Kyle Orton comes on the show to discuss Islam in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Some of the topics covered include: Saddam’s Islamist foreign policy reorientation in the 1980’s The Faith Campaign after the G...

Donald Trump reveals that he doesn’t know the names of the heads of the world’s biggest terrorist organizations. Shane asks whether that disqualifies him to be commander-in-chief. Turns out killing Anwar...

The cyberlaw podcast is back from hiatus with a bang. Our guest is Peter Singer, author of Ghost Fleet, a Tom Clancy-esque thriller designed to illustrate the author’s policy and military chops. The book...

Gen. David Petraeus has a new plan for fighting ISIS. Is it smart or is it totally nuts? Tamara talks about a new article by William McCants that takes us deep inside the mind and menace of Abu Bakr al-B...

North Caucasus Caucus comes on the show to talk about his recent research trip to Turkey. He and Aaron discussed the evolution of Turkish governmental policy towards jihadis, Turks’ role in jihadi groups...

In case you missed it last year, here's our special end of summer reairing of a Lawfare Podcast special edition:

This week on Rational Security: We speculate wildly on how China’s economic free fall could affect U.S. national security? What does international law have to say about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? And ...

As observers of the defense industry will know, recent developments, such as sequestration and contractor consolidation, have squeezed the American defense industry, resulting in the scraping of long-ter...

The Rational Security team is back in in action this week. Shane is back from Maine. I'm back from Israel. And Tamara is back from not being away. On this week's show, the top ISIS fighter in U.S. custod...

This episode features an interview with Samar Batrawi on Palestinians and the global jihadi movement. Some of the topics Aaron and Samar discussed include:

Last week, Ben posted five hard questions to both government and industry regarding encryption and the "going dark" debate. For this week's Podcast, we posed these questions and more on the issues of tec...

I know, I know, we promised that the Cyberlaw Podcast would go on hiatus for the month of August. But we also hinted that there might be a bonus episode. And here it is, a stimulating panel discussion w...

Thomas Hegghammer talks to Aaron about his new paper, “Assessing the Islamic State’s Commitment to Attacking the West,” in Perspectives on Terrorism, co-authored with Petter Nesser. This episode also fea...

The war with the Islamic State turns one today, and yet we still have no authorization for the use of force against the group.

On this week's episode, Shane abandons Tamara and me and goes on vacation. His empty chair is filled by Dan Byman, who brings a large Yemeni dagger and a National Counterterrorism Center Calendar, which ...

In this episode Aaron talks to Jacob Zenn about the group commonly referred to as Boko Haram. They covered a variety of topics including:

Last week, the podcast featured Aspen Security Forum interviews with a trio of Obama administration national security officials. This week is Part II, wherein we share edited discussions at the Aspen Sec...