War College

Today it’s all about the bomb. Nuclear weapons are back in a big way and everything about the Cold War suddenly feels very fresh. Nukes are strange things. They’ve only been used twice and the language and knowledge around them can often feel arcane, almost religious. There’s all these little rituals in nuclear space. We’re gonna talk about one of those rituals today—the Nuclear Posture Review. Once in every U.S. presidential administration, the nuclear curtain is withdrawn and we get a glimpse at what the Pentagon, and critically, the President is thinking. But what is the Nuclear Posture Review? Who writes it? And what does it have to do with the price of gas in an apocalyptic nuclear hellscape.Here to answer some of those questions for us today is Stephen Young. Young is the Senior Washington Representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists, the former Deputy Director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, and consulted on this most recent review.The Nuclear Posture ReviewNuke Experts Are Hor

I’m sorry, we have to talk about Elon Musk one more time. Or, as Jason said. “Twitter: Now With More Musk!”But seriously. This episode is about more than Musk. It’s about how conflict has gotten … weird. We start with a conversation about a new podcast about the weird future of war. Then we asked one question about Musk and things spiraled out of control.Has conflict gotten …weirder? Have the lines gotten blurrier? Why are cartoon Shiba Inu dogs yelling at Russian officials online? Why is the JAVELIN weapons system a saint? Why does that HIMARS system look … horny? When is an innocent meme not an innocent meme and what has the internet done to the way we fight?War … was has changed. Shitposts, disinformation, trolls farms in Macedonia, and Telegram channels full of gore videos that would make the average Ogrish visitor weep. (That was for you very old heads)So much of this feels like war …. Not exactly war but … something close. If only there were a podcast that explored these various phenomena and explained

Today we’re talking about Elon Musk — not because we want to, but because we have to. As we all know, the man is rich. I don’t mean merely wealthy, I mean he could pay off a good portion of the national deficit.He’s also not shy, to the point where he likes to tell entire countries what to do. They may not do it, but they’re forced to react.Bloomberg’s Iain Marlow, who covers diplomacy, has written a great piece about what Musk is up to now.Musk Tweets Complicate US Diplomacy From Ukraine to TaiwanThe CNN piece where the DoD throws Musk under the busAngry 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.Support this show http://supp

Alt Weeklies are an important part of America’s media landscape. It’s local reporting from people with a different point of view and different goals. If you’re mad at mainstream narratives you could do worse than picking up, say, the Inlander out of the Pacific Northwest. If you want to know what’s really going on there, how worried you should be about budding extremist movements, and what role politicians are playing in our current various crises, it’s a good place to start.With us today is Daniel Walters. Walters is an award-winning investigative journalist at the Inlander where he covers right-wing extremism, politics, and maybe just a little bit of pop culture.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 Faceb

In an attempt to shore up its rapidly crumbling position in Ukraine, Moscow has partially mobilized the people. In response, many of those people are fleeing. But where can they go? Russia has spent the last 100 years bullying, invading, and killing its immediate neighbors. Places like Georgia are seeing a huge influx of Russian military aged males. How do the Georgians feel about this? It’s complicated.With us today to talk about this is James Jackson. Jackson is a freelance journalist in German and Central and Eastern Europe. He was in Tbilisi, the capitol of Georgia when Russians fleeing mobilization started to show up. And he’s here with us today to talk about it. It’s the subject of his latest in Time: Why a Fresh Russian Exodus to Georgia is So Polarizing.Here’s a link to the video Jackson describes in the show.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/subscribe

There’s unrest in Iran right now. People have taken to the streets, the internet has been restricted for “security reasons” authorities say, and there’s been clashes with police. This all started after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by Iranian moral police. She died while in custody. Her death and the circumstances around it kicked off the current protests, but the unrest is part of a long continuum of uprising and suppression in Iran that’s as old as the Islamic Revolution of 1979.With us today is Maral Karimi. Karimi is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the author of The Iranian Green Movement of 2009, Reverberating Echoes of Resistance.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 F

The vast majority of Chinese people come from a single ethnic group—the Han. So what’s life like for the millions of people who aren’t Han? Tough, it’s fair to say. Ask any Tibetan.But one group has been singled out for particular persecution, the Uyghurs. There are about 12 million Uyghurs, they mostly live in a province called Xinjiang and mostly Muslim.And the Chinese appear to be trying to wipe out at least their culture. Many countries have condemned the Chinese for this, but the United Nations has been slow, slow, slow to take any action.That’s finally changed with a new report.Joining us to talk about the situation are two people working for Human Rights Watch, Louis Charboneau, at the UN, and Sophie Richardson, who works on issues in China.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 foll

What seemed unthinkable a year ago has come to pass. Ukraine has started its counter offensive and in a shockingly short amount of time has pushed Russia out of much of its territory. The Russian military appears to be collapsing with a rapidity that is shocking pretty much everyone.Well, maybe not everyone. People who’ve been paying attention to the minutiae of the war aren’t as surprised as the rest of us. That’s kind of been a pattern in coverage and punditry of Russia’s invasion.One of those smart guys is here to talk with us today on Angry Planet. It’s returning guest Aram Shabanian. He’s the Open-Source Information Gathering Manager at New Lines Institute, one of the minds behind The Fulda Gap, and one of the best Twitter follows you can snag @ShabanianAram.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, Goo

This will be the last episode we do on Afghanistan for a bit. We wanted to give the final word to a U.S. Marine who served there.We’re now a year out from the fall of Kabul and what looks like the end of America’s uniformed involvement in Afghanistan. There are as many as 70,000 Afghans who helped the United States during the war who are still looking to get out.Elliot Ackerman, who served in the region as a Marine and as a CIA operative, was trying to help as the last flights were taking off from Kabul’s Airport.It was, as Ackerman saw it, the Fifth Act of the Afghan War.He’s joining us today to talk about both his war and his views of the fall. He’s the author of both novels and non-fiction, including Dark at the Crossing, Green on Blue, and Red Dress in Black and White. We’ll put the full list in the show notes. His latest book, looking at these final days is The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and he

It’s been a year since the U.S. left Afghanistan in disarray. We’ve spoken to a number of people who have been to Afghanistan over the years on this show. That includes journalists who walked into Kabul with the Taliban the first time, in 1996, soldiers who fought in Afghanistan throughout the war, and more recently, a man who was supposed to be fighting corruption but found it to be worse than a losing battle.Today, NPR’s Steve Inskeep joins us. He recently visited Afghanistan and spent some time with the Taliban.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.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Our GDPR

Dissent. It’s a word people don’t like to hear, especially coming from the military. But it’s also a vitally important component of any vibrant democracy. Dissent, especially informed dissent, can pull us back from the brink and help us make better choices. We are one year out from the end of America’s direct involvement in Afghanistan and, after two decades of war, it’s time to start listening to the dissenters.That’s what the new book Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars hopes to do: give voice to that informed dissent.With us today is one of the books’ editors, returning guest Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich is a West Point graduate, a 23 year U.S. Army Veteran, a professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University, and … a dissenter.Buy the book here.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 li

To say there are widespread reports of abuses by Russian troops in Ukraine is to undersell it. There have been hundreds and hundreds of cases claiming rape, torture, and murder. Last week, a video of the torture and execution of a Ukrainian soldier at the hands of Russian soldiers shocked the world.We call these things war crimes and crimes against humanity. But that’s a relatively new concept. Today we’re going to talk about the Nuremberg Trials, which took some vague ideals and put them into practice.Joining us today to talk about the Nuremberg Trials is John Barrett. He’s a Professor of Law at St. John's University, a biographer of former U.S. Attorney General and Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson.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 a

WNBA star Britney Griner is imprisoned in Russia and, apparently, the U.S. is making Russia an incredible offer to get her out. Last week Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that America had “put a substantial proposal on the table.”That proposal? The return to Russia of convicted international arms dealer Viktor Bout. This so-called Merchant of Death’s story is an amazing one. It even inspired a 2005 Nicolas Cage movie, some six years before Bout’s arrest. With us today to talk about it is Sean Williams. Williams is a journalist and the co-host of the excellent Underworld Pod, a show about the worldwide phenomenon of organized crime.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.f

Imagine being trapped below ground for weeks, surrounded by soldiers, bombs dropping just a few feet above your head.Food is scarce, rats are everywhere. Is survival possible? And what would it even look like? A trip back home, or to a Russian prison?That was the situation during the siege of the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol, Ukraine. Michael Schwirtz of the New York Times has put together a comprehensive look at the siege, which is being called Ukraine’s Alamo and he’s joining us today to describe what he found.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.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. S

I think we can all assume why Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia recently. In fact, we just did a show on why the world can’t quit Saudi oil.But it’s interesting to pull apart the other part of his journey — to Israel and, very briefly, the Palestinian Authority.Joining us to do just that is independent journalist Noga Tarnopolsky. She’s written for everyone from the New York Times to the LA Times, as well as many other international outlets.So, why visit Israel and why now? Was he just in the neighborhood?Why is Israel still so important to the U.S.?One stop on Biden’s visit was the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. There he did something that seems to have melted hardened Israeli hearts. What was the significance of the way he spoke to two of the few remaining survivors of the Holocaust.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 Pla

We’re digging into the archives one more time to bring you two episodes from the early days of the show. They’re all about Russia and Ukraine. I chose these two because I think they give a unique view of the origins of the war and reflect how much our thinking on Russia has changed since its “official” invasion in February of 2022.We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. Stay safe until then.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.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This one is a blast from the past. Jason is on Vacation and Matthew is going in for a minor surgery so we're resurrecting some old episodes. Here's what we said five years ago when this first aired:"Antifa and white nationalists clash in the streets. Students on college campuses patrol the sidewalks armed with bats. A man in Portland stabbed several people on a bus and another in Virginia opened fire on Republican legislators on a baseball field. This week on War College, Joe Young – college professor and contributing editor at Political Violence @ a Glance – walks us through what does and doesn’t scare him about the new rash of political violence in America. For Young, the times may be scary but they’re a far cry from the radical sixties and seventies when groups such as the Weather Underground bombed government buildings."My how things have changed in just five years.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world i

If you’re a fan of this show, you’ve probably seen and read a lot of things about the war in Ukraine. But you’ve never seen anything quite like the new Popular Front documentary Frontline Hooligan.Today’s guest is the creator of that documentary. He’s been on the show many times. You know him. Jake Hanrahan. He’s an independent journalist and the host of Popular Front, a podcast that focuses on the niche details of modern warfare and under-reported conflict.Today we’re gonna talk about Frontline Hooligan, Hanrahan’s travels in Ukraine, and how places like YouTube make it hard, if not impossible, for independent journalists like him.Watch the documentary here: https://youtu.be/nsodbPkjO3cAngry 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 ca

The war in Ukraine grinds on. As the West’s attention wanes, Ukrainians fight for their lives and freedom. They need more of everything. Weapons, ammunition, supplies, people.Today we have various stories from the war, as told by returning guest Danny Gold. Gold is a writer and producer who focuses on crime and conflict. He’s also a reluctant podcaster who co-hosts the excellent Underworld Podcast.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.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The January 6th committee has gone public with its hearings and once again the Proud Boys are in the news. Charges against 5 members of the group, including its leader, Enrique Tarrio have been superseded. Now, we’re talking about straight up sedition.So, it’s time to look again at what this group — and related groups — did on January 6, and just how dangerous they really are. We’ll also talk about accelerationism, what it is and what accelerationists want.Joining us are two people who are following the situation closely: Matthew Kriner is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism. And Jon Lewis is a Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.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 websi