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 not a question of when the end of human civilization comes but how . Mike Pearl has spent years obses...
Nov 01, 2019•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 just shitposting? Here to help us figure that out is Idrees Ahmad. Ahmad is Lecturer in Digital Jour...
Oct 22, 2019•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/ ; and on Twitter: @War_College . ...
Oct 16, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Editor of Coffee or Die Magazine and a frequent guest of the show. He’s been covering military train...
Oct 09, 2019•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 know is just as interesting as the story itself. With us today is to help untangle this is Fabian H...
Oct 01, 2019•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 new trend - Islamic State using retail quadcopters to drop their own munitions with surprising accu...
Sep 25, 2019•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 street theater organized online? What if it’s both? Are you tired ALL THE TIME, like me? The answers,...
Sep 16, 2019•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, fascism is as American as apple pie and it’s been lingering in the wings for years. Here with us tod...
Sep 03, 2019•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 with us today to tell us about his recent trip to Rojava, and a new campaign he’s launched on Indieg...
Aug 26, 2019•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, he chronicled the final days of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, where state and local police m...
Aug 19, 2019•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, North Korea continues to test ballistic missiles, Russia keeps talking abo...
Aug 10, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 author and documentarian with extensive experience covering conflicts. He’s just back from Libya. You ca...
Aug 03, 2019•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/ ; and on Twitt...
Jul 27, 2019•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast Thinking about geopolitics is all about picking the right metaphor. After World War II, America’s elite conceived of a world engaged in a Cold War, where the United States and Soviet Union played a game of spies and skirmishes to spread political ideology across the planet. In the 19th century, the British and Russian Empires engaged in the Great Game, a political and diplomatic game of shadows that played out in Afghanistan and its neighboring territories. The problem with metaphors is that the...
Jul 19, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, was obsessed with the occult. He attempted to read minds and used astrological star charts to inform his battle plans. On the allied side, English magician Aleister Crowley kept in contact with German occultists, fed them false information, and even created the V for Victory. Today on War College, we sit down with media theorist, documentarian and author Douglas Rushkoff to talk about the bizarre occult history of World War II and how it affected strategic dec...
Jul 05, 2019•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Misinformation. Grainy and low resolution images from government sources. Signals intelligence. Satellite imagery. Photographs and social media posts from those nearby. Online databases of vast and public knowledge. These, and more, are the tools by which Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat suss out truth in a complicated world. On June 13, something attacked two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The United States blamed Iran, producing footage it claimed linked Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to the inciden...
Jun 28, 2019•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast On June 13, explosions—probably from Limpet Mines—hit two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The United States has blamed Iran. On June 20, Iran shot down one of the United States’ Navy RQ-4 Global Hawk drones, basically a fancy unmanned spy plane. In the aftermath, US President Donald Trump considered a retaliatory action, then pulled back. I’m recording this at 5pm on Friday, June 21. It’s possible between then and the time you hear this, the situation will have changed again. Iran is complicate...
Jun 21, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast China and America are two of the world’s great powers. Their economies are intertwined, their military’s powerful, and their soft power spreading across the globe. And tensions are rising. Neither side wants to go to war, but both sides are committed to winning that war should the unthinkable ever occur. Recently, War College’s own Kevin Knodell spent time at the Army’s Joint Warfighting Assessment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State. The weeks long training brought together military...
Jun 14, 2019•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Flying saucers. Little Green Men. UFOs. Over the past few years, reports from US Navy Pilots of strange flying objects has been hitting the pages of America’s newspapers. And no, not just the tabloids. The New York Times is talking about UFOs. So what is going on? Is this evidence of extraterrestrial life? Lights reflecting off of swamp gas, or dastardly new tech designed by America’s enemies? Here to help us answer these tough questions is the editor-in-chief of The War Zone , Tyler Rogoway. Yo...
Jun 07, 2019•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Soviet Union sent Sputnik into space in 1957. By 1958, thanks in part to the work of famed scientist Carl Sagan, the Pentagon had a plan to show the commies what for by nuking the moon. Thankfully, it was just a plan. One that the U.S. never acted on. But it’s far from the only military scheme the US and others cooked up over the years. From bat bombs to an aircraft carrier built from an iceberg, military history is full of outlandish and ridiculous schemes best left abandoned at the plannin...
May 31, 2019•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Conspiracy theories are as old as the republic. Actually, they're a lot older than OUR republic. In every country, in every culture, people believe powerful forces are colluding in ways they know nothing about. Why is that? In this week's bonus episode we talk with Jesse Walker, books editor of Reason magazine and author of "The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory." ----------------------------------- Qanon is a conspiracy theory that supposes President Donald Trump is at war with an ...
May 24, 2019•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Civilian casualties are a fact of war. The Pentagon, we’re told, does its best to minimize them but war is messy and it’s impossible to achieve the number zero. Unless you’re talking about Somalia. America has been at war in the African country for years and, according to the Pentagon, it has conducted that war with almost no civilian casualties. Amnesty International—a non-governmental organization focused on human rights—says that’s not true and has conducted its own investigation into the war...
May 17, 2019•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast On paper, Japan is no longer a military power. Article 9 of the Japanese constitution states that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” and that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” Japan is, on paper, to rely on its allies for military defense and, since World War II, American military bases have dotted its islands. But attitudes an...
May 10, 2019•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast The cliche goes that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. But history is more than just a memory and a lesson, sometimes it’s a tool and a weapon. Some pundits are concerned that historians in their ivory tower of academia are neglecting the study of war and policy in favor of identity politics, and in some cases shirking their role of educating the public in favor of an academic elitism that is mostly aimed producing work for themselves and their colleagues to consume. Brian L...
May 03, 2019•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Drugs and war go together like peanut butter and jelly. American soldier boys smoked the reefer in Vietnam, the Wehrmacht ran on amphetamine, and Viking Berserkers were probably on something . Soldiers have enhanced and altered perception using chemicals for centuries, but in the annals of getting fucked up and going to war you don’t hear a lot about psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA. But that might be changing. With us today is Marine Corps officer Emre Albayrak. Albayrak is an Expeditionary Gr...
Apr 26, 2019•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s a story some of you may know, it’s been told over and over in different forms. A gaijin, an outsider, comes to Japan and ingratiates themselves with the local military power. From James Clavell’s Shogun , to a bad Tom Cruise movie, to William Adams, it’s a story told over and over in both Japan and the West. Some of those stories have a kernel of truth and few are as fascinating as that of Yasuke—a Samurai born in Africa. Here to help us unravel the mystery and history of this legend...
Apr 19, 2019•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast From the Silver Legion to the Aryan Nation, the U.S. has had its share of fascist organizations but its never had anything quite like Atomwaffen Division. Grown and organized online, the group has been linked to five murders and a bomb plot in the past eight months. The group is so extreme that even prominent leaders of the Alt-Right have denounced it. This week on War College, journalist Jake Hanrahan takes us through what the group believes, what it wants, and what it might be willing to do to...
Apr 12, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Civil Defense! From the dawn of World War II and throughout the 1960s, America had a plan to keep its civilians safe and fit to fight in case of invasion or, god forbid, nuclear armageddon. From duck and cover to the aesthetic of the Fallout video games, American popular culture is enmeshed in the history of its Civil Defense. But what, exactly, is Civil Defense. Where did it come from and do we still practice it today? Here to help with this history is Alex Wellerstein. Wellerstein is a histori...
Apr 05, 2019•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast On March 15, a shooter entered two Mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. He killed fifty and injured 50 more. He left behind a bizarre and meme-laden manifesto. In February, authorities arrested a Coast Guard lieutenant who had been stockpiling weapons in anticipation of kicking off a race war. When it comes to terrorism, America’s problems are overwhelmingly white and nationalist. In terms or raw numbers, it’s not even close. With us here today to talk about our collective white nationalism pro...
Mar 30, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Transcript available on Metacast America is at war across the world, but it’s also at war at home. For decades, violent crime has been at record lows across the country—but that’s slowly changing as cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, and St. Louis see terrifying amounts of murders and gang violence. To make things worse, the way cops do their job in some of these cities looks more like counterinsurgency than it does community policing. Here to help us unpack what’s going on is Patrick Burke, Burke is a freelance journalist who ...
Mar 22, 2019•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
