Hello everyone. Hello everybody I have the opportunity today to talk to John Spencer and we talk about

urban warfare. Now John had a long military career as an on-the-ground infantryman,

both as a regular serviceman and as an officer and in combat in both positions.

So, and then he came to develop an academic career where he focused

specifically on the complexities of urban warfare and that was actually a relatively newly developed field

because most wars in the past haven't been fought

in an urban environment, but the planet has radically urbanized and so it was necessary for a new discipline to be developed to concentrate on that.

That happened to be particularly relevant at the moment because the conflict between Israel and Hamas is essentially a conflict of urban warfare.

Now there are other elements to it as well which we also discuss the public relations element.

So the conversation focuses primarily on Gaza and Israel

and what the Israelis are attempting to accomplish and what the barriers are there

and the nature of urban warfare, the complexities of urban warfare,

and the strictures and opportunities that the Israelis have

as a consequence of the October 7th events.

So I found the conversation extremely enlightening and I hope that you'll concur.

So welcome. All right, well, we might as well dive right in. So we're going to talk a fair bit today

about the state of the world in general with regard to all the wars that are currently raging,

but I think we might as well zero in

on urban warfare as such.

That's your particular of expertise.

So maybe we can start just, if you just outline for everybody in watching and listening.

What why is urban warfare your specialty and what does that mean exactly?

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