When the Chinese company DeepSeek recently released an artificial intelligence model called R1, its surprisingly advanced capability and the efficiency with which DeepSeek claimed to have trained the model sparked a wave of discussion about how rapidly Chinese AI development was progressing. But how is the competition to achieve superior AI technologies between China and the United States shaping up? And, given that the governments of both countries envision important military applications of AI, what implications does this have for the broader US-China strategic competition? To explore these questions and more, John Amble is joined by Bill Hannas, lead analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), and Sam Bresnick, a CSET research fellow.

The MWI Podcast is produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974.

After twenty years of America’s post-9/11 wars and the US military’s struggle to build capable and effective security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is an important discussion taking place about what role security force assistance should play for the United States in the very different strategic environment that is taking shape. Will it be a mission that we'll be required to do in order to compete with Russia and China? Or will it become tangential to our preparations for large-scale combat operations? And given the challenges we faced over the past two decades, what needs to happen to achieve better outcomes in the future? Will Reno, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, and Franky Matisek, a military professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, have researched the topic deeply, including conducting hundreds of interviews in the field. They join this episode to discuss their findings.

The MWI Podcast is produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974.

For well over a decade, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad managed to hold onto power during a complicated civil war involving a number of anti-regime rebel groups. And then, rebels launched a lightning offensive that saw a series of Syrian cities—including, ultimately, the capital Damascus—fall. Assad was gone and more than a half-century of rule by his family came to an end. To explore how that happened and what comes next, John Amble is joined on this episode by Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies with deep expertise on Syria.

The MWI Podcast is produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974.