Geopolitics Decanted with Dmitri Alperovitch

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Vipin Narang, a former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, a portfolio which includes U.S nuclear weapons employment strategy, about why we are now entering the New Nuclear Age and the urgent changes that the United States has to make to its nuclear deterrence posture and strategy. They also debate the utility of counterforce vs countervalue nuclear targeting approaches and how beli...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert, to assess the damage that has been inflicted upon the Iranian nuclear program over the course of the past 11 days and potential for reconstitution.

00:00 Introduction

00:49 Assessment of Damage to Each Part of the Iranian Nuclear Program

07:34 What is the Level of Difficulty of Reconstitution?

09:53 Did Iran Evacuate Fordow?

11:55 The Importance...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Israeli Gen Amos Yadlin (Ret.), perhaps the world's only person who has participated in the destruction of three Middle Eastern nuclear weapons programs: first, as an F-16 pilot in 1981 against Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, as Head of Military Intelligence in 2007 against Syrian nuclear reactor Al Kibar, and in various IDF roles for the last nearly 20 years planning the current operation against Ira...

Dmitri Alperovitch sits down with Andrei Lankov, one of the west’s foremost experts on North Korea, and Sergey Radchenko, a leading Cold War historian, for a deep dive into North Korea. They discuss the threats posed by North Korea's nuclear program and possibility of a new war, the chances of a Trump-brokered peace deal with Kim Jong Un, and the nature of North Korea’s relationships with China, Russia, and Iran. Andrei also offers...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks all things nukes with Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in arms control and nuclear and missile nonproliferation, currently a professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and director of the CNS East Asia Nonproliferation Program.

They discuss:

- Putin's frustrations about limitations of nuclear blackmail and his responses to ...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Andrey Liscovich (UkraineDefenseFund.org) about the latest updates in the evolution of drone warfare on the battlefields in Ukraine.

They discuss:

- How Ground Unmanned Vehicles (GUVs) are being used in battle

- 3rd Generation FPV drones

- Quadcopter bombers

- Mass-market EW systems

- Fiber optics C2

- EW recon units

- Use of aerial drones for anti-drone/aircraft warfare

- Impact of Chinese export cont...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Constantine Kalinovskiy (@Teoyaomiquu), a Ukrainian combat vet with friends currently in battle, about how the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to achieve tactical surprise with their August 6th offensive into Russian Kursk oblast, the achievable objectives of this operation and the risks that it brings.

They discussed the achievements to date, the potential for holding newly captured Russian territory...

After many months long wait, F-16s have finally arrived in Ukraine. How are the Ukrainians likely to use them and what are the challenges and opportunities presented by the introduction of this new weapons platform?

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Justin Bronk,  Senior Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology at RUSI and and the editor of a just released book "The Air War in Ukraine."

They discussed why F-16s will not play a trans...

Dmitri Alperovitch and his co-author Garrett Graff discuss their upcoming book “World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century” and include an exclusive audiobook excerpt from the book that lays out in great detail how China is likely to go about its invasion of Taiwan.

In addition, Dmitri and Garrett discuss:

- Why they wrote this book

- What’s a stake in the potential conflict with China o...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Sergey Radchenko, one of the Cold War's preeminent historians, about the untold secrets of that period based on Sergey's unique access to recently declassified Soviet and Chinese archives.

They discussed China's role in causing Khrushchev to initiate the Cuban Missile Crisis, a huge Soviet intelligence failure that caused the Korean War and Brezhnev's attempts to prevent Nixon's downfall in Watergate.

...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Bill Hennigan, a New York Times opinion writer currently publishing a series of articles called "At the Brink," focused on nuclear threats and the challenges our world faces in combating proliferation. They discussed the fears that the US intelligence community had in the fall of 2022 that the probability of Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine was estimated to be at 50/50 and how the US planned to...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Shashank Joshi, Defense Editor for The Economist, about the changing nature of warfare and the impact of proliferation and affordability of precision munitions, sensor ubiquity and digital communications like Starlink. They discuss the still crucial importance of infantry mass and artillery ammunition in this revolution, the challenge presented by electronic warfare and its logistical needs, whether un...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in arms control and nuclear and missile nonproliferation, currently a professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and director of the CNS East Asia Nonproliferation Program.

They discuss whether the nearly $130 billion that the US is planning to spend to modernize its land-based nuclear ...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Ivan Kanapathy, a former US military attache to Taiwan, about the looming threat of Chinese invasion and why a Chinese blockade or quarantine of Taiwan is unlikely to succeed. They discuss the implications of the recent Taiwan elections on the island's military readiness and the future of US-Taiwan relations, the challenges Taiwan faces in reforming its defense force and strategy, why an invasion of Ta...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Yaroslav Trofimov, a Ukrainian-born Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent, about his new book "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence." They discussed why the Russians lost any chance of capturing Kyiv in the first day of the war by failing to take Hostomel airport, why Ukrainian war preparations were quite uneven (stronger in the north than ...

Dmitri Alperovitch talks with Michael Kofman (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Rob Lee (Foreign Policy Research Institute) and Andrey Liscovich (UkraineDefenseFund.org) how the proliferation of FPV drones and countermeasures to them are changing the nature of warfare in Ukraine.

They discuss:

- Advantages and disadvantages of these new platforms

- The development of new tactics and force structures employing them

- The ...

Dmitri Alperovitch comes to the White House to interview Dr. Ben Buchanan, the White House Special Advisor on AI, about:

- The risks and benefits of AI

- What the US government is trying to achieve with the President's Executive Order on AI

- Why Terminator AIs are not coming to kill us but evil people using AI just might

- What the requirements to report to US government about the development of cutting-edge foundational models is...

Dmitri Alperovitch and guest co-host Patrick Gray interview Alicia García-Herrero, a Spanish-born economist based in the indo-Pacific and who specializes on China.

They discussed why China has exhausted its growth potential and is now facing structured deceleration, which will be a major global deflationary trend.

Other topics covered: why the real-estate bubble will likely not cause a dire crisis, why stimulus spending will not so...