The Lawfare Podcast

Today, we’re bringing you another episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem. We’ll be talking about “The Facebook Files”—a series of stories by the Wall Street Journal about Facebook’s failures to mitigate harms on its platform. There’s a lot of critical reporting about Facebook out there, but what makes the Journal’s series different is that it’s based on documents from within the company itself—memos from Facebook researchers, identifying problems based on hard data, proposing solutions that Facebook leadership then fails or refuses to implement and contradicts in public statements. One memo literally says, “We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly.”To discuss the Journal’s reporting, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Jeff Horwitz, a technology reporter at the paper who obtained the leaked documents and led the team reporting the Facebook Files. What was it like working on the series? What's his response to Facebook's pushback? And why is there so much discontent within the company?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Congress, which has been on recess for the month of August, has a lot on its plate. The January 6 committee is starting to receive information, and it has gone into stealth mode. If Congress doesn't get its act together, the government is going to shut down and we're going to default on the federal debt. And there's actually been some oversight hearings recently. We decided to check in on it all with Molly Reynolds and Quinta Jurecic, both of the Brookings Institution and both senior editors at Lawfare. They joined Benjamin Wittes to talk about what Congress has been doing, what's coming down the pike and if we are headed toward disaster.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa contains reporting about several controversial actions by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in late 2000 and early 2021, regarding conversations with his Chinese counterparts, his discussion with senior military officers about following standard nuclear procedures (if need be), and reaching out to others like the CIA and NSA directors to remind them to watch everything closely. Were each of these reported actions proper for a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and why? And what about all of this coming out in books? To talk through it all, David Priess sat down with an A-team on civil-military relations. Peter Feaver is a civil-military relations expert at Duke University and director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. He served in National Security Council staff positions in both the Bill Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations. Kori Schake is the director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute who has worked in the Joint Staff J5, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in the National Security Council’s staff, as well as the State Department's policy planning staff during Bush 43’s administration. She has also researched and written extensively on civil-military relations. And Alex Vindman is Lawfare’s Pritzker Military Fellow and a visiting fellow at Perry World House. His government experience includes multiple U.S. Army assignments, time inside the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in the National Security Council staff.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 6, a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the Electoral College vote. As lawmakers were being evacuated by Capitol police, Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, tried to climb through a shattered window in a barricaded door. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd shot Babbitt as she was climbing through the window and Babbitt died later that day. In the polarized debate over January 6, the death of Ashli Babbitt has become a focal point and one of unusual political valence. Many on the right view her as a martyred hero and the police officer that shot her as an example of excessive force. Those on the left, who have traditionally been outspoken about police killings, have largely stayed quiet. To the extent they've commented, it's been to emphasize the unique circumstances of the Capitol insurrection as justification for the use of lethal force. The Department of Justice, having reviewed the incident, determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Officer Byrd with violating Babbitt's civil rights, although DOJ did not conclude one way or the other, whether the shooting was justified under the Fourth Amendment.To work through the legal issues around the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Seth Stoughton, associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina and the coauthor of a recent Lawfare post on the shooting. Stoughton is a nationally recognized expert on police use of force. A former police officer himself, he was a key witness for the murder prosecution of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed George Floyd. Alan spoke with Stoughton about the murky factual records surrounding the Babbitt shooting, the complex constitutional and statutory issues that it raises and what its political effects say about the broader prospects for police reform.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A discussion at the Berkman Center: In the wake of the disclosures about government surveillance and the rise of corporate-run applications and protocols, is the idea of an “unowned” Internet still a credible one? The Berkman Center’s Jonathan Zittrain moderates a panel, incluing Yochai Benkler (Harvard Law School), Ebele Okobi (Yahoo!), Bruce Schneier (CO3 Systames), and Benjamin Wittes (Brookings Institution) to explore surveillance, and the potential for reforms in policy, technology, and corporate and consumer behavior.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawfare's editor in chief, Benjamin Wittes, gives a talk at the Palace of Westminster--sponsored by the Henry Jackson Society--on whether drones are becoming the new Guantanamo.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s Lawfare No Bull” with: “For today’s episode of the Lawfare Podcast, we are bringing you a preview of a new podcast Lawfare is launching: Lawfare ‘No Bull,’ which brings you a curated feed of the most essential speeches, testimony, and other found audio relating to national security. Subscribe to the separate Lawfare ‘No Bull’ podcast feed to receive future episodes!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we’re bringing you another episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem.In a 2018 Senate hearing, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to a question about how his company makes money with a line that quickly became famous: “Senator, we sell ads.” And indeed, when you open up your Facebook page—or most other pages on the internet—you’ll find advertisements of all sorts following you around. Sometimes they’re things you might really be interested in buying, even if you’ve never heard of them before—tailored to your interests with spooky accuracy. Other times, they’re redundant or just … weird. Like the aid for a pair of strange plaid pajamas with a onesie-style flap on the bottom that briefly took over the internet in December 2020.Shoshana Wodinsky, a staff reporter at Gizmodo, wrote a great piece explaining how exactly those onesie pajamas made their way to so many people’s screens. She’s one of very few reporters covering the business of online advertisements outside industry publications—so Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to her this week about what it’s like reporting on ads. How exactly does ad technology work? Why is it that the ad ecosystem gets so little public attention, even as it undergirds the internet as we know it? And what’s the connection between online ads and content moderation?It’s the Lawfare Podcast, September 16: The Broken Rube Goldberg Machine of Online AdvertisingSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lawfare Editor-In-Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Bruce Reidel of the Brookings Institution to discuss a pair of new articles in Lawfare on his first hand accounts of events in the wake of 9/11.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.