War College

It’s been a long time since the sun set on the British Empire and many institutions in British society have changed a great deal. In some ways, the British Army is the exception - a living linkage between imperial great power status and the current post-colonial European nation. In other ways, like the US military, the British Army has been comprehensively transformed by the long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. The way the British Army has altered - and also failed to react - over the last two decades is the subject of the new book The Changing of the Guard: The British Army Since 9/11. Here to talk about it is the book’s author Simon Akam. Akam is a journalist whose work has appeared basically everywhere, including Reuters, the Economist, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Outside, Bloomberg Businessweek and GQ.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We live in a world shaped by the Iraq War. No, not that Iraq War. No, not that one either. We’re talking about the Iran-Iraq war. Just after Iran’s Islamic Revolution, it fought an eight year war with Iraq. The details of that war are incredible, and in the west, little known. Children cleared minefields, Iraq used chemical weapons, drones flew through the air, and helicopters engaged in dog fights with jets. And the consequences of that war shaped the region and the world. The effects are still with us today.Here to help us untangle all of this is Aram Shabanian, a graduate student of Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He also runs The Fulda Gap, a site dedicated to using OSINT to understand modern war.Recorded 2/18/21Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Plane

The United States’ military is an all volunteer force and has been since 1973. The people who fought both Gulf Wars and the war in Afghanistan asked to join up. They had as many reasons as there are troops, but not one was compelled by the government. Today, we’re talking to Beth Bailey, Distinguished Professor at Kansas University and the author of AMERICA'S ARMY: Making the All-Volunteer Force. We’re going to talk about the history of the draft and what came after.Recorded 1/19/21  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After surviving a poisoning attempt, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to his home country and was arrested. Now he’s been sentenced to serve a 3 and a ½ year prison sentence. After Navalny’s arrest in mid-January, people took to the streets of Russia’s cities to protest. We’ve seen this before, but there is a sense that this time is different.Is it? Here to help us answer that question is Mark Galleotti. Galeotti is a frequent guest on the show, a Russia expert, and is currently the director of the consultancy firm Mayak Intelligence. His most recent books are We Need To Talk About Putin, and A Short History of Russia.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.fac

Here's a look at what we've been working on in the premium feed. Sign up at angryplanetpod.com or angryplanet.substack.com.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

State Houses across the country are filled with monuments to losers, traitors, and terrorists. General Robert E Lee and Benjamin Tillman are lauded alongside figures like George Washington. The reasons why are complicated, but they’re bound up in something called The Myth of the Lost Cause. If you’ve never heard of this or don’t understand why it’s so critical to understanding American history well, honey, you probably ain’t from the South.Here to help us understand what’s going on is Dr. Robert Thompson. Thompson is a historian working for Army University Press and the author of the forthcoming book Clear, Hold, and Destroy which is about the American war in Vietnam.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Please blame Jason Fields for that headline.Human trafficking and modern slavery are at the top of the news in the United States in the form of the QAnon conspiracy theory. It links together Democrats, child sex trafficking and a pizza place about a mile from my house.The pizza at Comet Ping Pong is just OK, but don’t ask to see the basement. There isn’t one.QAnon is one of the more whacko things going on in this country. Today we’re going to talk about the reality of human trafficking and how it actually works.We’re joined by Kieran Guilbert who covers human trafficking and modern slavery for the Thomson Reuters foundation. I worked for Kieran and learned a lot from him.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on ou

It finally happened. Twitter finally suspended Trump’s account. After the capitol riots on January 6, tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Twitter took the unprecedented step of invoking their first amendment rights and removing several users from their various platforms. I just want to remind everyone that the 1958 Supreme Court Decision in  NAACP v. Alabama outlined an implied part of the first amendment—that of Freedom of Association.Is this big tech censorship? Are private companies silencing conservative voices or merely deciding who they want to do business with? Is Twitter the new townsquare or just another site among a sea of websites.Here to help us figure some of this out is Dr. Alexi Drew. Drew is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Policy Institute at King’s College London. On Monday she published the policy paper “Disinformation Kills. Now what are we going to do about it?”recorded 1/12/21Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry pl

Sometimes referred to as Europe’s last dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.Lukashenko, formerly in charge of a collective farm, has kept a tight grip on power and on the past. Belarus has kept Soviet symbols and economic policies long after they’ve gone out of favor elsewhere.Elections have been held regularly in the country, but have been neither free nor fair. The latest, in August 2020, is considered to be the least fair of all. Since then, there has been a cycle of lies, protests and repression.To help us understand the situation, we are joined by journalist and advocate Serge Kharytonau.Recorded 1/9/21Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on ou

Ghost guns. Untraceable weapons manufactured in the home. They’ve been with us forever, but they’ve taken on a new menace in the age of 3D printers and digital distribution. Here to walk us through the new phenomenon is Mark A Tallman. Tallman is an Assistant Professor of Homeland Security & Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He’s also the author of Ghost Guns. Ghost Guns is an in depth, data driven, and dare I say nerdy deep dive into homemade weapons in the post-industrial age.You can buy Ghost Guns here.Recorded on 8/25/20The second amendmentCody Wilson and his terrible gunWorking on guns is like working on cars“Most gun nerds are low risk”Why ban the bump stock?Additive manufacturing and the DIY weapons of mass destructionRecycling plastics into weaponsThe security implications of the fourth industrial revolutionRaytheon has 3D printed a missileThe tech backlashThe costs of compliance only hit the open sectors, but don’t halt illicit activityThe rise of the surveillance state

Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you’ve ever heard the phrase one-man wrecking crew, they might well have been talking about Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s Shadow Commander.Soleimani’s first fight was against Iraq in the war that started right after Iran’s revolution and lasted until 1988. He went on to great success fighting bandits and drug lords, eventually taking over Iran’s Quds Force - Iran’s tool for diplomacy by other means.For more than 20 years, Soleimani helped Ayatollah Khamanei project power around the region-becoming a force to be reckoned with in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and more.In January, Qassem Soleimani was killed by the United States.Today, we’re joined by Arash Azizi, who literally wrote the book on Soleimani. It’s called The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US and Iran’s Global Ambitions, and it was published in November.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What’s a fascist anyway?It’s a word we heard a lot over the past few years. If you’re on one side of the political debate you probably used this word earnestly. If you’re on the other side, you probably think people use it because they’re too embarrassed to call their political opponent Hitler.But it’s an important word with several very real definitions. Musolini is not Hitler is not, dare I say it, Tr0ump. But, from a certain point of view, all these men are fascists. Worth noting at the top here that Jason doesn’t  agree with me on this point. Or, at least, doesn’t always agree with me. With all this baggage around the term fascist, is it even worth using?Here to help us figure that out is Jason Stanely. Stanley is a professor of Philosophy at Yale and the author of the book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Sir, thank you so much for joining us.11/23/20Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a w

PULP EPIC. MALE. MAN’S ILLUSTRATED. MAN’S ADVENTURE. BRIGADE. VALOR. You’ve seen these magazines before. You either grew up with them or you’ve seen their bizarre covers online. There’s always a man with rippling muscles, sometimes he’s fighting a pack of weasels, other times he’s eying a scantily clad dame. Sometime’s there’s a Nazi, sometime’s there’s a woman in an SS uniform with a few buttons missing.The Pulp magazines of the Cold War shaped the culture and thinking of an entire generation of men. The sons of World War II veterans learned a fantasy version of the war from lads mags and then took those fantasies with them when they rushed headlong into their own war: Vietnam.Here to tell us all about the Pulp magazines and how they shaped our perceptions of the Cold War and Vietnam is Gregory A Daddis. Daddis is a retired Army Colonel who served in both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He’s a professor of history and the USS Midway Chair in Modern History at San Diego State University. His ne

The phrase climate change was originally created to soft-pedal global warming. A hotter planet doesn’t sound good, but, hey, climates change all the time - from winter to summer and back again.But it turned out to be an accurate description for what’s really going on. Deserts are drying, wet places are getting wetter. Crops are dying, and so is livestock and in some places it’s increasingly unsafe to go out during the day?So, how is this affecting human conflict? The assumption is that climate change will make things worse, but how much worse?To tell us, we have Stanford Professor Marshall Burke, who has studied the issue extensively and written numerous papers on the subject.Recorded 10/22/20Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com.

Law and order, it’s one of the catchphrases of this election. Crime rates, in some cities in America, are on the rise but crime, in general, is down. But 2020 has been a chaotic year and our news feeds are filled with violent images of militant groups, protestors, riots, burning buildings, and everything in between. The sad fact is that not all crime in America is reported on in the same way, that the protest movement is overwhelmingly peaceful, but not always, and that police militarization has exacerbated all our current problems.Here to help us untangle some of this is Danny Gold. Gold is a Pulitzer Center grantee, a documentary producer whose work has appeared in VICE Nice, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He’s also the host of the new Underworld Podcast—a series about the global criminal underworld.Recorded 10/6/20Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.subs

https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe to listenArmenia and Azerbaijan are at war. Why? It’s complicated. What’s the nature of the conflict? That’s also very complicated. It’s so complicated, in fact, that Russia, Syria, and Turkey are all involved. And it threatens to pull in their allies, all over a war that’s been “frozen” since 1988.Here to help us untangle all of this is Aram Shabanian, a graduate student of Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He also runs The Fulda Gap, a site dedicated to using OSINT to understand modern war. And he’s a member of the Armenian diaspora community in the United States.Recorded 10/16/20The Roots of the conflictNagorno-KarabakhWhy this war got so violent so fastExtrajudicial killingHow the war was announced via a music video on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSh5tm2Hmn0Why 2020 has been going on for at least four yearsThe Iran of it allMilitary spending on either sideWhat happened when the Sov

Remember back when the Berlin Wall fell and history ended? Back when we won the Cold War and America was embraced by allies old and new, becoming the world’s only superpower. The Gulf War was fought and seemingly won.Actually, maybe you don’t. It was the end of the 1980s, after all.George Bush - no, not that one - stood at the center of events, and inside that center stood James A. Baker III.To tell us about the man who ran Washington, and why he remains important, we welcome Peter Baker of the New York Times who wrote the book with his wife Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The couple’s book, coincidentally, is called The Man Who Ran Washington.Recorded 10/9/20Hey, remember the 1980s?Who was the man who ran Washington?Foreign policy as the presidential big leaguesThe nightmare of facing Jim Baker in an election“Baker was Bush”How to win the Iraq war only to lose it laterHow to navigate the end of historySibling rivalry between Bush and BakerAngry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly i

Things feel surreal all the time now. We’re told that some of our favorite online personalities may just be sock puppet accounts for foreing governments. Russia, in particular, is supposedly a master at the new soft power internet based information warfare. Some people still believe that Trump is a Russian agent, the end result of a longcon forged years ago by the KGB and ushered into power by Russian trolls. Qanon, anti-vaxers, ant-maskers, shitposts, and doing it for the lulz. It can be exhausting. But understanding the myths of the modern age and how they permeate online is a key to understanding our world today. Here to help us figure this all out is Nina Janckowicz. Janckowicz studies the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in DC. She’s also the author of How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict. She’s also … a huge musical theater fan.Recorded 10/8/20A brief d

Nations rise and nations fall, as do their governments. Today, some people say the United States and its treasured republican virtues stand at a crossroads.But how can you tell? Are we dealing with the mere panic of the moment, or something worth panicking about?To help us get a grip on what’s going on, we’re going to reach into the past, today, to see if history is repeating or just rhyming.Joining us to help us get a grip—and we could probably all use to get grip right about now—is Patrick Wyman.Wyman is the host of the Tides of History podcast, which looks at moments when the world changed, including recent examinations of the world’s first farmers and the effects of plague on the Roman world.Recorded on 10/2/20What defines a Republic anyway?The Res publica“Don’t quote laws to men with swords”How the Roman republic workedA contract with the godsHow the grain dole workedThe private sectorWhy it’s so hard to maintain a RepublicHow cynicism degrades the political systemAngry Planet has a substack! Join the In