Ukraine’s Radical War

Thanks to all of you that have listened to the first episode of Behind the Lines and to all of those of you that are joining this new podcast for the first time. We are taking a weekly look at a different aspect of current geopolitics. This week, it’s how the information age has transformed warfare, and particularly how it has transformed warfare in Ukraine.

Russia's war on Ukraine is the most online in history. The smartphone has become the way the war is recorded and transmitted, and it is the way we consume news of the war. But it is also a weapon. The smartphone has become part of the kill-chain, with Ukrainian civilians uploading targeting information via secure servers that are used by Ukrainian military to direct their artillery fires against the Russians. How do we understand this new kind of radical warfare?

Dr Matthew Ford, an Associate Professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, is currently writing the book War in the age of the Smartphone to be published by Hurst in 2024. Matthew is co author with Andrew Hoskins of Glasgow University of the book Radical War about how the digital age has revolutionised modern warfare. He used to be a strategic analyst at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and has recently been undertaking Open Source Intelligence work for the UK government on the Ukraine war. We discussed what is different about the Ukraine war, how the smartphone enlists civilians, both inside and outside Ukraine, and how it shapes how we talk about and understand that war.

Matthew can be found on Twitter @warmatters and his book is available here: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/radical-war/

You can find me on Twitter @snellarthur and you can find my Substack on some of these, and related issues here https://arthursnell.substack.com/

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@snellarthur.bsky.social. You can sometimes find me on other podcasts - most often Disorder which I am involved with in partnership with RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, the world's oldest think tank.

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