advisor for counter-kleptocracy at the Helsinki Commission, to speak about the United States government's latest anti-corruption efforts following the June memo. They discussed the latest developments in the efforts to combat corruption, details around the first-ever presidential strategy on anti-corruption and the kinds of messages these unified efforts send to other authoritarian regimes beyond Russia. 

    For more on this topic, consider watching “Countering Oligarchs, Enablers, and Lawfare,” a hearing on Wednesday, April 6, at 2:30 p.m., hosted by the Helsinki Commission.


    Disclaimer: Paul Massaro serves on the staff of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent an official position of the U.S. government.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    48 min
  • The Legacy of Madeleine Albright, with Kori Schake and Natalie Orpett
    Madeleine Albright passed away on March 23. She was the first woman to serve as secretary of state in United States history, and she had a long legacy, both from her time as secretary and beyond. To talk through what made her special and what her impact was, David Priess sat down with Kori Schake and Natalie Orpett. Kori is the director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and she worked in the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the National Security Council staff. Natalie Orpett is the executive editor of Lawfare, and she worked with Secretary Albright as her executive assistant after she had left the Department of State. They talked about some of the foreign policy developments during Secretary Albright's tenure; about her personal relationships, including with those with whom she did not agree; and about her legacy when it comes to helping women in national security positions.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    34 min
  • Lawfare Archive: WTF, Ukraine!
    From October 1, 2019: The first two years of the Trump presidency were tied up with the Russia scandal. Now, there’s another scandal involving Russia’s next-door neighbor: Ukraine. The revelation that President Trump and his envoys pressured the Ukrainian government for information about debunked claims of Biden family corruption in Ukraine have brought Ukrainian domestic politics onto the American stage. The Ukrainian side of this very American scandal is complicated yet vital to understanding the whistleblower complaint and the reality of what happened with the Ukrainian prosecutor and Joe Biden’s son. Quinta Jurecic sat down with Alina Polyakova, the Director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology at the Brookings Institution, to break it all down. They talked about recent Ukrainian political developments, what exactly Joe Biden did or didn’t do in Ukraine, and what this might mean for the U.S.-Ukraine relationship going forward.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    54 min
  • Lawfare Archive: ICE, CBP and Coronavirus Response

    From April 13, 2020: Whether it has been travel bans, family separation, or changes to asylum rules, the Trump administration has long been embroiled in controversies over its immigration and detention policy. Those controversies have come amidst surges in migrants and asylum seekers, particularly at the U.S. southern border. The Trump administration's new policies have been legally and technically complex, and that was all before COVID-19.

    Mikhaila Fogel sat down with immigration reporters Hamed Aleaziz of Buzzfeed News and Dara Lind of ProPublica, as well as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council. They discussed how Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, are responding to COVID-19; the changing legal landscape for those agencies before the pandemic; and the challenges faced by migrants, asylum seekers and the U.S. immigration system during coronavirus and beyond.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    54 min

About The Lawfare Podcast: Patreon Edition

From the publisher's feed

The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security,…