Angry Planet

It’s only human to play games. Some might argue it’s in the DNA. Games are part of how we learn, and can be the best way to teach or solve a problem. But some games are more serious than others. A game recently played at a Washington think tank is about as serious as it gets. It looked at what might happen if China attacked Taiwan, and the results weren’t pretty for anyone.Joining us today to discuss what they found in playing the game is Mark Cancian. He is a retired marine corps colonel and is a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies International Security Program.Here’s a link to the report.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle is on its way to Ukraine. Fifty of them, to be precise. This armored personnel carrier on tracks is not a tank. Don’t call it a tank. Once maligned as a boondoggle that represented everything wrong with Pentagon weapon’s programs, the Bradley is now a much desired piece of armor.With us today to suss this all out is Sebastian Roblin. Roblin is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in NBC, Forbes, and—of course—War Is Boring.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Benjamin Netanyahu is back and he's brought a right-wing coalition like nothing Israel has seen.Dan Perry knows the game and all the players and and he joins Angry Planet to talk about what might be the end of democracy in the Jewish State and what it means for the Palestinians and relations with the U.S.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The shine has come off Russia’s regular armed forces. We’ve all seen the pictures in Ukraine of burned out vehicles and crashed drones, everything already starting to rust. Casualties for the Russian military are estimated to be over 100,000. But the Russian Army isn’t the only force in Ukraine fighting on Moscow’s behalf. The Wagner Group is there, too, and we know far less about them and what they’re doing.To help us get a better view, we’re joined by Jason Blazakis. He’s Director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and a senior research fellow at the Soufan Group. and wrote an op-ed for Newsweek on Wagner last week.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Or: Why Jason has a Velcro mezuzah.An episode about Kanye West and violent family histories.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve talked a lot on this program about electronic intelligence—the amazing stuff you can do with satellites, user generated content and sophisticated software.Nice.But we’ve left out all the men and women who still do work on the ground, all over the world.Paul Kolbe is here to remind us about human intelligence and the role it plays. Kolbe is a CIA veteran, having worked in the directorate of operations for 25 years before moving on to private industry. He’s currently director of the Intelligence project at the Belfer Center at Harvard.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reign has been defined by constant conflict. From Chechnya to Ukraine and many other wars in between, Putin’s Russia has constantly been pushing at its borders and sending troops abroad. How have those wars shaped Russia and the world? And what does it all have to do with Ukraine?That’s the subject of the new book Putin’s Wars. Its author is here with us today. Its friend of the show: Mark Galeotti. Galeotti is a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. He’s also the host of the excellent In Moscow’s Shadows podcast.Click here to buy Mark's book, Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re running our Thanksgiving break episode a week early. We’ll be back next week to talk with Mark Galeotti about Russia, Kherson, and the missiles that just hit Poland.This week, we’re going far back into our past. It’s a Timothy Snyder double feature. Both of these episodes are from our “War College” days and feature the famous historian at two different points in his journey to the cable news pundit we feel (well, I feel) weirdly ambivalent towards today.The first is from 2015, and is a disucssion about his book Black Earth. The second is from 2018 and is about his book Road to Unfreedom.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today it’s all about the bomb. Nuclear weapons are back in a big way and everything about the Cold War suddenly feels very fresh. Nukes are strange things. They’ve only been used twice and the language and knowledge around them can often feel arcane, almost religious. There’s all these little rituals in nuclear space. We’re gonna talk about one of those rituals today—the Nuclear Posture Review. Once in every U.S. presidential administration, the nuclear curtain is withdrawn and we get a glimpse at what the Pentagon, and critically, the President is thinking. But what is the Nuclear Posture Review? Who writes it? And what does it have to do with the price of gas in an apocalyptic nuclear hellscape.Here to answer some of those questions for us today is Stephen Young. Young is the Senior Washington Representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists, the former Deputy Director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, and consulted on this most recent review.The Nuclear Posture ReviewNuke Experts Are Horrified by Biden’s New ‘Nuclear Posture Review’Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’m sorry, we have to talk about Elon Musk one more time. Or, as Jason said. “Twitter: Now With More Musk!”But seriously. This episode is about more than Musk. It’s about how conflict has gotten … weird. We start with a conversation about a new podcast about the weird future of war. Then we asked one question about Musk and things spiraled out of control.Has conflict gotten …weirder? Have the lines gotten blurrier? Why are cartoon Shiba Inu dogs yelling at Russian officials online? Why is the JAVELIN weapons system a saint? Why does that HIMARS system look … horny? When is an innocent meme not an innocent meme and what has the internet done to the way we fight?War … was has changed. Shitposts, disinformation, trolls farms in Macedonia, and Telegram channels full of gore videos that would make the average Ogrish visitor weep. (That was for you very old heads)So much of this feels like war …. Not exactly war but … something close. If only there were a podcast that explored these various phenomena and explained the recent origin of them.Well … it just so happens there is. It’s called LikeWar and returning guest Peter W. Singer is one of its hosts. He’s here with us today to talk about the show.Listen to Likewar on iTunes.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.