Frontlines and Backrooms

The people building AI warn that it could destroy us. Why does that warning make us listen to them more closely?

Professor Arshin Adib-Moghaddam joins Vladimir Bobetic to discuss fear as a sales pitch, the promise of “good AI”, and the human responsibility behind machines built for war.

This episode is produced in cooperation with Manchester University Press.

Further reading:

The Myth of Good AI: A Manifesto for Critical Artificial Intelligence
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526189509/

AI Futures book series
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/ai-futures/

Is Artificial Intelligence Racist?
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/is-artificial-intelligence-racist-9781350374423/

For more on AI, geopolitics and history, visit Manchester University Press:
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/

If you're tired of noise, outrage and five-minute opinions, subscribe to Frontlines & Backrooms. Every week, we sit down with the people who have spent decades researching, negotiating and shaping the world we live in.

https://frontlinesbackrooms.substack.com

Donald Trump says he has won the war with Iran. Joe Cirincione says America has lost it, and the damage goes far beyond the battlefield.

What does Trump do when he cannot win, but refuses to accept defeat?

We discuss the war’s consequences for American power, Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions, and the Pentagon’s push to give the president more nuclear options. Smaller bombs come with a promise: use one, keep the war limited. But the other side gets a vote.

Joe Cirincione is a nuclear policy expert, author and vice chair of the board at the Center for International Policy.

For more from Joe, here are three recent pieces well worth your time:

• On the Iraq War
https://joecirincione.substack.com/p/we-warned-you-the-iraq-war-was-a

• Donald Trump Will Soon Have New Ways to Start a Nuclear War
https://joecirincione.substack.com/p/donald-trump-will-soon-have-new-ways

• The Madman Cometh
https://joecirincione.substack.com/p/the-madman-cometh

You deserve to be informed, not played for clicks. If you're tired of noise, outrage and five-minute opinions, subscribe to Frontlines & Backrooms. Every week, we sit down with the people who have spent decades researching, negotiating and shaping the world we live in.

A president can order a nuclear strike. Controlling what happens next is another matter.

Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein joins Vladimir Bobetic to talk about what Truman really knew before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how military planners shape presidential choices, and why a smaller nuclear bomb offers no guarantee of control.

We also talk about NUKEMAP, his tool for showing what a nuclear explosion would do to places we know.

Wellerstein is an associate professor at Stevens Institute of Technology and the author of The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age.

Get the book:
HarperCollins | Amazon

Try NUKEMAP:
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

AI is already helping militaries identify targets, rank them and act at machine speed. Professor Elke Schwarz explains why the “human in the loop” may be little more than a fig leaf when operators have only seconds to approve a system’s recommendation.

We discuss Palantir’s Maven, Claude, targeting in Iran and Gaza, private technology companies inside the kill chain, autonomous weapons and the danger of AI agents entering nuclear command.

Elke Schwarz is Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London and author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies.

If you're tired of noise, outrage and five-minute opinions, subscribe to Frontlines & Backrooms. Every week, we sit down with the people who have spent decades researching, negotiating, and shaping the worldwe live in.

The world is entering a nuclear era with more players, fewer restraints, and a dangerous new confidence that escalation can be controlled.

In the opening episode of Season 3, Vladimir Bobetic speaks with Ankit Panda, Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon.

Can nuclear war begin by mistake? Does the nuclear taboo truly exist if nuclear states plan for nuclear war all the time? Why do US planners still believe such a war can be won, and why might North Korea pose a more immediate danger than countries with much larger arsenals?

The conversation also examines China’s nuclear expansion, the collapse of arms control, possible proliferation among US allies, and the risk that autonomous AI systems could become catalysts for a nuclear crisis.

Recorded in December 2025, this conversation remains painfully current.

Dina Matar, Professor of Political Communication and Arab Media at SOAS University of London, speaks about the role Western media has played in shaping how Gaza is understood: the erasure of Palestinian history, the reduction of victims to statistics, the use of “both sides” language in a deeply unequal conflict, and the silencing of Palestinian journalists and voices.

She describes this as epistemic violence — violence against who is allowed to produce knowledge, whose testimony is trusted, and whose suffering is recognized as human.

If you’re tired of noise, outrage and five-minute opinions, subscribe to Frontlines & Backrooms. Every week, we sit down with the people who have spent decades researching, negotiating and shaping the world we live in.

Was Gaza inevitable?

Historian Zachary Foster says no.

In this episode, we discuss the origins of the Gaza Strip, the Nakba, why the expulsion of Palestinians should be understood as an ongoing process rather than a single historical event, and why the two-state solution has become little more than a fig leaf.

We also discuss the role of Western media, international diplomacy, and the political decisions that continue to shape the conflict today.

Originally recorded in December 2025 and first released as part of our two-part series on Gaza, this conversation is now available as a standalone episode.

If you're tired of noise, outrage and five-minute opinions, subscribe to Frontlines & Backrooms. Every week, we sit down with the people who have spent decades researching, negotiating and shaping the world we live in.

Just days before the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara, Dr. Jeremy Shapiro joins Frontlines & Backrooms to discuss the future of the transatlantic alliance.

As Washington shifts its strategic focus toward the Indo-Pacific and questions over burden-sharing grow louder, Europe is being forced to confront a difficult reality: can it continue to rely on the United States as its ultimate security guarantor?

We discuss NATO, European rearmament, America's strategic priorities, Russia, deterrence, and whether the alliance is adapting to a new geopolitical reality—or approaching one of the most consequential moments in its history.

For nearly eighty years, Europe's security rested on one assumption: that the United States would always be there.

Today, that assumption is being tested like never before.

In this episode, Dr. Nathalie Tocci, Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali and principal author of the European Union's 2016 Global Strategy, explains why Europe may have entered a fundamentally new strategic era.

We discuss NATO, European rearmament, Ukraine, strategic autonomy, and whether Europe can defend itself without American security guarantees.

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Six months after its original release, we are publishing our complete conversation with historian Benny Morris as a standalone episode for the first time.

From the Nakba and 1948 to Oslo, October 7, Gaza, and the future of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Morris explains why he believes peace is further away than ever. At several moments, the conversation became heated as we challenged each other's arguments on history, Gaza, international law, and the prospects for peace.

Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Benny Morris remains one of the most influential—and controversial—historians of modern Israel.

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