The Lawfare Podcast

On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien brings you a series of edited conversations from the 2026 Aspen Security Forum, where he sat down with host and founder of the Global Dispatches Podcast and Editor-in-Chief of UN Dispatch Mark Leon Goldberg, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Kori Schake, Lawfare Contributing Editor and the founder of Capitol Peak Strategies Alex Zerden, and President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Alexandra Bell.
They discussed the U.S.-Iran war, what’s left of bipartisanship in the Trump era, who from the current administration did—and didn’t—come to Aspen this year, what urgent foreign policy issues were missing from the agenda, and much more.
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On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett speaks with Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, a professor at University of Minnesota Law School and a Commissioner on the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria. They talk about the Commission's work investigating atrocities that occurred after the fall of the Assad regime, how to think about Syria's new government and the international community's response to it, and what it all says about global counterterrorism strategies.
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In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Senior Editors Eric Columbus, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff discussed a hearing over the subpoenas sent to New York Times reporters, a hearing in the criminal case against Nicolas Maduro, the court-appointed U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington suing over his termination, the first convening of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, 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 March 21, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman interviewed Gregory Johnsen, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C. Johnsen explains the rationale of the Trump administration's decision to bomb Yemen but argues that it will have little effect on the Houthis. Indeed, Johnsen contends that the Houthis are spoiling for a fight with the United States and Israel, believing that this will generate support within Yemen that will help them increase their power.
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From October 16, 2024: In early September, the U.S. Justice Department released a trove of information about the Russian influence campaign known as “Doppelganger”—a Kremlin-backed effort that created faux versions of familiar news websites and seeding them with fake material. Just a few weeks later, the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that it had received a tranche of hacked materials from inside the Doppelganger operation.
Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the founding director of the school’s Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies, got an inside look at those documents. In a new article in Foreign Affairs, “The Lies Russia Tells Itself,” he examines the “granular operational insight” that this material provides into the active measures campaign. He joined the Lawfare Podcast to talk with Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic about his findings—and why he believes the documents show that “the biggest boost the Doppelganger campaigners got was from the West’s own anxious coverage of the project.”
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