Ep 060 "The Military Historian's Craft: Past Tense Imperfect"
Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare PodcastShow Notes
This CG episode got the complete audio upgrade and revision to achieve the cleanest sound ever for the podcast series effective 22 June 2025 using the new technology at Chris Williams' Podsworth. I am an un-credentialed amateur historian who has done very little archive work and lack the substantial infrastructure credentialed historians have to practice their craft. I have debated esteemed historians and won on stage (Daniel Walker Howe looked at my CV and did not prepare) but that doesn't make me better than them. I think my various detours in life mostly outside the formal academy gives me a unique insight into how history works and why I think I am more sober than university historians. I describe some of the reasons I do it and the techniques I employ to get the single most accurate picture of what happened then to determine what's going on now. I am the Smedley D. Butler Fellow for Military Affairs at the Libertarian Institute. Recommended Reading: Mortimer Adler How To Read a Book Robert Strassler The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika (Landmark Series) Mike Snook How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed Mike Snook Like Wolves on the Fold: The Defence of Rorke’s Drift David Stahel Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East David Hackett Fischer Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought Keith Windschuttle The Killing of History John Burrow A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century Harry Elmer Barnes A History of Historical Writing US Army Center of Military History My Substack Email at [email protected]
More from Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]