Cogs of War

Joe Jewell left academia and his role directing hypersonic wind tunnels to oversee the Pentagon's science and technology enterprise. He wants more researchers to make the same move. He joins Jonathan to discuss the Pentagon's science enterprise, why he thinks academia is the envy of America's closest allies, and how his office gets technology from the lab into the hands of the warfighter.

Armies run on more than what happens at the front. Behind every operation is a vast amount of coordination, administration, logistics, and judgment. Bill Pessin, senior vice president of national security at Salesforce and a former U.S. Army logistics officer, joins Jonathan to discuss how military organizations can use AI agents, what makes these tools different from ordinary software, and why sa...

Congress rarely moves fast, but Reps. Rob Wittman and Pat Ryan are trying to change that. The two lawmakers founded the bipartisan House Defense Modernization Caucus in 2024 and have driven reforms through two consecutive defense authorization acts, targeting acquisitions and other bottlenecks. Jonathan sits down with both congressmen to discuss their initiatives, how a caucus without markup power...

Is it too late to stop criminals and American adversaries from exploiting AI to conduct cyberattacks or design novel pathogens? Has regulation kept pace with the threat civilian drones pose to critical infrastructure? AI researcher  Lennart Heim , Army drone strategist  Paul Lushenko , and CEO of  Sentinel Bio Claire Qureshi join Jonathan to discuss the trade-offs between protecting the public and...

Ryan sits down at the Cogs of War mic for the last time to introduce Jonathan Panter, the new host and executive editor of  Cogs of War . Jonathan shares his background, from naval officer to scholar. They discuss major defense tech issues, and Jonathan shares what he hopes to accomplish at the helm of Cogs of War.

What happens when one of the defense industry's leading technology integrators partners with one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture firms? Bryce Pippert of Booz Allen and Matt Cronin of Andreessen Horowitz join Ryan to unpack their new partnership and discuss how the United States is trying to tap into the tech ecosystem. The conversation gets into venture capital's growing role in natio...

The tech soldiers carry will shape their performance in combat, missions, and their safety and health. If you care about any of those things, you will love this episode. The next generation of American soldiers will operate with systems that blur the line between human and machine, but that future is still being worked out in real time. In this episode, three former servicemembers turned industry...

This episode is about far more than countering drones. It is about how America prepares for and fights its wars. With three leaders from three companies at the forefront of counter-drone solutions (AeroVironment, Epirus, and Hidden Level), the conversation explores how America and its enemies are adapting, how the U.S. military is and isn't keeping pace, the problems with how America buys things,...

Agentic AI is quickly moving from demo to deployment inside the Department of Defense. But what does it actually mean to give AI "agency" — and what does it take to make those systems work on real military networks? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Ben Van Roo, co-founder and CEO of Legion Intelligence, Jags Kandasamy, co-founder and CEO of Latent AI, and Aaron Brown, co-founder and CEO of Lum...

China and Russia are churning out millions of drones while the United States has little capacity to build them at scale. Rep. Pat Harrigan of North Carolina introduced the SkyFoundry Act to change this, and it got rolled into the latest National Defense Authorization Act .  This law authorizes a government-run facility capable of producing one million small drones annually, cutting China out of ou...

Since World War II, America's universities have been part of the nation's arsenal, forging the ideas, technology, and talent that underpin national defense. That engine of innovation never stopped running. John Beieler and John Paul Sawyer of the University of Maryland join Ryan to talk about the power of public–private partnerships in defense tech, quantum science, and AI, and how that work keeps...

Open-source intelligence has matured into a complex blend of technology, access, and tradecraft. Ryan is joined by Ryan Curran of ZeroFox, Tucker Moore of Booz Allen Hamilton, and Scott Petry of Authentic8 to explore how today's practitioners manage attribution, collect at scale, preserve provenance, and ensure human judgment remains at the center of the process.

When it comes to missiles, America lacks the magazine depth for a long fight, especially against a peer competitor like China. A major part of the problem: Traditional U.S. missiles are simply too costly to produce at scale. Ryan sits down with three industry leaders working to change that. Listen to Ethan Thornton (Mach Industries), Sean Pitt (Castelion), and Steve Milano (Anduril) as they explai...

Sherman Williams, the co-founder of AIN Ventures, joins Ryan at the bar to discuss the hard realities of dual-use investing. They dig into inflated valuations, the dangers of easy capital, and the risks of betting on defense budgets that may not endure. They also examine the outlook for space companies, the role of private equity, and what it really takes for startups to survive in this sector.

Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, joins us to talk about the hard business of getting things into space. He reflects on competition, what it took to turn ULA around, the politics of building new rockets, and what assured access to space means in the new era of great-power competition. 

The future fight won't be won by those with the biggest budgets , most polished strategies, or largest armies . It will be won by those who can translate breakthrough technology  into usable capability at speed  and scale . Ryan w as joined by  Horacio Rozanski,  the CEO of Booz Allen, to talk about the role his company is playing in this race. Having reoriented Booz Allen into a technology integr...

A career-ending spinal injury during Navy SEAL training could have closed Joe Musselman's chapter of service. Instead, it became the catalyst for a new one. He first founded  The Honor Foundation  to help special operators bring their elite standards to civilian leadership, then launched  BVVC Capital , a venture fund backing relentlessly focused founders. He most recently assembled the founding t...

There's a fundamental mismatch between the agile acquisition process es  that the Pentagon says it wants, and  the unfortunate bureaucratic  reality. Bonnie Evangelista ,  an acquisition maverick , joins the show to explain why.  She  spent the last seven years implementing rapid acquisition strategies for Army Defensive Cyber, the Joint AI Center, and the Chief Digital AI Office, and is now a str...

Could this small state's collaborative approach to defense planning be the future for countries seeking asymmetric advantages? Ryan traveled to northeastern Europe to sit down with Uģis Norītis, Latvia's undersecretary of state for planning at its Ministry of Defence, to discuss how Latvia is growing its defense industry and industrial base. Hear how Latvia leverages battlefront testing in Ukraine...

What does it take to push aerospace innovation from concept to battlefield? Ryan sits down with John Clark, Lockheed Martin's senior vice president for technology and strategic innovation and former head of the legendary Skunk Works. They unpack the Skunk Works playbook  for rapid innovation, reveal proven strategies for bending the cost curve, and explore why established defense giants may have a...

How can you bring together technical directors, military officials, and competing commercial interests to craft effective defense tech policy? Whitney McNamara and Stephen Rodriguez, the co-author and commission director of the Atlantic Council's Commission on Software-Defined Warfare, sit down with Ryan to talk about guiding tech adoption and more in government and defense.      

"Innovation adoption is a contact sport." As the chief technology officer of the Department of the Navy, Justin Fanelli is one of the leaders responsible for ensuring warfighters have access to bleeding edge solutions. Listen to his conversation with Ryan Evans, recorded live at an event in Washington, DC — our first episode of Cogs of War, a new vertical on defense tech and the defense industry b...