Angry Planet

The Military needs gamers. Over the past few months, the U.S. Army and Navy have spent a considerable amount of time playing video games. The Pentagon is streaming on Twitch, showing up at video game tournaments, and sponsoring esports events. And it’s all in a bid to reach a younger crowd and fill out the ranks. The military is trying to meet young people where they live and, increasingly, they live online playing video games.

Is the military’s use of video games as a recruitment tool crossing the line or business as usual? To help us figure that out, we’ve got two guests today. Both returning champions.

Here to help us untangle this mess is Pauline Kaurin. Kaurin is the Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics at the US Naval War College and the author of the new book On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military Citizenry and Community.

We’ve also got Marty Skovlund Jr. Skovlund is a veteran of 1st Ranger Battalion and the Executive Editor of Coffee or Die Magazine.

• Recorded 8/28/20
• The long weird story of the Military going online
• Activists, trolls, and AOC
• Why the military is allowed to recruit at high schools
• The wild questions you get working as a recruiter
• Scumbag recruiters
• Military service as a path to a middle class life and education

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You 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: @War_College.

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Civil wars, proxy wars, cold wars, hot wars. Economic collapse, the collapse of civil societies and governments. Hunger, torture, disease.

Many parts of the world seem to be falling apart in 2020, but even then, the Middle East is its own special case.

To talk about the state of one of the world’s most turbulent regions, Steven Cook joins us. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He recently wrote an overview for Foreign Policy magazine that captures much of what’s going on—“The End of Hope in the Middle East”

• Recorded 9/10
• How bad are things really?
• How Western powers created a sectarian system in Lebanon
• Who is fighting on the ground in Libya?
• Russian mercenaries and air assets
• Iraq as America’s original sin of the current troubles, and why that’s wrong
• How Saddam held Iraq together
• Fragmentation of the Middle East
• Is Saudi Arabia as stable as it seems?
• The importance of having a vision for the future

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Fort Hood. One of America’s largest military bases is off the long stretch of highway between Dallas and Austin. Its Commander was set to transfer out and take over command of a division at Fort Bliss, but the Army announced on Sept. 1 that wouldn’t be happening.

To anyone who’s been following the news, the reasons are pretty clear. At last count, 26 soldiers have died at Fort Hood in 2020. That’s more than have died fighting in Afghanistan this year. Some have been accidents, others suicides. Five were murdered. For Fort Hood, 2020 isn’t an outlier but part of a broader trend that’s tied up in the base’s history and culture as well as its relationship to the neighboring city of Killeen.

The story is so complicated and terrible that we needed to speak with two reporters to make sense of it. First we get the big picture from Task & Purpose’s Haley Britzky. Britzky is a journalist working for Task & Purpose whose recent article there This all could have been prevented’ — Inside the disappearance and death of Vanessa Guillén is a must read on this topic.

Next, we speak with Rose Thayer of Stars & Stripes to dig deeper into the story and get details and specifics. Thayer is a reporter who’s been covering the story for Stars and Stripes, a native Texan, and the former military editor for the Killeen Daily Herald.

• Rose Thayer recorded on 9/3/20
• Haley Britzky recorded on 9/16/20
• What happened to Vanessa Guillén
• How the Army handles sexual assault
• What the numbers really tell us
• Who are the investigators?
• What it’s like to live in Killeen? 
• The Texas of it all
• On parachute reporting
• How to build a better military

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Ghost guns. Untraceable weapons manufactured in the home. They’ve been with us forever, but they’ve taken on a new menace in the age of 3D printers and digital distribution. 

Here to walk us through the new phenomenon is Mark A Tallman. Tallman is an Assistant Professor of Homeland Security & Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He’s also the author of Ghost Guns. Ghost Guns is an in depth, data driven, and dare I say nerdy deep dive into homemade weapons in the post-industrial age.

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• Recorded on 8/25/20
• The second amendment
• Cody Wilson and his terrible gun
• Working on guns is like working on cars
• “Most gun nerds are low risk”
• Why ban the bump stock?
• Additive manufacturing and the DIY weapons of mass destruction
• Recycling plastics into weapons
• The security implications of the fourth industrial revolution
• Raytheon has 3D printed a missile
• The tech backlash
• The costs of compliance only hit the open sectors, but don’t halt illicit activity
• The rise of the surveillance state

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On August 4, an explosion levelled a port in the Lebanese city of Beirut. Aging ammonium nitrate was the direct cause, but that the explosive fertilizer had been left for almost a decade in a storage warehouse speaks to the broader problems in Lebanon. A corrupt government, a financial crisis, a protest movement, and suffering citizens.

Here to walk us through what’s going on is Blu Fiefer. Fiefer is a Lebanese performance artist who lives in Beirut who believes in signing truth to power. As the protest movement began, she performed for the crowds and livestreamed her set to the world.

• Recorded 8/24/20
• Cleaning up the streets
• The economic collapse
• Lebanon as the “Rising Phoenix” of the Middle East
• “It wasn’t this bad during the revolution”
• The day of the explosion
• Exploiting Beirut’s “survivor mentality”
• The cost of staying in Lebanon
• What was lost in the explosion
• The Game of Thrones analogy

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.

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You 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: @War_College.

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Hello and welcome to the final episode of War College.

Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. We’re just becoming Angry Planet.

From time to time we record things that, for whatever reason, don’t quite work. Sometimes the audio is bad. Sometimes the news cycle destroys the story. Sometimes the the very famous, big name podcast host you have on as a guest is clearly drunk and loses his end of the audio. Sometimes you find out the guest is a CIA agent who never set foot in the country he’s talking about and decide to scrap the episode.

The following audio is almost one of those episodes, but I think it’s still worth a listen. Back in May just before Jason returned to the show I talked with the British journalist Gareth Browne about Syria, Russia, and Iran. We talked the geopolitics of the region and what’s been happening since Solemani’s death.

Some of the information here is out of date, and there’s places where the audio is a little … scratchy. But I think this was a good conversation about some vital stuff and I thought it’d be nice to go out on something like this before we officially launch Angry Planet. 

We’re clearing the backlog, so to speak.

Thanks for listening, we’ll miss War College but we know we’ll be happier as Angry Planet.

• Recording 5/26/20
• Russia’s goals in Syria
• The roots of Russia and the Assad family’s relationship
• How much of the country does Assad still control?
• Iran backed militias in Syria
• “War has changed”
• How the death of Qasem Soleimani changes everything
• The court politics of Russia, Syria, and Iran
• The legacy of Hafez al-Assad

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Great powers don’t always go great together, often viewing each other as rivals, if not enemies. After the Cold War, the United States was viewed as the last superpower standing. But not only has Russia and its nuclear arsenal stubbornly refused to go away, China has kept on rising.

Now, people at the highest levels of government are trying to figure out whether China and the United States can play nice together, but whether the 21st will be the Chinese Century.

Joining us to help understand the situation is Matthew Kroenig. Kroenig is both a political scientist and national security strategist at the Atlantic Council. 

He is also the author of the Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy Versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China Matthew Kroenig.

• Recorded 8/21/20
• The innovators
• Innovating with government money
• Where China’s labor comes from
• China’s soft power strategy
• A coming generational struggle

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Many people may not realize, but Turkey is a relatively new country--just shy of 100 years old. It was created as a republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, largely by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who stuck around as president until 1938.

Since then there have been elected governments, military coups and now a -- well, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reshaped the country in his own likeness - or at least how he likes.

To help us make sense of it all, we’ve invited Andrew Finkel onto the show. Finkel has been a journalist based in Istanbul since 1989, corresponding and freelancing for a variety of print and broadcast media that has included The New York Times, The Times, TIME, The Economist, The Guardian, the Observer, CNN, and the Financial Times as well as Turkish language media. His popular handbook: Turkey What Everyone Needs to Know” is published by OUP (2012).

• Recorded on 7/8/20
• Is Turkey a free country? “No.”
• Who is Erdogan?
• What went down during the coup of 2016
• The Gülen of it all
• The state of Turkish journalism
• The fight over social media
• The immunity of Western media
• How Covid is effecting things
• Strangling the economy
• What are the lessons of Turkey’s rise of authoritarianism? 

War College 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/

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.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

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The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the CHAZ, the CHOP. It had many names, but from about June 8 to July 1, protesters occupied a portion of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle Washington. A utopia to some, a nightmare to others, the CHAZ became a symbol to the left and the right. The reality on the ground, as is always the case, is far more complicated.

With us today to talk about that messy reality is Nikki West. West is a freelance journalist and former Congressional staffer who lives in Capitol Hill in Seattle. She catalogued life in the CHAZ on her Instagram.

• Recorded on 8/10/20
• Daily life in the CHAZ
• Violence in the autonomous zone
• “The worst Coachella ever”
• The CHAZ’s well organized systems
• Ring wing violence
• Competing activist agendas
• How to build a city overnight
• Decolonization cafe
• White Wokes
• Struggle sessions
• What’s a tankie?
• Violence and the end
• Those aren’t fireworks

War College 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/

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.

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A few weeks ago, two nuclear-armed neighbors got into a fistfight. Actually, there were some clubs and other handheld weapons, too. It was bizarre and people died, more than 20 on the Indian side. The Chinese have been more coy about their numbers.

To get a grip on what happened and what it means for the future, we have Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times on the show. Abi-Habib is a South Asia correspondent who is based in India’s capital of Delhi.

• Recorded 7/22/20
• India’s army focus
• How the battle went down
• How to project power without even trying
• How to lose friends and influence your enemies

War College 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/

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.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

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