151 episodes listed below
Army War College faculty in conversation on modern security.
A Better Peace is the podcast of War Room, the U.S. Army War College's online journal, and its interviewers are college faculty, among them Tom Spahr, Daryl Driver and Ron Granary. Conversations range from Russian narratives about Ukraine and cell-phone surveillance to autonomous systems, Islamic State propaganda and how homeland defense differs from homeland security.
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A Better Peace is the podcast of War Room, the online journal of the U.S. Army War College, and it asks its questions the way a teaching institution would. Episodes open with a set routine: a welcome, thanks to the Army War College Foundation for its support, and a reminder that the views belong to the speakers, not to the college or the Army. They close just as consistently, with an invitation to send feedback through the journal's website. In between, faculty take turns as interviewer. Tom Spahr, who introduces himself as the college's Chair of Strategic and Theater Intelligence, is a frequent interviewer, and intelligence is his steady subject. In one conversation he asks a guest which new technology is the biggest worry. The answer is not AI but the cell phone, because everyone carries one. The same exchange covers Edward Snowden and the NSA, along with surveillance and enhanced interrogation after 9-11, described as created for good reasons and perhaps taken too far. It also raises the problem of former intelligence officials making statements seen as political. Another guest turns to Russia. He argues that World War II, distant history for Americans, runs through Russian news every night and supports the Kremlin's story that it was forced into the war in Ukraine. He repeats 'we tried to warn them' several times in a row. A third guest explains how profit pushes commercial suppliers toward the cheapest supply chains, then talks about future intelligence platforms for the anti-access area denial problem while staying clear of anything classified. Technology comes up again in a conversation about autonomous systems. There, a scenario set at a forward command post in Poznan imagines systems built to protect beginning to direct and constrain human judgment as tensions escalate and speed becomes the priority. Daryl Driver, director of the Advanced Strategic Art Program, talks with a researcher about how the Islamic State timed leadership speeches, including ones by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to coincide with particular operations. Driver then asks where joint doctrine's assumptions about operational risk might break down once non-state special operations are taken into account, and he frames the question around their shared work in professional military education. Ron Granary, a professor of history, leads a conversation tied to the college's 2025 Homeland Defense Symposium. His guest, Burt Tussing, directs the Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group at the college's Center for Strategic Leadership. They separate homeland defense from the more familiar homeland security and treat the two as meant to work together. That conversation defines its terms at the start, so it is an easy first stop for a newcomer. The back catalog is large, so picking by subject makes more sense than starting at the beginning. Throughout, War College educators put specific, practical questions to researchers and practitioners and connect the answers to doctrine, intelligence practice and the defense of the United States.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants national security discussed at the level of doctrine, intelligence practice and institutional design, and who is comfortable with professional military education terms like joint doctrine, operational art and anti-access area denial.
What sets it apart: It comes straight out of the U.S. Army War College: the interviewers are the college's own faculty, and they keep bringing each case back to what military educators and planners can learn from it, down to joint doctrine and operational risk.
This is the podcast of WAR ROOM, the official online journal of the U.S. Army War College. Join us for provocative discussions about U.S. national security and defense, featuring prominent national security and military professionals.
The phone in your pocket becomes a question of security versus liberty at the War College.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sober look at how intelligence power reaches citizens through the phones they cannot easily live without.
A Better Peace brings security and liberty down to the cell phone, the object modern life has made difficult to do without. In Dr. Tom Spahr's conversation with Dr.
A conversation on Russian intelligence turns into a clear look at how World War II memory shapes Russia's narrative about Ukraine.
A Better Peace frames Russia's intelligence services as a way into the country's global posture and the story it tells about the war in Ukraine. Dr. Tom Spahr, the U.S.
A war-game scenario tracks how tools built for speed can start to steer human judgment.
A Better Peace keeps its focus on a familiar but uneasy tradeoff: systems built to help people decide faster can also narrow the space in which judgment happens. Dr.
A clear, doctrine-minded discussion of non-state groups, special operations, operational art, and strategic messaging.
Non-state armed groups are usually kept outside the standard special operations frame, but this episode asks what happens when their actions begin to resemble special operations in form, function, and strategic intent.
A sober look at how Army intelligence is adapting collection, commercial technology, and deterrence to anti-access threats.
This episode looks at how the Army is rethinking intelligence collection when peer adversaries can hold many airborne platforms at risk. Tom Spahr anchors the discussion in the rise of the ISR Task Force and the wider shift inside the military intelligence force, but the…
War history with mud on its boots.
Strange history, sharply bottled.
Tank markings, trick cigarettes and the war's fine print.
Outnumbered units, remembered under fire.
Battle maps, war films, and patient context.
This episode discusses the historical Japanese balloon bombing campaign during WWII and its modern implications for homeland defense.
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An interview with Dr.
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Daryl Driver, director of the Advanced Strategic Art Program at the U.S.
["Andrew Evans says the Army's biggest intelligence acquisition problem is speed, citing a 2024 GAO report that found an average of 11 years to deliver wartime capability.", "Dr.
Colonel Amanda Love says the Army’s new portfolio acquisition executive structure reached initial operating capability on January 30 and remains in a pathfinder phase.
Samuel Helfont frames the Gulf War, 2003 invasion, and campaign against ISIS as connected parts of “one giant war.” He says George H.
Ronald J.
This episode introduces the distinction between homeland defense and homeland security, featuring an expert guest to discuss how the defense enterprise contributes to homeland protection.