WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast is an auxiliary effort to the Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast to expand the portfolio of the CG agenda. This podcast will address war in the larger contexts adjacent to the rubric of irregular warfare. I'll be inaugurating the new podcast with a series on how to actually change the foundations, context, systems and greater emergence of near-peer/peer conflicts in the 21st century called "Fixing Fight Club".
You are witnessing a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) across many fronts to include autonomous targeting, UAS and hyper-sonic munitions among other emerging technology and military employment techniques.
My Substack (https://cgpodcast.substack.com/)
You can email with comments or recommendations to cgpodcast@pm.me
Episode 021 "Strategic Deficit Disorder: National Malpractice and the Perils of the Death of Statecraft"
Host Dr. William Flavin explores America's strategic deficit disorder and the critical thinking needed to revive competent martial imagination in this interview.
19 Jan 2026
Ep 020 "The Jerboa That Squeaked: Broke and Woke NATO on the Warpath"
The Greenland debacle is bringing the NATO relationship into better focus on just how bad the EU/SSR has become.
America should take a non-interventionist pause and get its internal house in order before standing astride the world again and lighting fires that never go away and continuously make things worse.
Stop the madness.
Recent episodes on NATO.
First part here: Ep 009 "Fixing Fight Club: Just Say No to NATO: Part One" (https://rss.com/podcasts/warnotes-a-conflict-podcast/1853769/)
Second part here: Ep 016 "Fixing Fight Club: Just Say No to NATO: Part Two" (https://rss.com/podcasts/warnotes-a-conflict-podcast/1954112/)
References:
Defense of Greenland: Agreement Between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark, April 27, 1951 (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp)
Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile Defenses (https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/winning-the-salvo-competition-rebalancing-americas-air-and-missile-defenses)
The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age
Nyet Means Nyet (William Burns 2008) (https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html)
Pat Buchanan Where Does NATO Enlargement End? (https://www.creators.com/read/pat-buchanan/01/22/where-does-nato-enlargement-end)
DoS Cable: NATO ENLARGEMENT: RUSSIAN ASSERTIONS REGARDING THE TWO-PLUS-FOUR AGREEMENT ON GERMAN UNIFICATION (https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html)
Books:
Edward Bernays Propaganda (https://amzn.to/4iSyL6u)
Sevim Dagdelen NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic Alliance (https://amzn.to/4gYKboE)
Matt Kennard The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire (https://amzn.to/42gFuSr)
Daniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (https://amzn.to/3DiZPwc)
Scott Horton Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine (https://amzn.to/3CfydI4)
Nassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game (https://amzn.to/4jyFL9K)
Mark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile Defense (https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/CSBA6173-PGM2_Report_WEB_2.pdf)
Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare (https://amzn.to/3ClGZEz)
My Substack (https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx)
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me
18 Aug 2025
Ep 019 "Power Failure: A Thought Experiment on US Expeditionary Vulnerability"
Effective June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.
The banal and humble generator set is a secret to destroying US combat power.
I wanted to flesh out a thought experiment on the vulnerabilities of the US war machine in its expeditionary mode in future wars of choice if a critical node of its operations for US efficacy were specifically targeted, in this case, generator sets;. these range from small portable units to large, trailer-mounted systems, including the Tactical Quiet Generator (TQG) and the Advanced Medium Mobile Power Source (AMMPS).
In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the ways in which the West is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe to toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.
The US is NOT prepared for the war of leakers in which the inadequate missile defense systems and strategy now deployed will be overwhelmed if it enters a war of choice with China or Russia.
It isn't simply the peer competitors but the smaller players like North Korea and Yemen are demonstrating that the US and its allies can't cash the checks they boast about.
Once again, the US should stand down, reassess, re-calibrate and stop thinking defense is a four letter word.
References:
Millennium Challenge: The Real Story of a Corrupted Military Exercise and its Legacy (https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/)
STP 9-91D13-SM-TG: TACTICAL POWER GENERATION SPECIALIST MOS 91D (2018) (https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN13520_STP%25209-91D13-SM-TG%2520FINAL%2520WEB.pdf)
Skill Levels 1/2/3
Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile Defenses (https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/winning-the-salvo-competition-rebalancing-americas-air-and-missile-defenses)
The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age
Space Based Interceptor Sizing Methodology (https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2004-4140)
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (https://thebulletin.org/nuclear-notebook/)
Books:
Nassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game (https://amzn.to/3PVWINu)
Mark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile Defense (https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/CSBA6173-PGM2_Report_WEB_2.pdf)
Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare (https://amzn.to/4h7zFvt)
My Substack (https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx)
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me
Inside a recent episode
Episode 021 "Strategic Deficit Disorder: National Malpractice and the Perils of the Death of Statecraft"
Published 27 Jul 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] Now, what I find, end quote, what I find inevitably is one can have all the tools, all the predictions, all the forecasts, all the composition and dispositions that you need of the enemy forces, And as I mentioned in an earlier podcast where I talked about red teaming and Ono's Five Whys and trying to be rather more sophisticated than one is in the path that we have struck in the past few generations. I was going to say decades, but I'll say generations. It doesn't seem as if any forethought takes place. I had mentioned Mazar's book that I used to prepare for this episode. And he finds that in the Iraq war, the substantial strategic and grand strategic malpractice, disorder, disagreement, and such, was so great that I happen to think that if one were to make a thumbnail sketch of what happened then in 2002 and 2003, when they were preparing to have this war in Iraq, no one thought it through. […]
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