Angry Planet

You know, we wanted to talk about European (and especially German) views of the war in Ukraine today. And we still will. What’s an IRIS-T, for example. What’s up with those Leopard tanks? But then a Russian Su-27 fighter jet crashed into an American MQ-9 Reaper above the Black Sea and the guest we planned to have on, well, she knows a lot about drones. With us today is Ulrike Franke. Franke is a s...

This week, Angry Planet talks with Caleb Larson who has been working as a journalist in and around Ukraine’s Donbas region where much of the war is currently being fought. He paints a picture of the situation on the ground and tells us where to buy groceries in time of war. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the planet slowly broils, we keep hoping that some technological revolution will save us. Not just carbon capture or seeding the oceans with iron to grow algae that will drink in all the carbon dioxide right out of the atmosphere, but solutions that we can power our homes with and drive around. But what if we’ve put all of our money on the wrong horse? David Ko and Richard Busellato former hedg...

In 1973, as most American troops left Vietnam, President Richard M. Nixon ended compulsory military service for males over the age of 18. It was an end of system that had been in place since the Second World War and came in answer—at least in part—to an ever-growing anti-war, anti-draft movement. Historian and writer Max Boot joins us to talk about the history of the draft and the all-volunteer fo...

What’s the biggest Chinese threat to the United States? Well, if you ask security expert Stephanie Carvin, it’s not a balloon—no matter how large and how many missiles it takes to shoot down. So, what should we really be worried about from China’s security apparatus? Well, you could start with more traditional spying, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Support this show http://supporter.acast...

All three Angry Planet guys are on the show today. Kevin went to South Korea in September and he’s here to tell us all about it. “A shrimp stuck between two whales.” Shopping for a frigate in a glossy catalog Why America doesn’t remember the Korean War The Don Draper connection “MASH was about Vietnam.” A nuclear penninsula? No one knows what’s going in in North Korea. Angry Planet has a Substack...

Only Nixon can go to China. The now-forgotten aphorism once represented so much in American politics. After Nixon met with Mao, relations between the Communist country and America thawed. Trade opened up and, the popular notion went, with economic benefits would come a lessening of authoritarianism in China and the eventual end of Communism. Here in 2023 the idea that economic modernization and pr...

It’s only human to play games. Some might argue it’s in the DNA. Games are part of how we learn, and can be the best way to teach or solve a problem. But some games are more serious than others.  A game recently played at a Washington think tank is about as serious as it gets. It looked at what might happen if China attacked Taiwan, and the results weren’t pretty for anyone. Joining us today...

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle is on its way to Ukraine. Fifty of them, to be precise. This armored personnel carrier on tracks is not a tank. Don’t call it a tank. Once maligned as a boondoggle that represented everything wrong with Pentagon weapon’s programs, the Bradley is now a much desired piece of armor. With us today to suss this all out is Sebastian Roblin. Roblin is a freelance journalist w...

Benjamin Netanyahu is back and he's brought a right-wing coalition like nothing Israel has seen. Dan Perry knows the game and all the players and and he joins Angry Planet to talk about what might be the end of democracy in the Jewish State and what it means for the Palestinians and relations with the U.S. Angry Planet has a Substack ! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear mor...

The shine has come off Russia’s regular armed forces. We’ve all seen the pictures in Ukraine of burned out vehicles and crashed drones, everything already starting to rust. Casualties for the Russian military are estimated to be over 100,000.  But the Russian Army isn’t the only force in Ukraine fighting on Moscow’s behalf. The Wagner Group is there, too, and we know far less about them and w...

Or: Why Jason has a Velcro mezuzah. An episode about Kanye West and violent family histories. 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 You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes , Stitcher , Google Play or follow our RSS directly . Our website is...

We’ve talked a lot on this program about electronic intelligence—the amazing stuff you can do with satellites, user generated content and sophisticated software. Nice. But we’ve left out all the men and women who still do work on the ground, all over the world. Paul Kolbe is here to remind us about human intelligence and the role it plays. Kolbe is a CIA veteran, having worked in the directorate o...

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reign has been defined by constant conflict. From Chechnya to Ukraine and many other wars in between, Putin’s Russia has constantly been pushing at its borders and sending troops abroad. How have those wars shaped Russia and the world? And what does it all have to do with Ukraine? That’s the subject of the new book Putin’s Wars . Its author is here with us today....

We’re running our Thanksgiving break episode a week early. We’ll be back next week to talk with Mark Galeotti about Russia, Kherson, and the missiles that just hit Poland. This week, we’re going far back into our past. It’s a Timothy Snyder double feature. Both of these episodes are from our “War College” days and feature the famous historian at two different points in his journey to the cable new...

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 Revi...

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 li...

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 writ...

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 po...

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 compl...

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 lo...

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 w...

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 th...

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 th...

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...