Welcome to the new year at Angry Planet.
For the last 100 years, American defense policy has been aided by elaborate war games. SIGMA, the Cold War Game, and the Millenium Challenge are just some of the most famous. Sometimes these games are played with dice and boards, other times they’re purely electronic. Why do we do this, when did we start, and what does it all mean? More importantly, how do we make sure the board games don’t play us?
Here to answer those questions is Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, Jacquelyn Schneider.
What War Games Really Reveal
One episode of The Crisis Game on YouTube
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A Throw of the Dice: Games the Pentagon Plays

Conversations about conflict on an angry planet. Created, produced, and hosted by Matthew Gault and Jason Fields
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News & Politics

News

The war between Israel and Hamas, which began on Oct. 7 when terrorists overran the Gaza frontier and killed more than 1,200 Israelis, is now more than six months old. More than 100 Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza.
Israel, in return, has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, with two thirds of that number likely to be civilians, including women and children. There are negotiations for a ceasefire going on—at least sporadically—but Dan Perry, former Associated Press bureau chief in the region, says that Hamas isn't playing by the same rules as Israel, or anyone else.
Hamas, according to Perry, welcomes the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Anyone and everyone can be a martyr for Hamas's cause, which is not peace, but a complete destruction of Israel. Whoever must be sacrificed in the process, well, other people's live are a price Hamas is willing to pay.
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An Insider's Critique of Israel

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A direct link to the episode on Substack.
A successful TV adaptation of the Fallout video game franchise has everyone excited about the post-apocalypse again so we thought it was a good time to finally do a bonus episode we’ve been threatening for a long time.
Cultural critic, journalist, and YouTuber Noah Caldwell-Gervais comes on this episode of Angry Planet to discuss all things Fallout. It’s a long episode, we dive into a lot of topics including 
Jason’s globe from 1937The peculiar pleasure of vacuum tube technologyCold War memoriesThe anxiety of worrying about dying in a nuclear blastWest Coast vs East Coast Fallout In defense of Fallout 76Power armor and Soviet TanksVault-Tec the ultimate villain
Full spoiler warning for all of the Fallout video games and the entire TV show. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TEASER: Crawl Out Through the ‘Fallout’

Go here to listen to Face-Off
Jane Perlez is a veteran foreign correspondent, the former Bejing Bureau Chief for The New York Times, and host of the new podcast “Face-Off.” She’s on Angry Planet today to talk to us about the show and her experiences reporting on China. “Face-Off” is all about America’s complicated relationship with China. Perlez says she started the show because she was tired of the hysterical conversations she hears about Beijing in Washington. In this episode we learn … 
Why On the Beach is Perlez’s favorite nuclear war movie.
What it’s like to visit China for the first time at the height of the Cultural Revolution.
What “Communism” means in a country with a growing bourgeoisie.
What it takes for someone to lead China.
 When Mao and Khrushchev Went Swimming Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What Happens to the World When China and the U.S. ‘Face Off’?

Violence thrives in countries where political solutions to conflict have failed. On this episode of Angry Planet, Jeffsky Poincy comes on the show to walk us through the origins of Haiti’s gang problems and lay out the complicated history that gave rise to them.
Poincy, who is Haitian, is a program manager at PartnersGlobal, an NGO that helps foster democratic conflict resolution. Poincy’s perspective on the violence in Haiti is that it will require complicated and lengthy political solutions. The gangs thrive, he says, because of their place in a complicated transnational criminal network. It’s a local problem that requires local solutions. A thousand Kenyan soldiers on the ground in the devastated country won’t provide long term relief. Real political change will.
Recorded 4/5/24
Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Origins of Haiti’s Gangs and What Comes Next

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Recorded 4/4/24
 The U.S. State Department has been working hard to get Americans out of Haiti. The island nation’s government is in shambles and gangs run much of the urban center of Port-au-Prince. Haitians have struggled for hundreds of years at the hands of gangs, brutal authoritarian dictators, and colonial rule. One of its biggest problems has always been its nearest Imperial neighbor: America.
On this episode of Angry Planet, we get America’s side of the story. Keith Mines is the Vice President for Latin America at U.S. Institute of Peace. If you’ve never heard of the USIP, you aren’t alone. As Mines says in the show, it is bad at branding.  Part of a Congressional initiative from 1984, the USIP was founded to pursue peaceful resolutions to worldwide conflict.
Mines has a storied career of government service. He’s worked for the State Department and been all across the world. His unique point of view gives listeners a window into the mind of a member of the U.S. political establishment. Mines has a deep knowledge of Haiti and a deeper understanding of how badly America has screwed up its efforts to help. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Throw of the Dice: Games the Pentagon Plays

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