Silicon Curtain

Edition No13 | 07-07-2023 500 Days of Russian Criminality and Barbarism in its Imperial War Against Ukraine ~~~~~ NEWS LINKS: The Moscow Times https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/08/zelensky-hails-brave-ukraine-on-500th-day-of-war-a81776 Zelensky Hails 'Brave' Ukraine on 500th Day of War July 7, 2023 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/07/us-reporter-gershkovich-marks-100-days-in-russian-detention-a81775 U.S. Reporter Gershkovich Marks 100 Days in Russian Detention July 7, 2023 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/05/standing-by-or-choosing-sides-wagner-mutiny-deepens-divides-in-russian-opposition-a81732 Standing By or Choosing Sides: Wagner Mutiny Deepens Divides in Russian Opposition By Leyla Latypova | July 7, 2023 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/06/28/we-were-called-in-for-a-meeting-and-handed-weapons-how-the-russian-elites-survived-the-prigozhin-rebellion-a81682 ‘We Were Called In for a Meeting and Handed Weapons’: How the Russian Elites Survived the Prigozhin Rebellion By Farida Rustamova and Maxim Tovkaylo | June 29, 2023 Ground News https://ground.news/article/us-will-provide-ukraine-with-cluster-munitions-white-house-says_4bf8d7 US will provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, White House says July 7, 2023 https://ground.news/article/turkeys-erdogan-hosts-zelenskyy-says-ukraine-deserves-membership-in-nato_94bb70 Turkey's Erdogan hosts Zelenskyy, says Ukraine deserves membership in NATO July 7, 2023 https://ground.news/article/nato-leaders-set-to-offer-ukraine-major-support-package-but-membership-is-off-the-table-for-now_b14337 NATO leaders set to offer Ukraine major support package but membership is off the table for now July 7, 2023 The Economist https://www.economist.com/ukraine-crisis https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/07/06/a-new-era-of-high-tech-war-has-begun A new era of high-tech war has begun Jul 6th 2023 https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/07/03/can-russias-navy-thwart-attacks-by-repainting-its-ships Can Russia’s navy thwart attacks by repainting its ships? Jul 3rd 2023 ~~~~~

Historically, U.S. firms dominated the private security company market, in places like Afghanistan and Somalia. But in recent years they have been emerging in other countries. Warlords and militias have restyled themselves as private security companies, and in Russia we have seen the incredible consequences of PMC Wagner rising as a force to challenge the reputation of the regular military. Mercenaries were common in the European Middle Ages and contract warfare the norm. The proliferation of private military forces is having a profound effect on international relations, meaning the twenty-first century may have more in common with the twelfth century than the twentieth. ---------- SPEAKER: Dr Sean McFate is a strategist and expert on international relations. He is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a professor at: Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, Syracuse University's Maxwell School, and the National Defence University’s College of International Security Affairs. His career began as a paratrooper and officer in the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He served under Stan McChrystal and David Petraeus, and graduated from elite training programs, such as Jungle Warfare School in Panama. Sean has held many roles in a long and distinguished career, including private military contractor, business consultant and author of several successful books, including ‘The New Rules of War’ and ‘Goliath: Why the West Doesn't Win Wars. And What We Need to Do About It’. Dr McFate a consultant to the Pentagon, CIA, and Hollywood. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and he has been interviewed on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, Vice on Home Box Office, and The Discovery Channel. #seanmcfate #mercenaries # wagner #yevgenyprigozhin #prigozhin #privatemilitarycompany #pmc #ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda #war #disinformation #hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet ---------- LINKS: https://www.seanmcfate.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmcfate/ https://twitter.com/seanmcfate https://www.youtube.com/@seanmcfate826 https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014TYDIAA4/sean-mcfate https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/sean-mcfate/ https://cisa.ndu.edu/About/Faculty-and-Staff/Article-View/Article/2168026/dr-sean-mcfate/ ----------   ARTICLES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux98Xl_lIWk https://www.rferl.org/a/military-strategist-mcfate-what-could-stop-russia/32180030.html https://www.newsweek.com/how-defeat-russias-mercenaries-opinion-1785481 https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3757281-irregular-warfare-will-win-strategic-competition/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/commentary/podcast/defeating-the-wagner-group/ ---------- BOOKS: The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (2014) Goliath: What the West got Wrong about Russia and Other Rogue States (2019) ----------

“As the world watches two Russian thugs fight it out, it’s important to remember that both of them have been, and still are, implicated in Russia’s ongoing genocide in Ukraine.” This is taken from an article written by Alexander Motyl in The Hill, dated 28th June 2023. ------- Alexander Motyl is an American historian, political scientist, poet, writer, translator, and artist. He lives in New York and is a professor of political science at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Alexander is a specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the Soviet Union. He has taught at Columbia University, Lehigh University, the Ukrainian Free University, the Kyiv-Mohyla University, and Harvard University. Aside from academic work, he also writes opinion columns in publications such as Foreign Policy, Forty-Five, The Hill and the Kyiv Post. ------- LINKS: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-motyl-9847877/ https://sasn.rutgers.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/alexander-motyl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_J._Motyl ------- ARTICLES: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4079666-americas-leading-realist-keeps-getting-russia-wrong/ https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4071234-putin-and-prigozhin-are-both-war-criminals/ -------

Ian Bond is a former senior diplomat and British Ambassador to Latvia and was a member of the British diplomatic service for 28 years. Ian is director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform. His most recent appointment was as political counsellor and joint head of the foreign and security policy group in the British Embassy, Washington (2007-12), where he focused on US foreign policy towards Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa. He was posted in Vienna as deputy head of the UK delegation to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 2000-04, working on human rights and democracy in the OSCE area, and on conflict prevention and resolution in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. His earlier career included postings in Moscow (1993-96) and at NATO HQ (1987-90). Ian is a specialist in the former Soviet Union and has deep knowledge of US foreign policy and its drivers. ------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/CER_IanBond https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-bond-8a295451/ https://www.cer.eu/ -------

Anna Ackermann is one of the co-founding members of Ukraine's key environmental NGO – the Centre for Environmental Initiatives “Ecoaction”, and a professional in the field of energy and the environment with experience in NGOs, as well as the energy design and research sectors in Eastern and Central Europe. Her main areas of expertise include energy efficiency in buildings, renewable energy, climate change mitigation and policy advocacy. Between 2016 and 2018 she managed the expert “Energy Policy Reform” group of Ukraine's largest civil society platform the Reanimation Package of Reforms. Anna is a policy analyst for the green reconstruction of Ukraine at the IISD. ------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/ackerm_ann/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-ackermann/ https://www.iisd.org/people/anna-ackermann -------

Vatnik soup is a Twitter thread series where Pekka Kallioniemi introduces pro-Russian actors and propagandists from around the world. This includes so-called “independent journalists”, politicians, military personnel and of course just regular grifters looking to make money. The series has introductions and deeper insights on how online propaganda and disinformation works and is spread. There are now 200 Vatnik soups, which introduce bad actors along with the strategies they employ to pollute the information space. As Pekka states: the first victim of war is the truth, and Russia considered itself at war with the US, and its perceived vassals, the collective West, EU, and NATO. Pekka Kallioniemi has a PhD in interactive technology and is an expert on social media platforms, algorithms, and disinformation. He is a #NAFO activist, and runs a series on Kremlin assets, agents, and oligarchs, called vatnik soup. LINKS: https://vatniksoup.com/ https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi

Much of Russian history was shaped by the “imperial experience”. Alexander Etkind suggests the process was a simultaneous of internal colonization as well as the more obvious external one. The characteristic phenomena of colonialism, such as missionary work, exotic journeys, and ethnographic scholarship, were directed inwards toward the interior provinces of the Russian empire – villages and timeless peasant lifestyles, as well as outwards and overseas. To an extent Russia is still an ‘undiscovered country’ from the perspective of its urban elites, and we see this starkly in the current war – with the burden of fighting and dying falling on minorities and the impoverished. We also see a radical lack of empathy for other people within the empire experiencing violence, whether that be Belgorod or Buryatia. It even leads us to ask, can Russia even be compared to the modern nation states of Europe? #alexanderetkind #colonisation #ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda #war #disinformation #hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet ---------- SPEAKER: Alexander Etkind is a historian and cultural scientist. Alexander Etkind was born in 1955 in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is a professor at CEU Vienna. He was formerly a professor of history and the Chair of Russia-Europe relations at the European University Institute in Florence. He is fellow of the European Institute for International Law and International Relations. Etkind's research focuses on European and Russian intellectual history, memory studies, natural resources and the history of political economy, empire and colonies in Europe, and Russian politics, novels, and film in the 21st century. His has written many compelling books, including Russia Against Modernity, Rethinking the Gulag and Nature's Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources. Links will be added to the video description. ----------   LINKS: Alexander Etkind on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sasha_Etkind Alexander Etkind on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Etkind Alexander Etkind at the Moscow Times: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/author/alexander-etkind-2 ---------- BOOKS: Russia Against Modernity (2023) Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies (2022) Nature's Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (2021) Eros Of the Impossible: The History of Psychoanalysis In Russia (2019) Development and Dystopia: Studies in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Eastern Europe (2018) War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (2017) Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia (2017) Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (2013) Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience (2011) Remembering Katyn (2013) ----------

Nolan Peterson is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Centre. He is an independent defence consultant, award-winning journalist, war correspondent, and author who has lived in Ukraine since 2014. As an international correspondent, Peterson has covered conflicts around the world. Apart from his work in Ukraine, he has been embedded with US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and with the Kurdish Peshmerga during the battle for Mosul in Iraq. Peterson is a former US Air Force special operations pilot and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After leaving the US Air Force in 2011, Peterson completed a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, where he was a McCormick Foundation fellow. Peterson's work has been published by numerous news outlets including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, BBC, Newsweek, the Heritage Foundation, and Coffee or Die Magazine. He is the author of Why Soldiers Miss War: The Journey Home and several fiction collections. ------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/nolanwpeterson https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolanwpeterson/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/nolan-peterson/ https://coffeeordie.com/nolan-peterson https://ukrainer.net/nolan-peterson/ https://archive.kyivpost.com/author/nolan-peterson -------

GUEST: Nicolas Tenzer - civil servant, academic, writer, and editor. ---------- Ukraine is Fighting for Universal Values, like the Rule of Law, committment to truth as a concept, and democracy; not only its survival, freedom and independence. #nicolastenzer #ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda #war #disinformation #hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet ---------- SPEAKER: Nicolas Tenzer is a French civil servant, academic, writer, and editor. Tenzer is a graduate of the École normale supérieure (1980–1982), Sciences Po (1980–1982) and the École nationale d'administration (1984–1986). He has taught political philosophy at Sciences Po (1986–2004) and since 2014 he teaches Science of Government. As a civil servant, Tenzer is the former head of the Commissariat général du Plan (1994–2002), a former member of the staff of France's minister of Economy and Finance (1987–1988). He is currently the editor of the journal Le Banquet and is the founding president of the Centre d’étude et de réflexion pour l’action politique (CERAP), a position he has held since 1986. He was a director of the Aspen Institute from 2010 to 2015 and has acted as its treasurer and president. Nicolas Tenzer is a member of the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. LINKS: https://tenzerstrategics.substack.com/ https://twitter.com/NTenzer https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-tenzer-07390617/ ----------

GUEST: Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges - Retired United States Army officer ---------- After the incursion by Wagner mercenaries revealed how badly the war is going for Russia, Ben Hodges, former commanding general for the U.S. Army in Europe asks what the future for Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army is likely to be. ---------- SPEAKER: Ben Hodges is a retired United States Army officer, who became commander of United States Army Europe in November 2014, and held that position for three years until retiring from the United States Army in January 2018. He has been Senior Advisor to Human Rights First since June 2022 and also serves as NATO Senior Mentor for Logistics. Until recently was the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies, at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, specialising in NATO, the Transatlantic relationship and international security. #benhodges #usarmy #ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda #war #disinformation #hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet ---------- WATCH NEXT: Sir Richard Shirreff https://youtu.be/UMi1Y3iF710 Operator Starsky https://youtu.be/ABIIyNa1AOk Anders Puck Nielsen https://youtu.be/2TJTUuu_cM0 Ben Hodges https://youtu.be/gpzfEVhdNp0 John Spencer https://youtu.be/2lmAOWfQvdE ---------- CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction ---------- PLATFORMS: Twitter: https://twitter.com/CurtainSilicon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconcurtain/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6NO7y93zG11JMtqm Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkjonathan/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- Welcome to the Silicon Curtain podcast. Please like and subscribe if you like the content we produce. It will really help to increase the popularity of our content in YouTube’s algorithm. Our material is now being made available on popular podcasting platforms as well, such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts.