The “Reboot the Reboot” Edition

Rational Security

The Lawfare Institute

Foreignpolicy, Nationalsecurity, News, Government, Politics, Middleeast

4.8 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2024

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Alan and Scott were joined by Lawfare teammates Molly Reynolds and Eugenia Lostri to talk over the week’s big national security news, including…

“Bye Biden.” President Biden made the historic decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race over the weekend. He swiftly endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris, who now appears poised to become the Democratic candidate at the party’s convention next month. How might Harris be different from Biden, both as a candidate and as a president? And what will the change mean for the 2024 race?

“The CrowdStrikes Back.” Countless businesses around the world found their Windows computers disabled this past week, due to a faulty update pushed out by the prominent cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The consequences continue to ripple out, including waves of canceled and rescheduled flights at numerous major airlines. What can this incident teach us about the security of our computer infrastructure? And are there ways to avoid similar incidents in the future?

“Netanya-who?” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give his long-awaited speech to Congress later today. But the normally high-profile event has been overshadowed by recent news relating to the 2024 presidential race, potentially mitigating some of its intended effect. What should we expect from Bibi’s speech? And how will it impact progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza—and U.S.-Israeli relations more broadly?

For object lessons, Alan recommended Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Marriage Plot. Scott sent a love letter to the New York Times’ odd coverage of world culture, including this week’s exposé on Japanese backpacks. Molly gave the people what they want, with a new public radio podcast recommendation: NPR’s Embedded: Supermajority. And Eugenia carried on a longstanding tradition of bringing in video game recommendations, this time for the cozy agriculture sim Stardew Valley.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Look at you with your fancy pants job sitting at your laptop all day on your video meetings
0:06.8	saying things like let's circle back on this or can you drill down on that? Or deep dive.
0:15.0	You know what you are, don't you?
0:17.0	You're entitled. That's what?
0:20.0	That's right.
0:21.0	Most people who use a screen at work are entitled to claim free eye care.
0:24.4	Ask your boss about getting one of our vouchers. Should have reached out to Spexavers.
0:30.0	So Molly, I feel like we've established over the last couple of episodes that at least
0:37.0	Euhenia and I are video game nerds and Scott is an aspirational video game nerd though he sadly doesn't have time because of
0:43.7	pesky children.
0:44.9	Molly, what about you? I feel like you could be a video game nerd. I have high
0:50.0	potential for nerdy, we know this, but I guess this is like how my husband feels when he has to
0:57.1	hang out with me and my Congress friends and like we're just all in on like Congress nerd-dom that's I get that like it's but that's your job
1:06.3	that's different than being like oh I mean a hobby nerd a job and a passion
1:11.1	yeah it's just that's clear here A job and a passion. A passion.
1:14.0	I feel like we just need to find a congressional video game like Sims Congress
1:21.0	where you know you get
1:22.7	nothing happens you get to decorate your little your little office where you get
1:26.4	moved every two years raise funds you spend half of the time calling to to fake
1:31.7	donors and then no legislation ever gets passed. Best game ever.
1:36.1	I don't know I feel like this could fall in the category of the cozy games you know I've been playing
1:41.3	Starder Valley and you know like there's the nice music and it's
	...

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