Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger join the show to discuss their recent Foreign Affairs essay on the need for a victory strategy in America’s cold war with China.

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 Times 

    •      01:53 Introduction 

    •      03:25 Meeting in Iraq

    •      07:43 “There are bad guys…”

    •      13:15 Why detente isn’t working  

    •      23:45 Real statesmanship?

    •      32:12 Rearm/Reduce/Recruit 

    •      35:20 TikTok

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Read the Foreign Affairs piece here No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed 

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Andy Lowery, CEO of EPIRUS and a retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, joins the show to talk about directed energy weapons on the modern battlefield.

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 Times 

    •      01:45 Introduction 

    •      02:02 Before EPIRUS

    •      06:29 Drones on the battlefield

    •      13:30 Current countermeasures 

    •      19:40 An answer for autonomy

    •      21:32 How does it all work? 

    •      29:54 Beam specs 

    •      33:45 Sci-fi but familiar

    •      38:11 Gallium nitride

    •      40:31 Cat and mouse game

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Iskander Rehman, Ax:son Johnson Fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Kissinger Center and author of Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius, joins the show to talk about the military career and statecraft of Tiberius and what his career has to teach us today.

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 Times 

    •      02:32 Introduction 

    •      03:29 The Pentagon and Rome

    •      07:29 Why Tiberius?

    •      15:04 Parallels 

    •      18:26 Germania

    •      22:38 Roman criticism 

    •      28:03 Auxiliaries and proxies 

    •      32:09 Diplomacy and a recruitment crisis

    •      34:00 A brilliant military career

    •      37:17 Force structure

    •      41:18 Parthian Cold War

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Buy the book here - Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius

Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign-affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and author of Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence, joins the show to talk about the early days of Russia’s war in Ukraine, how the battlefield has evolved, and where the war may be headed.

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 Times 

    •      01:48 Introduction 

    •      02:06 Growing up Ukranian

    •      05:03 The collapse of Kabul

    •      07:40 Leadership counts 

    •      10:14 Zelensky

    •      16:20 How did Putin get Ukraine so wrong? 

    •      19:49 Touch and go

    •      22:45 Draft confusion

    •      26:09 Battlefield evolution

    •      30:42 Countermeasures

    •      34:33 Washington’s tepid support

    •      38:11 Possible futures 

    •      40:26 Trump

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Buy the book here - Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence

Michael Doran, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute and co-host of the podcast Counterbalance, joins the show to talk about the Israel-Hamas war and the broader regional competition with Iran.

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 Times 

    •      02:04 Introduction 

    •      04:01 Is Hamas winning?

    •      10:29 Fighting the clocks

    •      13:10 Defeat from the jaws of victory 

    •      18:24 An Iranian-American conflict

    •      22:44 Managing decline 

    •      26:40 Lessons not learned

    •      33:00 The Iranian nuclear umbrella

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Rabbi Shlomo Brody, executive director of Ematai and author of Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View on War and Morality, joins the show to talk about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and the Jewish tradition of military ethics.

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 Times 

    •      01:28 Introduction 

    •      04:04 Just war

    •      07:27 The Bible as a framework

    •      13:34 International service 

    •      18:33 Reprisals

    •      21:37 Purity of arms 

    •      27:09 Collateral damage

    •      33:41 International law

    •      35:48 Proportionality 

    •      39:40 A dangerous ideology  

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David Stahel, associate professor of history at the University of New South Wales and author of Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded, joins the show to talk about Heinz Guderian, the myth and the man.

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 Times 

    •      01:38 Introduction 

    •      02:57 Diving into the letters

    •      08:43 Debunking

    •      15:30 A sinister figure  

    •      19:39 Achtung - Panzer!  

    •      27:37 Guderian the Nazi 

    •      33:42 Poland and France 

    •      45:49 Russia  

    •      50:50 Barbarossa bound to fail?

    •      54:48 Guderian the chameleon   

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Buy the book here - Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded

Stephen Robinson, author of The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War, joins the show to talk about Boyd, the man who developed the concept of “maneuver warfare,” and what Boyd may have gotten wrong.

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 Times 

    •      01:21 Introduction 

    •      02:24 “A genuine polymath”

    •      04:20 The OODA Loop

    •      07:39 J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart  

    •      13:28 The conventional blitzkrieg  

    •      19:26 Maneuver warfare 

    •      25:01 Cannae 

    •      29:07 Tactical success to operational failure  

    •      34:07 Post-Vietnam U.S. military woes

    •      37:24 Active defense   

    •      43:31 Skeptical of technology

    •      48:07 The Defense Reform Movement   

    •      53:50 Iraqi Freedom

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Buy the book here - The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War

Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey and Finland, joins the show to talk about how nuclear strategic thinking began and how those debates resonate today.

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 Times 

    •      01:47 Introduction 

    •      02:45 Oppenheimer’s Borden in reality

    •      07:00 Brodie and The Absolute Power

    •      11:12 Deterrence before Hiroshima 

    •      13:15 Blackett and Fear, War, and the Bomb  

    •      19:40 Counter-value vs counter-force 

    •      37:33 Russian nuclear strategy  

    •      42:44 Extended deterrence   

    •      52:37 Pain tolerance

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Rebeccah Heinrichs, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the director of its Keystone Defense Initiative, joins the show to talk about the state of U.S. deterrence of Russia, Iran, and China—and what Washington could be doing better.

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 Times 

    •      01:42 Introduction 

    •      02:18 Conventional and strategic deterrence

    •      04:06 A failure of strategic deterrence

    •      09:38 Integrated deterrence 

    •      13:33 Putin is committed to the bit  

    •      15:36 If Russia wins, what’s it to the US? 

    •      19:16 Options if Russia uses nuclear weapons

    •      24:06 The pendulum keeps swinging  

    •      28:20 Washington’s confusion regarding Iran and Israel

    •      31:56 Red Sea adrift

    •      36:00 China and the rest

    •      40:01 Pacific flashpoints

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Paul Scharre, Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS and author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, joins the show to talk about how AI will change the battlefield.

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 Times 

    •      01:38 Introduction 

    •      01:54 Becoming a Ranger

    •      03:48 A defining moment 

    •      07:25 A historical parallel for AI

    •      11:16 Hardware 

    •      14:10 “Taiwan is the Saudi Arabia of chips” 

    •      16:20 Military applications

    •      19:37 Battle damage assessment and AI tracking  

    •      22:50 Autonomous weapons

    •      27:50 Legal, ethical, and control issues

    •      30:08 Battlefield applications

    •      32:43 Operational ability 

    •      36:51 WMDs

    •      40:09 Countermeasures 

    •      43:53 Transportable?

    •      46:40 AI and nuclear weapons

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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

Buy the book here - Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence