Law of Code

What do the 2026 midterm results mean for tech policy in the U.S.? Not necessarily a tech crackdown, according to Justin Slaughter, senior advisor at Paradigm. Justin explains why a wave this big scrambles the usual playbook, and what tech’s pitch to Democrats should be. This podcast also features Khurram Dara, Partner at Thompson Street, and Mike Katz, Partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:25 AI data centers and the exit polls 2:18 Tech’s unhedged political bet 3:28 Why a tech crackdown isn’t a given 5:01 A generational turnover 6:04 Realignment 9:00 How tech should approach Democrats now 10:25 Why startups have the advantage 13:52 Should crypto batten down the hatches? 16:32 Will Democrats listen? 19:30 What happens at the SEC and CFTC 22:42 Lessons from swaps and Dodd-Frank 25:02 What derailed CLARITY 27:53 Bubbles 29:00 Inside the Biden admin on crypto 32:29 The lesson of the long 2016 34:19 The state attorneys general shift Thank you to the sponsors of this episode: the Decentralization Research Center, the Solana Policy Institute, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel. To learn more about CahillNXT, visit https://www.cahill.com/practices/litigation-digital-assets-ai-frontier-technology. Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

David Lat has watched the legal profession for 30 years: as a law student, a federal clerk and a prosecutor, then as the founder of Above the Law and now as the writer behind Original Jurisdiction, one of the most widely read newsletters on law and the legal profession. In this conversation, he explains how the profession has changed since he began covering it in the early 2000s. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:07 30 years of change in the legal profession 4:19 Private equity’s backdoor into law firms 6:35 How David uses AI 9:52 Is the fear of AI overblown? 11:29 Ranking the circuit courts 15:25 Interviewing with Justice Scalia 18:39 Crypto as a law school hypothetical 21:29 Regulation by enforcement and due process 21:59 Speech and debate 25:09 The most underrated legal skill Thank you to the sponsors of this episode: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Hyperliquid Policy Center, the Solana Policy Institute and the Decentralization Research Center. To get in touch with the Cahill team about how any issues discussed in this episode apply to your situation, email [email protected]. Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Can traditional financial institutions use permissionless blockchains without being offside of the Bank Secrecy Act? What happens if a bank unknowingly pays a fee to a sanctioned validator? By the end of this episode, you'll understand the history of the Bank Secrecy Act, how OFAC actually enforces sanctions and a new paper's nine-part framework for how banks can use public blockchains and stay compliant. You'll hear from the paper's three co-authors: Rebecca Rettig (Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer of Jito Labs, of counsel at Arktouros) Omid Malekan (adjunct professor at Columbia Business School) and Michael Mosier (co-founder of Arktouros and former acting director of FinCEN). This episode is presented by Altitude, visit https://altitude.xyz/law to learn more about their global payments platform. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 3:24 Problems they see 5:39 The router principle 7:13 What permissionless systems get right 11:28 Lessons from the open internet 14:23 Credible neutrality 19:20 A brief history of the BSA 23:55 What OFAC enforcement looks for 26:16 Treasury, Iran and open networks 28:29 The SEC's innovation exemption 34:03 Compliance belongs at the app layer 37:04 "The government will never allow it" 39:39 The paper's nine-part framework 44:12 Network layer vs. transaction layer 46:28 The $50,000 canoe 48:02 Safety, soundness and final settlement 50:29 Why this matters for national security 51:27 Privacy 58:07 What this means for DeFi Thank you to Cahill Gordon & Reindel for sponsoring this podcast. Thank you as well to the Solana Policy Institute, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and the Decentralization Research Center for supporting the podcast. The full paper is here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7343938. Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Anthropic calls some AI distillation illicit. But is distillation illegal? The answer may depend less on what you do with AI outputs than on how you accessed them. This episode is a deep dive into how courts might rule. We cover X v. Bright Data, what OpenAI's and Anthropic's terms say about who owns AI outputs, why Anthropic's own fair use arguments could be turned against it and what the labs will likely do next. Thank you to the presenting sponsor of this episode, Altitude. Visit altitude.xyz/law to learn more about their payments platform. You'll hear from the three Variant co-authors of one of the sharpest papers on the topic: Daniel Barabander, investment partner and chief legal officer at Variant Sabina Beleuz, deputy general counsel at Variant Elijah Fox, investor at Variant Read their article here: https://variant.fund/articles/license-distill-law-distillation-anthropic/. Timestamps: 0:00 What is distillation? 1:52 Intro 3:01 Why distillation matters 5:44 X v. Bright Data 7:50 Access vs. selling 10:40 Copyright preemption 11:25 Why X doesn't own your posts 13:49 From scraping to distillation 16:12 Who owns AI outputs? 19:38 Is all distillation illicit? 24:10 Anthropic's fair use problem 25:05 Bartz v. Anthropic 26:42 Predictions 28:41 Distilling the distillers 29:21 Selling services, not tokens 32:34 Antitrust 37:06 Tech moves exponentially, law sublinearly 40:47 Humans, AI and personhood 45:15 Final thoughts Thank you as well to the other sponsors of this episode: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the Solana Policy Institute, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and the Decentralization Research Center. To get in touch with the Cahill team about how any issues discussed in this episode apply to your situation, email [email protected]. Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Cybercrime costs Americans an estimated $200 billion a year, and AI is supercharging it. The U.S. government's newest response is one of the oldest tools in the Constitution, one Congress hasn't used since the War of 1812. This episode covers letters of marque and privateers: their role in the American Revolution, how prize courts and bonds kept privateers from becoming pirates, and the White House memo that trends toward implementing a modern version for cyberspace. Sponsors: This episode is presented by Altitude, visit altitude.xyz/law to learn more about their global payments platform. Sponsors also include: The law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel. Cahill is hosting Confluence 2026, its flagship emerging tech conference, in New York City on September 24, 2026. You can apply to attend here: https://www.cahill.com/confluence2026. Thank you as well to the Solana Policy Institute and the Hyperliquid Policy Center for supporting the podcast. Guests: Chris Perkins (President of Franklin Crypto at Franklin Templeton, Naval Academy graduate and Marine Corps veteran) Ari Redbord (Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs and former federal prosecutor) Michael Coates (CISO of the Solana Foundation and previously Twitter's first CISO) Camelia Lopez Shoemaker (Holland & Knight, former DOJ) Nelson Rosario (Rosario Tech Law) Timestamps: (0:00) The $200 billion problem (2:16) The Model T and the FBI (4:18) Pig butchering (7:03) History (7:50) The high seas and the internet (8:30) Marque vs. reprisal (11:35) American Revolution (14:08) Building a (private) navy (17:25) The Constitution (18:40) The Paris Declaration (20:34) Pirates or privateers? (22:12) The five-part system (22:40) Why government can't scale (23:30) The Fourth Amendment (25:26) Suspicious Activity Reports (28:23) Recent memorandum (30:40) The bond (32:34) The blockchain (33:49) Latest from U.S. gov't (34:56) The attribution problem (36:30) Who's involved today? (37:49) The Beacon Network (39:16) Pre-clearance and due process (41:10) Reporting cybercrime (44:26) International law This should be the internet's best explainer on letters of marque. You don't need to be a lawyer, historian or security expert to follow along. Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship.