Angry Planet
Conversations about conflict on an angry planet. Created, produced, and hosted by Matthew Gault and Jason Fields781951Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why Wars Never End
The world’s great military powers seem to have forgotten how to end wars. The traditional Clausewitzian model of armed conflict sees war as an expression of political power. It’s about using military might to extract concessions from an opponent. But the enemy always gets a vote and defeat must always look more attractive than the continuation of fighting. Russia wants unconditional surrender from Ukraine. Trump and Hegseth want Iran to give up everything. Given those circumstances, why not keep fighting?
It wasn’t always this way.
On this episode of Angry Planet...
Dreams of War in Space
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink casually dropped the news that America had space-based weapons during the keynote address at a cyber conference. “We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” he said.
But what, exactly, are those space weapons? Why has space become so important for war? How do we fight up there and what are the consequences?
On this episode of Angry Planet, Bleddyn Bowen and Cameron Hunter return to the show to answer all...
Human Decisions Are Behind Every ‘Rogue’ AI
A lot of people are afraid right now. I’ve lost track of the times OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta have announced they lost control of their AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants to “pace the frontier” and Bill Gates is warning there’s a non-zero chance that AI will kill billions. The US military has embraced AI and it’s leading to grave mistakes. In Ukraine, an AI-controlled drone has killed three people.
Something is bothering me about all these stories and it’s not the thought that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity. It’s the distance A...
The Cult of the American Military Academy
Journalist Jasper Craven joins the show today to talk about his new book God Forgives, Brothers Don’t. The book is a deep dive into the history of the American military academy and how it has shaped the country’s conception of manhood. Craven’s investigation led him from Valley Forge to West Point, uncovered a strange 20th century Joe Rogan who changed his name so it sounded like a lion’s roar, and landed him multiple interviews with Graham Platner.
If You Must Fight a Trade War, Fight to Win
The world I grew up in no longer exists. The decades after World War II were boom times for free trade lovers. During the Pax Americana it seemed that most diplomatic problems could be solved by exporting blue jeans and lowering the cost of consumer goods for everyone. But in 2026 trade is a serious weapon and economic policy seems less a path to prosperity and more a weapon for waging war.
On this episode of Angry Planet, Chad P Bown is here to talk about his new book How to Win a Trade War. Bown is...
Iran Won Because America Is Stuck in the ‘Smart Bomb Trap’
Recorded in May. Join angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes early and commercial free.
America’s war against Iran has gone on for more than two months and the United States has achieved none of its political objectives. American power has diminished, its munitions stockpile is low, and Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran has all the cards.
To hear Robert Pape tell it, this was all predictable. Pape is a political scientist who teaches at the University of Chicago and specializes in the use of violence to achieve po...
Navigating Reality and War During the Age of AI Propaganda
On the morning of April 21, Trump posted an image of eight women on Truth Social, claimed they were Iranian dissidents set to be executed, and demanded that Tehran release them. Detractors, and several Iranian sources, claimed the women were AI-generated. A day later Trump claimed the women would no longer be executed and that he’d saved them.
The truth is that the women are real and many are still in danger. Trump’s post made real Iranian women who protested the Iranian regime appear fake. The story speaks to a moment we’re in where it’s b...
Christianity Shaped North Korea’s Cult of Personality
Kim Song Ju, the man who would become Kim Il Sung, was born to devout Presbyterian parents. Billy Graham’s wife was born to christian missionaries in China and went to high school in Pyongyang. American protestants once spread the gospel in northwest Korea and found fertile ground for their gospel message. Kim listened, learned, and used those teachings to shape a cult of personality that rules North Korea to this day.
On this episode of Angry Planet I’m joined by Wall Street Journal China bureau chief Jonathan Cheng to talk about his new book Kore...
Making the Case America Was Winning in Iran
Recorded March 24, 2026. Subscribe at angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes first and commercial free.
Last week an article published in Al Jazeera by an academic at the University of Doha in Qatar proposed something that felt crazy to some western war watchers: America and Israel’s strategy in Iran is working.
On this episode of Angry Planet, author Muhanad Seloom is here to explain his position. Seloom is an assistant professor of international politics and security at the University of Doha. He’s also an Iraqi who lived through the Iran-Iraq war and both US i...
Neutralizing Iran’s Nuclear Material During a War Is ‘Nearly Mission Impossible’
America went to war in Iran, we’re told, because the idea of the country developing nuclear weapons was intolerable. Nukes are complicated and technical weapons that require scientists and experts to build, maintain, and manage. Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is core to the design and unless all of Iran’s HEU is accounted for the threat of it becoming a nuclear power will linger.
So what would it take to get rid of Iran’s stockpile HEU?
François Diaz-Maurin is on Angry Planet today to answer that question. Diaz-Maurin is editor for nuc...
The ‘AI as Nuclear Weapons’ Obsession
AI enthusiasts love to say that the technology is as revolutionary and important as nuclear weapons. Even the Trump administration has adopted the metaphor. The President and the Department of Energy have repeatedly referred to the development of AI in the US as “Manhattan Project 2.0.”
But is the buildout of LLMs and machine learning systems really as important as the development of the atom bomb? And what are the lessons from the atomic age that AI scientists should then learn? Do we need an AI Non Proliferation Treaty? An AI International Atomic Energy Agency?
On...
A Killer True Crime Fandom & Islamic State’s Digital Caliphate
Things have gotten very surreal in the dark corners of the internet. AI-generated prophets are preaching jihad in Facebook groups, Minecraft servers host digital caliphates, and school shooting fandoms gather to study their heroes and plot how to up beat their score. It’s a double bill on this episode of Angry Planet as two experts from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a nonprofit that studies and works to mitigate violent extremists, discuss the brave new world of online-born violence.
First up is Milo Comerford, the co-author of a study about nihilistic violence. Then we’ve g...
When Americans Became ‘Splendid Liberators’
America spent most of the 19th century at war with itself. It conquered its western expanse then collapsed into civil war. Once the North beat the South, partisan politics consumed the country for a generation. A string of assassinations, progressive firebrands, and civil service reforms burned people out on domestic politics and a bored and febrile nation began to search for meaning beyond its borders. It noticed the Spanish Empire was awfully close.
In Splendid Liberators, award winning journalist Joe Jackson chronicles the beginning of the American myth of the “good war.” He’s on the show t...
Puffins, Zyn, and ‘Polar War’
Greenland fever has faded for now but it will return. The world’s polar region, you see, is pretty damn important. As the planet heats and the ice melts, what was once an impassible warren of ice and snow has become a geopolitical opportunity.
On today’s Angry Planet, we host journalist Kenneth R. Rosen who just published the book Polar War. He’s spent the past few years among the ice and snow, embedding with troops, yearning for snus, and smoking cigarettes with morticians in the long dark.
Rosen knows what makes the Ar...
Online Culture Is the Whole Culture
There was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore the worst political and cultural actors who now dominate our psychic landscape. Now those people are in charge and they’ve manifested Twitter into real life in a way previously thought impossible.
The White House is posting Stardew Valley memes about whole milk. A Customs and Border Patrol official is asking people if they’re triggered when they respond with empathy to the mur...
How We Thought the First Year Would Go
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On January 28, 2025, I sat down with Aram Shabanian to talk about how we thought the first year of the Trump administration would go. I put the audio in a vault and didn’t listen to it until now.
We focused on geopolitics and the American military and our hit rate for predictions was about fifty percent. Domestically, it’s been much worse than I expected. Abroad it’s been much weirder than I expected. The bit about America seeking violence though? Right now that f...
On Spectacles of Cruelty
On the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty.
Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the administration’s constant barrage of grotesque memes, it feels like America is a crueler and cruder place. For better and worse, the Presidency sets a moral standard for the country and Trump has lowered that standard. Klay wrote about all this in a piece at The New York Times and he’s here with us today to talk through it.
Google’s Former CEO Is Dancing in Ukraine
Earlier this year journalist Ben Makuch caught a glimpse of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, dancing at a club in Kyiv. It was a surreal moment, a snapshot of a tragic war that the West thinks is defining the future of conflict. Tech executives have flocked to Ukraine, courting the country in an attempt to get at a resource more precious than gold: data. Makuch was just there and has written about what he saw for The New Republic and he’s on the show today to talk about it.
‘Capitalism Is a Series of Regime Changes’
Another week and another Angry Planet about the horrifying systems that rule our lives.
Is there a depressive theme running through the work right now? Possibly. I promise we’ll soon replace it with rage.
This week on the show we have Sven Beckert to talk about his new book Capitalism: A Global History. Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard and his tome is an attempt to capture the entire history of an economic system in one book. It’s a doorstop, but it’s also readable and clear-eyed. Some come with m...
The US Government’s AI Grand Bargain
The White House is portraying the race to adopt AI as an existential crisis. It’s the next Manhattan Project, they say, a technology so important it will require an unprecedented build out of energy infrastructure and massive data centers. But the Manhattan Project was a government-led technological drive whereas AI is led by salesmen and corporations.
What could possibly go wrong?
On this episode of Angry Planet, Ben Buchanan is here to tell us about the government’s role in fostering AI. Buchanan was an AI advisor during the Biden administration where he help...
Deadwood: The Town that Made the Wild West
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This week on Angry Planet we’re taking a break from the horrors of the present to explore horrors of a past distant enough now that they’re entertaining. But then, America found those horrors pretty entertaining at the time, too. Even when it was still a thriving community and a going concern, the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, was the subject of dimestore novels and tall tales.
Peter Cozzens is here with us to talk about his new book Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and...
Learning to Love the Stagnant Order
Is your Empire feeling less than fresh? Does it feel like the modern world’s best days are behind it? Do conquest and global power politics not hit as good as they used to? Welcome to the Age of Stagnation, a time when the fruits of the Industrial Revolution can be enjoyed but not replicated.
It’s making us all a little crazy, especially world leaders. With us today on the show is Michael Beckley, a political science professor at Tufts University and his career includes stretches at the Pentagon, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and...
‘Goliath’s Curse’ and the Surprising Benefits of Societal Collapse
We’re obsessed with apocalypses, big and small. We fantasize about what the future might look like after the fall of society and fear the coming tribulation. Rome fretted about decline until its end. Stories of the Sea Peoples terrified the monarchs of the Late Bronze Age. During the 30 Years’ War, Europeans imagined Armageddon had finally begun.
But a funny thing happens after the collapse: things tend to get a little better for everyone.
Luke Kemp is here to hold our hands through the end of the world as we know it. Kemp is a...
Yes, US Strikes On Alleged Drug Traffickers Are Illegal. That Won’t Stop Them
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This week on Angry Planet we have returning guest and former judge advocate Dan Maurer. The last time he was on the show, Maurer walked us through the consequences of a Supreme Court ruling that asked the question: is it illegal for the President to order SEAL Team Six to kill people? It was a surreal question that now feels more pressing.
A US Carrier Strike Group is moving into South American waters to support America’s highly kinetic War on Drugs. Military la...
Vanessa Guillén and the Importance of Speaking Up
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The episode is about Vanessa Guillén, a US soldier who was murdered at Fort Hood in 2020. She also experienced sexual harassment while in the military. I spoke with ABC Special Correspondent John Quiñones about his new podcast, Vanished. It’s a good podcast that covers Guillén’s case in-depth and highlights the reforms the Pentagon instituted after.
We recorded the show on September 30, Guillén’s birthday. That morning, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivered a long speech about his own milita...
Assassinations Are Shitposts Now
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Political assassins often have incoherent politics and Tyler Robinson is no different. The young man who killed Charlie Kirk inscribed the shell casings of his bullets with obscure memes that say less about what he believed and more about where he spent time online. Robinson isn’t alone. Earlier this year the Annunciation Church shooter showed off a rifle inscribed with similar memes pulled from the internet. The Christchurch shooter in 2019 livestreamed their killing and left behind a meme laden manifesto.
So what th...
The War On Terror on Drugs
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On September 2, 2025 the United States escalated its decades long War on Drugs with a tactic borrowed from the War on Terror. It used a drone to blow up a boat it said was full of drugs then said the 11 people killed in the strike were terrorists.
Is this legal? Does that matter?
On this week’s Angry Planet, journalist Mike LaSusa of InSight Crime comes on the show to walk us through the ins and outs of America’s long-running War...
Traveling America’s ‘Murderland’
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The Pacific Northwest is known for its startling natural beauty, precocious rainfall, and propensity to birth serial killers. Why? Caroline Fraser has a theory and it’s a good one.
This week on Angry Planet, Fraser takes us on a journey through the American past and into the dark heart of the PNW. Her new book Murderland weaves together memoir, true crime, history, and science into a compelling narrative that’s as beautiful and deadly as the forests around Tacoma.
After Xi
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All things move towards their end, even seemingly omnipotent political leaders, and authoritarian systems are shaped by the question of succession long before the leader dies. Xi Jinping is 72 years old and the Chinese Communist Party has started to consider what comes next. Those conversations are shaping the political reality of the country.
On this episode of Angry Planet, Brown University professor Tyler Jost comes on the show to explain China is navigating what life may look like after Xi.
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Does the U.S. Need an Independent Cyber Force?
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If the internet is a battlefield, does that mean the United States needs a new military force to dominate it?
On this episode of Angry Planet, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Edward Charles Cardon and former House Armed Services Committee staffer Joshua Stiefel make the case for spinning off the Cyber Force into an independent branch. Both are part of a new commission at the Center for Strategic and International Studies — partnered with Jason’s new bosses at Foundation for Defense of Demo...
Hunting Nazis Online With Canadian Journalists
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Journalists and Nazis have changed a lot in the years since the end of World War II; journalists are on the outs while Nazis are having a bit of a moment. Across the U.S. and Canada, avowed fascists have committed murder, attempted to destroy the power grid, and actively recruit online and in person. As these extremists work to hide their identity, journalists and law enforcement use advanced tech to expose them. But at what cost?
On this episode of Angry Planet...
How Many Nukes Does It Take to Win a War? (Trick Question)
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The world is living with a Cold War hangover. The logic of deterrence, which dominates the minds of the people who plan nuclear wars, means that America must have enough nuclear weapons to credibly threaten to destroy the world should someone launch nukes at it. That thinking led to a world with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and that was just when the U.S. had the Soviet Union to think about. Now it’s facing the twin threats of Russia and China. Does that me...
A History of the Iranian Nuclear Program
Sometimes it’s good to back up and ask the basic questions: How do we know Iran was even developing nuclear weapons?
On this episode of the show, the Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis walks us through the history of the Iranian nuclear (weapons and energy) program. It’s got it all: diplomacy, assassinations, cowardly politicians, and uranium fever.
Lewis is a professor at the Middlebury Institute, member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and former member of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board. He knows the tale...
Talking With the Military Ethics Professor Who Resigned in Protest
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Pauline Shanks Kaurin PhD. was, until recently, the Stockdale Chair for Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College. She’d been there since 2018, teaching philosophy and ethics to U.S. military officers and the occasional civilian. Then came Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and marching orders she said stifled academic freedom.
So she resigned.
On this episode of Angry Planet, Pauline talks us through her decision and tells us what she saw from the inside of one of the U...
The Iran Strikes Beg the Question: What Is Airpower For?
You can’t win a war with airpower alone, despite what the U.S. Air Force will tell you. For more than 100 years, the masters of the air have promised that military and political objectives can be achieved if you just let them drop enough bombs.
It’s a theory that’s been tested, and fallen short, many times. Operation Midnight Hammer, the Trump administration’s use of 14 GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Iranian nuclear sites, is just the latest test. The promise is that this has set back Iran’s nuclear program (it probably h...
Libya, China, and the Outlaw Ocean
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The ocean is vast, beautiful, and lawless. Thousands of miles from any coast, power belongs to those who seize it.
On this episode of Angry Planet, journalist Ian Urbina stops by to discuss the Outlaw Ocean Project and the second season of its incredible podcast. Urbina and his team of investigative journalists are telling stories about human rights, labor, and the environment on the vast swaths of the planet covered in water.
Silicon Valley Wants ‘More Everything Forever’
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The futures of the past have curdled into the nightmares of the present. The richest and most powerful people the world has ever known want to colonize mars, live forever, and digitize human consciousness. To make these technological miracles come to pass, they say, will require people to dramatically change the way they live and work. Will it be worth it? Does science even say it’s possible?
On this Angry Planet, astrophysicist and author Adam Becker joins us to explain all the pr...
America’s Favorite Gunfighters and the Birth of the Old West
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America loves the Western. Stories about frontier towns, outlaws and lawmen, and—most of all—killing. How did the myth and legend of the gunfighter come to permeate the U.S.? Were there rules to gunfights? How did you become famous by killing people? Did Texas, yes Texas, make all this possible?
We’ll answer those questions in this episode of the show as we discuss the new book The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild. It’s the work of returning guest (a...
The Horror of AI Generals Making Command Decisions
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Palantir, Anduril and a suite of other Tolkien-inspired tech nightmares want to integrate artificial intelligence into every aspect of the U.S. military. Both companies have software suites they’re pitching as agents that will help make command decisions during combat. An AI general, if you will.
Yes, that’s a terrible idea.
On this episode of Angry Planet, Cameron Hunter and Bleddyn Bowen will tell us why. Hunter is a researcher at the University of Copenhagen and Bowen is a pr...
America’s Pivot to the Pacific
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The Pentagon has been trying to pivot to the Pacific for years now. Under President Donald Trump 2.0, who is focused on China, it just might happen. It’s a complicated body of water with dozens of players and a bloody history. One where Beijing is increasingly asserting itself.
Here to walk us through some of it is Angry Planet producer and Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Kevin Knodell. He’s just back from the Philippines where he spent two weeks reporting on a joint exercise betw...
