The “Truth Fairy” Edition

Rational Security

The Lawfare Institute

Foreignpolicy, Nationalsecurity, News, Government, Politics, Middleeast

4.8 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2022

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Alan, Quinta and Scott were joined by Jeffrey Kosseff, cybersecurity law professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, to hash through some of the week's big national security news, including:

“One Letter Off KGB, Two Letters Away from DGAF.” The Department of Homeland Security has taken heat this week for creating an internal Disinformation Governance Board, which partisan critics have railed against as a federal “Ministry of Truth” responsible for policing speech. What’s the real story behind this group? And does it warrant all this fervor?
“One Bad Mother Tucker.” A newly published New York Times report documents how Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show makes unprecedented use of racist rhetoric and partisan fear-mongering. What new did we learn? And what broader impact should we expect this report to have?
“Chutes and Escalation Ladders.” While Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a habit of invoking his country’s nuclear arsenal in response to Western reactions to his invasion of Ukraine, he so far hasn’t made any signs toward actually using it. But is this about to change? And how should the United States and its allies respond?

For object lessons, Alan endorsed his neighbor's ghost pepper-laced apple brandy, which all listeners should take as an invitation to crash at his place in Minnesota. In light of the pending repeal of Roe v. Wade, Quinta recommended that listeners read Jessica Bruder's “The Future of Abortion in a Post-Roe America." On a similar logic, Scott encouraged listeners to look back to John Hart Ely's 1973 critique of Roe "The Wages of Crying Wolf" for a vision of the pre-Roe legal landscape to which we may be returning. And Jeff recommended one of his favorite musical artists Patty Griffin and her forthcoming album, giving her some of the publicity that she won't pursue herself.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So how do we imagine this went down? Is this Alex Ward in the basement of some
0:05.6	Capitol Hill parking lot being handed some, I'm assuming, double-sided, hopefully
0:12.2	from a conscientious law clerk copy of this opinion? So I have multiple
0:16.4	theories. The first theory is that the justices are older. They may not be so
0:23.1	technologically inclined. Maybe somebody accidentally reply all or they put
0:29.5	like pee to, you know, send it to their clerk, Paul, and they sent it to
0:33.2	Politico by accident. That's my number one theory. My other theory is revenge by
0:40.7	like an angry bitter exo clerk. I think based on the friends of mine, I know
0:47.0	who have clerked that, that's a very likely scenario. It's not an easy year on
0:50.6	the clerk. Which one I could see an angry spouse taking some, taking some
0:55.2	casual revenge, depending on who they're clerking for, in particular. What's
0:59.2	interesting about the article is that it made it clear that they spoke with the
1:03.3	person who had knowledge. But I don't like that they automatically assume it's
1:09.9	a clerk. There could be justices. There could be all sorts of other people who
1:15.3	work there. And to immediately think it's a clerk who wants to be an activist is
1:22.0	definitely plausible. But I don't think it's the only person who could have done
1:26.0	it. It's hard for me to imagine that it was a justice only because if it was
1:32.4	a justice, then the identity of that justice will inevitably come out at some
1:35.8	point. And you have to work with those other people for a long time. I mean, I
1:40.5	just, I can't imagine what if a justice did this that would do to the forget
1:46.4	collegiality just not hating each other norms. And it does seem to me that the
1:51.2	justices do try to sort of like each other. That's the sense I get. That's
	...

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