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Rational Security: The “Potty Like It’s 1999” Edition

1 h 7 min · 28 de may de 2026
Portada del episodio Rational Security: The “Potty Like It’s 1999” Edition

Descripción

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower and Eric Columbus, and his Brookings colleague Molly Reynolds, to talk through a couple of the week’s big news stories in domestic politics, including: * “The Grift That Keeps On Giving.” Last week, the Justice Department announced the creation of a so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund of nearly 1.8 billion taxpayer dollars, from which purported victims of politically motivated prosecutions can apply to receive payments. The fund was created as part of a settlement with President Trump and his sons, who sued the IRS for 10 billion dollars over the leak of his tax returns. So far, pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, former Congressman George Santos, Trump’s ex attorney Michael Cohen, and even former FBI Director James Comey have all said that they are considering applying, and three lawsuits have already been filed challenging the fund. How did Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS lead to this fund? And how do we see these legal challenges playing out in court? * “Lame Duck Around and Find Out.” President Trump’s preferred primary picks have cruised to victories in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Georgia Republican primaries, ousting incumbents Senator Bill Cassidy and Representative Thomas Massie as some of the few voices of dissent within the Republican Party. But Trump’s involvement in the primaries has come at a political cost, with outgoing members voicing their criticism and even going so far as to buck the president on legislation. Last week, Cassidy flipped his vote in favor of a critical war powers resolution in the Senate, which could undermine the administration’s legal justification for the war. With such close margins in Congress, how do we expect this new YOLO faction to impact the president’s agenda before the midterms? * While we introduced a third topic, we frankly ran out of time this week. Sorry about that! We’ll circle back to it in the weeks ahead. In object lessons, Molly is hooked on the fish-focused local NPR podcast, “Catching The Codfather [https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/thecodfather].” Eric is looking to catch a killer with the latest Hugh Jackman movie [https://www.workingtitlefilms.com/film/the-sheep-detectives/] (which he thinks is shear perfection). Scott is caught up in the latest “Storm [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6_mbnsh6VU&t=371s],” featuring Yung Lean. And Anna has caught basketball fever, both with the Knicks’ return to the NBA Finals, and also with the (much-more-affordable-but-equally-entertaining) NY Liberty. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

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Portada del episodio Lawfare Daily: AI Targeting Systems Are Coming—But Not as Fast as You Think

Lawfare Daily: AI Targeting Systems Are Coming—But Not as Fast as You Think

On this episode, Senior Editor Kate Klonick speaks with Steve Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about his recent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists essay [https://thebulletin.org/2026/06/ai-targeting-systems-are-coming-but-not-as-fast-as-many-assume/] on AI targeting systems. Feldstein argues that the conventional wisdom about AI warfare has it backwards: the technology's battlefield debut in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza is real and consequential, but AI targeting is not a model you download—it's a stack of surveillance infrastructure, data pipelines, battle management software, and strike capacity that takes decades and billions to build, which means it will spread far more slowly and unevenly than the common narrative suggests. Among the things they discuss: what the Iran War's staggering Maven numbers do and don't prove, how Israel became the case study in what it actually takes to build an AI kill chain, why the same handful of American tech companies that govern online speech now supply the infrastructure of targeting—and who is accountable when they do, whether the UAE is next, and whether export controls, or norms, can realistically slow any of it down. Additional resources: * Steve Feldstein, “Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalry, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250394088/bytesandbullets/]” (St. Martin's Press, September 2026) * Steve Feldstein, "Anthropic-Pentagon Feud Over AI Technology Is a Bad Sign [https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/25/anthropic-pentagon-feud-ai/]" (Foreign Policy, February 2026) * Steve Feldstein, “The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance [https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Digital-Repression-Technology-Resistance/dp/0190057491]” (Oxford University Press, 2021) ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

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Portada del episodio Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, June 10

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Portada del episodio Lawfare Archive: What French Politics Means for Europe and the United States

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