The Foreign Affairs Interview

The war in Iran pitted two of the world’s mightiest militaries against one weakened by years of strikes, sanctions, and sabotage. And yet it was the smaller country that appears to have emerged with the advantage. In Ukraine, similarly, Russia expected an easy victory, only to be repeatedly thwarted by apparently outmatched Ukrainian forces. These outcomes may seem surprising. But Paul Scharre argues that they should not be. The innovations that have in recent years transformed battlefields have also leveled the playing field between powers great and small. And as Scharre wrote in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the U.S. military is unprepared for a new age of warfare in which drones, AI, and other emerging technologies undercut the dominance it has become used to.

Scharre, the executive vice president of the Center for a New American Security, served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan and then went on to craft Pentagon policy on drones and autonomous weapons systems. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him about what the wars in Iran and Ukraine should tell us about the future of warfare more generally, about what China is learning from those wars, and about what the United States must do to adapt.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Like the rest of us, China’s leaders are confronting a world in turmoil. They see uncertain American commitments to allies, even as many of those allies ramp up their own defense efforts. They see changing relationships, whether deepening ties between Russia and North Korea or new connections among anxious middle powers. They see American military action in the Middle East and Western Hemisphere, with effects on American power in China’s own region.

And yet, as Oriana Skylar Mastro sees it, far from surprising Beijing, such disruptions are being taken as confirmation of what Chinese leader Xi Jinping often refers to as “great change unseen in a century.” Mastro has written a series of essays for Foreign Affairs on how Beijing aims to shape and exploit that change. She joined Dan Kurtz-Phelan to discuss China’s strategy for navigating this turmoil—and what the United States should, and should not, do in response.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The breakneck pace of AI progress and the intensity of the competition for AI supremacy has left U.S. policymakers in a difficult position. They must encourage the innovation needed to ensure an advantage over China and to power economic growth; protect against a national security catastrophe; and assuage the concerns of an anxious and skeptical public.

Sebastian Mallaby calls this the “AI trilemma” in his most recent essay for Foreign Affairs. And he argues that it requires more than the piecemeal measures currently on offer in Washington—or, for that matter, in Beijing or Brussels. Mallaby is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the host of a new podcast called The Spillover, as well as the author of The Infinity Machine, an excellent new book about the founding of the AI lab DeepMind.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him on June 24 about the state of AI competition, about the stakes of that competition, and about how its course will reshape societies, economies, and global politics.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The war in Iran may have come to an end, but both the course and the conclusion of that war have brought into sharp relief the forces that increasingly define a world of weaponized power and systemic risk: unconstrained leaders willing to gamble with military force; the search for, and use of, economic leverage; technologies destabilizing both decision-making and development models; and old alliances fracturing and new alignments forming.

Ian Bremmer is a leading geopolitical analyst and the president and founder of the Eurasia Group. His most recent piece for Foreign Affairs is about the long-term consequences of the Iran war, but he has also written on shifts in global power, the effect of technology on geopolitics, and much else. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bremmer on Monday, June 22, about how to make sense of today’s global turmoil.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The Iran war may be coming to an end, as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign a framework agreement later this week. That deal should reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade of Iranian ports, even as it leaves unresolved the issues that brought both sides to war in the first place, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But policymakers in Washington and other capitals are just starting to confront the ways in which the war has transformed Iran—and how it could transform the Middle East moving forward.

In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argue that members of a new, emboldened generation of Iranian leaders are forging an entirely new approach to their own society, to the United States, and to the region. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bajoghli and Nasr on June 15 about the potential implications of a deal—and about how the last three and a half months of war will shape both the Middle East’s trajectory and the future of geopolitics more broadly. 

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.