Hypervelocity

Professor Elke Schwarz is Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London. Her work bridges philosophy, ethics and technology to examine how emerging military and digital systems reshape war, violence and political practice. She investigates how autonomous weapons, military AI, drones and the defence-technology complex challenge traditional moral, political and legal frameworks. S...

Dr Aaron P. Jackson⁠  is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at Swedish Defence University in Stockholm, Sweden, where he specialises in researching and teaching operational art, military design thinking, and the ontology of military planning processes. Before commencing this role in February 2025, he was an Australian Public Servant for fifteen years. His public service appointments include Commander...

Dr Rory Cox , Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is Professor of History at the University of St Andrews, where he has taught since 2011. He studies how ideas shape human history, with research spanning the ethics of war, violence, and environmental history. His book Origins of the Just War: Military Ethics and Culture in the Ancient Near East (Princeton) won the 2024 Society for Military His...

Today’s guest is Major Donald Vandergriff (U.S. Army retired), a distinguished military thinker, educator, and reform advocate with over two decades of service across the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and National Guard. As Director of Adaptive Leadership Training at Nemertes , and the author of multiple influential works, he brings a blend of operational experience and intellectual rigour. In this epi...

Dr. Togzhan Kassenova is a Washington, DC-based senior fellow at SUNY-Albany’s PISCES and a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She specializes in nuclear politics, WMD nonproliferation, strategic trade controls, sanctions, and financial crime prevention. Her current work focuses on countering proliferation financing. She holds a Ph. D. in Politics from the Univer...

All comments and opinions are those of the individuals recorded; they do not reflect any official policy or position of the Department of Defense or U.S. government. Dr. Ben Zweibelson is an author, philosopher, and a retired Army Infantry Officer with multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ben lectures and publishes on military strategy, operational planning, design thinking, and war phil...

Dr Mark Lacy , a senior lecturer at Lancaster University, joins me to discuss his book " Theorizing Future Conflict: War Out to 2049 ." We explore the evolving nature of warfare, focusing on the impact of new technologies like AI, drones, and cyber warfare. Mark highlights the challenges of predicting future conflicts, citing the ongoing war in Ukraine as a case study. He contrasts the liberal and...

Paul Rogers⁠ is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and an Honorary Fellow of the Joint Service Command and Staff College (JSCSC). Paul lectures on changing drivers of international conflict with particular interests in the Middle East and paramilitary violence, and also has a long-term research interest in the interaction between socioeconomic marginalisation, climate disru...

Owain Leyshon ⁠ (Raymond K Hessel) is a philosopher and writer based in Ireland. He focuses primarily on the phenomenology of technology and political philosophy, with a special interest in the ancient Greeks. Owain blogs regularly on Substack and a number of his essays have been published in the collection called Notes from the Pod. ⁠ Joshua Hansen ⁠ is a US-based cultural theorist focused on hyp...

Antoine Bousquet is Associate Professor at the Swedish Defence University, Stockholm. He is the author of  The Eye of War: Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone  (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and  The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity  (Hurst, 2009). He has contributed an array of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on subjects t...

Dr Becky Alexis-Martin is a pacifist academic at the University of Bradford . Her work explores nuclear warfare, social justice, humanitarian and environmental issues, and human rights. Her expertise is focused on nuclear geographies and decolonising disarmament policy in the Pacific. She has authored over sixty-five news articles, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles. Her first book, “Disarm...

In this episode, my guest Italo Brandimarte discussed his journal article 'Breathless war: martial bodies, aerial experiences and the atmosphere of empire .' Italo's article covers the use of poison gas by the Italian air force in the Abyssinian War. We covered the following questions: Why do you think that the usual discussions of aerial warfare tend to split between the strategic, te...

Professor Andrew Futter specialises in contemporary nuclear weapons issues, specifically emerging technologies and their impact on nuclear strategy, stability and arms control. His work is centred on raising international awareness of nuclear risks, and shaping the climate of ideas that ensures governments and policymakers can make the best decisions possible.  In this interview we discussed Andre...

Dr Michael Mulvihill is a Research Associate at the University of Newcastle's. His recent project, 'Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: making practice visible at the UK’s ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station' was a multimedia art project intending to demystify nuclear weapons through showing that they are made of everyday materials: the original panel sections of t...

In this first episode of Hypervelocity I was delighted to speak with Dr Matthew Ford and Professor Andrew Hoskins about their new book, Radical War: Data, Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century.  In Radical War , Matthew and Andrew recount how the smartphone, social media and big data are revolutionising the conduct and experience of war to the point that the battlefield is now eve...

Hypervelocity: a podcast about the impact of military technology on strategy.