Episode 13: Always Above: Space Force and the New Frontiers of an Increasingly Contested Warfighting Domain

Vanuatu is a country comprised of about 80 islands in the South Pacific. The United States established diplomatic relations with Vanuatu in 1986, with a non-resident US ambassador overseeing diplomatic interests in Vanuatu from the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea. Diplomatic engagement with Vanuatu deepened in 2024, when the United States opened an embassy in Vanuatu’s capital, Port-Vila. Instrumental in this effort was Navy Captain Mark Asuncion, who was the senior U.S. official in Vanuatu during this period. He joins The Debrief to reflect on this experience.

The Honorable Christopher R. Hill had a distinguished career at the U.S. Department of State, serving as a five-time ambassador and diplomat at the center of some of the most consequential challenges in American foreign policy. Over three decades in the Foreign Service, which he joined in 1977, Ambassador Hill's career propelled him into high-stakes negotiations with some of America’s most intractable adversaries, from helping lead negotiations in the 1990s that ended the war in Bosnia to serving as the senior U.S. negotiator to the Six Party Talks, which sought to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in the mid-2000s. In 2009 and 2010, Ambassador Hill led the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as the United States wound down its combat mission in Iraq, and in March 2022, the Senate confirmed Ambassador Hill for a fifth time to a U.S. posting abroad, this time to serve as ambassador to Serbia mere weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This followed a period when he served as Dean of the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, where he wrote The Outpost: A Diplomat at Work. He joins The Debrief to reflect on his distinguished diplomatic career after delivering the 2025 convocation address at the U.S. Naval War College.

Over the last quarter century, digital technologies have transformed the way we ways we communicate, the way we shop, the way we bank, and even the way we socialize and consume information. With these advancements have come a number of vulnerabilities that adversaries and malign actors have sought to exploit in the cyber age. Joining The Debrief to help weigh the challenges and opportunities posed by cyberspace is Dr. Derek S. Reveron, professor and chair of the National Security Affairs Department and co-author, with John E. Savage, of Security in the Cyber Age: An Introduction to Policy and Technology (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

The Arctic encompasses not only the territory of eight countries, but also vital geological features and strategic waterways that have made the region an area of ecological concern and geopolitical contestation. To help navigate these waters, The Debrief talks with Dr. Mary Thompson-Jones, a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer and professor and chair of Women in Diplomacy and National Security, who is the author of America in the Arctic: Foreign Policy and Competition in the Melting North (Columbia University Press, 2025).

Today, economics is more a part of the national security equation than it has ever been. Trade, science, technology, innovation, and supply chains – to name a few issues – intersect with national security with more depth, breadth, and frequency every year. As a consequence, U.S. economic agencies are increasingly called to the table to solve national security challenges. To help understand these many connections and what economic security looks like in practice at the highest levels of decision-making, The Debrief spoke with Don Graves, who served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2021-2025.