North Korea is mimicking Pakistan’s 1998 successful nuclear strategy to develop nuclear capabilities without exacerbating sanctions by quietly developing nuclear weapons and reinforcing trade alliances with China and Russia, reports the New York Times.
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Event Announcements (More details on the Events Calendar)
Monday, Sept. 17 at 1:30 p.m.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies will host an event called “A Discussion on National Security with DIA Director Robert Ashley”. The event will be moderated by Seth G. Jones, and Juan C. Zarate. Register or livestream here.
Russia’s information operations not only threaten elections, they erode Americans’ faith in a key democratic institution: the justice system. The United States isn’t doing enough to counter the threat.
The numbers show that U.S. operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are reducing the terrorist organization's ability to strike Western countries.
Your weekend roundup of everything on the site.
On Friday, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort entered a plea agreement with the special counsel. To discuss what the news means for Manafort, the Mueller investigation, and President Trump, Benjamin Wittes spoke to former Obama White House counsel Bob Bauer, independent counsel prosector Paul Rosenzweig, and Lawfare managing editor Quinta Jurecic.
Manafort’s plea does not implicate the president—but it’s really bad news for him.
Well, would you look at that: your hosts are back in town at the same time at last, and they’ve got a fresh episode covering some of the major national security legal developments of the past couple of weeks! We’ve got:
How the Department of Justice has made FARA a significant tool in addressing foreign influence operations in the United States.
There is value in putting down a marker that using the technology this way is not acceptable.
The time has come to release what may be the last great Watergate document still kept from the public—a document with enormous contemporary relevance.
Former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort is expected to plead guilty to reduced charges Friday morning as part of a plea agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, reports the New York Times.
The special counsel's office has filed a superseding criminal information in the case against Paul Manafort. The document is available here and below. The plea agreement and statement of offense are also available below.
Lawfare’s daily roundup of national-security news and opinions.
A review of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “How Democracies Die” (Crown, 2018).
The first executive agreement under the Cloud Act, between the U.S. and U.K., may come soon. But the British side of the agreement needs work.
John Bolton comes out swinging in his first major speech as national security adviser. Is Russia behind a mysterious string of illnesses at U.S. diplomatic facilities? And Trump administration officials met with coup plotters in Venezuela.
The reactions of Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Afghanistan will be quite important for the looming investigation that was the focus of Bolton’s ire.
A formal congressional inquiry into grounds for impeachment would be a more constitutionally sound response to an unfit president than the internal "resistance" described in the anonymous New York Times op-ed.