Podcast
Cogs of War
Hosted by War on the Rocks · EN
A new show and vertical focused on defense tech and the defense industrial base, created and produced by WAR ON THE ROCKS and supported by BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON.
18episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Meet the New Host of Cogs of War
2d ago00:34:08Tap to summarizeRyan sits down at the Cogs of War mic for the last time to introduce Jonathan Panter, the new host and executive editor of Cogs of War. Jonathan shares his background, from naval officer to scholar. They discuss major defense tech issues, and Jonathan shares what he hopes to accomplish at the helm of Cogs of War.
Transcribe →Why Booz Allen is Partnering With One of the World's Most Important VC Firms
Apr 1500:44:14Tap to summarizeWhat happens when one of the defense industry's leading technology integrators partners with one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture firms? Bryce Pippert of Booz Allen and Matt Cronin of Andreessen Horowitz join Ryan to unpack their new partnership and discuss how the United States is trying to tap into the tech ecosystem. The conversation gets into venture capital's growing role in national security, how this partnership is supposed to work in practice, and why getting real technology into government hands is still harder than it should be.
Transcribe →The Future Soldier Loadout: Smarter Gear or Dead Weight?
Apr 1000:50:23Tap to summarizeThe tech soldiers carry will shape their performance in combat, missions, and their safety and health. If you care about any of those things, you will love this episode. The next generation of American soldiers will operate with systems that blur the line between human and machine, but that future is still being worked out in real time. In this episode, three former servicemembers turned industry leaders look ahead to how frontline capabilities may evolve over the next decade and what will constrain them.
Transcribe →Countering Drones and the Pace of Modern War
Mar 1900:55:12Tap to summarizeThis episode is about far more than countering drones. It is about how America prepares for and fights its wars. With three leaders from three companies at the forefront of counter-drone solutions (AeroVironment, Epirus, and Hidden Level), the conversation explores how America and its enemies are adapting, how the U.S. military is and isn't keeping pace, the problems with how America buys things, and more. This episode also features a rant from Ryan about companies that exaggerate the value they are providing to Ukraine. The idea for this episode precedes the latest war with Iran, but the fight in the Middle East makes this conversation so much more urgent.
Transcribe →Agentic AI and the Pentagon's Integration Challenge
Feb 2400:55:04Tap to summarizeAgentic AI is quickly moving from demo to deployment inside the Department of Defense. But what does it actually mean to give AI "agency" — and what does it take to make those systems work on real military networks? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Ben Van Roo, co-founder and CEO of Legion Intelligence, Jags Kandasamy, co-founder and CEO of Latent AI, and Aaron Brown, co-founder and CEO of Lumbra AI, to discuss why the real challenge is not just building smart models but getting AI agents to run on military networks and inside operational workflows. They cover deploying agents in denied environments, compressing models for the edge, orchestrating them across stovepiped systems, and the Pentagon's struggle to scale and buy these tools fast enough to matter.
Transcribe →SkyFoundry and the Future of American Drone Production at Scale
Feb 400:37:30Tap to summarizeChina and Russia are churning out millions of drones while the United States has little capacity to build them at scale. Rep. Pat Harrigan of North Carolina introduced the SkyFoundry Act to change this, and it got rolled into the latest National Defense Authorization Act. This law authorizes a government-run facility capable of producing one million small drones annually, cutting China out of our supply chains and ending years of procurement delays. It's a truly new way for the government to work with multiple industry partners. Harrigan joined Ryan to discuss how SkyFoundry is supposed to work, the tradeoffs of a government-run production facility, how vendors would plug into the system, and the failures in military strategy and production that brought us here.
Transcribe →Building an Academic Arsenal
Dec 900:34:40Tap to summarizeSince World War II, America's universities have been part of the nation's arsenal, forging the ideas, technology, and talent that underpin national defense. That engine of innovation never stopped running. John Beieler and John Paul Sawyer of the University of Maryland join Ryan to talk about the power of public–private partnerships in defense tech, quantum science, and AI, and how that work keeps American innovation humming just outside Washington.
Transcribe →The Tech and Tradecraft Behind Open Source Intelligence
Nov 600:45:33Tap to summarizeOpen-source intelligence has matured into a complex blend of technology, access, and tradecraft. Ryan is joined by Ryan Curran of ZeroFox, Tucker Moore of Booz Allen Hamilton, and Scott Petry of Authentic8 to explore how today's practitioners manage attribution, collect at scale, preserve provenance, and ensure human judgment remains at the center of the process.
Transcribe →Missiles and the Math of Modern Warfare
Oct 2300:48:53Tap to summarizeWhen it comes to missiles, America lacks the magazine depth for a long fight, especially against a peer competitor like China. A major part of the problem: Traditional U.S. missiles are simply too costly to produce at scale. Ryan sits down with three industry leaders working to change that. Listen to Ethan Thornton (Mach Industries), Sean Pitt (Castelion), and Steve Milano (Anduril) as they explain how they aim to produce different kinds of missiles at scale at costs orders of magnitude lower than the primes. Can they deliver?
Transcribe →What it Takes for Dual-Use Tech Companies to Truly Succeed
Oct 600:19:15Tap to summarizeSherman Williams, the co-founder of AIN Ventures, joins Ryan at the bar to discuss the hard realities of dual-use investing. They dig into inflated valuations, the dangers of easy capital, and the risks of betting on defense budgets that may not endure. They also examine the outlook for space companies, the role of private equity, and what it really takes for startups to survive in this sector.
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