IWI Weekly - Labor Day Listens

This Labor Day weekend, whether you are firing up the grill, heading for the beach, or standing watch somewhere at the frontier of American security, we wanted to send you something worth a listen.

If you have been with us since the early days, consider this a refresher. If you are newer to IWI, this is a good front door.

If you would rather have something new, two recent episodes are worth your time. Hidden Costs of Precision, out Tuesday, draws on twelve billion geocoded cell phone records from Yemen to show how drone strikes disrupt civilian life well past the strike itself, even when no one is hurt. From Subversion to Resistance traces how a small number of armed actors seized cities in the Donbas in 2014, and why they failed in the places they did.

Thank you for listening and for reading. We hope you get some rest this weekend, where you can and if you can.

Keep Warfare Irregular,
Ian Platz
Chief Communications Officer, Irregular Warfare Initiative

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Proxy Wars, Part 1: War Through Local Agents in Africa

with MG (Ret.) Marcus Hicks and Professor Eli Berman

Proxy Wars, Part 2: Opportunity and Risk in the Middle East

with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Professor Eli Berman

These episodes remain among my favorites because proxy warfare sits at the intersection of my professional experience and academic research, and a subject that was important when we recorded them has become indispensable in an era of great-power competition. They also showed me, early in my time as a host, the value of bridging scholarship and practice: although our senior practitioners and scholars spoke in different lexicons, years of experience and study had led them to remarkably similar insights with immediate value for irregular-warfare professionals, the mission at the heart of IWI.

Artificial Intelligence in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency

with Gen. (Ret.) Stan McChrystal and Dr. Anshu Roy

In this 2021 episode from the podcast’s early days, Retired Gen. Stan McChrystal and Dr. Anshu Roy tackle the reality of information overload, accurately predicting how adversarial spoofing and explainable “Data DNA” would define the future of war. This pod aged exceptionally well. The conversation remains timely in retrospect because it cuts through tech hype to focus on how the human element (judgment and culture) will always remain the decisive variable.

Transmitting Values: Can US Security Force Assistance Export Democratic Norms?

with Ambassador Dennis Ross and Dr. Renanah Joyce

In a former life doing security sector assistance work, I sat through too many calls about why a partner unit had ignored the norms we taught alongside the tactics. Those conversations rarely got past broad strokes and shoulder shrugs. This episode goes further. My thanks to Dr. Joyce for her expertise then and in the years since.

Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949

with Professor Taylor Fravel and LTG (Ret.) Charles Hooper

I’m a strong believer in the practice of revisiting history to make sense of current happenings in international relations. I find this is especially important as U.S. defense policymakers consider what a potential future conflict with the PRC might look like. This episode tracks the evolution of China’s military strategy since the Chinese Civil War, highlighting both continuity and change in PLA doctrine. The episode is rich with insight, not to mention that Professor Taylor Fravel and LTG (Ret.) Charles Hooper are exceptionally knowledgeable and engaging guests.

The Inheritance: America’s Military After Two Decades of War

with Dr. Mara Karlin and Major General (Ret.) John Ferrari

So much of the discussion at IWI is rightly about what our adversaries are doing or how the character of irregular warfare is changing. But in Episode 127, Dr. Mara Karlin and Major General (retired) John Ferrari provide an expert look at how the U.S. military has evolved after 9/11. Rooted in history and theory, these expert practitioners provide a strategic frame to understand not only where our military has been but also where it is going.

The Future of War Part III: Strategic Sabotage in an Era of Great-Power Conflict

with Rear Admiral Mark Schafer

Episode 144 made my list because it has been our highest-listened-to episode of 2026, with more than 12,000 cumulative downloads, and its argument that strategic sabotage and indirect action can provide meaningful options for deterrence short of war has continued to hold up. It is also worth revisiting for Rear Admiral Mark Schafer as a guest and for its use of August Cole’s Useful Fiction approach to explore complex ideas about future conflict, infrastructure, technology, and deterrence in a way that makes them accessible and vivid to listeners.

Hellscape Taiwan: Drones, Deterrence, and the Future of Asymmetric Defense

with Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn

Perhaps the most consequential foreign policy question today is whether the United States and China can compete without going to war. Taiwan is the obvious flashpoint, but deterrence is possible with the right strategy. In Hellscape Taiwan, Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn unpack what a successful strategy might look like and the steps required to implement it.

The IW Weekly is made possible through the generous support of Stratagem Consulting. We’re especially grateful to Mick Crnkovich, Founder and CEO of Stratagem, for championing thoughtful, practitioner-oriented resources in the national security space.

The following organizations support IWI's mission to advance the study of irregular warfare.