Defense One Radio

With less than a year until the next U.S. election, we’ve got a few experts to help break down what they think is ahead in U.S.-directed influence operations. They include Alina Polyakova of the Brookings Institution; Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Alliance for Securing Democracy; retired CIA agent John Sipher; and (briefly) Mark Galeotti of the Royal United Services Institute. // Music is by Paul Mottram; Bob Bradley; David O'Brien; Lincoln Grounds; and Matt Hill — via AudioNetwork.com. • Find the full 2019 Reagan National Defense Survey (PDF), here: https://www.reaganfoundation.org/media/355292/reagan-foundation-survey-charts-112519.pdf

Defense One's Patrick Tucker sat down with Pakistan’s top diplomat in Washington to discuss the U.S. troop pullout in Afghanistan, the worsening situation in Kashmir, and efforts to fight extremism.

This episode we'll discuss the NATO alliance and how some military tactics are changing in the face of strategic threats from Russia. We’ll also assess some of the more recent responses to wider global trends like populism and how, in some parts of Europe, Chinese soft power is already influencing culture, politics and security. // Music this week from Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd; Joe Henson and Alexis Smith; David O'Brien and Chris Egan; Philip Guyler; Terry Devine-King; Paul Clarvis, Matt Hill and Sonia Slany, via AudioNetwork.com; also featuring music from Leonid Kharitonov and the Red Army Choir.

This episode we'll learn why the Pentagon and the U.S. defense establishment are increasingly turning to wargames and simulations; what famous games of the past got right, and wrong; and why we still need experts who strategize almost exclusively in the analog world of plastic chips and toy soldiers and hexagon maps. Guests include Becca Wasser, Stacie Pettyjohn, Ellie Bartels, Christopher Rice and Mark Herman. // Music by Terry Devine-King, Nathan Feddo, Henry White, Ben Watson, Joe Henson and Alexis Smith, via AudioNetwork.com. • Find Robert Work's February 2015 memo on wargaming here: https://www.govexec.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/work-wargaming-memo-9feb15.pdf • Find Hannah Allam's NPR report on Wasser, Pettyjohn and Bartels (aka the "Dames of Wargames") here: https://npr.org/2019/07/25/744193558/can-this-group-of-teen-girls-save-the-world-from-nuclear-war

What does it mean for the future of international security to almost completely pull the U.S. military out of Syria? This episode, we investigate that and a lot more with Dana Stroul of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute, and Melissa Dalton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

America’s war in Afghanistan turns 18 in October. And one journalist has been making trips to the country since 2004. North Carolina-based author Kevin Maurer joins us to talk about what’s new from his latest trip in January, what never really changed in 14 years, and how some U.S. soldiers derive meaning from the longest conflict in the nation's history. Find Maurer's essay in the Washington Post Magazine here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/09/09/feature/the-afghanistan-war-is-likely-ending-one-longtime-correspondent-asks-was-it-worth-it/

Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum, joins us to talk about more than just the U.S. military’s plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon, he also explains a few American efforts to kill Cuba’s Fidel Castro, as well as bold Russian operations today — and one Soviet idea that would have killed everyone decades ago. Vince's new book, "The Nuclear Spies America's Atomic Intelligence Operation against Hitler and Stalin," comes out Sept. 15. Our music this week is by Philip Guyler, via Audionetwork.com.

Today we’re going to hear from the U.S. military’s top intelligence official, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, who directs the Defense Intelligence Agency. Defense One Tech Editor Patrick Tucker sat down with Lt. Gen. Ashley Monday in Tampa. The general answered 10 questions about the Pentagon’s evolving tech needs in Afghanistan, cloud computing across the services, cyber defense, machine learning, China, North Korea, and quite a bit more.

We’re joined by journalist Alexa O’Brien and Chris Woods, the founder and director of Airwars. They published a report in July that revealed big gaps in Western media coverage of civilian harm from the U.S.-led airstrike campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Find that report online here: https://airwars.org/report/news-in-brief-us-media-coverage-of-civilian-harm/

Today we sit down for an extended discussion with Ali Wyne of Rand. Wyne dropped by our studios for an in-depth chat questioning some of the core goals of that American strategy, why it has risen to the top of U.S. national security doctrine, and a lot more.

This episode, we sit down with Magnus Nordenman, who just wrote a book on the evolution of America’s naval competition with Russia in the Far North called "The New Battle for the Atlantic."

This episode, we survey the history of cyberwarfare — from the ascent of China-linked hackers this century to the arrest of a Soviet-linked hacker 30 years ago, and a lot in between. Find a transcript of this episode, along with a table of 50 key events in the history of the domain, here: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/07/ep-50-cyberwarfare-yesterday/158750/ Find the full C-Span interview with Cliff Stoll in 1989, here: http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/10122-1/Clifford-Stoll

This episode, we turn to the future world of cyberwarfare — from life after encryption to the 5G debate, from the next election to the next generation of cyber professionals, and a lot more. Our guests include: • Dawn Thomas, Associate Director and Research Analyst on the Safety and Security team of CNA; • Paul Gagliardi, a former U.S. intelligence contractor and current threat intelligence analyst at SecurityScorecard; • Dmitri Alperovitch, co-Founder and CTO at CrowdStrike;  • Adam Segal, who directs the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations;  • Matt Wyckhouse, CEO at Finite State; • And B. Edwin Wilson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy. Find Dawn's "Cybersecurity Futures 2025" report here: https://www.cna.org/centers/ipr/safety-security/cyber-security-2025 Find Finite State's report on Huawei here: https://finitestate.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Finite-State-SCA1-Final.pdf And find a transcript of this week's episode here: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/07/ep-49-cyberwarfare-tomorrow/158568/

In the first of a three-part podcast series, we're going to look at the contemporary risks of cyber warfare, from ransomware and extortion to online banking and culture wars. Our guests include: • Dawn Thomas, associate director and research analyst on the Safety and Security team of CNA; • Paul Gagliardi, a former U.S. intelligence contractor and current threat intelligence analyst at SecurityScorecard; • information security researcher the Grugq; • Adam Segal, who directs the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations; • and Jen Miller-Osborn, deputy director of Threat Intelligence and Unit 42 at the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. Find a transcript of this episode here: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/07/ep-48-cyberwarfare-today/158387/ Music for this week's episode comes from AudioNetwork.com and features work by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd, Dave James, Michael Craig, Darren Leigh Purkiss, Bob Bradley, Paul Clarvis, Matt Sanchez, Matt Hill, Chris Egan, Andrew Cooksley, Duncan Pittock, David O'Brien, Philip Guyler, Sonia Slany, Barrie Gledden, Chris Bussey, and Evelyn Glennie.

We continue our remembrance of the Iraqi and coalition forces pushing the Islamic State group out of Mosul two years ago this week. This week we’ll hear from Mike Giglio, national security correspondent for The Atlantic. He was embedded with Iraqi special forces when the Mosul offensive kicked off in late 2016. And he’s got a book coming out on it this autumn. Then we’ll hear from former CIA man Dan Gabriel, who just produced a documentary called “Mosul.” Read more about the film online here https://mosul-film.com