Episode 9:  We speak with six students at the Army's War College. A handful of colonels, lieutenant colonels, and one civilian. We talk about the future of warfare, what war will look like in 2040, and how the United States Army is preparing for that future. We get a chance to hear from a group of War College students while they're in the midst of finishing their year-end research project and thinking about how they will return to their commands and put to use some of the thought and research they've conducted over their time at the War College.

UnderSimplified Home: https://www.undersimplified.org/
UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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Episode 8 -- Dr. Michael Vickers is a former Green Beret, CIA operations officer, and national security policymaker with a remarkable 40+ year career. Mike talks about his early career, including being part of the Grenada invasion force as a CIA trainee, taking down the Soviets in Afghanistan, and provides great analysis and assessment of operations and policy decisions, connecting his experiences to conflicts that the U.S. faces today. Among many roles in his career, Vickers served under President George W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities from 2007 to 2009 and was held over by President Barack Obama, serving as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence before retiring in 2015.

Dr. Vickers' Book: https://www.amazon.com/All-Means-Available-Intelligence-Operations-ebook/dp/B0BG14NJDS

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UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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Episode 7, Imagine waking up today to discover an entity among us that's 10 times smarter than any human. What would change immediately? Everything.

In this episode of the UnderSimplified Podcast, we delve into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). How close are we to achieving this groundbreaking technology? If you think you know, or think you understand what will happen when we do, think again.

Recent events involving Sam Altman and the OpenAI board shed some light on this question. As OpenAI's mission is to actualize AGI, there is a chance we are nearing a breakthrough sooner than anticipated. AGI won't just be a technological leap; it’ll be a paradigm shift that changes every aspect of our lives. If AGI emerges tomorrow, nothing will ever be the same.

Check out the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/undersimplified/id1637281861

Visit the website for more insights: https://www.undersimplified.org/

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UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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Episode six is with former CIA Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) Dave Marlowe.  At the time of this recording, Dave had just given up the DDO reins and was preparing to retire after 32 years at CIA.  During his career, which began in the Army during the Cold War, Dave served in some of CIA's most important roles including as the CIA Assistant Director for the Near East Mission Center, Chief of Station Kabul, Chief of one of CIA's largest Stations in Europe, and across positions in the Counterterrorism Center. We spoke about the future of human intelligence (HUMINT), leadership, bureaucracies, and the culture at CIA. 

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UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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Episode five is with General Jasper Jeffers. General Jeffers has served in the Army for 27 years, and he served more than half that time in Special Operations, both as an Army Ranger and multiple times as a Special Operations Commander. He spent the better part of his 27 years deployed to combat zones and austere environments. His final combat tour was as the senior Special Operations commander in Syria, during a period of enormous success for Special Operations. He now serves as the Deputy Director for Special Operations on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, where he advises and assists the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior most officer in the U.S. Military. Join us as we delve into a fascinating conversation with General Jeffers, who continues to shape the future of Special Operations at the highest level of U.S. Military leadership.

Jasper's SciFi Story: https://mwi.usma.edu/an41-2/

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UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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The Under Simplified Podcast is on a mission to have deep conversations about the most crucial and consequential issues facing society. We will do this by way of myriad topics like technology, philosophy, health, history, and science, all at the crossroads of culture, society, the present and our future. We will take great risks to have provoking and meaningful discussions that push listeners beyond their comfort zones and to new heights of understanding, empathy, moderatism, skepticism and optimism. We will do all this in the hope of improving our collective ability to talk to each other, instead of past each other.

UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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Episode four is with Toomas Ilves, the former President of Estonia. Toomas is a statesman, foreign policy expert, and a technologist long before the term existed. He brought the internet into Estonian elementary schools before the internet arrived to some U.S. cities. Toomas is like a visitor from a parallel universe where elected leaders are technocratic, effective, and wise.  During his time as an elected official, Toomas successfully followed through on his promise to get Estonia into both the EU and NATO, and he guided Estonia to becoming one of the world's most technically advanced countries. While the West has periodically suffered from a naive approach to Russia (i.e. Bush seeing Putin's soul, Obama's "reset," the entirety of Germany’s foreign policy, and Trump’s Helsinki summitt), Toomas has never suffered under such illusions and has been one of the clearest voices against imperialism in general, and Russia in particular, for years. 

Toomas on Twitter: @IlvesToomas
Toomas on Mastodon: @[email protected]

UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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In episode three we speak with bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen. Annie is the author of 6 books (listed below) and has a 7th on the way. She is an expert on many areas of the intelligence community and  the U.S. national security apparatus.  In this episode Annie and Aaron discuss aliens and UFOs, new war-fighting technologies, China's surveillance state, biometrics, and whether CIA has an assassination program.   

Annie on Twitter: @AnnieJacobsen
 Annie's Website: anniejacobsen.com
Her Books: AREA 51; PAPERCLIP; PENTAGON'S BRAIN; PHENOMENA; SURPRISE, KILL, VANISH; 1ST PLATOON
 
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Episode two is with the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. At the time Michele was Defense Undersecretary, she was the most senior woman to ever serve in the DoD, and she was on both President Obama and President Biden’s shortlist for Secretary of Defense. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is effectively the #3 position in DoD and this incumbent attends the deputies committee meetings of the National Security Council–these are the meetings that develop almost every consequential strategy decision affecting national security. Michele now serves as the managing partner of WestExec Advisors, a firm she helped found with now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and she continues to advise on matters of huge strategic consequence. (https://www.westexec.com/)

We spoke with Michele about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the risk of nuclear war, the increasing tensions in the Strait of Taiwan, innovation in DoD, leadership and her hope for the future. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, Michele is a clear-eyed optimist. As a testament to the way Michele approaches the world, she had to postpone this recording by a week because she broke her ankle in five places sky-diving with Navy SEALs for charity the day before our originally scheduled recording. Michele’s passion and insight is palpable, and for those who would like to know more of her thoughts, particularly with respect to China, we highly recommend a recent article she wrote with Mike Brown, the former head of DIU in Foreign Affairs. (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/time-running-out-defend-taiwan)

UnderSimplified Music by:  Arethusa Strings
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John Sipher is a senior CIA officer who retired after 28 years, serving many times as a CIA Chief of Station across the world and as the head of CIA’s Russia Operations. As a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment he now works closely with Hollywood to advise on spy movies, write and produce more accurate espionage films, and push the industry to take greater risks. We chat about CIA, Russia, risk taking, innovation, and how British MI6 flew him and a Soviet defector first class to Scotland solely to drink expensive scotches and brainstorm about how to catch Russia’s spies. But John’s story is interesting for a host of other reasons too, especially for the UnderSimplified podcast, because he has also, reluctantly by his account, entered into the public political fray since leaving CIA; with 250k followers, he is very likely the most followed former CIA officer on twitter. He was also one of the 50 senior intelligence officials that signed a now infamous letter related to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Russian misinformation, which has been weaponized by both sides of the political spectrum.  And it is here that we get into one of the central missions of this podcast: difficult conversations.

John considers himself a radical centrist, but because of this letter, which is often held up as proof of the deep state, and John’s public comments about Donald Trump (which he stress that for him is less about politics and more about his deep appreciation for America’s institutions), it’s hard for John to establishing himself as a centrist while having these challenging conversations. But we must have these conversations… so how do we do it?

This is the first episode of the UnderSimplified podcast and we hope to have many more from as many angles as we can manage. If you like this episode, or even the idea behind this effort, please subscribe to and rate this podcast in Apple or Spotify. The ratings on these two platforms are absolutely consequential in these early stages.

John Sipher on Twitter:  @john_sipher
Spycraft Entertainment:  https://spycraftentertainment.com/
Music by:  Arethusa Strings

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