November 02, 2018

Ep. 27: CENTCOM's Gen. Votel; Exosuits and super soldiers; Weaponizing social media and more

By: Paul Scharre and Lauren Fish

This week on the program:
• During a flight over Turkmenistan this week, America’s top commander in the Middle East spoke by phone with Defense One Executive Editor Kevin Baron. Kevin explains (at the 2:07 mark) what Gen. Joseph Votel told him about America’s military involvement in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and more.
• Then (30:32) we’ll turn to exosuits and pack robots of the future — many are already available, and they’re only getting better. We’ll hear from Paul Scharre and Lauren Fish about those and other robotic gadgets you just might find on soldiers 20 and 30 years from now.
• And we’ll end (49:48) with a conversation on the quieter wars — and sometimes not so quiet ones — going on every day in the chatty spaces of our Facebook and Twitter feeds. P.W. Singer and Emerson Brooking — co-authors of a new book about the weaponization of social media called “LikeWar” — join us to talk about radicalization in America, determining fact from falsehood, and whether we humans are even capable of disagreeing more productively in the months to come.

Listen to this episode and more from the Defense One Radio podcast.

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