During Lawfare Live from Oct. 9, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Molly Roberts, Eric Columbusto discuss the CNN v. Trump press-pool case; the twin Harvard cases over grants and visas, where Paul Clement makes a forceful First Amendment argument; the FTC’s campaign against NewsGuard, which could reshape how media ratings survive government pressure; and more.
On Lawfare Daily, Peter Harrell sat down with Kristen Eichensehr and Ashley Deeks to discuss the U.S. government's expanded use of tariffs, sanctions, export controls, and investment screening to regulate the economy. The group discussed America’s new “command economy,” what it means for companies and the government, and how increased transparency and oversight could be implemented.
Scott Anderson detailed the Trump administration’s decision to waive sanctions on Russian diesel fuel and what potential legal routes the administration may use given other sanctions and a statute banning Russian fuel imports. Anderson concluded that the deal is unlikely to deliver lower prices, and its most serious consequences will be felt in Ukraine, as Putin appears to have convinced Trump that Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s diesel industry have raised global energy prices.
On Lawfare Live, Friday, Oct. 16, at 4 p.m. ET, Wittes sat down with Roberts, Bower, Parloff, Columbus, and Loren Voss to discuss the D.C. Circuit argument in challenge to the National Guard’s deployment in D.C.; hearings and orders in multiple cases related to Donald Trump’s latest ads; the temporary restraining order in the administration’s ongoing work at the East Potomac Golf course; and more.
On Lawfare Daily, Anderson sat down with Harrell and Rachel Alpert to discuss the legality of President Trump’s recent announcement lifting U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. They covered what the practical ramifications will likely be, what it all tells us about the Trump administration’s shifting views on Russia and the war in Ukraine in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and more.
Kirsten Asdal, Tom Koch, and Tao Tan proposed a financing instrument—a contingent convertible security that converts into ownership if Beijing weaponizes supply—to rebuild U.S. rare earth supply and blunt China’s leverage. The authors explain that American companies sold off the U.S. rare earth industry for reasons that made economic sense at the time, but that the United States erred in treating it as a market rather than, as China recognized, a geostrategic industry.
On Rational Security, Anderson sat down with Daniel Byman, Julia Curlee, and Michel Paradis to discuss Trump’s deal with Putin to import Russian diesel, Yemen’s civil war and recent Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, sanctions against the International Criminal Court, and more.
On Lawfare Daily, Michael Feinberg sat down with author and journalist Ben Macintyre to discuss his new book, “Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy,” about a little-known intelligence coup from the Cold War that changed the strategies of great powers in the Middle East.
David W. Opderbeck reviewed Elisabeth Braw’s book, “Undersea War: The Battle to Control the Cables and Pipelines That Connect Our World,” and found that Braw compellingly discussed the network of undersea global communications and energy infrastructure, including the growth of threats to undersea cables from malicious actors like Russia and China. Opderbeck explained that the book could have also explored international maritime policy and questions of market concentration.
Nadwa Al-Dawsari argued that Washington and its regional allies should not see the Houthis as simply an Iranian proxy but instead address the regenerative roots of the Houthi resistance. Due to the Houthis’ recent seizure of Yemen’s Red Sea coast—and the internationally recognized government’s Operation Dawn of Yemen to retake Houthi-held territory—Al-Dawsari noted that diplomacy and military action should support a broader goal of reducing the Houthis’ territorial, economic, and military base.
Lucas Gualtieri examined the Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice’s (STJ) ruling in the case of Lucas Passos Lima, a Brazilian national who surveyed synagogues for Hezbollah. The STJ reversed an earlier judgement by the Regional Federal Court of the Sixth Circuit, holding that one cannot escape liability for terrorism just because there were monetary incentives behind an action. The reversal signals an opportunity for greater international cooperation to prosecute the transnational networks used by Iran and Hezbollah.
Renée DiResta explained that the evidence does not show that Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian Yandex data centers knocked out large numbers of Russian propaganda bots, as a viral story claimed. She noted that the dramatic decline in traffic from Yandex’s main network reflects a drop in web crawler activity rather than social media bots, and that Russian influence operations—which obscure their origins using VPNs and other proxies—may not originate from Yandex. DiResta concluded that the story’s popularity reflects a widespread sense that online conversations are crowded with suspicious or inauthentic accounts.
Kevin Frazier analyzed Anthropic’s request for a hearing en banc in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after the Department of Defense designated the company a supply chain risk for refusing to drop their conditions that its technology not be used for mass surveillance or fully automatized weapons systems. Frazier described the legislative history of the statute, in which Congress was concerned with hostile threats, and outlined principles the government may rely on in their argument.
Adam Conner described how President Trump’s June 2026 Executive Order 14409 on Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation and Security raises many questions about the text of its AI framework, which designates a threshold for covered frontier models but has been kept secret from the public. Conner explained that Trump’s sole discretion over the release of frontier U.S. AI models—without authorization from Congress—reduces transparency and safety around AI.
On Scaling Laws, Frazier sat down with Matthew Tokson to discuss what happens to society, law, and privacy when artificial intelligence makes it possible for police to detect nearly every observable crime.
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren broke down recent Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian data centers, the possibility of loosening cyber safeguards on American frontier artificial intelligence (AI), and more.
And that was the week that was.
