The Week That Was

Benjamin Wittes explained why he does not believe multiple claims FBI Director Kash Patel made during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Wittes questioned the truth of several statements, including that Patel never fired agents as retribution for investigating Donald Trump or Jan. 6, that his grand jury transcript from the classified documents case was publicly available, and that he was unaware of reports of agents being required to take polygraph tests that probed whether they had made negative comments about Patel personally.

On Lawfare No Bull, Isabel Arroyo shared the audio from FBI Director Kash Patel’s testimony at a Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight Hearing this Tuesday. Patel responded to questions about politicized personnel decisions at the agency, gun violence mitigation, the Jeffrey Epstein case, the ongoing investigation into Charlie Kirk’s murder, and more.

On Lawfare Live, Wittes sat down with Roger Parloff, Anna Bower, and Eric Columbus to discuss the status of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s challenge to President Trump’s effort to remove her, litigation surrounding the removal of immigrants to third countries, and more.

Jordan Ascher and Mia Harris analyzed the Trump administration’s plan to screen civil service applicants based on political affiliation, which violates the First Amendment. They explained how “patronage hiring” differs from the established practice of placing political appointees in senior civil service roles and outlined paths forward for those seeking to challenge the plan in court.

On Lawfare Daily, Parloff sat down with Lee Gelernt to discuss the cases Gelernt has led against the validity of President Trump’s Alien Enemies Act Proclamation, the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) recent victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the status of the ACLU’s original case in Washington, D.C., and more.

Bower shared the 4-3 ruling in which the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s disqualification appeal.

Joshua Claybourn analyzed the legal obligation of the U.S. government to refund tariffs collected unlawfully under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Claybourn explained why both statutory provisions and judicial precedent require Customs and Border Protection to issue refunds for unlawful exactions, then evaluated different mechanisms by which importers can claim those funds.

On Lawfare Daily, Dan Byman, Joel Braunold, and Natan Sachs joined Scott R. Anderson to discuss Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza, airstrikes against Hamas’s leadership in Qatar, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with former Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and more.

Tricia Bacon unpacked what a provocative attack in Kashmir implies about Pakistani military support for the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terror group and analyzed how a more active Lashkar might exacerbate India-Pakistan tensions.

Wittes argued that Iraq’s unconditional release of hostage Elisabeth Tsurkov marks a rare success for President Trump’s blunt foreign policy style. Wittes recounted the events leading up to the deal and offered his theory for why Iraq agreed to the release. 

On Rational Security, Anderson sat down with co-hosts emeriti Wittes, Shane Harris, Alan Rozenshtein, and Quinta Jurecic to discuss Russian incursions into Poland and Romania, the motivations of Charlie Kirk’s killer, Karen Hao’s “Empire of AI,” and more.

Justin Sherman examined how Russia’s cyber industry has grown richer despite U.S. sanctions, emphasizing firms’ successful adaptation to wartime conditions and the persuasive “sales pitch” of Russian cybersecurity in emerging markets. Sherman argued that American policymakers should rely on more than sanctions to curb Russian tech access and highlighted the importance of security measures that target cyber supply chains.

Kevin Frazier argued that the president should prioritize fortifying and expanding the system of undersea cables responsible for internet access, which is a prerequisite for artificial intelligence (AI) development. Frazier highlighted ongoing threats to cable resilience and proposed strategies for turning cable development into a national security priority.

Erik Brown argued that Europe should quickly follow the U.S.’s lead in purging critical undersea cables of components manufactured by Chinese companies. Brown compared the threat of untrusted cable equipment to the threat previously posed by Chinese suppliers in 5G networks and laid out policy steps for enhancing cable security.

Michael Genkin argued that, if internet access constitutes a human right, the international community should permit offensive cyber operations to break imposed internet blackouts. Genkin explored the role of blackouts in exacerbating repression in Iran, analyzed sovereignty-based barriers to a “humanitarian” basis for cyber operations, and highlighted third-party countermeasures as a promising avenue for conducting such operations.

On Scaling Laws, Rozenshtein and Pam Samuelson discussed the tumultuous legal landscape at the intersection of generative AI and copyright law, recent rulings in Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta, whether training AI models on copyrighted data constitutes transformative fair use, potential AI-induced “market dilution” effects that harm creators, and more.

On Lawfare Daily, Maia Woluchem, Livia Garofalo, and Joan Mukogosi joined Tyler McBrien to discuss their recent research trips to AI data centers in Pennsylvania, the state’s industrial history, its burgeoning AI industry, and more.

Jeff Greene evaluated the successes and shortcomings of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), a federal advisory body created under the Biden administration to review major cyber incidents and provide security recommendations. He argued that the Trump administration—which has fired all members of the CSRB but not revoked the executive order creating it—should revive the advisory body, clarify the scope of its mandate, improve its operational flexibility, and affirm its independence from other federal agencies.

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren evaluated how recent U.S. investment in spyware contracts could exert some salutary restraining influence on spyware vendors’ behavior, analyzed implications of the TikTok deal, praised government researchers’ work red-teaming private AI developers, and more.

Julius Hattingh explained how overly broad disclosure exemptions—aimed at protecting AI developers’ trade secrets—risk undermining proposed state laws that would obligate developers to publish safety and security protocols (SSPs). Hattingh argued that new AI laws should require trade secret exemptions to be balanced against the public’s interest in understanding catastrophic AI safety risks, and that explicit procedures should be created for the government to contest redactions with which it disagrees.

And Wittes reflected on the growth of Lawfare, which turned 15 years old on Sept. 1. 

And that was the week that was.