When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it galvanized both NATO and the European Union, doing more to unify much of Europe than any event in recent history. But how has political and strategic unity translated to improvements of collective European defense and deterrence? Amid uncertainty about continued US support for Ukraine, which European states are stepping into leadership roles? And most broadly, after three and a half years of war, how much has the European security landscap...
May 31, 2025•51 min
For more than three years, journalists, researchers, and military professionals have sought to describe the key dynamics of the war in Ukraine and determine what they tell us about the future of warfare. One of the sharpest observers has been retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan. He joins this episode to share some of his thoughts about the ongoing war—and what it indicates about the changing character of warfare. He also explores the ways that lessons from Ukraine should be translate...
May 01, 2025•53 min
National security professionals often conceptualize a continuum of conflict as a framework to understand the wide variety of ways in which conflict can manifest itself. It extends from relative peace on one end, terrorism and low-intensity conflict, up through large-scale combat, all the way to strategic rivalry in which nuclear weapons even come into the picture. But what if that cognitive framework no long holds? In a recent article published by Foreign Affairs , Dr. Mara Karlin explored that ...
Apr 04, 2025•50 min
When the Chinese company DeepSeek recently released an artificial intelligence model called R1, its surprisingly advanced capability and the efficiency with which DeepSeek claimed to have trained the model sparked a wave of discussion about how rapidly Chinese AI development was progressing. But how is the competition to achieve superior AI technologies between China and the United States shaping up? And, given that the governments of both countries envision important military applications of AI...
Feb 09, 2025•49 min
After twenty years of America’s post-9/11 wars and the US military’s struggle to build capable and effective security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is an important discussion taking place about what role security force assistance should play for the United States in the very different strategic environment that is taking shape. Will it be a mission that we'll be required to do in order to compete with Russia and China? Or will it become tangential to our preparations for large-scale comb...
Jan 24, 2025•56 min
For well over a decade, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad managed to hold onto power during a complicated civil war involving a number of anti-regime rebel groups. And then, rebels launched a lightning offensive that saw a series of Syrian cities—including, ultimately, the capital Damascus—fall. Assad was gone and more than a half-century of rule by his family came to an end. To explore how that happened and what comes next, John Amble is joined on this episode by Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with ...
Dec 13, 2024•40 min
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, one of its first targets was the city of Mariupol. Despite being outnumbered by—and less well equipped than—their adversaries, Ukrainian defenders held out for three months. As the Russian siege of the city intensified, Ukrainian forces defended a shrinking perimeter with a command post in the Azovstal steel plant. One of those Ukrainian defenders was Sergeant Arseniy Fedosiuk. MWI's John Spencer had the opportunity to speak to him about his experien...
Nov 27, 2024•29 min
Writing is often treated as a peripheral activity in the military, but it is a defining characteristic of any profession—including the profession of arms. Professional military writing is the way we share information, new ideas, and creative solutions to collective problems. It’s the way we drive bottom-up change. And it’s vital if the Army is to be prepared for the challenges of tomorrow’s battlefield. On this episode, John Amble is joined by two two leaders of the Harding Project, an initiativ...
Nov 15, 2024•38 min
During the United States’ post-9/11 counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, many US service members survived wounds that would have been fatal in any previous conflict. This was largely because of the care they received—beginning at the point where they were wounded and continuing through evacuation to medical facilities in theater and transport to military hospitals at Landstuhl, Germany and in the United States. But prolonged casualty care will be vastly more challenging in what ...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr
Both military practitioners and scholars believe that artificial intelligence will influence the character of war in the future. But it’s difficult to know how it will do so exactly, particularly as we look further and further into the future. Much of what we learn about that future will come from experimentation that yields lessons not just about the tools that will become increasingly important in future military operations, but the way that militaries develop them. That makes the recent exper...
Oct 21, 2024•54 min
Thirty years ago this week—on October 3, 1993—US special operations forces launched a mission in Mogadishu. It was part of Operation Gothic Serpent, which was aimed at capturing Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The mission was intended to be of a short duration. But things changed when, shortly after members of Task Force Ranger launched from their base, fighters on the ground began firing on US aircraft. The battle that ensued—which would later become the subject of journalist Mark Bowden’s...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 20 min
When news emerged from Lebanon recently that several thousand pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah had exploded, observers quickly began piecing together an assessment of what happened. It looked to be an Israeli intelligence operation—and a wildly successful one, both operationally and psychologically. But why did Israel pick now to conduct it? Is it likely to become just another episode in an ongoing shadow war between Israel and Hezbollah or lead to a dramatic escalation? And how is Hezbo...
Sep 21, 2024•37 min
Would Patton be an effective battlefield commander today? Do the characteristics of successful commanders generally remain constant over time? Or do they evolve alongside—and in response to—the changing character of warfare? And if they do change, what traits will commanders need on the battlefields of today and tomorrow? Dr. Anthony King, the author of the book Command: The Twenty-First-Century General , joins this episode to discuss these questions and more.
Sep 05, 2024•36 min
For weeks, after an Israeli strike that killed a senior Hezbollah commander and the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran, tensions between Israel and Iran have spiked. So far, Iran has yet to follow through on its threats to retaliate against Israel. But these heightened tensions, like the period earlier this year when Israel killed senior officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps at a diplomatic facility in Syria and Iran responded by launching hundreds of drones and missiles at Israe...
Aug 24, 2024•35 min
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian government began asking its international supporters to provide it with combat aircraft. By 2023, a number of NATO members had agreed to provide training on the US-made F-16 to Ukrainian pilots, and last summer it was announced that a number of F-16s would be provided to Ukraine. Now, the first batch of aircraft have arrived in the country and, according to reports, have already begun flying operational missions. But what role wi...
Aug 08, 2024•56 min
The term "cohesion" features prominently in discussions of military effectiveness, especially at the small-unit level. We all know intuitively what it means, but understanding how to develop and nurture it in practice is a challenge. That's even more true as technological advances continue to make constant connectivity with the outside world easier, even from a battlefield. How do soldiers' stresses from home impact cohesion? What about when soldiers no longer process shared traumatic experience...
Jul 26, 2024•50 min
How does cyberspace differ from the other warfighting domains—land, sea, air, and space? What challenges do those differences pose? Does cyber require unique approaches to talent manage to ensure the US military can recruit, promote, and retain the talent it needs? What resources are needed to effectively compete in cyberspace, and are those different from the resources necessary for a conflict scenario? How would the cyber dimension of a modern war play out, and are there lessons from the ongoi...
Jul 12, 2024•1 hr 9 min
The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz is held in high regard among US military scholars. But it can be challenging at times to apply his ideas—with necessary nuance—to real-world security challenges. In this episode, Dr. Donald Stoker, a professor at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School and the author of Clausewitz: His Life and Work , joins John Amble to discuss several of Clausewitz’s theories and use them as a lens through which to examine the ongoing war in Ukrain...
Jun 26, 2024•46 min
No unit in the US Army has more experience defending against drone attacks than 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. During a recent deployment to the Middle East, spread out across eight bases in Iraq and Syria, the brigade was targeted more than one hundred times by drones known as one-way attack unmanned aircraft systems. The brigade’s commander, Colonel Scott Wence, joins this episode to discuss that experience, the weapons and systems that enabled the unit to successfully defeat...
Jun 13, 2024•55 min
In this special episode of the MWI Podcast , we're taking the opportunity to introduce listeners to a brand new podcast series called Ctrl Alt Army: Stories from Cyberspace . Hosted by Dr. Michael Sulmeyer, principal cyber advisor to the secretary of the Army, this podcast series features informal conversations with senior Army leaders about cyber issues. This is not a podcast by and for cyber specialists about cyber topics, but an opportunity for leaders from wide-ranging professional backgroun...
May 30, 2024•30 min
Russia is actively pursuing military applications of AI technology. But how much progress has been made in that pursuit? How have sanctions put in place in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine influenced the course of Russian AI research and development? Most fundamentally, how do Russian military leaders actually want to employ AI-enabled tools on the battlefield? This episode examines those questions and more and features a discussion with Sam Bendett, an adviser and member of the Russia S...
May 15, 2024•35 min
Many people look at a map of the Indo-Pacific region and assume that—characterized as it is by long distances and vast stretches of ocean—it is principally the air and maritime domains where military capability is most important. But as you'll hear in this episode, landpower services play a vital role in the region. So what is the US Army uniquely suited to achieving there? How are the service's newest capabilities reinforcing security for its allies and partners? How is it leveraging new Army o...
Apr 30, 2024•51 min
When Iran recently launched more than three hundred drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles in a large-scale attack against Israel, almost every single one was stopped from reaching its target. A combination of ground-based air defenses, ship-launched weapons, and aircraft from multiple nations were involved in the defensive operation. But how does such a complex air defense mission happen? How is it commanded and controlled? How are the differing capabilities of such a variety of air de...
Apr 17, 2024•42 min
Seventy-five years ago, on April 4, 1949, representatives of twelve governments came together to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. Much has changed in the intervening period—the Cold War came and went, NATO invoked the Article 5 collective defense clause after the 9/11 attacks, an era of renewed strategic competition has emerged, and large-scale conflict has returned to the continent of Europe. Yet despite all of that change, in both the strategic landscape and the alliance itself, NATO's history ...
Apr 04, 2024•48 min
In this episode, John Amble speaks to Sandor Fabian about a very specific approach to national defense: resistance. The war in Ukraine has made clear that comparatively small states can be vulnerable to the threat of aggression from larger neighbors. Resistance, Sandor argues, is the most viable means of defense for these states. But effectively embracing it as a strategic approach would require dramatic changes in force structure, training, equipment, doctrine, and more. And if small US allies ...
Mar 21, 2024•57 min
For eight decades, the world has navigated the risk of nuclear war. But what will be required to so in the future? And because that risk is not static, how do we measure, conceptualize, and respond to changes—like when Russia rattles its nuclear saber? What challenges do so-called tactical nuclear weapons pose to deterrence models based on much larger, strategic weapons? And what dynamics influence both the creation and erosion of international arms control frameworks that aim to regulate these ...
Mar 07, 2024•42 min
The Houthi movement in Yemen has launched dozens of attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea in recent months. Over the same period, militant groups have attacked US forces in the Middle East as many as 160 times—including the deadly drone attack against a base on Jordan’s border with Syria. And cross-border strikes between Hezbollah, operating from its southern Lebanon base, and Israeli forces have increased. All of this has occurred since Israel began its campaign in Gaza in response to...
Feb 06, 2024•45 min
While Ukraine's international supporters have provided equipment to enable the country's defense against Russia's aggression for nearly two years, global actors have also responded on a completely separate front—putting in place a massive sanctions regime targeting Russia. What effect have they had on Russia and its ability to make war? More broadly, how do sanctions and other instruments of economic statecraft fit within the United States' foreign and security policy? To explore those questions...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Most people know something about the most famous amphibious operations in military history—the D-Day landings and Gallipoli, for example. But what about an amphibious night attack on the shores of Tuscany in 1555? Or a Turkish amphibious assault in response to a coup in Cyprus in 1974? This episode features a conversation with Tim Heck, coeditor of the book On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare , and explores the past, present, and future of am...
Dec 27, 2023•34 min
This special episode of the MWI Podcast features the first installment of a three-part miniseries produced by the Irregular Warfare Initiative. The series focuses on irregular warfare in Israel and is hosted by Adam Darnley-Stuart. In the first episode, he speaks to renowned counterterrorism analyst Dr. Levi West about Hamas, its history, and its strategy. Dr. West offers nuanced insights into Hamas operations and the likelihood that the organization's tactics might be adopted by other groups ar...
Nov 14, 2023•33 min
