
100 episodes

Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis & Aaron Stein
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- News
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4.8 • 392 Ratings
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The nuclear weapons, arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation podcast. Companion to the popular Arms Control Wonk blog (www.armscontrolwonk.com). Hosted by Jeffrey Lewis & Aaron Stein.
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One of Them is Wrong About That
Both plan on going first, but...
President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea is being piled on for discussing South Korean pursuits of nuclear weapons (although what he said *exactly* was distorted a little).
In the face of increasing pressure to respond to North Korea's nuclear posture, South Korea is realistically pursuing capabilities for rapid, precision strikes. North Korea feels similarly.
As Jeffrey always says: both plan on going first in a conflict, but one of them is going to be wrong.
Jeffrey and Aaron walk through President Yoon's statements, the complexities of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula, and the instabilities that result from mutual pre-emptive strike postures.
Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast! -
Detecting Missile Launches with Ionospheric Disturbances
Tyler Nighswander and Mike Nute have developed an incredible tool for detecting long-range missile and space launches by processing and visualizing ionospheric disturbances in GPS data.
In one of the most fascinating and technically complex episodes of the ACW pod, Tyler and Mike join Jeffrey to talk about their wild new open-source intelligence tool, how it works, and what it means for missile and rocket observation.
A visualization of their work can be seen here: https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1593452159365918722?s=20&t=hAI_EJvR8zCRMqj9u36yuw
And, of course, shout out to the ACW Slack Channel, wherin Tyler and Mike started this project.
Tyler and Mike can be found on twitter at: @tylerni7 and @michaelnute
Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast! -
How Sting Likes to Test
Jeeze that was a big missile.
North Korea has tested another large ICBM, and this one was (another) doozy. Jeffrey and Aaron talk through modelling this missile, the potential theft of missile tech from Ukraine, Kim Jong Un's Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, and the incredible Missile Launch Detection tool that @tylerni7 and @michaelnute have spearheaded in the ACW Slack channel.
Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast! -
New New START or New Finish?
The Biden administration has been working to re-kindle New START talks with Russia, while working to deter Russian WMD use in Ukraine, in an era that increasingly appears to be about risk management instead of risk reduction. How do you restart heavily managed talks in an era of COVID restrictions? How do you do on-site inspections during a conventional conflict?
Jeffrey and Aaron talk through the rough state of international nuclear arms control, the increasingly-complex balance of nuclear forces globally, and the core aspects of what makes deterrence actually work.
Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast! -
The Lake-Bed Missile
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Launch a missile get a pod
Aaron and Jeffrey talk about North Korea's record-setting number of missile launches and what the North Korean launch authorities look like. A new(?) ICBM, a new Hwasong-12 variant, the bizarre reservoir-bottom lake-missile, and a whole lotta rocket artillery are all keeping the community *very* busy...
Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!
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Another Crazy Train
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is giving people brain worms. Multiple terrible reports, citing oSiNt aNaLyStS, have recently been released and grossly overexaggerated the risk of nuclear weapons use around Ukraine. These reports, particularly about the "nuclear weapons convoy headed towards Ukraine," don't help anyone and just add noise to a chaotic narrative.
Jeffrey and Aaron take a knife to bad analysis, and muse on what deterrence actually means to the people living under it.
Tangentially related, Superproducer Scott is so excited to use this opening again, a year after its last use.
Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!
Customer Reviews
FOBs
Definitley one of the more educational ASMR podcasts out there.
Decent info if u can suffer through it
First episode I listened to was painful. Audio quality, so so. Content surprisingly decent, but too much chaff and self involved drivel. Not as dry or half hearted as some people think tank content. Not much competition in this space I guess
Useful, but only to a point
As one who is intimately interested in WMD arms control and who has a graduate degree in Global/National Security Studies, I was a core consumer for this podcast. Sadly Dr. Lewis has turned me off of this podcast through his use of profanity in instruction and his failure to observe a prime commandment of higher education - ‘Thou shalt not demonize “all”, lest your argument become an intellectual fallacy’.
Dr. Lewis is an unabashed Democrat supporter and he believes that no Republican, Libertarian, or any other political party can, might, or could bring about meaningful arms control measures to the fore. He ignores the uneducated statements that the current President or his senior policy makers utter.
This made him increasingly unlistenable for myself.
If one can screen out the biases and listen for the facts, you might find it useful, but Dr. Lewis is on the far side of the curve now and not self-moderating.