Decoding Geopolitics Podcast

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Lennart Meschmayer. Lennart is a researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich who’s focusing on cyber warfare - how states use cyber power against each other both in times of war and peace and what role does cyber play in conflicts today. And that’s exactly what this conversation is all about. We talk about what role does cyber play in the war in Ukraine, why we haven't seen a cyber apocalypse that many have predicted before the war started, why cyber warfare works really differently than most people think, why is Israel a hacking superpower or what would a cyber war between Russia and NATO look like. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Professor Justin Bronk. Justin is a Senior Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology at the Royal United Services Institute, a professor at the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, an active private pilot and one of the most respected experts on air power and technology in the world. In this interview we talk about a lot of things. We discussed the F-35s and its criticism, how it compares to its Russian and Chinese counterparts or whether it will be replaced by drone swarms and unmanned technology. How did Ukraine change what role air power plays in conflicts, what kind of impact are F-16s having on the war or whether Ukrainian force will start operating Western-made planes. And we talk about how the near future will air power as we know it - from drone swarms, unmanned fighter jets and collaborative aircraft. It’s a great conversation and I really hope you’ll enjoy it. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Aron Lund. Aron is an analyst at the Swedish Defence Research Agency and one of the world’s leading foreign experts on Syria, its security and politics. And in this conversation, we unpack everything that happened in the past week and what is going to happen now.  We talk about why no one saw the offensive coming and why did Assad’s regime fall so quickly, about who are actually the rebels who took it down, how radical are they and what can we expect of them. We discuss what this means for Turkey, Israel, Russia and Iran and the Middle East at large and what post-Assad Syria will look like - and why things might get a lot worse. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Eliot Cohen. Eliot is a military historian, a dean of the school of advanced international studies at John Hopkins University, a former official at the U.S. department of state and one of the most influential thinkers shaping U.S. foreign policy in recent decades.  But in this interview we talk about one specific topic: why did most analysts and experts completely failed to predict how the war in Ukraine would turn out following the Russian invasion. He recently published an extremely interesting paper dedicated to this issue, co-authored with professor Phillips O’Brien and so we dove deep into it: we talked about why most experts wildly overestimated Russian military capability and underestimated Ukraine’s readiness and resilience, why do we tend to either over and under-estimate Russia, whether the invasion could have actually turned out differently or what do most analysts still keep getting wrong. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Michael Sobolik, a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and an author of the book Countering China’s Great Game. And in this interview, we talk about China’s grand strategy - and what it actually looks like. We discuss what are China’s geopolitical ambitions and why their origins go back way further than most people think, how does China uses the Belt and Road to increase their influence and why it often shoots itself in the foot doing so or why China is in danger of an imperial overstretch and how does Taiwan fit into its global vision. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Kenneth Pollack about one single question - why do militaries of Arab nations, despite often having superiority in numbers and better equipment than their opponents, tend to hugely underperform in modern military conflicts? And often end up losing wars which in theory they should win? It’s a question that has been asked by many but no one  knows more about it than my guest.  He spent 30 years as an analyst in the CIA studying the Middle East and the militaries of both U.S. partners and adversaries. After leaving the CIA he became an academic and dedicated his academic career to answering this question. And so this is what we talk about - what is the real reason that Arab militaries tend to be notoriously ineffective, how does culture, economy or politics influence how they fight or why do organizations like Hezbollah seem to defy this rule and are a lot more effective than many larger and better equipped traditional Arab armies.

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Ryan McBeth. Ryan is a former infantryman in the Marine Corps, an intelligence analyst, software architect and most importantly, a Youtube legend and one of my favorite creators. In this conversation, we talk about a lot of things - from his background to what he thinks that Trump’s presidency will mean for the world of geopolitics. And also what’s his view of the situation of the war in Ukraine and how he thinks it might end, why does he believe that we are already living through WW3, whether China will invade Taiwan and much more.

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Matthew Savill. Matthew is a Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute and he has over 20 years of experience of working on defense, intelligence and national security in leadership positions in the British civil service. And in this conversation we talk about the current state of the British military which according to many is not great. We discuss whether the British military is in crisis and how bad it is, why is the British army becoming smaller than ever before in the last 200 years at a time of a growing threat to Europe, whether Britain can still afford to maintain a global blue-water navy or why does it have smaller armed forces than France despite spending more money on it.

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Dr. Ali Ansari, professor at St Andrews University and an expert on Iranian history and foreign policy. In this interview we talk about Iran's conflict with Israel - why both countries race against the clock to win, how the past months changed the balance of power between the two, about what it means for Iran's proxy groups in the region, about the great paradox of Iran's foreign policy and much more. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Tim Marshall. Tim has a long career as foreign correspondent, covering wars and revolution from the Balkans to the Middle East but he's mostly known for his series of books starting with Prisoners of Geography, in which he argues that more than anything it's geography that determines international relations. I'm a fan of the books but at the same time I'm not sure if I agree with the theory and so in this interview we talk about whether this argument holds water, whether geography influenced Russia to invade Ukraine and whether we should even accept this premise and how it shapes the world from China to the Middle East.