Irregular Warfare Podcast

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1. What's Cyber Good For?

   13 oktober 2026 · 49 min

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   Episode #167 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast grapples with the role cyberspace should play in the broader coercion toolkit. The conversation considers why cyber has remained a go-to tool for shaping adversary behavior even as research has cast doubt on its coercive effectiveness. We explore the practical challenges of signaling credibly in a secretive domain, unpacking what cases like the 2014 Sony Pictures hack and the discovery of Volt Typhoon reveal about cyber coercion in practice. Our guests close by discussing a fundamental question: if cyber isn’t the coercive silver bullet it’s often made out to be, what is cyber actually good for? Lees meer

   This episode is anchored in the article Minding the gap? The strategic logic of cyber coercion in theory and practice by Dr. Erica Lonergan.

   Dr. Erica Lonergan is an Assistant Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where she focuses on research and teaching related to emerging technologies, strategy, and international security. She was previously on the faculty at West Point, and also served as a Senior Director on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Erica's second book, Open Secrets: Power and Influence in Proxy Alliances, is forthcoming next month with Oxford University Press.

   Dr. Michael Sulmeyer is a Professor of the Practice at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Previously, he was the first Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy and the Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of Defense.

   Alisa Laufer hosts this episode. Please reach out to the Irregular Warfare Podcast team with any questions about the episode or the broader mission of the show.

   The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a production of the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI). We are a team of volunteers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. IWI generates written and audio content, coordina…

2. The Airpower We Need for Irregular Warfare

   29 september 2026 · 47 min

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   Summary Lees meer

   Why does providing aircraft so often fall short of building an effective air force? Retired Lieutenant General Anthony Rock, Michael Horowitz, and Tobias Switzer join Kyle Atwell to examine the gap between acquiring technology and turning it into military power. Drawing on Switzer’s RAND report, Build Partner Airpower, Not Air Forces, the conversation explores what American air advisors learned in Iraq and Afghanistan and what future missions should do differently.

   The guests discuss the appeal of prestige aircraft, the organizational demands of modern aviation, and the case for affordable equipment that partners can put to use quickly. They examine dependence on contractors, the risks facing advisors, and the tension between building partner forces and planning a complete U.S. withdrawal. Throughout, they ask how policymakers should define success when useful combat capability may still require years of outside support.

   Takeaways

   Providing aircraft does not automatically create airpower. Effective capability also requires trained people, maintenance, logistics, doctrine, intelligence, and functioning bases.

   Building a Western-style air force and generating useful combat airpower are different objectives, particularly during an ongoing insurgency.

   Iraq and Afghanistan presented unusually difficult starting conditions, including war-damaged institutions, limited technical skills, and urgent operational demands.

   Technology transfers should reflect a partner’s ability to absorb and employ equipment, not just its ability to acquire it.

   Political loyalties, patronage, and rival institutions can undermine personnel decisions and create organizational barriers that outside advisors cannot control.

   Prestige aircraft can appeal to partner leaders even when simpler platforms better meet immediate operational needs.

   Switzer argues that “cheap, fast, and good enough” should guide aviation acquisitions for partners fighting insurgencies, with attention to avai…

3. War at Arm’s Length: Can Military Assistance Work?

   15 september 2026 · 55 min

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   U.S. military assistance often has a bad reputation, but it isn’t doomed to failure. This episode examines why security assistance succeeds with some partners and falls short with others, and what it takes to turn weapons and training into lasting military capability. Lieutenant General (Ret.) Charles Hooper, Dr. Richard Bennet, and Dr. Alexander Noyes are the guests. Lees meer

   Today’s episode explores how the United States can build effective military partners, drawing on Richard Bennet and Alexander Noyes’s book, War at Arm’s Length: How America Can Build Effective Partners Through Military Assistance (Yale University Press, 2026).

   Our guests begin by asking what effectiveness means, when security assistance advances U.S. interests, and how Washington should assess the results. Bennet and Noyes explain the book’s central argument that shared security interests and capable defense institutions make assistance more likely to succeed. The discussion then examines how far sustained assistance and personal relationships can bring partners’ interests closer together, and how much alignment is needed at the outset. Drawing on cases including Ukraine and Colombia, the guests explore the importance of partners’ willingness to reform and the limits of externally imposed change. The episode closes with recommendations for choosing partners, coordinating U.S. assistance, and sequencing support so that institutions can sustain the capabilities Washington helps provide.

   Lieutenant General (Ret.) Charles W. Hooper is Senior Counselor at The Cohen Group and a former director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. In this role, he led the agency responsible for the sale of all US weapons, military equipment, support services, and training packages to foreign governments, which included oversight of 20,000 people globally and over $50 billion in annual sales. During his 41-year military career, he served as the Senior U.S. Defense Official in Egypt, U.S. Defense Attaché to China, an…

4. Hidden Costs of Precision

   1 september 2026 · 51 min

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   Episode 164 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast grapples with the hidden costs of precision warfare, looking at how drone strikes affect civilian populations well beyond their immediate lethal footprint. Anchored in a study using twelve billion geocoded cell phone records from Yemen, the conversation explores how drone strikes trigger sharp spikes in civilian mobility and communication—disruptions on a scale comparable to major natural disasters—even when no civilians are physically harmed. Our guests unpack what these findings mean for the strategic logic of precision airpower and discuss the tension between tactical accuracy and perceived legitimacy on the ground. Lees meer

   The article is here: Estimating the Impact of Drone Strikes on Civilians Using Call Detail Records

   Dr. Aidan Milliff is an assistant professor of political science at The Ohio State University. His research examines how people interpret and respond to political violence. Aidan earned his PhD from MIT, where he was a member of the Security Studies Program.

   Lieutenant Colonel Paul Lushenko, PhD, is a globally recognized expert on artificial intelligence, autonomy, drones, and counter-drone warfare and currently serves as Chief Strategist for the U.S. military’s counter-drone efforts. He is retiring from the U.S. Army after more than two decades of leadership, including extensive service in Special Operations Forces, and is the author of four books and dozens of peer-reviewed articles. His work as both a scholar and practitioner has helped shape the international debate on emerging technologies, autonomy, drones, and the future of warfare.

   Alisa Laufer hosts this episode with Alexandra Chinchilla. Please reach out to the Irregular Warfare Podcast team with any questions about the episode or the broader mission of the show.

   The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a production of the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI). We are a team of volunteers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to…

5. The Future of War Part IV: Special Operations on a Global Battlefield

   18 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 12 min

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   This episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast concludes our four-part Future of War series, pairing author and futurist August Cole with senior special operations leaders to explore how tomorrow’s conflicts may unfold. Lees meer

   Today’s episode centers on Operation Lightning, a near-future story by P.W. Singer and August Cole that imagines Army Rangers operating across a truly global battlefield. Set during a large-scale conflict with China in 2039, the story follows a four-person Ranger reconnaissance element infiltrating a Chinese space facility in Antarctica. Rather than destroy the facility, the Rangers covertly corrupt its surveillance data, blinding Chinese sensors and creating an opening for a Ranger task force thousands of miles away to seize a critical airfield in the Indo-Pacific.

   Joining the discussion are Lieutenant General Gil Ferguson, Commanding General of U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), and Command Sergeant Major David Waldo, USASOC’s senior enlisted leader. Together with Cole, they examine how Army Special Operations Forces can contribute to the joint force during large-scale combat—and how small, distributed teams can create strategic effects across theaters and domains.

   At the conclusion of the episode, listeners will hear a professionally narrated reading of Operation Lightning, bringing to life one possible vision of Army Special Operations Forces in the conflicts of the late 2030s.

   Ben Jebb is the host for this episode. Please reach out to Ben a with any questions about this episode or the Irregular Warfare Podcast.

   The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a production of the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI). We are a team of volunteers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners in the field of irregular warfare. IWI generates written and audio content, coordinates events for the IW community, and hosts critical thinkers in the field of irregular warfare as IWI fellows. You can follow and engage with us on Facebook, T…

6. From Subversion to Resistance: Lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine

   11 augustus 2026 · 1 uur

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   Today’s episode examines how Russian agents and local militants exploited ambiguity, weak state capacity, and fragmented local authority to transform unrest in the Donbas into an armed insurgency in 2014. At its core, it is a story about how a small group of armed actors can seize a city—and how local institutions, political legitimacy, and civil society can stop them. Dr. Celeste Wallander and Dr. Serhiy Kudelia are the guests. Lees meer

   Summary

   Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, but the war began eight years earlier with the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of conflict in the Donbas. Wallander and Kudelia trace how Russian operatives converted genuine but diffuse political discontent into an armed insurgency, why militants seized some cities but failed in others, and how confusion over how to respond gave militants time to consolidate control. Their discussion traces Ukraine’s transformation from a state hampered in 2014 by fractured ties between Kyiv and local administrators and unprepared security forces to one capable of mounting a determined resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022—a transformation enabled by stronger military capacity, municipal leadership, democratic legitimacy, and civil society. They also revisit the debate over US military assistance, the Minsk process, and what outside partners can realistically accomplish when crises escalate faster than relationships, training, and logistics can be built.

   Dr. Celeste A. Wallander is the executive director of Penn Washington, the University of Pennsylvania’s program in Washington, D.C. From 2022 to 2025, she served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. She previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Central Asia on the National Security Council from 2013 to 2017 and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 2009 to 2012. She has also served as presiden…

7. Five Years After the Withdrawal: Insights from the Afghanistan War Commission

   28 juli 2026 · 1 uur 2 min

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   Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan this August, Dr. Colin Jackson and Colonel (Ret.) E.J. Degen join us to discuss initial insights from the Afghanistan War Commission’s work. The Afghanistan War Commission is an independent body established by the U.S. Congress to examine the key strategic, diplomatic, and operational decisions that pertain to the war in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021. In particular, the episode examines what the US war in Afghanistan can teach us about the promise—and limits—of building partner armies. Lees meer

   Summary

   Security force assistance was central to the US war in Afghanistan. It was the presumed exit strategy: if Afghan forces could become capable enough, the United States could reduce or end its own combat role. Yet the collapse of Afghan security forces after the final US withdrawal raises hard questions about what the United States built, why it built it, and whether the desired end state was ever realistic. The guests discuss the work of the Afghanistan War Commission and what the commission has learned thus far about US efforts to build Afghan security forces.

   Dr. Colin F. Jackson is the Co-Chair of the Afghanistan War Commission. He has served in a number of roles across academia and policy. Previously he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia from 2017 to 2019. He also served as the senior Department of Defense representative to the U.S.–Taliban peace talks. His career serving in the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserve included a deployment to Afghanistan in 2011 as Executive Officer for Policy Planning for the Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and as a senior civilian advisor to Task Force Mountain Warrior.

   COL (Ret.) Edmund J. “E.J.” Degen is the Executive Officer and Chief of the Military Operations & Security Forces Assistance Team at the Afghanistan War Commission. He is a retired career U.S. Army field arti…

8. Innovation Under Fire: What WWII’s Commandos Teach Us About War and the Future of Special Operations

   21 juli 2026 · 51 min

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   Description Lees meer

   Episode 160 examines the origins of Britain’s World War II commandos and the enduring role of special operations forces from Churchill’s era to today.

   Summary

   This episode explores the creation of Britain’s legendary commando force following the military disasters of 1940. Author Monty Halls and retired Lieutenant General Scott Howell trace how a remote house in the Scottish Highlands became the laboratory for a new kind of warrior – one selected for grit, initiative, adaptability, and the ability to operate independently under extreme pressure.

   The conversation examines how early commando raids sought to restore British morale, create uncertainty in the German high command, divert enemy forces, and achieve strategic effects disproportionate to the number of troops involved. The discussion then connects these experiences to modern special operations forces, including their relationship with the conventional military, the importance of joint and combined operations, the risks of overrelying on raids as an easy policy option, and the challenge of adapting SOF for cyber, space, drones, and future large-scale conflicts. Throughout, the episode asks how military institutions can protect their mavericks, preserve disciplined initiative, and innovate before battlefield failure forces them to change.

   Takeaways

   Britain created its commando force after conventional doctrine and military institutions failed to meet the crisis of 1940.

   Inverailort House became an experimental training ground where unconventional leaders developed the culture and methods of the early commandos.

   Small special operations units can create strategic effects by disrupting adversaries, creating uncertainty, diverting forces, and influencing political decision-making.

   The psychological impact of commando raids often exceeded their immediate tactical results.

   Early raids frequently failed, demonstrating that courage and audacity cannot substitute for intelligence, training, planni…

9. From NATO to the Gulf: Allies, Access, and the Hidden Architecture of American Power

   7 juli 2026 · 57 min

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   Description Lees meer

   Episode 159 examines the relationship between alliances, military access, and U.S. global power projection.

   Summary

   This episode explores an often overlooked benefit of alliances: wartime access. Dr. Rachel Metz and Ambassador Douglas Lute explain why public debates about allies often focus narrowly on defense spending, while missing the basing, overflight, logistics, intelligence, and political permissions that make U.S. global power possible.

   The conversation examines how allies and partners enable American military reach, why states may grant, restrict, or deny access, and how domestic politics, retaliation risks, technological change, and shifting global power dynamics can make access harder to secure in future crises. The discussion also considers recent examples from NATO, the Persian Gulf, and Ukraine to show why access is not automatic, why it is a burden allies often bear, and why the United States may need to rethink how it plans, consults, and sustains its alliance relationships.

   Takeaways

   Alliances are often judged by burden sharing, but access may be one of their most important strategic benefits.

   Access includes permission to operate from another state’s land, ports, airspace, territorial waters, or infrastructure.

   Wartime access allows the United States to project power far from home and sustain operations over time.

   Allied access helps mitigate the “tyranny of distance” and makes distant theaters militarily reachable.

   The United States often takes access for granted, but allies and partners can grant, restrict, or deny it.

   Domestic politics can shape whether a state allows U.S. forces to operate from its territory.

   Lack of consultation can make allies less willing to support U.S. military operations, especially in wars they view as optional or offensive.

   Access itself can be a form of burden sharing, because host nations may absorb political, economic, and military risks.

   Drones, missiles, cyberattacks, sabotage, and other …

10. The Wars Nuclear Weapons Don't Prevent

    23 juni 2026 · 53 min

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    Nuclear weapons may make direct war between major powers less likely, but they do not end competition. Instead, they push states toward indirect forms of conflict: proxy warfare, security force assistance, covert action, and cyber operations. Lees meer

    The guests discuss why indirect conflict is so attractive in an era of nuclear risk, how this logic applies to Ukraine and Taiwan, and what it means for US-China competition. They also consider whether the United States is adequately preparing for the kinds of conflicts it is most likely to face: not large-scale conventional wars, but persistent competition through indirect conflict. The academic foundation for the episode is the following article: Kyle Atwell and David Logan (2026), “Shadow Wars in the Shadow of the Bomb: The Link Between Nuclear Weapons and Indirect Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution.

    General Richard D. Clarke, US Army, retired, served as the twelfth commander of US Special Operations Command. He previously served as Director for Strategic Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, commandant of cadets at West Point, and director of operations at Joint Special Operations Command.

    Dr. David Logan is an assistant professor in security studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His research focuses on nuclear weapons, arms control, deterrence, and the US-China security relationship.

    Dr. Kyle Atwell is an Army Special Forces officer and co-founder and chair of the board of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. He is a former assistant professor at West Point and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

    Alexandra Chinchilla is the host for this episode. Please reach out to her with any questions about the episode or IWI.

    The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a production of the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI). We are a team of volunteers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of i…

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