Strategy beneath the threshold of war.
Irregular Warfare Podcast examines how states and armed groups compete when formal war is only part of the story. Episodes move through doctrine, proxy networks, sanctions, space systems, civil wars, and defense industry problems with a policy level of detail.
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Irregular Warfare Podcast is built for the parts of conflict that do not fit cleanly into conventional war. Its episodes examine proxy warfare, economic coercion, military assistance, foreign fighters, defense technology, militant alliances, space support, and the contested meaning of irregular warfare itself. The show has a policy seminar rhythm. A question is framed, a doctrine or case is put on the table, and the conversation works through definitions, incentives, institutions, and consequences. It can be blunt. It is rarely casual. The best episodes make clear why language matters in national security, because a confused concept can lead to confused resourcing, planning, and strategy. One conversation asks why the United States has so much skill and enthusiasm for kinetic power but far less comfort with winning without fighting. Another follows economic statecraft from sanctions machinery into great-power competition with China and Russia. Space is treated not as a distant domain but as command, control, weather, targeting, attribution, and joint-force dependency. An Iran conversation focuses on revolution, deterrence, proxies, and the logic behind armed networks. Discussions of Al Qaeda and ISIS compare how militant organizations use ideology, money, and operational capability to build alliances. Civil war episodes challenge the idea that internal wars stay internal. Foreign fighter conversations are especially stark, weighing purpose, recruitment, risk, and the personal motives that pull people toward dangerous conflicts. The show also spends serious time on the defense industrial base, emerging technology, and the distance between government procurement habits and the wider private sector. It is technical, strategic, and institutionally minded. Listeners get fewer hot takes and more careful arguments. The recurring concern is how states and non-state actors compete under the threshold of direct major war, and what militaries must understand before that competition turns kinetic.
Made for: For military professionals, policy students, security researchers, defense technologists, and serious listeners who want structured analysis of modern conflict. It best serves people comfortable with doctrine, institutions, and long-form strategic argument.
What sets it apart: The show treats irregular warfare as a contested professional problem rather than a catchall label. Its edge is the combination of operational cases, academic framing, and policy consequences across military, economic, technological, and political domains.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast explores an important component of war throughout history. Small wars, drone strikes, special operations forces, counterterrorism, proxies—this podcast covers the full range of topics related to irregular war and features in-depth conversations with guests from the military, academia, and the policy community. The podcast is a collaboration between the Modern War Institute at West Point and Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project.
Irregular warfare cannot agree on its own definition, which may be your kind of argument.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A disputed definition opens into a practical argument about force, incentives, and neglected alternatives.
Irregular warfare gives this episode its frame, but the real issue is whether an unsettled concept can reliably support national security work.
A grounded look at how export controls and Treasury tools turn economic pressure into strategic competition.
Economic statecraft is often framed as pressure with an exit ramp: impose costs, force a policy shift, then ease off once behavior changes. This Irregular Warfare Podcast episode finds a sharper frame in parts of U.S.-China competition, where the goal looks less like persuasion…
A clear look at how space capabilities underpin modern operations and complicate irregular conflict.
Space is framed as the quiet backbone of modern military power: command and control, ISR, weather awareness, precision targeting, and even global finance all depend on orbital systems that are easy to overlook until they are stressed.
A focused comparison of how Al-Qaeda and ISIS used alliances to solve different strategic problems.
The episode looks at how Al-Qaeda and ISIS built alliance networks to meet very different strategic needs. Its comparative-advantage frame is useful: Al-Qaeda is tied to stronger, more capable partners that could help carry its influence into local conflicts, while it offered…
Sea power, policy, and history in context.
Leadership lessons with history in the room.
Weekly military policy, pay, and deployment briefings.
Military headlines, measured against hard power.
Air Force officership, explained from inside the work.
The episode opens with the claim that irregular warfare is still defined by what it is not, which makes the term hard to use for national security planning.
Irregular Warfare Podcast's "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare" frames U.S.
General Stephen Whiting says Operation Midnight Hammer used seven bombers, space-based ISR, weather data, and GPS timing so the force could strike multiple targets with synchronized command and control.
Irregular Warfare Podcast frames Iranian deterrence around long-range strike systems, nuclear hedging, nuclear latency, and a transnational proxy network the regime calls the "axis of resistance." Hosts Ben Jeb and Alex Chinchilla speak with Dr.
Chris Blair and Joseph Votel argue that militant alliance networks can reveal operational and ideological gaps, not just strength, in groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast features Dr.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast episode examines competitive intervention, defined by Noel Anderson as rival states providing simultaneous military assistance to government and rebel forces in a civil war.
Irregular Warfare Podcast episode 145 examines why people leave countries such as the United States and United Kingdom to fight in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, and other civil wars.
Episode 144 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast examines August Cull and Peter Singer’s 2037 scenario in which U.S.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines how Ukrainian resistance and special operations supported broader war aims against Russia, from the defense of Kyiv to long-range attacks.
Episode 143 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast asks why some guerrilla organizations can implement effective strategies while others cannot.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines Department of Defense Instruction 3000.07 with host Ben Jebb and guests Jonathan Schroden, David Maxwell, and Mick Cherenkovich.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines whether resistance operations in occupied Ukraine affect the broader war when synchronized with conventional military activity.
Irregular Warfare Podcast’s “South America in Competition Conference: Bonus Episode 2” brings together seven conference participants across three conversations about OSINT, illicit finance, and economic warfare.
Fiona Murray and John Griffin examine how China’s control of drone components creates supply-chain leverage in Ukraine and elsewhere.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast’s “South America in Competition Conference: Bonus Episode 1” presents four conference follow-ups on Chinese influence, economic statecraft, infrastructure, and irregular warfare in South America.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast's “Future of War Part II: On Their Own” examines August Cole's fictional 2030s mission in Thailand, where U.S.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines why victorious rebel movements sometimes remain loyal to postwar governments while others fragment, defect, or stage coups.
August Cole and Major General Peter Huntley use Safe Harbor 2 to examine how MARSOC Raiders could operate against proxy terrorist networks in an unnamed country around 2040.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines why Matt Pottinger and Matt Turpin believe deterrence is weakening around Taiwan after Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the October 2023 Hamas attacks backed by Iran.
Rebecca Patterson and retired Lieutenant General David Barno argue that the United States treats economic and informational power as supporting tools rather than primary domains of competition.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines how American strategic culture shapes competition below the threshold of armed conflict, drawing on Winning Without Fighting by Dr.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines how Susan Bryant and Thomas X.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast's Don Edwards and Julia McClendon interview Susan Bryant and Thomas X.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast examines “security hybridization,” in which countries such as Vietnam and Hungary pursue security relationships with both the United States and China.
This episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast explores a theory of irregular war centered on the dysfunctional sovereign, with guest Jonathan Haggett discussing its implications for U.S.