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Lily Shabihan
The telegraph.
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Lily Shabihan
South Korea's National Intelligence Service has recently announced that it is increasingly likely that Kim ju Ae, the 12 or 13 year old daughter of Kim Jong Un, will be the next successor.
Phil Lockwood
We will measure our success not only.
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By the battles we win, but also by the wars we end.
Dr. Edward Howe
Right now all eyes are on Washington, but who's actually watching Europe at the moment? The deepening ties between China, Russia and.
Lily Shabihan
North Korea would certainly have some in Washington concerned.
Roland Oliphant
And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.
Phil Lockwood
We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transitions.
Dr. Edward Howe
The IDF will continue to uphold the ceasefire agreement and will respond firmly to any violation of it.
Roland Oliphant
I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battle lines. It's Monday 16th February 2026. This weekend the Munich Security Conference was full of politicians calling for European rearmament and autonomy from the United States. But what about the arms companies? The people who actually make weapons? Do they think the rhetoric matches the reality? I spoke to a European defense startup to find out, but first, on Friday, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was reported to have chosen his daughter Kim Joo Ae as his heir. If confirmed, she'd be the first female to rule North Korea since Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung founded the dictatorship after the Second World War. And I say female rather than woman because she is still A child. Is she about to become the youngest person in history to control an arsenal of nuclear weapons? The Telegraph's Lilly Shabihan has the story. Lily, welcome to battle lines. What do we know what exactly has been announced and by who?
Lily Shabihan
South Korea's National Intelligence Service has recently announced that it is increasingly likely that Kim ju Ae, the 12 or 13 year old daughter of Kim Jong Un, will be the next successor. The key factor that will indicate that she will become the next leader could be at North Korea's party congress, which will take place later this month. It's the largest political event in the country and only takes place every five years. If Kim Ju A attends or receives a title at the party congress, it is likely that she will be the next successor.
Roland Oliphant
At the moment we're going on reports from South Korean intelligence and they're saying highly likely rather than 100% certain.
Lily Shabihan
Yeah, it's not certain at all. And there are other people that could be the next successor. For example, Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong. She's widely regarded as the second most powerful person in the country and she holds a senior position in the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea. She was long tipped to be the next leader, but with the increased scale of presence of Kim Joo A Since 2022, she's appeared a number of times at a number of important events. I would say the most symbolic was when she Beijing and met with Xi Jinping, who is essentially North Korea's biggest ally. It's increasingly likely that she will be the one to take over.
Roland Oliphant
So just off the top of my head, Lily, North Korea, the succession goes Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, all men. How unusual is it would it be for a, for a female successor to be named?
Lily Shabihan
It would be very unusual and unprecedented, to be honest, because North Korea is a very patriarchal society and experts have drawn into question whether she would have the respect of the public without a serious propaganda campaign making her seem like a serious contender. For example, her attending military events, especially for example, when she visited the launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile in 2022, it was seen by some as a symbol that she can be taken seriously and she is the future because she's attending military launches. But at the same time, having Kim Yo Jong tipped as a potential successor implies that it wouldn't be out of the question for a woman to take over.
Roland Oliphant
This is her aunt.
Lily Shabihan
But North Korean ideological doctrine also appears to enforce the idea of a hereditary heir and saying that essentially it must go father to son, son, grandson to grandson.
Roland Oliphant
When dictators name their successors, you know, traditionally a dictator will wait quite a long time before doing that. Is there any reason to believe that? I know that Kim needs to name a successor now. Is he sick? Is he ill? I know he's a smoker and he's on the heavy side.
Lily Shabihan
Yes. So he's just 41 or 42, and he's already struggling with problems of obesity, of diabetes. He's a heavy smoker, he's a heavy drinker. And during COVID it was rumored that he was very sick and he was having to seek treatment. So it could be that he can't get his weight and smoking habits under control and might need to be proactive. Naming a successor. It could also just be a sign that the Kim line is here to stay. It's not leaving anytime soon. They've already got the future leader in the workings in training.
Roland Oliphant
Right. So it says, you know, I'm not preparing to shuffle off this mortal coil anytime soon, but even when I do, my line is here to stay.
Lily Shabihan
Primed and ready.
Roland Oliphant
Primed and ready. It's a dynastic thing. Last thing, Lily. Tell me about their dress sense. These extraordinary photographs of the two Kims, father and daughter, matching outfits with kind of James Bond villain leather jackets.
Phil Lockwood
What's that all about?
Lily Shabihan
When she first appeared on the scene, she was wearing very mature clothing for such a young girl. I'm thinking tailored suits, pencil skirts, high heels. Her hair was down compared to the customary updos that are mandatory for most North Korean. However, like you say in recent years, she's coming out in sunglasses, in leather trench coats, hair done up, matching her father, who does love a leather bomber jacket. It's a fashion force, the pair of them together.
Roland Oliphant
Fashion force. I guess it sends that signal of alignment, doesn't it?
Lily Shabihan
Yeah. They walk alongside each other, they're the same height. They talk and confer amongst one another. It's clear that she is seen as his equal.
Roland Oliphant
And how old is she now?
Lily Shabihan
She's either 12 or 13.
Roland Oliphant
12 or 13, depending on reports. Very, very young and already as tall as her father.
Lily Shabihan
He's between five' two and five' nine, but he has been known to wear inserts in his shoes.
Roland Oliphant
Inserts in his shoes to give him.
Lily Shabihan
A bit of extra height.
Roland Oliphant
How do we know that South Korean intelligence even knows what he puts in his shoes?
Lily Shabihan
Wasn't it you who interviewed a North Korean analyst who said that you're not likely to be refuted? But it's very hard to find the truth as well.
Roland Oliphant
I did once interview someone who said that. It's very true indeed. Lily Shanahar, thank you so much for joining us on Battlelands Telegraph Foreign news reporter Lily Shanahal there. Now, North Korea is of course an incredibly opaque country. Few people on the outside can claim to understand the context and nuances of its political system. So to find out what all this might mean, I turned to Dr. Edward Howe. He's a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford and one of very few UK academics who follows internal nor Korean politics. I started by asking him what he made of the news.
Dr. Edward Howe
So I think we need to be clear that Kim Jong Un himself has not yet announced his daughter as his successor. The South Korean Intelligence Agency has said that Kim Jong Un has chosen his daughter as the successor. And I think the reason I mention this is because we do need to make sure that we do not rush to conclusions here because only when we hear or see something from the North Korean regime, from the Kim Jong Un regime, will we know for certain. That said, I think Xi has been increasingly visible over the past year, couple of years, which indicates that the likelihood that she would succeed him in the event of his death in the longer term is reasonably high. But I think we need to be careful here. Firstly, yes, she's been increasingly visible with her father at intercontinental ballistic missile launches, at military banquets, and crucially, she accompanied him to his visit to Beijing last September. When he disembarked from his train, Xi followed behind him. And actually, even earlier today, we saw reports that Kim Jong Un had opened a new housing complex where he would house the families of North Korean soldiers who had been killed in Russia's war against Ukraine in the Kursk region. And accompanying him was his daughter, Kim Ju Ae. I think what we need to be mindful of though, is that if Kim Jong Un were to drop dead tomorrow, power would not likely transfer to his 13 year old daughter. She is barely a teenager. She has been following her father around in public, but little else really. If in this event, power would transfer to most likely transfer to his sister, Kim Yo Jong, she has since 2014 been leading the propaganda and agitation department, so responsible for disseminating North Korea's propaganda. And she is a rising member of the North Korean elite. When Kim Jong Un was incapacitated with COVID she was issuing statements on his behalf. And I think also the prospect of some kind of tussle for power between aunt and niece cannot be ruled out. So there's a lot, there's still a lot of uncertainty here how Reliable.
Roland Oliphant
Do we think the South Korean intelligence service is on this stuff? Because an awful lot of what we report actually about what's happening in North Korea often, as you say, ultimately comes back to what South Korean intelligence has said. Do they have a good track record?
Dr. Edward Howe
It's reliable, but again, it's not the same as actually hearing something from the North Korean regime itself. Now, only a few years ago, the South Korean intelligence agency made clear that Kim Jong Un had a daughter, and not just that, that he had two other children as well, including an older son. But those two children are not really deemed to be worthy of being a successor. That is true. Right. We know that he has a daughter. We know absolutely nothing about these other two children, by the way. That said, I think we do need to bear in mind that looking back at the transitions of leadership in North Korea also doesn't really give us much guidance. Kim Il Sung, the first leader of North Korea, he appointed his son, Kim Jong Il, the father of Kim Jong Un, to be the North Korean leader in 1980, to be his successor. It would be 14 years after, in 1994, when Kim Il Sung would die, when power transferred over to Kim Jong Il. He died in December 2011, and it was 14, 15 months beforehand, only that late, really, that we saw Kim Jong Un being revealed in public, being promoted to the equivalent of a four star general, and being named as the great successor. The history of North Korean leadership transitions, the past two, doesn't give us that reliable a picture. So the South Korean intelligence agency's views are often the most reliable that we have.
Roland Oliphant
What's the context in which this happens, if we believe it has happened and he has chosen his successor? You are one of very few, I think, British academics who try to report on contemporary goings on in North Korea. It must be pretty difficult, really. As far as we know, what is the domestic context in which this decision takes place, or perhaps international context? What do you think is on Kim's mind when he decides this?
Dr. Edward Howe
Firstly, Kim Jong Un has been, in my view, the most successful North Korean leader hitherto far more successful than his grandfather was during the Cold War. In terms of the international context, he has benefited greatly and his regime has benefited greatly from the relationship with Russia as a result of the Ukraine war. Both Russia and North Korea now call each other allies. Right. And Kim made very clear that North Korea would do everything to support Russia. I think secondly, Kim Jong Un has clamped down on domestic dissent. And I'm not just talking about in terms of amongst the North Korean youth In terms of targeting young people for listening to K Pop or watching Korean dramas and films, he's also made sure that there is elite loyalty. It's only a couple of years ago when North Korean state media showed pictures and videos of Kim Jong Un with his elite officials, including the North Korean Foreign Minister, attending an ideological basically lecture or school. They were being lectured on and Kim was walking around the classroom looking at his officials, quote, unquote work. So he has clamped down severely on any signs of domestic dissent, used the three year coronavirus lockdown from January 2020 to 2023 to further this. And I think another thing that's important domestically is that we must remember that Kim Jong Un has two aims. The first is regime survival. That's true of any despotic regime. But the second is ultimately, Kim wants North Korea to be recognized as a de facto nuclear armed state. This is not new. This is what he's been ever since he took power in December 2011. And he is making strides in this vein. In terms of the domestic narrative, Kim Jong Un also wants to portray himself as a family man, as a paternal and a maternal leader. This is again something that's very much been in the North Korean historical narrative ever since Kim Il Sung became the first leader of the country. So I think by going around showing public displays with his daughter, with Kim Ju Ae, I think that also has a role to play with respect to this broader domestic narrative of Kim portraying himself as a family man, as a caring leader, a paternal maternal leader, and that must also not be discounted.
Roland Oliphant
Just give us an idea of what we should be looking at in the coming weeks, months, years. As a North Korea watcher, what are the kind of the big questions on your mind, the things that you're going to be passing South Korean intelligence reports and North Korean media for in the near to medium term.
Dr. Edward Howe
So in the immediate term, we need to keep an eye out for the 9th Workers Party Congress. This takes place every five years. The Workers Party Congress, the last one took place in 2021 and saw Kim Jong Un basically outline a shopping list of all of the nuclear weapons, missiles, other forms of weapons that he wanted. And North Korea has made progress in testing and launching these new forms of weaponry. So this will take place in a few weeks time. Most likely. We need to pay attention not only to whether Kim Jong Un decides to show his daughter again or name his daughter as a successor, perhaps. I think that's a little bit of a long shot, but we can't rule anything out. But we must also pay attention to North Korea's broader war strategy, North Korea's foreign policy aims and what it aims to outline this year, particularly given how since the last Party Congress in 2021, North Korea has ruled out the reunific of South Korea peacefully, the peaceful reunification with the South. That's been ruled out. That was ruled out at the end of 2023. And North Korea now does not want to talk to South Korea at all. I mean, it doesn't want to talk to the US at the moment, but it wants to talk to South Korea even less. It views South Korea as a hostile enemy, as its primary foe, basically as another separate state, not the same Korea. So how this will feed in to Pyongyang's broader planning from policy and strategy I think is something we should watch out for, as well as the obvious question of whether Trump and Kim will meet again and again. North Korea doesn't want to talk to the US at the moment, but it wants to talk to South Korea even less.
Roland Oliphant
Dr. Edward Howell of Oxford University there after the break. If America and Europe still agree on anything, it's that Europe needs to rearm. But is Europe's arms industry ready to meet the challenge?
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Roland Oliphant
Welcome back. You're Listening to Battle Lines, the Telegraph's defence and foreign policy podcast. Before we go on, nothing we do here would be possible without you, the listeners. And we have had some very interesting feedback from listeners over the past week or two. So I'd just like to say thank you for that and please keep it coming. Let us know what you think of the show, what you'd like to hear more of, and any topics you'd like us to cover. Now, this weekend's Munich Security Conference was dominated by one theme, European rearmament and military autonomy from the United States. Everyone was talking about it. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States wanted European allies who can defend themselves. Germany and France said they're talking about developing a European nuclear deterrent that can protect the continent without the help of the us And Sir Keir Starmer called for a new approach to defence procurement to wake up what he called the sleeping giant that is European military potential. But if Europe is to rearm, it will need money, factories and raw materials, not to mention a skilled workforce to build the weapons. Is the European defence industry able to do what the politicians are demanding of it? Or to put it another way, are the politicians doing what they need to do to let industry succeed? How do the people who actually make weapons rate the politicians words? To find out, I turned to Phil Lockwood, a former Canadian soldier and head of innovation at NATO who is now Director of international for Starc, a German startup that builds AI enabled loitering munitions. That's kamikaze drones to you and I, and unmanned surface vehicles for Europe's armies and navies. I began by asking him what he made of the mood at this year's Munich Conference.
Phil Lockwood
Maybe a few things that I think are important to highlight. First of all, we've had a pretty tumultuous last few weeks in respect to the transatlantic alliance. Obviously we had everything that was going on around Davos in respect of Greenland and the run up to that. We had President Trump's speech, we had Prime Minister Carney of Canada's speech that talked about middle powers, and we had the Munich Security Conference issue their annual report about a week ago that I think is talking about Under Destruction. I think that was the title of the report. And it's this question of where is the international order, this rules based liberal order that has been, I think, the focal point of the transatlantic alliance over the course of the last 75 years. And so the question is, is that under destruction, are we witnessing a sea change and are we witnessing that being torn down we live in a world where we probably cannot rely on the United States to the extent that we have over the last 75 years. And so what does it look like tangibly for us in respect to burden sharing? Because the burden sharing commitments for defense spending have already been agreed. There was a run up to the Hague summit. We have the three and a half percent of defense spending, the extra 1.5% on industrial resilience and other capacity for this 5% target that allied heads of state agreed to last, I want to say, June or July. And so I think this MSC is going to be much more about the European nations grouping together and what it looks like in terms of their next steps towards probably a greater degree of sovereignty and autonomy. And so what does that mean from an industry perspective? I think for quite some time, certainly over the last year, industry has been watching nations across the alliance increase their commitments to defense spending. And I think at this msc, it marks, I think we are all quite assured that nations will be spending more on defense. There's questions about how they do that, what that looks like, and what does that look like from what is still a relatively fragmented market with a number of state actors and sovereign actors that are pushing for national benefit. And the tension, I think, between individual nations and what they're looking for, what they're looking to buy, what they're looking in terms of their economic gain as a nation versus the collective security.
Roland Oliphant
Part of the reason we want to talk to you is because, you know, there's lots of people who will pontificate endlessly about strategies and alliances and things like that. We don't perhaps often enough listen to the people who have to build the weapons that we say we want. About a year ago, exactly, exactly A year ago, J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth kind of poured a bucket of cold water over the heads of the European part of the Alliance. They said, look, Europe's no longer America's priority for defense and you're going to have to do a lot more yourselves and so on from an industry perspective in terms of stepping up in terms of military production, how do you think Europe has responded to that over the past 12 months? Do you think that collectively, Europe, European industry, European states have begun to get more serious about military production?
Phil Lockwood
Absolutely. In short, they have gotten significantly more serious. And I think that's collective across the board. Obviously, the commitment to increased defense spending only came about five months after last MSc and the speeches from Rubio and Hegseth, et cetera. And so we've seen that change. We've seen more nations increase their procurement spending. We've seen the launch from the European Union of the SAFE Funding Mechanism and this Rearm Europe initiative. We saw a significant amount of countries apply for literally hundreds of billions worth of spending from the EU to be able to go and to bolster the capabilities pretty rapidly. That said, I think certain nations have done this more aggressively than others, and I think none more aggressively than Germany at this stage. So the commitment to increase defense spending in Germany with the release of the debt break, et cetera, have led to a major sea change. And I think from an industry perspective, what I would say is as someone who's been tracking defense technology and startups in the defense technology space for well over five years, probably close to about 10, when this ecosystem really started to develop the contracts that have been awarded to defense startups in Europe. If I compare where this innovation ecosystem is at compared to the United States, and how many years it took some of the larger American players to get contracts, Europe is just moving much more rapidly and aggressively than the environment that we've seen in the US which has been much more of a slow build. And so you're seeing European startups like stark that are 1, 2, 3 years old, in some cases getting significant eight and nine figure contracts. That's unheard of in the world of defense technology. And if you were in the United States three or four years ago as a defense technology startup, you'd be shocked by seeing the rapid movement that some of these countries have had in terms of their procurement mechanisms.
Roland Oliphant
Yeah, that's really interesting. The narrative is often Europe is lagging the United States. That sounds like actually in one area you're moving faster. Could you tell us a bit about what that means for you? I did write a piece about Stark and your maritime drones last time we met actually in Portugal. Where does Stark, where does your company fit into this, into this scenario you've painted?
Phil Lockwood
When we last spoke, that was September, we were probably a little over a year into our journey. We've had another basically six months pass and we are growing extraordinarily quickly across all of our product lines, actually. So I think maybe three lines of effort. The first one, in respect of our product and product development. We are continuing to increase the numbers of products that we build because we are seeing demand for so many different capabilities and we think that we have the capability of meeting some of those demands. And so we are aggressively growing our engineering and R and D teams and setting up new programs and products to be able to support our customers. Which are across a number of countries in Europe.
Roland Oliphant
Just give us some examples of those products. What is it you're making?
Phil Lockwood
We develop loitering munitions and different types of strike drones. And we have our maritime programs. Some of these products we haven't launched publicly. But what I can say is we have a fair number of different types of loitering munitions and aircraft systems that we are developing that are maturing pretty rapidly at the moment. And then when it comes to our maritime capabilities, I think everyone saw our Vanta 6 drones. And all I can say is stay tuned because we'll have some public launches in the coming months in respect of new capabilities in that space as well, which I think will bring a higher level of capability as well to the maritime domain. That's the product side. The second is with our more established products like Vivanta 6, like the Virtus loading munition, we are now shifting over from research and development on those products to what I call iterative mass production. And the reason why I call that iterative mass production is because it doesn't exist, I think, in this world of defense technology that you just build a product and then you say, okay, that's it, we've frozen the design. Here you go. That's what you're going to get, a happy customer, and we're now going to build a whole bunch of them. We're going to deliver them to you, and that's what you're going to have to use for your loitering munition for the next 10 years. That's not how our customers expect it, and that's not how we would approach it, I think, given what we've seen in Ukraine. So what we're actually gearing towards is starting to now produce these systems in mass. And we're talking about in the hundreds and in the thousands of units. But at the same time, we can't just leave the software and the hardware as is. We need to be able to keep updating that. And so there's a challenge to manufacturing en masse and at scale, but also recognizing that we're going to need to continue to iterate our products based on feedback that we get from the battlefield in Ukraine, feedback that we get from operational experimentation like RETMUS with these NATO exercises and close engagement with their customers. And so Stark has gone from last February, we were just in the process of setting up our first manufacturing facility here in Munich. We've gone from that to several manufacturing facilities in Germany, multiple sites in Ukraine. We have our sites in the UK we just announced the opening of our R and D hub in Sweden. We also have another hub in Greece. And so collectively we have about 200,000 square feet of manufacturing space that is now open and ready to go. And we are getting ready for drones to start rolling off production lines at scale. And so that's the other big shift. We've, I think, seen our customers and allied nations lean in and commit to defense spending. And so we've done the same to lean in and commit to starting to produce for these customers.
Roland Oliphant
So you paint a picture of the spending's happened, the commitments there. You're able to invest in factories, you're able to start churning stuff out. I'm wondering what you think is still missing. The defense industry is not monolithic, obviously. What would you say you still need from European policymakers?
Phil Lockwood
Gosh, I mean, there's, there's a lot of work to be done. This hasn't changed in, you know, just a few days or a few weeks or even a year. First of all, not all of our customers are moving at the same pace as Germany. Not all of our customers have necessarily the same commitment to spending and have unlocked that. I think whether it's Germany or other nations, it completely depends on the customer and it depends on the procurement officers. And we still have in many cases the same procurement regulations and rules that we've always had. We have some nations that are looking at changing those very aggressively. We have other nations that are maybe a little bit slower to change and are trying to use existing rules and still try and move at pace with top down, more political directives. In an ideal world, we would have our customers who are the operators, who are not the technologists and engineers saying this is the problem that we have that we need to get solved. And they would work closely with industry to be able to help industry understand what that problem is. And you would have industry then go and solve that as best possible. The way that we've always done it though is through what we call requirements or requirement setting. Where you have the end user that says, I need you to build me X widget. It has to have ABC specifications. It has to be this long, weigh no more than this amount. It has to be able to operate at these temperatures, do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the fact of the matter is when the end user does that too much, basically they overstate the requirements. It slows things down and they limit the potential for innovation to solve the problems that they have. I still see the tension within nations between some procurement officials and end users on can we move more towards the problem solution, more of an agile, iterative type of fashion that is very much embedded, I think in today's modern technology industry. Or are we going to still stick around with that classical. We really need to specify exactly this because this is really important. And so that dynamic is still in a process of flux and different nations handle that, I think better and in different ways. And maybe just one other thing that I would say is I think that you have this emergence of the Neoprime so you have traditional Primes or defense contractors like the Airbuses and the Rheinmetalls and the baes etc and you have an emergence of companies like Stark, like Helsing. There's a Ukrainian company coming out called Upource as an example that are almost, I think people are giving them the term Neoprimes and they're shifting away from, you know, being a startup which is just a few folks in a garage, to actually large scale capacity to support their customer and to work directly with the customer to integrate different systems together. And I think that there's a philosophical difference between the prime and the Neo Prime. Both are trying to support the customer, both have their role to play, but slightly different cultural takes.
Roland Oliphant
Phil Lockwood of the German arms company Stark. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back on Wednesday with our midweek Global Health episode. Until then, that was Battlelands. Goodbye. Battlelands is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Roland Olyphant and Venetia Rainey. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battle Lines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others to find the show. To stay on top of all our news, subscribe to the Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine, the latest. You can also get in touch directly by email selling battlelinestelegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show Notes. The producer is Peter Shevlin and the executive producer is Louisa Wells.
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Podcast: Battle Lines (The Telegraph)
Episode: North Korea 'names' 13-year-old nuclear heiress & inside Europe’s race to rearm
Date: February 16, 2026
Host: Roland Oliphant
Guests: Lily Shabihan (Telegraph Foreign Reporter), Dr. Edward Howell (Oxford University, North Korea Expert), Phil Lockwood (Director of International, Starc)
This episode unpacks two major international defense and security stories:
North Korea and Succession: Reports that Kim Jong Un's 12- or 13-year-old daughter Kim Ju Ae may have been designated his successor, an unprecedented move both for her age and gender, and what it implies for internal power dynamics and nuclear stability.
Europe’s Race to Rearm: Insights from the Munich Security Conference on whether Europe’s political rhetoric for military autonomy and rearmament is matched by industrial and technological reality. Direct input from the industry side is provided by Phil Lockwood, who leads a German defense technology startup.
Notable Quote:
"It would be very unusual and unprecedented...North Korea is a very patriarchal society."
— Lily Shabihan (04:48)
Memorable Moment:
“They walk alongside each other, they're the same height. They talk and confer amongst one another. It’s clear that she is seen as his equal.”
— Lily Shabihan (07:38)
Notable Quote:
"The history of North Korean leadership transitions, the past two, doesn't give us that reliable a picture."
— Dr. Edward Howell (12:33)
What to Watch:
Notable Quote:
"Kim wants North Korea to be recognized as a de facto nuclear armed state...he is making strides in this vein."
— Dr. Edward Howell (15:03)
Notable Quote:
"We probably cannot rely on the United States to the extent that we have over the last 75 years...what does it look like tangibly for us in respect to burden sharing?"
— Phil Lockwood (21:40)
Memorable Perspective:
"What I call iterative mass production...We can't just leave the software and the hardware as is. We need to be able to keep updating that based on battlefield feedback."
— Phil Lockwood (28:38)
Notable Quote:
"Both are trying to support the customer, both have their role to play, but slightly different cultural takes."
— Phil Lockwood (33:09)
| Timestamp | Segment | Details | |------------|---------|---------| | 01:18–08:13 | North Korea succession overview with Lily Shabihan | Announcement background, gender dynamics, signals, Kim Ju Ae’s image | | 08:52–18:10 | Analysis by Dr. Edward Howell | Intelligence reliability, succession scenarios, domestic/international context, what's next | | 19:57–33:14 | Europe’s rearmament at Munich & Interview with Phil Lockwood | Political rhetoric, practical industry view, Starc’s growth, procurement challenges |
This episode offers a deep and nuanced look at two pivotal security stories—the opaque, dynastic maneuvering in North Korea, and the real-world hurdles facing Europe’s quest for defense self-sufficiency. It balances analytical rigor with on-the-ground perspectives, highlighting both the risks of reading too much into regime theater and the unexpectedly rapid evolution of Europe’s defense-industrial base.
Listeners come away with: