At the Water's Edge

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The At the Water’s Edge Podcast explores national security and geopolitics from an insider’s perspective, looking at how national power, industrial policy, diplomacy, and military might shape our world and America’s place in it.

  1. hace 2 días

    Trump's Trade War Could Starve His Own War Machine

    Trump just invoked a Depression-era tariff statute that's never been used at this scale — against the one G7 ally that's a sole-source supplier for the U.S. Army's artillery propellant and a critical link in the F-35 supply chain. Scott breaks down the actual USMCA timeline, which of the administration's five stated justifications for the trade war actually holds up, and why the timing — six months into the Iran war, with the Pentagon pushing contractors to surge munitions production — makes this one of the more strategically incoherent fights Washington could pick right now.

  2. hace 6 días

    Trump’s Economic D-Day Will Backfire | Robert Pape

    The ceasefire MOU with Iran has expired, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has launched what he's calling an "economic D-Day" — the same day Iran's new National Security Council chief, Mohsen Rezaei, threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz to any nation that cooperates with US sanctions. Professor Robert Pape returns to the show with the historical argument he's been building for months: since World War One, economic pressure has never once ended a major war on its own. Not Germany, not Japan, not Iraq, not Iran to date. It takes extraordinary military force layered on top — and the cases where policymakers convinced themselves otherwise are the cases that produced the worst blowback, including the oil embargo that pushed Japan toward Pearl Harbor. This episode breaks down what the new sanctions package can realistically accomplish, why Iran's 3,600-mile land border makes this a harder problem than any prior sanctions regime, and what Saudi Arabia's new defense pact with Turkey and Pakistan signals about the region's confidence in Washington. 🔗 Robert Pape's live briefing tonight + full memo: escalationtrap.substack.com 📩 Send a question for the professor: askrobertpape@gmail.com (personal email only, please) 📬 At the Water's Edge on Substack: substack.com/@scottatthewatersedgeorg 🛡️ Geopolitical risk consulting: grayzoneadvisory.com

  3. 10 ago

    Washington Is Watching. Iran Is Moving. | Robert Pape

    Iran has moved from survival to ambition to hard power — and it's reshaping the balance of power in the Middle East while Washington stays on the sidelines. University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape returns for his weekly real-time breakdown of the U.S.-Iran conflict. This week: a tentative Iran-Oman deal on Strait of Hormuz traffic, Iran's new list of demands to reopen it, two overlapping defense coalitions forming across the Gulf and Red Sea, and Pape's enrichment-curve analysis on how close Iran actually is to a nuclear weapon — and why he says U.S. policy is teaching them to build one. In this episode: – The Iran-Oman Strait agreement and Iran's demands to reopen Hormuz – The Mecca joint defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan – The Houthi war on Saudi oil and Iran's "resistance security belt" strategy – Why Gulf states are drifting out of America's orbit – Pape's case for why Iran is on track to become the fourth global power – The path to $6 gas, and why every major power in this conflict keeps walking into its own escalation trap – Audience questions on Europe's role and the Obama-era nuclear deal counterfactual Got a question for Prof. Pape? Send it to askrobertpape@gmail.com for a shot at a future episode. Robert Pape is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and author of The Escalation Trap on Substack: escalationtrap.substack.com More analysis every week on the Substack: substack.com/@scottatthewatersedgeorg Need geopolitical risk analysis for your organization? grayzoneadvisory.com

  4. 3 ago

    "This Is Strategic Paralysis" | Robert Pape on the Power Vacuum in the Persian Gulf

    This is the latest episode in The Escalation Trap, an ongoing series with Robert Pape of the University of Chicago tracking the war with Iran in real time — and the first episode where audience questions go directly to Pape on air. We open with what's actually known about the pause in strikes and the low-level Iran-Oman talks over Hormuz transit fees, which Pape argues is not a sign of progress but of strategic paralysis: a White House caught between an air campaign that hasn't achieved its goals and a negotiated path that means conceding to Iran's steadily expanding demands. Pape connects this to a larger thesis — that American dominance in the Persian Gulf, essentially unchallenged since the 1991 Gulf War, is giving way to a power vacuum that regional actors are moving to fill. He ties this directly to the Minnesota water-system cyberattacks, now assessed by U.S. intelligence as likely Iranian in origin, which he characterizes as a calibrated test of American resolve. He closes with his "nightmare scenario" for the next two months of the war, built around economic pressure, political necessity, and the risk of an Iranian response that reaches beyond the region. In our first audience Q&A segment, we put listener questions to Pape directly: whether anything could stop Iran from targeting Gulf desalination infrastructure serving 66 million people, whether a U.S. land blockade on Iran is realistically achievable, and whether the war in Ukraine and the war with Iran could become linked through Caspian Sea shipping. Robert Pape publishes ongoing frameworks and updates on this war at The Escalation Trap: https://escalationtrap.substack.com/ Scott's Substack: https://substack.com/@scottatthewatersedgeorg

  5. 30 jul

    Former Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: “The Colossus Is Awake”

    America Can't Build Weapons Fast Enough | The Pentagon's Former Acting Chairman Explains Why Admiral Chris Grady (Ret.) spent over 40 years in the Navy, commanded at every level from ship to fleet, and served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — including a stretch as Acting Chairman during one of the most chaotic weeks in recent Pentagon history. Now retired and serving as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Business Executives for National Security (BENS), he joins the show to break down why America's defense industrial base can't keep pace with modern conflict, and what it would actually take to fix it. We cover his own framework for how the character of war is changing: the shift from platform-centric to system-centric thinking, why "attritable mass" is rewriting the cost-exchange math of modern combat, why the electromagnetic spectrum is now a contested warfighting domain in its own right, and why the industrial base itself has become a tool of deterrence. Along the way: the 155mm shell shortage, the cost-exchange problem of cheap drones against expensive interceptors, why the U.S. still hasn't fielded a real answer to 1991's Blue Force Tracker, and the workforce gap behind it all, including why a welder can out-earn a lot of college grads. Read Adm. Grady's article, "The Future of War," on The BENS Lens: https://thebenslens.substack.com/p/the-future-of-war Learn more about BENS: [bens.org] Subscribe to my Substack: https://substack.com/@scottatthewatersedgeorg

  6. 29 jul

    You Can’t Bomb Iran Into Surrender | Robert Pape

    This is the latest episode in The Escalation Trap, an ongoing series with Robert Pape of the University of Chicago tracking the war with Iran in real time. Pape recorded this episode without power of his own — tornadoes had just knocked out electricity across the south side of Chicago — and turns his own blackout into a working case study for what it would actually mean for the U.S. to take down Iran's electric grid. We walk through the difference between hitting a grid's transformers and hitting its generator halls, why one is fixed in days and the other takes months, and what a real months-long blackout does to a city of ten million people: food spoilage, water pressure collapse, hospitals losing dialysis and surgical capacity, and no air conditioning in near-100-degree heat. Pape explains why that level of damage — what he calls "medium" civilian punishment — tends to produce revenge rather than surrender, drawing on his historical research into World War II bombing campaigns and Pearl Harbor, and where the ceiling actually sits before a population is too devastated to seek payback. From there we turn to the drone hunt: the scale problem behind suppressing Iran's Shaheed arsenal, why the search area is one and a half times the size of California, and why Pape doesn't believe the Strait of Hormuz reopens before the midterms. We close on the political clock both Washington and Tehran are racing against, and why Pape thinks Iran's actual target has never been our bases in the Gulf — it's the presidency itself. Robert Pape publishes ongoing frameworks and updates on this war at The Escalation Trap: https://escalationtrap.substack.com/ Scott's Substack: https://substack.com/@scottatthewatersedgeorg

  7. 23 jul

    This Should Be Illegal. It's Not

    Cities and towns across America are signing non-disclosure agreements with corporations — and in some cases, officials aren't even allowed to tell the public an NDA exists. Investigative journalist Miranda Spivack joins the show to explain how local government secrecy became a national security issue. Miranda spent twenty years at The Washington Post covering state and local government. Her new book, Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back (The New Press), documents how "accidental activists" across the country have fought back against poisoned water, toxic firefighter gear, and opaque data center deals. We cover why data centers are driving a wave of secret NDAs between corporations and local officials, the Hoosick Falls, NY water contamination case, what happened when Amazon went hunting for its second headquarters, why the collapse of local news makes all of this harder to catch, and how local government secrecy connects to national power and America's data infrastructure race. Guest: Miranda S. Spivack — veteran journalist, former Washington Post editor/reporter, Fulbright Scholar, and author of Backroom Deals in Our Backyards (The New Press, 2025). Book: available from The New Press with discount code BACKROOM30, or at your local bookstore and bookshop.org Substack: backroomdeals.substack.com X: @mirandareporter

  8. 21 jul

    The War Is Spiraling | Robert Pape on Iran and the Escalation Trap

    The war with Iran has entered what Robert Pape, Professor at the University of Chicago, calls the "spiral phase" — a dynamic that's both vertical, with harsher strikes on both sides, and horizontal, with the Red Sea now pulled into the conflict via a Houthi blockade. This week brings the death of three more U.S. service members, bringing the total to 17, a bombing campaign now targeting Iranian civilian infrastructure at scale, a reinstated naval blockade, and strikes on multiple Kuwaiti desalination plants — cutting off water that millions of people depend on, with no backup supply. We cover why Pape believes he's been modeling this exact war for twenty years, and why he traces its real starting point to the bombing of the Fordow enrichment facility in June 2025, not the more commonly cited February 2026 date. We discuss new intelligence around a facility Pape refers to as "Pickaxe Mountain" and concerns about uranium enrichment moving toward weapons-grade levels, why Pape argues that neither Trump nor Iran actually controls the outcome of this war — commercial shipping companies do — and the parallel Pape draws between Trump's political calculus now and Lyndon Johnson's decision-making during Vietnam. Pape publishes ongoing analysis of the conflict in his Substack, The Escalation Trap: https://escalationtrap.substack.com/ For more analysis on this conflict, subscribe to the At the Water's Edge Substack: https://substack.com/@scottatthewatersedgeorg This is a weekly recurring conversation tracking the Iran war in real time. New episodes drop every week.

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The At the Water’s Edge Podcast explores national security and geopolitics from an insider’s perspective, looking at how national power, industrial policy, diplomacy, and military might shape our world and America’s place in it.

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  • Creador
    WRKdefined Podcast Network
  • Años de actividad
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodios
    80
  • Clasificación
    Explícito
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    © All rights reserved by WRKdefined
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