Angry Planet

In the closing days of World War II, the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force dropped more than 3,900 tons of high explosives and fire bombs on the city of Dresden. It was not, strictly, only a military target and the story of the bombing has captured the imagination of everyone who survived it and those who study the war. One of those people is Sinclair McKay. McKay is a liter...

From the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to, probably, New START, all the old treaties are failing. Nuclear weapons are back in the public consciousness in a big way and old Cold War ideas that we once thought relegated to the dustbin of history are back. One of those are so-called low yield nuclear weapons. The U.S. Navy recently fielded some of these SLBMs for the first time on its nucl...

There’s a battle raging for the future of the internet. No, it has nothing to do with net neutrality or broadband access. This is about 5G, the shadowy world of global intelligence agencies, and a telecom giant with $108 billion in revenue that most Americans haven’t heard of. The company is Huawei, a Chinese manufacturer known the world over for its cell phones. It also makes radio arrays and is...

Iraq. Since October of last year, a protest movement has taken hold of the country. After 16 years of conflict, Iraq is tired. Its people want political and economic reforms. America didn’t pay attention. Until, that was, a militia stormed an embassy, America killed an Iranian General, and tensions between the U.S. and Iran flared. For a moment, the whole world paid attention. They should keep pay...

This week, producer Kevin Knodell walks us through his recent reporting in Iraq. https://coffeeordie.com/american-troops-iraq/ You can listen to War College on iTunes , Stitcher , Google Play or follow our RSS directly . Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/ ; and on Twitter: @War_College . Support this show http://...

Drones are everywhere. Military drones buzz war zones dropping missiles; surveillance drones hover above neighborhoods, looking for anything out of place; even now, commercial drones hide in holiday wrapping, waiting for excited enthusiasts to fly them in a park. As the market for drones has grown, so too has the market for tools to take them down. There’s jamming rifles, spoofing software, and hu...

Last week the Washington Post published The Afghanistan Papers—a blockbuster piece of reporting that details every little thing about what’s gone wrong with the Afghanistan War. As the war grinds through its second decade, the Afghanistan Papers make clear what many defense reporters, government officials, and soldiers have known for years. The Afghanistan War is a costly, pointless, unwinnable me...

Luke Skywalker is a household name. Carl von Clausewitz not so much. Learning about the military—especially about strategy and tactics—is a jargon filled slog. War has a language all its own and for decades, military minds have struggled to find an easy way to teach conflict to the common citizen and aspiring officer alike. Star Wars is that language. That’s the theory behind a new book, Strategy...

We are living on the precipice of a manufacturing revolution. 3D Printing is more than just a hobby your weird rich friends use to make guns, it’s the dawn of a new process of prototype and creation. Additive manufacturing, if you believe the hype, will make it easier to make everything . Including weapons of Mass Destruction. But how real is that threat and how close are we to making chemical wea...

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for tuning into this special podcast. Last week was a busy one for President Trump and the military. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer was fired. Or did he quit? No, he was fired. Why? Because of how he handled controversy surrounding Navy SEAL and accused War Criminal Eddie Gallagher. That’s … that’s if he was actually fired, which he probably was. Here to help u...

Refugees. People from countries in crisis fleeing oppression and death. America was once a beacon to the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But things have changed. In the last term of President Barack Obama the U.S. said it would accept 110,000 refugees. That number is now just 18,000. There’s a moral argument here, but also a compelling strategic one. The enemy of my e...

If there’s been a recent throughline or theme on this season of War College, it’s that war has changed. And it’s not just conflict, but the way we cover conflict. Increasingly, people are using open source intelligence and social media to study and report on the changing nature of conflict. Calbre Obscura is one of those people. He’s an independent arms researcher interested in non-state groups in...

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s fine . Stop asking. Between the climate Apocalypse, tensions in the Middle East, the dissolution of decades old nuclear treaties, artificial intelligence, 3D printed weapons of mass destruction, immortal humans, CRISPR, and drone swarms, it feels like we’re closer to a science fiction apocalypse everyday.  These days it’s n...

There’s anti-government protests in Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Russia. The civil war in Syria rages on and, thanks to Twitter, VK, Facebook, anyone can share their opinion about world events. Elements of both the left and right say that any anti-government protest in one of America’s rivals is a CIA plot and dictators such as Bashar Al Assad are good, actually.  Is this information warfare or...

This week on War College, Syrian journalist Loubna Mrie walks us through life in the early days of the Syrian revolution, how it turned into a nightmarish Civil War, and the consequences of US Withdrawal. You can listen to War College on  iTunes ,  Stitcher ,  Google Play  or follow our  RSS directly . Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Face...

There’s war all over these days, but it’s different. War has, in fact changed, and the operators of the future are preparing for different challenges in different theaters. The bulk of US involved conflict is happening in the Middle East and North Africa, but the Pentagon is preparing for fighting in more traditional theaters. Marty Skovlund Jr. is a veteran of 1st Ranger Battalion, the Executive...

On September 14, explosions rocked oil infrastructure in Saudia Arabia. Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack and the early headlines stated that the rebel group had attacked the Kingdom with drones. As always, the truth of the attack is a little more complicated. It’s a story of cruise missiles, Iran, and open source intelligence. It’s also a story where how we know what we...

For the past decade, unmanned aerial vehicles have been a cornerstone of America’s campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Greater Middle East. Predator and Reaper drones crisscross the globe firing hellfire missiles on U.S. enemies. Other countries have operational drone fleets, but few match the might and ubiquity of America’s. But journalists on the front lines in Iraq have seen a disturbing...

Does it feel like there’s just too much information out there and you can’t get a handle on it? Do you have trouble parsing the lies from the truth? Do you know all the places America is at war? Can we even technically call them wars? Are your Twitter followers even real or are they just bots? Are Antifa and the Proud Boys rumbling in the streets a natural extension of electoral politics or just s...

Fascism. It’s back and it’s….Ironic? From Hungary to Brazil to the United States of America, facism—yes, fascism—is back in a big way. When our grandfathers beat back the Nazis in World War II, we assumed we’d beaten the ideology into dust. The problem is that fascism isn’t so much a coherent set of beliefs as it is a mutation, perversion, and reaction to the politics of the moment. The truth is,...

Do you like independent journalism? Do you like learning about conflict from the best in the business. Well Jake Hanrahan is one of the best in the business and he’s the mind behind Popular Front—a podcast, a website, a documentary series, and a home to independent journalism. Popular Front goes places other journalists don’t go and asks questions other journalist don’t ask. Jake Hanrahan is here...

After a year of protests, Standing Rock began to die down in late winter this year. But to one observer, the standoff stood out for how much it resembled a war zone. Marty Skovlund Jr. is a U.S. Army veteran who served in the 1st Ranger Battalion. He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Since coming home he’s run a small business, written books and freelanced for several news outlets. In December,...

Nuclear war. These days it feels like we’re closer to Global Thermonuclear Annihilation than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—an organization of experts that calculates humanity’s odd of Armageddon—seems to agree. The Doomsday Clock is set at two midnight to midnight.  It’s easy to see why. On August 2, the US pulled out of the Intermediate-Ran...

Libya. Dictator Muammar Gaddafi ruled the country from 1969 to 2011. The Arab Spring led to a Civil War and the deposition and death of Gadaffi in 2011. The country never quite recovered and remains in the throws of a violent Civil War. One most of us in the West, myself included, have not paid much attention to. Someone who did pay attention is today’s guest Robert Young Pelton. Pelton is an auth...

This week on War College, producer Kevin Knodell is back from his trip to the Middle East and he’s got stories. He shares his experiences climbing a mountain in Kurdistan, eating at KFCs that are better than the ones in America, and talks about the future of the region. You can listen to War College on iTunes , Stitcher , Google Play or follow our RSS directly . Our website is warcollegepodcast.co...