On Lawfare Daily from Wednesday’s Lawfare Live, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Molly Reynolds, Julia Curlee, Scott Anderson, Eric Columbus, Michael Feinberg, and Loren Voss to discuss how the new composition of Congress will shape key national security issues, including the appropriations process, presidential war powers, how Congress can address the Trump administration’s damage to the national security apparatus, and more.
Molly Roberts and Loren Voss outlined the findings of the Strategic Threats to Elections and Electoral Legitimacy Working Group, which has spent the past year mapping out the possibility of interference in the elections. Roberts and Voss described the various strategies which could be taken by state, non-state, or federal actors to intervene and how each strategy could be deterred. Even meddling which has no direct impact on election results, the authors noted, may confuse the public.
David Manners-Weber explained that although the 2024 Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States limited executive branch oversight, Congress may push back against these limits if Democrats take control of one or both houses. Manners-Weber illustrated how a new Congress could confront these constraints and how the executive branch may react.
On Lawfare Live on Friday, Nov. 6, at 4 p.m. ET, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, Eric Columbus, and Anna Bower and discussed the latest litigation over the Trump administration’s policies. The group covered D.C. and Virginia’s suit to block construction of the triumphal arch, the Ahmed Soliman case, the politicization of the justice department, election litigation in California and Alaska, President Trump’s defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal, and more.
Aimee Chun, Tim Vanable, Niharika Vattikonda, and Joshua Villanueva walked through the history of American troop deployments at polling places. The authors analyzed how the Reconstruction period in the antebellum South saw sustained federal deployments to election sites in order to help newly enfranchised Black men vote in elections. They concluded that the following long period of non-intervention built the modern understanding that federal troops have had no role in elections.
On Lawfare Daily from last week’s Lawfare Live, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, and Eric Columbus to discuss recent developments in litigation against the Trump administration, including former FBI Director James Comey being charged for a third time, a judge ruling that Maureen Comey was unlawfully fired as an assistant U.S. attorney, updates in the Kennedy Center litigation, and more.
Daniel Byman described the history of election-related violence in the United States and past lessons that still apply today. Byman noted that American election violence during periods such as Reconstruction was driven by prejudice but also rumor and deliberate misinformation. He concluded that although there is greater mainstream tolerance in America today, support for political violence may be growing as the country becomes more politically divided.
Justin Sherman broke down the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s first report on how the U.S. intelligence community acquires commercial data and what the report reveals about how little these agencies publicly disclose about the data they collect on citizens. Sherman emphasized that this practice defies the spirit of the Fourth Amendment and that Congress should call on these agencies to answer questions about their data-buying practices.
On Rational Security, Scott Anderson spoke with Tyler McBrien, Eric Columbus, Ariane Tabatabai to discuss the Democrat’s historic victory in the midterms, the significance of President Trump’s decision to initiate the Iran War, what the midterms can tell us about what national security issues will be during the next presidential election, and more.
Eric Green reviewed Hanna Notte’s book “We Shall Outlast Them: Putin’s Global Campaign to Defeat the West,” describing the work as an insightful look into Russia’s foreign policy and how it impacts the lives of people around the world. Green outlined Notte’s description of the turning point marked by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, why Russia is enjoying considerable success globally, and what the costs of Moscow’s confrontational approach will be for Russia’s power.
Seungmin Helen Lee outlined the prominent role drones play in geopolitical conflicts as artificial intelligence (AI) drives their technological advancement. Lee argued that the evolving use of drones will require interoperability from allied nations on drone hardware, drone software, and other military equipment. She concluded that allied nations should share lessons learned and support one another just as adversaries such as China, North Korea, and Russia do with their respective drone technologies.
On Lawfare Daily, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Julia Curlee to discuss Curlee’s essay on Russia’s 2016 election interference as judged by the standards intelligence professionals use for covert action. They discussed why, unlike covert operations which usually pay off early and fade, Moscow's gains have grown over the past decade.
In the latest edition of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay Series, Carol R. Saivetz and Kimberly Marten analyzed the current strategic partnership between Russia and Iran and found that, because the core interests of the two countries do not align, this relationship is likely temporary. Saivetz and Marten broke down the partnership’s short-term benefits to each country, the ways it may burden Russia as the stronger party, and how this security cooperation could play out in the future.
On Lawfare Daily, Justin Sherman sat down with Katherine Dunn to discuss navigation technologies and bombing in World War II, satellites during the Cold War, the birth and evolution of the U.S. government’s GPS program, and more.
On Lawfare Daily, Anastasiia Lapatina sat down with Anton Antonenko to discuss the energy infrastructure in Kyiv and why the upcoming winter may be the toughest yet for the Ukrainian capital.
Jeff Kosseff broke down the legal battle between Elon Musk’s xAI and Minnesota over a state law that lets the state’s attorney general seek fines from a tech company each time it enables a user to download a nudified image. Kosseff explained the First Amendment problems the law may raise and why a ruling in the case could reach well beyond nudification.
In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren described North Korea’s theft of about $6.3 billion dollars from the Binance cryptocurrency exchange; the pressure tech executives exert to speed up the pace of their software development using artificial intelligence, potentially to the detriment of security; and more.
On Scaling Laws, Kevin Frazier sat down with Alex Bores and Stacey Abrams to discuss Leader Abrahams’s framework for rebuilding democratic power, her efforts to connect people with opportunities to participate, and the role artificial intelligence might play in those efforts.
Felix Wu argued that the ideal mechanism for granting public ownership of frontier artificial intelligence (AI) firms would be a dual strategy of revenue-sharing—which could provide direct payments to Americans—alongside golden shares granting shareholders veto power over key corporate actions. Wu outlined the issues with voting common stock, which could clash with regulations, face legal obstacles, and increase the federal deficit.
Jennifer Tridgell, Chinmayi Sharma, and John Speed Meyers argued that restrictions on foreign open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) models would not keep foreign influence out of the American AI ecosystem and could weaken U.S. influence abroad. The authors contented the binary between open Chinese AI and closed American AI misdescribes the competition since influence also lies in compute and other layers of the AI stack, not only in the weight file.
And that was the week that was.
