Shows / School of War
School of War
In School of War, CBS News National Security Analyst and Free Press columnist Aaron MacLean sits down with secretaries of state, top military historians, war planners, and key political decision-makers to help understand the lessons of war. Tune in as School of War takes you to the front lines. Aaron MacLean is a former senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He has worked as a foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine…
Episodes
- School of War
Ep 178: Mark Montgomery on Cyber War
Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at FDD and retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, joins the show to discuss how…
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Ep 177: Christopher Kolakowski on Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
Christopher Kolakowski, director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum and editor of Tenth Army Commander: The World War II Diary of Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr…
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Ep 176: David Betz on Modern Fortification
David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London and author of The Guarded Age: Fortification in the Twenty-First Century, joins the…
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Ep 175: Mick Ryan on War & Fiction
Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army and author of War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and…
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Ep 174: Hal Brands on the Long Struggle for Eurasia
Hal Brands, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of The…
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Ep 173: Tom Karako on America’s Iron Dome
Tom Karako, Senior Fellow and Director of the Missile Defense Project at CSIS, joins the show to discuss what President Trump’s executive order on missile…
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Ep 172: Eric Chewning and Tom Moore on the Warship Production Crisis
Eric Chewning and Thomas Moore of HII join the show to discuss America’s military shipbuilding challenges, and their potential solutions. ▪️ Times • 01:32…
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Ep 171: I Am André: German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy
Diana Mara Henry and Gabe Scheinmann join the show to discuss the new book I Am André: German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy, which charts the…
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Ep 170: Evan Mawdsley on WW2 in the Central Pacific
Evan Mawdsley, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and author of Supremacy at Sea: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific…
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Ep 169: Dmitry Filipoff on Naval Warfare in 2025
Dmitry Filipoff, associate research analyst at the Center for Navy Analyses, joins the show to discuss the U.S. Navy surface component and the grave challenges…
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Ep 168: Nadège Rolland on China’s Vision of Strategic Space
Nadège Rolland, Distinguished Fellow, China Studies, at the National Bureau of Asian Research and author of Mapping China's Strategic Space, joins the show to…
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Ep 167: Dan Blumenthal and Kyle Balzer on China’s Nuclear Buildup
Dan Blumenthal and Kyle Balzer, co-authors of The True Aims of China’s Nuclear Buildup for Foreign Affairs, join the show to discuss the geopolitical…
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Ep 166: Rachel Kousser on Alexander the Great
Rachel Kousser, professor of Classics and Art History at the City University of New York and author of Alexander at the End of the World, joins the show to…
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Ep 165: Shyam Sankar on a Defense Reformation
Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Palantir Technologies, joins the show to explain the broken Defense Department…
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Ep 164: Mark Dubowitz on Syria’s Collapse
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive officer of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to break down the collapse of the Assad regime and the…
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Ep 163: School of War Goes to Israel—Lessons from a Savage Year
Host Aaron MacLean recently embedded with the Israeli Defense Forces and saw firsthand Israel’s war with Iranian proxy groups Hezbollah and Hamas. What lessons…
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Ep 162: Michael Leggiere on Military History on Campus
Michael Leggiere, Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida and editor of War Studies Journal 1, joins the show to discuss the sad state of military…
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Ep 161: Mackenzie Eaglen on China’s Military Spending and Ours
Mackenzie Eaglen, senior fellow at AEI and author of Keeping Up with the Pacing Threat: Unveiling the True Size of Beijing’s Military Spending, joins the show…
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Ep 160: Thomas Barfield on Empire and Imperial Strategies Today
Thomas Barfield, Professor and Chairman of the Anthropology Department at Boston University and author of Shadow Empires: An Alternative Imperial History…
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Ep 159: Rebeccah Heinrichs on the Morality of Nuclear Weapons
Rebeccah Heinrichs, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Duty to Deter: American Nuclear Deterrence and the Just War Doctrine, joins the show to…
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Ep 158: Randall Schriver and Dan Blumenthal on an Economic Strategy for China
Randall Schriver, Chairman of the Board at The Project 2049 Institute, and Dan Blumenthal, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, join the show to…
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Ep 157: Frank Cohn—Veterans Day Special
Watch this episode on YouTube. Frank Cohn joins the show to talk about his life: fleeing Hitler’s Germany, his return as a U.S. soldier tasked with hunting…
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Ep 156: Nicholas Eberstadt on North Koreans in Russia
Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, joins the show to discuss the North Korean regime and the…
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Ep 155: Nick Lloyd on World War I’s Eastern Front
Nick Lloyd, Professor of Modern Warfare in the Defence Studies at King’s College London and author of The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918…
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Ep 154: Ben Noon on the U.S.-China Chip Wars
Ben Noon of the Vandenberg Coalition writes about US-China rivalry and geopolitics. He joins the show to discuss the critical fight for semiconductor…
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Ep 153: Scott Hartwig on the Battle of Antietam
Scott Hartwig, author ofI Dread the Thought of the Place: The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign, joins the show to discuss the single…
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Ep 152: Jacqueline Deal on China’s Strategy
Jacqueline Deal, President and CEO of the Long Term Strategy Group and recently the author of the article Competing against Ourselves: How U.S. Policy…
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Ep 151: Nicholas Morton on the Crusades
Nicholas Morton, Senior Lecturer in History, Nottingham Trent University and author of The Crusader States and their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099-1187…
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Ep 150: Katherine Kuzminski on the Draft
Katherine Kuzminski, Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at CNAS, joins the show to discuss recruiting and mass mobilization in the event…
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Ep 149: Mark Dubowitz on the Iran-Israel War
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to help us understand breaking developments in the war between Israel…
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Ep 148: Alex Miller on Battlefield Technology
Alex Miller, Senior Advisor for Science and Technology and the CTO to the Chief of Staff of the Army, joins the show to talk about how we are preparing to…
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Ep 147: Frank Ledwidge on War in Space
Frank Ledwidge, Senior Fellow in Air Power and International Security at the Royal Air Force College and author of Aerial Warfare: The Battle for the Skies…
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Ep 146: Eric Edelman and Thomas Mahnken on America’s Defense Strategy Crisis
Eric Edelman and Thomas Mahnken of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments join the show to talk about what our defense establishment has gotten…
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Ep 145: Christopher Lynch on Machiavelli at War
Christopher Lynch, Professor of Political Science at Missouri State University and author of Machiavelli on War, joins the show to talk about renaissance…
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Ep 144: Mark Montgomery on Defending Taiwan (Boiling Moat #2)
Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at FDD and contributor to The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan…
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Ep 143: Sabin Howard on WWI, Art, and Honoring Veterans
Sabin Howard, sculptor of A Soldier’s Journey, the central feature of the new World War I Memorial in Washington, DC, joins the show to talk about his work and…
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Ep 142: Andrew Roberts Debunks Darryl Cooper on Winston Churchill
Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny, joins the show to give his thoughts on Tucker Carlson’s controversial guest Darryl Cooper. ▪️ Times…
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Ep 141: Matt Pottinger on the Defense of Taiwan (Boiling Moat #1)
Matt Pottinger, distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Chairman of FDD’s China Program, and author of The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to…
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Ep 140: Roger Wicker on Defense Spending and Peace through Strength
Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joins the show to discuss his plan to spend five percent of…
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Ep 139: Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. on CENTCOM
General Kenneth F. McKenzie, USMC, retired as the fourteenth commander of U.S. Central Command in 2022 and is the author of The Melting Point: High Command and…
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Ep 138: Joshua S. Treviño on the Southern Border Crisis
Joshua S. Treviño, Chief of Intelligence and Research and the Director for Texas Identity at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, joins the show to talk about…
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Ep 137: Richard Frank on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and World War II’s Endgame
Richard Frank, historian and author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire and Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War: July 1937-May…
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Ep 136: Ronald C. White on Joshua Chamberlain
Ronald C. White, Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum and author of On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, joins the show…
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Ep 135: Rich Goldberg on Israel‘s Northern Crisis
Rich Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to talk about the expanding war between Israel and Iran. ▪️ Times •…
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Ep 134: Michael Sobolik on China’s Geostrategy
Michael Sobolik, author of Countering China's Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance and Senior Fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign…
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Ep 133: James Holland on World War II in Italy, 1943
James Holland, author of The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943 and host of the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast, joins the show to talk about the…
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Ep 132: Michael Kofman on the Battlefield in Ukraine (War in Ukraine #4)
Michael Kofman, Senior Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and contributor to War in Ukraine: Conflict…
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Ep 131: Thomas Mahnken on Strategic Fallacies (War in Ukraine #3)
Thomas Mahnken, President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and contributor to War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return…
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Ep 130: John Spencer on Israel’s Unprecedented War (or, Urban Warfare 101)
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute and host of the Urban Warfare Project, joins the show to talk about urban combat and…
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Ep 129: Frank Gavin on Nuclear Strategy and Ukraine (War in Ukraine #2)
Frank Gavin, the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and…
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Ep 128: Stephen Kotkin on Russia and Ukraine (War in Ukraine #1)
Stephen Kotkin, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and contributor to War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World…
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Ep 127: Robert Blackwill & Richard Fontaine on the Failed Pivot to Asia
Robert Blackwill & Richard Fontaine, authors of Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, join the show to talk about America’s failed…
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Ep 126: Michel Paradis on D-Day and Eisenhower
Michel Paradis—litigator, national security law scholar, and author of The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower—joins…
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Ep 125: Nick Bunker on America and the Early Cold War
Nick Bunker, journalist and author of In the Shadow of Fear: America and the World in 1950, joins the show to talk about the first decade of the Cold War. ▪️…
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Ep 124: Shane Brennan on Xenophon and Leadership
Shane Brennan, Associate Professor of History and Classics at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh and author of Xenophon's Anabasis: A Socratic…
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Ep 123: Sergey Radchenko on Soviet Motivations in the Cold War
Sergey Radchenko, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of To Run the World: The…
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Ep 122: Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger on a Victory Strategy for China
Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger join the show to discuss their recent Foreign Affairs essay on the need for a victory strategy in America’s cold war with…
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Ep 121: Andy Lowery on Drones and Directed Energy
Andy Lowery, CEO of EPIRUS and a retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, joins the show to talk about directed energy weapons on the modern battlefield. ▪️…
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Ep 120: Iskander Rehman on the Emperor Tiberius and American Primacy
Iskander Rehman, Ax:son Johnson Fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Kissinger Center and author of Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius, joins the…
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Ep 119: Yaroslav Trofimov on the War in Ukraine
Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign-affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and author of Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War…