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Pauline Shanks Kaurin PhD. was, until recently, the Stockdale Chair for Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College. She’d been there since 2018, teaching philosophy and ethics to U.S. military officers and the occasional civilian. Then came Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and marching orders she said stifled academic freedom.

So she resigned.

On this episode of Angry Planet, Pauline talks us through her decision and tells us what she saw from the inside of one of the U.S. military’s most lauded academic institutions as the new administration seeks to restrict what’s taught in the classroom.

• Disclosures and caveats
• “A moral dilemma I couldn’t resolve”
• On Obedience
• Admiral James Stockdale
• “We’re all in vacation mode.”
• “The snitch line”
• Purging books, telling professors what not to talk about
• “I don’t want to be on Fox News”
• It happened fast
• Suggestions of pulling manuscripts at the editor
• What happens to a military that isn’t taught honor and ethics?
• Compliance versus deference
• Avoiding discomfort as a policy position
• Disagreements as combat
• A heavy metal argument
• The cost of taking a moral stand
• “Everyday is ethics day”

A Military-Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest

Disgraceful Pardons: Dishonoring Our Honorable

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You can’t win a war with airpower alone, despite what the U.S. Air Force will tell you. For more than 100 years, the masters of the air have promised that military and political objectives can be achieved if you just let them drop enough bombs.

It’s a theory that’s been tested, and fallen short, many times. Operation Midnight Hammer, the Trump administration’s use of 14 GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Iranian nuclear sites, is just the latest test. The promise is that this has set back Iran’s nuclear program (it probably has) but Israel is hoping for much more—regime change in the Islamic Republic.

Time will tell, but I’m not betting on it.

On this episode of Angry Planet we zoom out and talk about the strategy behind airpower in the 21st century. Robert Farley, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kentucky, is on the show today to give us his thoughts on the Iran strikes, airpower in general, and the lessons to be learned from watching the war in Ukraine.

• Should we abolish the independent Air Force?
• Was Israel’s war on Iran a success?
• Has airpower ever forced regime change?
• Curtis LeMay mentioned
• Bombing doesn’t create revolutionary fervor
• Airpower as theater
• “Israel-splaining”
• What’s a Golden Dome for anyway?
• Are FPV drones part of the air force arsenal or infantry weapons?

Strikes on Iran Show the Force, and Limits, of Airpower

Robert on PBS in Kentucky

Buy Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force

The Five-Ring Circus: How Airpower Enthusiasts Forgot About Interdiction

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The ocean is vast, beautiful, and lawless. Thousands of miles from any coast, power belongs to those who seize it.

On this episode of Angry Planet, journalist Ian Urbina stops by to discuss the Outlaw Ocean Project and the second season of its incredible podcast. Urbina and his team of investigative journalists are telling stories about human rights, labor, and the environment on the vast swaths of the planet covered in water.

• The hidden cost of the seafood supply chain
• Why the ocean is such a lawless place
• “Crimes at the intersection of environment and human rights.”
• Libya is “hell on earth” for migrants
• Aliou’s journey to Libya
• How Europe enables Libyan militias to police its borders
• The migration to slavery pipeline
• A team of journalists at gunpoint
• Life on a Chinese squid fishing vessel
• Low tech and high tech reporting gets the job done
• “That is what life is like in that niche of hell.”

Listen to the Outlaw Ocean Podcast

Inside a migrant detention center in Libya

China: The Superpower of Seafood

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