Scaling Laws, Founders & Founders: Brandon Mitchell of WriteSea Lawfare 2026-09-19 | Scaling Laws, Founders & Founders: Brandon Mitchell of WriteSea
Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, July 17 Lawfare 2026-07-17 | On Friday, July 17 at 4 p.m. ET, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Justice Department sending grand jury subpoenas to New York Times reporters, the White House firing the court-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington state, and more.Find Lawfare’s litigation tracker here: www.lawfaremedia.org/trumptrackerSupport Lawfare's work at: givebutter.com/journalism
Lawfare Live: Breaking Down President Trumps Primetime Address on Elections Lawfare 2026-07-17 | On July 17 at 11am ET, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Michael Feinberg and Molly Roberts and Lawfare Contributing Editor Renée DiResta to discuss President Trump's primetime address last night where he discussed election security.
Lawfare Daily: Consent in the Age of AI Lawfare 2026-07-17 | Lawfare Senior Editor Renée DiResta sits down with Senior Editor Kate Klonick and Elissa Redmiles, an assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University. They examine the people who create AI-generated sexual content and whether prominent technical proposals can actually prevent AI systems from generating exploitative content.For further reading:Jaron Mink, Lucy Qin, and Elissa M. Redmiles, “‘Unlimited Realm of Exploration and Experimentation’: Methods and Motivations of AI-Generated Sexual Content Creators”, FAccT '26: The 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (June 2026)Renée DiResta and Berin Szóka, “Grok, ‘Censorship,’ & the Collapse of Accountability,” Lawfare (January 2026)Lucy Qin, Sharon Wang, Yigit Aydinalp, Marin Scarlett, and Elissa M. Redmiles, "'Did They F***ing Consent to That?': Safer Digital Intimacy via Proactive Protection Against Image-Based Sexual Abuse," USENIX (August 2024)Safe Digital Intimacy.orgPlease note that this podcast discusses sexual violence and the harms of image-based sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Rational Security: The “Hip to Be a Square State” Edition Lawfare 2026-07-16 | This week, Scott sat down with his colleagues Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ariane Tabatabai, to talk through the week’s big news in foreign policy, including:“Truce or Consequences.” The fragile ceasefire that had paused the U.S.-Iran war since the spring now appears to have collapsed. After Iran struck several commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the United States has launched several successive nights of strikes, hitting more than 300 targets across Iran. Iran has in turn retaliated against U.S. bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Speaking from the NATO summit in Ankara, President Trump declared the June memorandum of understanding “over” even as he insisted that talks toward a lasting peace could still continue. By the weekend, Iran had declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, and U.S. officials were describing the ceasefire as fully “broken down.” Then, on Monday, Trump escalated further—declaring that the United States would “keep” and “run” the Strait as its self-styled “Guardian,” reinstate its blockade on Iranian ships, and charge a 20% fee on all cargo passing through, an arrangement Tehran has flatly rejected. Is the war back on? And is there any diplomatic path left to pull both sides back from the brink? “Rutte Awakening.” NATO’s leaders gathered in Ankara last week for a summit that Secretary General Mark Rutte billed as the launch of “NATO 3.0”—a stronger, more self-reliant Europe inside an alliance less dependent on the United States. Allies touted rapid progress toward last year’s pledge to spend 5% of GDP on defense, announcing more than $50 billion in new procurement and at least €70 billion in fresh military aid for Ukraine. But the gathering was overshadowed by friction with President Trump, who publicly berated allies for declining to help in the Iran war and briefly revived his campaign to acquire Greenland before ending on a somewhat more conciliatory note. What did the Ankara summit actually accomplish? And what does “NATO 3.0” mean for the alliance’s future?“Bad Bromance.” The once-close alliance between Washington and Jerusalem—and between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu—is showing unusual public strain. Trump has repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu over Israel’s continued operations in Lebanon—which have threatened the Iran ceasefire—and over the stalled second phase of his Gaza peace plan, which has all but wilted as Hamas refuses to disarm and Israel refuses to withdraw. Defense Secretary Hegseth abruptly canceled a planned trip to Israel, and a possible F-35 sale to Turkey has added to the unease. The tensions turned vivid this past week when Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said he was detained for more than an hour by armed Israeli settlers—and then by IDF soldiers—during a West Bank visit, and armed settlers attacked a CNN crew and other journalists days later. At home, Israeli confidence in Trump has plummeted in advance of Israeli elections in October, even as U.S. primaries have produced a record number of candidates critical of Israel, particularly on the left. Just how strained is the U.S.-Israeli relationship? And how might Israel’s coming elections—and America’s midterms—reshape it? (Also see the Atlantic article by Thomas Wright that Julia references here.)In object lessons, Dan reviews the movie The Invite, and it’s complicated. Ari reviews Israeli jazz musician Avishai Cohen’s new album “Eternal Child” and is totally engaged. Scott remembers the influential life and career of Lindsey Graham, separating himself from any alleged involvement in a long-ago gym-mat scandal. And Julia is in love with post-SCIF life, especially one in which she can work from the serenity of her mother’s paradisiacal porch: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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: What Do the Russians Actually Think About the War? Lawfare 2026-07-16 | On today’s episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina talks to Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about how the Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy sites are shifting attitudes towards the war inside Russia. They also discuss Maria’s latest report, co-authored with Jade McGlynn, called “Russian Attitudes Are Shifting as the War’s Effects Come Home.”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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: AI Targeting Systems Are Coming—But Not as Fast as You Think Lawfare 2026-07-15 | On this episode, Senior Editor Kate Klonick speaks with Steve Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about his recent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists essay on AI targeting systems. Feldstein argues that the conventional wisdom about AI warfare has it backwards: the technology's battlefield debut in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza is real and consequential, but AI targeting is not a model you download—it's a stack of surveillance infrastructure, data pipelines, battle management software, and strike capacity that takes decades and billions to build, which means it will spread far more slowly and unevenly than the common narrative suggests.Among the things they discuss: what the Iran War's staggering Maven numbers do and don't prove, how Israel became the case study in what it actually takes to build an AI kill chain, why the same handful of American tech companies that govern online speech now supply the infrastructure of targeting—and who is accountable when they do, whether the UAE is next, and whether export controls, or norms, can realistically slow any of it down.Additional resources:Steve Feldstein, “Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalry, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare” (St. Martin's Press, September 2026)Steve Feldstein, "Anthropic-Pentagon Feud Over AI Technology Is a Bad Sign" (Foreign Policy, February 2026)Steve Feldstein, “The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance” (Oxford University Press, 2021)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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Scaling Laws: New Paths to Social Mobility with Joe Seddon Lawfare 2026-07-14 | Joe Seddon, Founder and CEO of Zero Gravity, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a senior fellow at the Abundance Institute, to discuss AI, social mobility, higher education, and the future of opportunity. Zero Gravity is a UK-based platform that helps launch students from low-opportunity backgrounds into leading universities and prosperous careers.The conversation explores whether AI can scale the kinds of mentorship, admissions advice, tutoring, and career guidance that have historically been available only to students with strong networks. The two also examine the future of elite credentials, the role of universities in preparing students for an AI-transformed labor market, and whether AI will disrupt entry-level white-collar work in ways that require new approaches to retraining, apprenticeships, and lifelong learning.
Lawfare Daily: Taking Stock of the Ukraine-Russia Talks Lawfare 2026-07-14 | Lawfare Contributing Editor Mykhailo Soldatenko sits down with Eric Ciaramella, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Samuel Charap, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, to take stock of the U.S.-led negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. They discuss the improvements in Ukraine's position, the structure of negotiations, territorial questions, and security commitments to Ukraine.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, July 10 Lawfare 2026-07-11 | On Friday, July 10 at 4 pm ET, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Justice Department settling a second suit with Michael Flynn, developments in the E. Jean Carroll litigation, the D.C. Circuit denying a stay pending appeal of the order to take Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center, and more.Find Lawfare’s litigation tracker here: www.lawfaremedia.org/trumptrackerSupport Lawfare's work at: givebutter.com/journalism
Lawfare Daily: Prophecy, Prediction, and Power with Carissa Véliz Lawfare 2026-07-10 | On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as well as a tutorial fellow at Hertford College, at the University of Oxford. They speak about Véliz’s paradigm-shifting, free-ranging new book, “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI,” including discussions on the history of prediction, why a healthy democracy—and a life well lived—requires uncertainty, and Véliz’s belief that “artificial intelligence is the new Oracle of Delphi and tech executives the new prophets.” 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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Rational Security: The “Scoot Over” Edition Lawfare 2026-07-09 | This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Editor in Chief and co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes and Senior Editors Anna Bower and Michael Feinberg to talk through the latest in national security news, including:“Humphrey’s Executioner.” On June 29, the Supreme Court closed out its term with a trio of decisions on the president’s power to fire officials at supposedly independent agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, a 6–3 majority upheld Trump’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and overruled the 90-year-old precedent Humphrey’s Executor, handing the president at-will removal power over roughly two dozen multimember agencies. The same day, in Trump v. Cook, the Court refused 5–4 to let Trump remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, carving out a special exemption for the central bank. And a day later, in Blanche v. Perlmutter, the justices declined to let Trump oust Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, whose office sits within the legislative branch. Taken together, what do these cases tell us about the unitary executive and the future of agency independence?“For Your Lies Only.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in freefall. Since Bill Pulte—a housing-finance official with no intelligence background—took over as acting DNI on June 19, he has demanded a roster of every employee, fired the head of the office that oversees the President’s Daily Brief, and all but liquidated the National Intelligence Council. The fight over his appointment has already cost the government its Section 702 surveillance authority, which lawmakers let lapse rather than leave in his hands, and Trump abruptly canceled the confirmation hearing for his own permanent nominee, Jay Clayton, to keep the “less shackled” Pulte in place. How did the nation’s top intelligence coordinator get here—and how much damage can a politicized ODNI actually do?“Fixer Upper.” In one of the stranger turns of the Trump era, Michael Cohen—the former “fixer” whose testimony helped convict Trump of 34 felonies—says he and the president have reconciled. Cohen, who once vowed to flee the country if Trump won, said that the ice between them “didn’t just melt, it broke,” and he is now taking a weekend slot on a conservative station with what he says was Trump’s “glowing recommendation.” The thaw arrives as Trump’s appeal of his New York conviction and related civil fraud judgment grind forward—and after Cohen publicly claimed he felt “pressured and coerced” to testify. What might Cohen’s turn mean for that pending appeal?In object lessons, everyone is in a unifying mood. Ben demonstrates how RAGtime, his co-creation with AI overlord Claude to develop and analyze datasets, can find common cause between this week’s co-hosts. Mike is enthusiastic about the new Criterion Collection bringing together all of Stanley Kubrick’s works. Scott is reaching for perhaps humanity’s greatest unifier—a certain beverage that can be enjoyed across political persuasions and coasts alike. And Anna is bringing us all to the world of personal essays with Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter.”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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: Nuclear Weapons in the Age of AI, with Joshua Keating Lawfare 2026-07-09 | For today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with Vox Senior Correspondent Joshua Keating to discuss his special new series on how artificial intelligence is impacting the use and development of nuclear weapons. Together, they explore what AI may mean for nuclear command and control moving forward, how it is impacting nuclear arms development, how these trends are intersecting the breakdown of the global nonproliferation regime, and what it all means for the risk of nuclear escalation moving forward.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: The Military, Elections, and the Law Lawfare 2026-07-08 | Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes talks with Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Senior Editors Loren Voss and Molly Roberts about the limits the Constitution and statutes put on the use of military in U.S. elections—as well as the arguments an eager executive might make to skirt those restrictions. They discuss how the history of domestic deployment law shows that legislators have long believed voting deserves special protection from military involvement. They also explain why, ahead of the 2026 midterms, that isn't as reassuring as it might sound.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Scaling Laws: All Things Data Centers with Andy Masley Lawfare 2026-07-07 | Andy Masley joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a senior editor at Lawfare, and Alan Rozenshtein, research director at Lawfare and associate professor at Minnesota Law, to unpack the increasingly contentious issues related to data centers.They discuss Andy’s efforts to challenge what he sees as misleading claims about data center water use, land use, electricity rates, and local community impacts. Be sure to check out Andy’s substack here.
Lawfare Daily: Whats Happening at ODNI? Lawfare 2026-07-07 | On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Lawfare Senior Editor Mike Feinberg and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee about the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which was created to oversee the intelligence community. But much like the IC itself, the ODNI is somewhat mysterious to the general public—which makes it difficult to tell when something is going wrong. They talked about what ODNI does, why it exists at all, and how recent developments are undermining its mission.Read more of Mike and Julia's analysis in their recent article in Lawfare, "Gradually, and Then Suddenly: The Decline and Fall of ODNI."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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, July 2 Lawfare 2026-07-03 | On Thursday, July 2 at 4 pm ET, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Kate Klonick, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court's decisions on birthright citizenship, the president's ability to fire the head of independent agencies, and constitutional protections for location data, and more.Find Lawfare’s litigation tracker here: www.lawfaremedia.org/trumptrackerSupport Lawfare's work at: givebutter.com/journalism
Lawfare Daily: What the Supreme Court Said About the Presidents Power Over Independent Agencies Lawfare 2026-07-02 | On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Nick Bednar, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and a contributing editor at Lawfare. They talk about two Supreme Court cases issued last week that will have a huge impact on the president's authority over agencies that Congress set up to be independent. In Slaughter v. Trump, the Court held that the president has the power to remove members of independent agencies who had previously been understood to have employment protections that forbade the president from firing them. In Cook v. Trump, the Court carved out a special exception to that rule for the Federal Reserve. They discuss Nick's recent article for Lawfare, what the opinions say, what they fail to say, and what it means for the workforce that makes the federal government function.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: Trumps Cuba Problem Lawfare 2026-07-01 | Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman sits down with Professor Javier Corrales, Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Science and Department Chair of Political Science at Amherst College, to discuss the Trump administration's efforts to pressure Cuba and support regime change there. They discuss why the Cuban regime stays in power, the effectiveness of different U.S. policy instruments used against Cuba, why Professor Corrales thinks that the Venezuela approach probably would not work in Cuba, and what a post-communist Cuba might look like.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: ‘The Reverse Centaurs Guide to Life After AI’—A Conversation with Cory Doctorow Lawfare 2026-06-30 | On this episode of Lawfare Daily, Senior Editor Kate Klonick and Senior Editor Alan Rozenshtein speak with Cory Doctorow—science fiction author, activist, journalist, adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the writer who coined "enshittification"—about his new book, “The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.” Doctorow argues that the most important thing about the AI boom isn't what the technology can or can't do, but the historic investment bubble and the new arrangements of work being built on top of it—the same analytic lens he brought to platform decay, now turned on AI.They discuss whether the AI bubble will actually burst or merely deflate, and the unit economics underneath it; the "reverse centaur," the worker conscripted to serve the machine; and how it maps onto a broader culture and questions of AI "knowledge collapse," the human analogue to AI model collapse.Additional Resources:Cory Doctorow's daily newsletter, Pluralistic Ed Zitron, "The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble," (Where's Your Ed At, 2025)Andrew J. Peterson, "AI and the Problem of Knowledge Collapse" (arXiv, 2024)Benjamin Recht, “The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us” (Princeton University Press, 2026) 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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, June 26 Lawfare 2026-06-26 | On Friday, June 26 at 4 pm ET, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett will sit down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the Supreme Court’s decisions allowing Trump’s cancellation of TPS for Haitians and Syrians, the D.C. Circuit ruling that the administration’s expedited removal procedures are likely lawful, and more.Find Lawfare’s litigation tracker here: www.lawfaremedia.org/trumptrackerSupport Lawfare's work at: givebutter.com/journalism
Rational Security: The “Happy FrAIday” Edition Lawfare 2026-06-26 | This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Kevin Frazier, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to talk through some of the week’s big news in AI, including:“Citizen Cain’t.” When the NAACP sued Elon Musk’s xAI under the Clean Air Act—alleging that the company built dozens of gas-fired turbines to power a data center in Mississippi without relevant air permits and exposing nearby, predominantly Black communities to harmful pollution—the Justice Department opted to do something it has never done before: it intervened in a citizen suit against a private company in order to kill it. DOJ’s motion offers two theories: first, that shutting down the turbines would threaten national security because the military relies on xAI’s Grok Gov model (including in relation to the Iran war) to secure the nation, and second, that the Constitution’s vesting of executive power in the president means private citizens cannot enforce federal law over the executive’s objection. How strong are these arguments? And what would it mean for environmental and other citizen-enforcement suits if DOJ were to prevail?“Grok the Vote.” We may be living through the first true “AI elections.” In Manhattan’s NY-12 Democratic primary, more than $40 million in AI-industry and AI-safety money turned a little-known assemblyman, Alex Bores, into something of a national referendum on whether voters care about AI regulation and AI safety—though Bores ultimately lost to Micah Lasher this week. Meanwhile, overseas in Malaysia, parties are using chatbots and other AI-driven technologies to reach out to voters in new and novel ways. And just this week in Washington, a new study has concluded that frontier AI is perhaps more persuasive than ever, but also may not be as politically neutral as some suspect or one might hope. What does this all mean for democratic politics when both money and the messaging involved in our politics are increasingly shaped by AI?“Kill, Kill Switch, Kill, Kill!” The government's frontier-AI "kill switch" is now ready to have its first day in court. If you recall, a few weeks ago, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security sent Anthropic an "Is Informed" letter ordering it to suspend all access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for any foreign nationals, including its own employees. This ultimately led Anthropic to pull access to those models for everyone within hours. But this past Monday, June 22, a technology startup called Legion LegalTech filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government alleging that it has acted in a way that is unlawful and raises a number of statutory and constitutional concerns. How strong is the legal challenge, and what does it tell us about whether courts—rather than the executive—will end up defining the government's power to switch a frontier model on and off?In object lessons, Molly sticks to the script for this week’s episode with her call-out of Erik Nitsche’s “Atoms for Peace” poster series for General Dynamics. Also inspired by this week’s theme, Kevin dives into some “light summer reading” about technology, globalization, and the law with “Rules for a Flat World,” by Gillian Hadfield. Roger, similarly, is “unwinding” with “The Winter Warriors,” by Olivier Norek, a novel about the lesser-known David vs. Goliath story of Finland taking on the Soviet Union in 1939. And Scott says enough already! He’s headed on vacation next week, and so is Rational Security. We’ll be back with a new episode and a rejuvenated Scott on July 9.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: Excavating Arctic Frost Lawfare 2026-06-25 | Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes and Senior Editor Michael Feinberg discuss the methods and techniques the FBI used to investigate Donald Trump as part of the Arctic Frost investigation, and whether critiques of the FBI’s steps hold up. 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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: Attorney General Blanche’s Purported Waiver of Pres. Trump’s Past Tax Liabilities Lawfare 2026-06-24 | Brandon DeBot and Kelsey Merrick, of NYU’s Tax Law Center, speak to Senior Editor Roger Parloff about Attorney General Todd Blanche’s purported waiver of President Trump’s past tax liabilities on May 19, as part of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion suit against the IRS.DeBot and Merrick discuss whether those who negotiated the deal might face criminal liability under 26 USC § 7217 or § 7212, and what steps Congress should take to investigate how the waiver came about and to stop it from taking effect.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Scaling Laws: The God Test AI as Cosmic Reckoning, with Robert Wright Lawfare 2026-06-23 | Alan Rozenshtein, Research Director at Lawfare, spoke with Robert Wright—author of Nonzero, The Moral Animal, The Evolution of God, and Why Buddhism Is True, and the writer behind the NonZero Newsletter and podcast—about his new book, The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, which argues that AI is an evolutionary threshold on the scale of the entire history of life, that we are collectively failing to grasp its magnitude, and that rising to the challenge will require both new forms of international governance and an expansion of human moral and cognitive perspective.The conversation covered the multiple meanings of the book's title and what it means to view AI from a "cosmic" perspective; whether the public is finally starting to "feel the AGI" and where skepticism about AI's capabilities now comes from; how large language models are trained and Wright's claim that we have built "machines that create machines that think"; whether these systems genuinely understand, what Searle's Chinese Room and Nagel's "what is it like to be a bat?" have to do with it, and the open question of AI moral patienthood; the two families of AI risk—bad actors empowered by AI versus AI itself going rogue—and why the near-term disruption to jobs, relationships, and security may matter most; the "But China!" argument against AI regulation, China hawkishness, and why Wright thinks racing toward superintelligence is dangerously destabilizing; the case for "global governance" over "world government" and the perils of concentrating AI power at home; and why a book about AI and geopolitics closes with a call for mindfulness, cognitive empathy, and transcending the psychology of tribalism.
Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, June 22 Lawfare 2026-06-22 | On June 22 at 4 pm ET, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett will sit down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the indictment of anti-ICE protestors in Minnesota, a new lawsuit challenging the Trump adminsitration's plans to redesign the West Potomac Park, and more.Find Lawfare’s litigation tracker here: www.lawfaremedia.org/trumptrackerSupport Lawfare's work at: givebutter.com/journalism
Lawfare Daily: Military Education and American Manhood with Jasper Craven Lawfare 2026-06-22 | On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Jasper Craven, a freelance reporter covering the military and veterans’ issues, to discuss his new book, “God Forgives, Brothers Don't: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood.” They speak about why the son of a peace activist embarked on this project, how military education helps explain our current political moment, and so much more.Purchase “God Forgives, Brothers Don't: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood" here: simonandschuster.com/books/God-Forgives-Brothers-Dont/Jasper-Craven/9781668087190 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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Justified Posteriors join Scaling Laws: Two economists and two lawyers walk into a podcast studio Lawfare 2026-06-19 | In this cross-pod episode, Alan and Kevin join Seth Benzell and Andrey Fradkin of Justified Posteriors to explore a big question: what should AI be for?The conversation begins with Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical. The group discusses how economists should think about the Church’s role in AI debates, what counts as an AI-related market failure, whether moral and religious institutions can help address social harms, and whether such interventions risk crowding out private action or local experimentation.The episode then turns to the emerging idea of positive alignment. A recent paper, Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishing, argues that AI alignment has focused too heavily on negative alignment—preventing harms such as manipulation, bias, dangerous outputs, and misuse—and should also ask how AI systems can actively support autonomy, wisdom, truth-seeking, pluralism, and human flourishing.
Rational Security: The “Predestination” Edition Lawfare 2026-06-18 | This week, Scott sat down with cohost emeritus and Lawfare Research Director Alan Rozenshtein, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, and Lawfare Contributing Editor and Vice President of Research, Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ariane Tabatabai, to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Fission Accomplished.” After nearly four months of war, the United States and Iran have reached a deal to end the conflict—with Trump declaring it “complete” and authorizing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz ahead of a formal signing ceremony set for June 19 in Switzerland. But the agreement leaves enormous questions unresolved, from the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium to sanctions relief to whether the ceasefire extends to Israel’s campaign in Lebanon. Is this the durable peace Trump claims, or a fragile pause papering over the hardest issues?“Model Misbehavior.” Days after Anthropic publicly released its powerful new Claude Fable 5 model, the Commerce Department imposed export controls barring any foreign national—inside or outside the U.S.—from accessing it, forcing the company to disable the model worldwide. The administration says Anthropic recklessly refused to fix a dangerous jailbreak; Anthropic says it was a narrow, non-serious vulnerability and the order is a misunderstanding. What does this episode tell us about the government’s expanding use of export controls on AI—and its increasingly adversarial relationship with one of the country’s leading labs?“Bad Vibrations.” In one of her final acts as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard rescinded two Biden-era intelligence assessments that had cast doubt on whether a foreign adversary was behind “Havana Syndrome,” the mysterious ailments afflicting U.S. spies and diplomats. Gabbard’s office says the prior assessments cherry-picked intelligence to support a predetermined conclusion; critics worry about a politically motivated rewrite of analytic findings on the way out the door. What should we make of this last-minute reversal, and what does it mean for the future of the Havana syndrome debate—and Gabbard’s legacy as DNI? In object lessons, Tyler remains steadfast in his mission to ensure that no one ever runs out of podcasts, this week plugging A Whole Other Country, a discovery from Tribeca Festival Audio. Alan embraces peak dad-tech with his bbq upgrade—a new, after-market temperature controller. Scott savors a delightfully spicy Supreme Court dust-up in FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. And Julia celebrates her mug, an appropriate mainstay during her post-White-House-PDB “deep state therapy hour.” 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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: The Department of Justice, or the Department of Revenge? Lawfare 2026-06-18 | Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with Devlin Barrett, a journalist and author of the new book, “The Department of Revenge: How Trump Took Control of American Justice,” to talk about the seismic changes in personnel and policy which have shaken the Justice Department over the past 18 months.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Daily: A Breakthrough in Ukraine’s EU Accession Talk Lawfare 2026-06-17 | Ukraine Fellow Anastasia Lapatina sits down with Chris Powers, the Brussels correspondent at the Kyiv Independent, to discuss the recent progress in Ukraine's bid to join the European Union and the many political dramas that surround that process both in Kyiv and in 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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Scaling Laws: Explain to Shane (Tews) Cross-post Lawfare 2026-06-16 | Shane Tews, host of Explain to Shane and nonresident senior fellow at AEI, joins Kevin Frazier, director of the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and a senior fellow at the Abundance Institute, for a cross-post conversation about the AI and cyber executive order, workforce disruption, and the future of education. They also share their respective research agendas for the summer.
Lawfare Daily: For-Profit Cage-Fighting at the White House Lawfare 2026-06-16 | Brendan Ballou, founder and CEO of the Public Integrity Project, speaks with Senior Editor Roger Parloff about his group’s case, Douglas v. National Parks Services, seeking to enjoin the UFC cage-fighting event on the White House South Lawn. Ballou alleges that the event is a “volcano of corruption,” the first for-profit sports event ever staged at the White House, and a turning point in American history.Ballou explains what laws and regulations he believes are being violated, and he addresses the government’s claims that he waited too long to bring the case and that his plaintiffs don’t have standing. He also discusses what can be done to ward off commercialization of national monuments in the future.Note: This conversation was recorded on Thursday, June 11. In the early afternoon on Friday, June 12, Judge Amit Mehta denied the temporary restraining order that the Public Integrity Project was seeking to stop the UFC match at the White House on June 14. Judge Mehta ruled mainly on the grounds that the plaintiffs were unlikely to be able to show that they had standing.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 givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.
Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, June 12 Lawfare 2026-06-12 | On June 12 at 4 pm ET, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett will sit down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss a new lawsuit challenging White House UFC fight, the release of the Broadview Six grand jury transcripts, and more.Find Lawfare’s litigation tracker here: www.lawfaremedia.org/trumptrackerSupport Lawfare's work at: givebutter.com/journalism
