The Week That Was

Anastasiia Lapatina examined the evidence behind escalating corruption allegations against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his inner circle following the leak of wiretap transcripts from a major energy corruption investigation.

On Lawfare Daily, Lapatina sat down with Danylo Mokryk to discuss the latest corruption scandal surrounding the Ukrainian government, evidence suggesting that Zelensky personally profited from corruption, why—despite this evidence—no one is calling for Zelensky’s removal, and more:

Also on Lawfare Daily, Candace Rondeaux joined Justin Sherman to discuss the latest activities of Russian private military companies, including their roles in recruiting people to fight for Russia against Ukraine, touchpoints with Iranian actors, and impacts in geopolitics:

In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Abdullah Alhenaki argued that the Iran War is fundamentally reshaping the Gulf states’ approach to regional security by pushing Gulf Cooperation Council members toward stronger defense integration, infrastructure diversification, and new strategic partnerships.

On Lawfare Daily, Natalie K. Orpett sat down with Scott R. Anderson to discuss the War Powers Resolution and how it has yet to effectively constrain the president’s actions in the Iran War. The pair also discussed if the resolution is affecting the administration’s conduct, if the resolution can be enforced, and more:

On another episode of Lawfare Daily,  Anderson sat down with Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) to discuss her and her colleague’s efforts to oppose the Iran war, bipartisan proposals relating to foreign assistance and expeditionary diplomacy, the role a Congress under Democratic leadership could play during the second Trump administration, and more:

Roger Parloff examined the context surrounding a misleading press release from the Department of Homeland Security, which maligns U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose for allowing the release of an immigrant accused of homicide in the Dominican Republic. Parloff explained how the press release omits key details of the case, including how ICE told a government lawyer not to inform Judge DuBose of the pending warrant.

Lindsay Nash examined the legal justifications behind a policy implemented recently by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement that would allow agents to enter homes with administrative warrants, a nonjudicial form that agents themselves sign off on. Nash argued that the policy misunderstands or misrepresents the legal arguments in support of administrative warrants.

Kate Gilbert argued that the first report from the Department of Justice’s “Weaponization Working Group” incorporates a veneer of government-speak and effortful sourcing to normalize its architects’ likely intended goal of investigating and prosecuting former officials.

Jonathan Shaub analyzed a sweeping new opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, which claims the Presidential Records Act is entirely unconstitutional. Shaub argued that the decision ignores decades of legal precedent and threatens government transparency. 

Anna Bower shared a collection of audio and video recordings heard by the Fulton County special purpose grand jury in 2022 to investigate whether President Trump and his allies had illegally interfered in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. The recordings include interviews of Georgia officials, witnesses, fraudulent Trump electors, and more.

On Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, May 15, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Bower, Eric Columbus, and Parloff to discuss the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the D.C. Bar for disciplining Jeffery Clark, oral argument before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the lawsuit challenging the executive orders targeting law firms, and more:

On Rational Security, Anderson, Michael Feinberg, and J. Dana Stuster sat down to discuss the week’s big national security news stories, including President Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, stalling in negotiations between Iran and the United States, the CIA’s covert campaign of assassinations in Mexico targeting mid-level members of the country’s drug cartels, and more:

On Lawfare Daily, Daniel Byman sat down with Holly Berkley Fletcher and Alexander Palmer to discuss the growth of terrorism and instability in East and West Africa, the instability of regional governments, and how the U.S. and other outside powers are shaping the region.

Renée DiResta analyzed a new generation of Pentagon-linked online influence operations and traced how covert U.S. propaganda efforts evolved from fake social media personas and bot amplification into state-funded “news” sites promoted through paid advertising. DiResta explained that these outlets rely on selective framing and coordinated ad strategies to shape narratives about certain regions such as Latin America, Iran, and Ukraine.

Tash Buckley reviewed Joe Tidy’s “Ctrl + Alt + Chaos: How Teenage Hijackers Hijack the Internet,” calling the book a vivid, narrative-driven account of teenage cybercrime culture that makes the human cost of cyberattacks feel real. While she praised Tidy’s storytelling, Buckley noted that the book leaves deeper questions unanswered about what drives socially isolated teenagers into serious cybercrime.

Guy Ward-Jackson and Keegan McBride explained why Europe should pursue artificial intelligence (AI) latency by developing the industrial capacity and infrastructure to rapidly build and deploy sufficient AI systems during crises, rather than attempting to compete directly with the U.S. and China at the AI frontier.

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business newsletter, Tom Uren reported on the chaotic internal debate within the Trump administration over AI model oversight, how threat actors are exploiting free-trial loopholes to bypass AI safety guardrails at scale, Russia’s nascent Starlink rival satellite constellation, and more. 

Kevin Frazier and Alan Z. Rozenshtein argued that maintaining U.S. AI dominance will require not only rapidly advancing frontier models, but also major investments in understanding, testing, and securing AI systems. The pair emphasized that breakthroughs in AI interpretability, cybersecurity, and public-private coordination are necessary to ensure both national security and long-term public trust in AI deployment.

On Scaling Laws, Frazier sat down with Deger Turan to unpack new forecasts on how AI could reshape the labor market over the next decade. The duo addressed fundamental questions about whether existing economic models can keep pace with rapid technological change, second-order effects of AI in the labor market, and why AI forecasting may become a core component of effective governance:

Sarosh Nagar and David Eaves examined how AI could create the next major global divide, arguing that the countries and institutions best able to adapt to rapid AI transformation may pull dramatically ahead while others risk being left behind. 

Daniel Wilf-Townsend argued that the U.S. legal system is too slow to effectively regulate AI, as years of procedural delays have allowed the industry to grow so large that judges now face enormous pressure to rule in its favor to avoid economic catastrophe. He warned that this dynamic—where delay entrenches the status quo—is already shaping legal outcomes across copyright, tort, and other AI-related cases.

And on Scaling Laws, Frazier and Sean Perryman unpacked the rapidly evolving debate over algorithmic pricing and AI governance. They discussed state-level efforts to regulate algorithmic pricing, political motivations behind these regulatory efforts, the economic tradeoffs they often overlook, the risk of unintended consequences, and more.

And that was the week that was.