Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

Ep 041 "Storming America: Intelligence Failure is Now and Forever"

Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

Show Notes

My Storming America Series covers the gamut of what the spontaneous attack in the US will look like when terror cells launch a simultaneous attack on the US homeland. I cover it further in Episodes 37, 42-43 and 49-50 of my Chasing Ghosts podcast. This is a continuation of my "Storming America Series" where I will tease out and describe why the inevitable internal attack on America by external forces will be made real. In this episode, I will examine what intelligence looks like from a professional perspective and why America and the West consistently engage in existential chaos avalanches that make the world a worse place. The bureaucratic impulse in the West has been a significant factor in making the intelligence community (IC), like the military community, a paper tiger that is a far greater danger to the inhabitants of the west than an ally. Until the IC is restructured and made more effective, it will consume roughly 100 billion a year to produce shoddy analysis, inform bad policy and a Keystone Kops foreign covert operations history that is a national shame. Like 9/11 and its existential failures, the next attack on America will have them simply asking for more money and more power. If you leveled the FBI, NSA and CIA tomorrow morning, made each of their budgets one dollar and fired all their employees, you would still be safe as a country. References: Richard J. Heuer The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis David Talbot The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Mortimer Adler How to Read a Book Tim Weiner Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA John Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of Darkness My Substack. Contact me at [email protected].

More from Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

Oct 19, 2026

It's been quite some time since I have responded to "mail" so I have curated these questions to address:. Why the future of warfare is not clone wars? The Fall of Europe is inevitable, here is what it will look like. The rifle is no longer the future in any form of warfare. How systems engineering is ultimately the way of war now and forever Events and Ephemera: The Arcata Summit in Bozeman 13-14 November 2026 Hearts of Space Subscription Service References: Why the M7 is Wrong with Ian McCollum Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? Sun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America My Substack Email at [email protected]

Sep 21, 2026

Hybrid warfare is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations. We continue our conversation. References: The Arcata Summit 13-14 November 2026 War Without a Center: Iran’s Mosaic Defense Richard J. Samuels Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community John Llewelyn The Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organisations: Connections Between Wartime and Peacetime Intelligence Activities Simon Hall BLINDED BY THE RISING SUN JAPANESE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE FROM THE FIRST SINO-JAPANESE WAR TO THE END OF WORLD WAR I Interrogation of IJF CDR Miyazaki Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026 The Future of Hybrid Warfare Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974 RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America Email at [email protected]

Sep 8, 2026

Hybrid warfare Is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations. This second episode examines an historical example of what I think is the closest modern hybrid warfare modality in the Japanese Empire in the 1930s leading to WWII; the.Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organizations that laid the groundwork for this phenomenon in the modern west. References: Richard J. Samuels Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community John Llewelyn The Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organisations: Connections Between Wartime and Peacetime Intelligence Activities Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026 The Future of Hybrid Warfare Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974 RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? Sun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America My Substack Email at [email protected]

Aug 24, 2026

Hybrid warfare Is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations. This first episode tries to lay the ground work of what it is and in the next two episodes we will examine an historical and a contemporary example of hybrid warfare in meat-space. References: Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026 The Future of Hybrid Warfare Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974 RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? Sun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America My Substack Email at [email protected]

Jul 6, 2026

I discuss the possibilities of America relinquishing its global ambition to reduce its footprint to a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere. The new technologies of AI, UAVs and hypersonics rather easily challenge the spending paradigms and mission architecture of the American armed forces. There are no near-peer competitors, every nation on Earth is now a peer to modern western war machines. America boasts a magnificent 20th century war machine is not fit for purpose for 21st century peer warfare. The crossroads is chock-full of landmines. References: Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America Martin van Creveld The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945 Colin Gray Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy William Lind Maneuver Warfare Handbook John Boyd Patterns of Conflict Michael Weiner Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA John Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessSun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare My Substack Email at [email protected]

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