So if you look at the population of the world in 1900, it was about 10% urban. If you look at it in 2010,

it's just slightly more than 50% urban.

And by the middle of the century,

we're probably going to be looking at about two-thirds to three-quarters of the global

population living in cities.

There are emerging different and new ways of controlling a city without going into it, but none of that absolves us from the responsibility of, you know, we have to be able to do that when it's required.

Hey, welcome back to the Modern War Institute podcast. I'm John Imble, editorial director at MWI, and we have a really exciting

episode today. Over the past couple years, as most of you who follow what we're doing at MWI

will know, we've spent a lot of time and energy on the particular set of military problems posed

by cities. We know we can't escape major demographic, geopolitical, and other trends that combine to make it extremely likely that militaries will increasingly have to operate in urban areas in the future.

But those urban areas pose a host of challenges that, frankly, we aren't ready for.

That's why we launched the Urban Warfare Project as an effort to wrestle with these challenges.

And our latest initiative is the launch of our Urban Warfare Project podcast. It'll be hosted by

John Spencer, who is currently MWI's chair of Urban Warfare Studies, and whose work strives to help

guide the Army, our sister services, and our allied militaries to a place where we're ready

for the problems cities will inevitably pose. In this first episode, John talks to David Kilcullen,

who, among his many other notable contributions to the way we think about war and the contemporary

battle space, has sought to conceptualize the major global patterns that really drive this idea that

cities, whether we like it or not, will be a dominant feature of the coming landscape of

conflict and security. Before we get to the conversation, a couple quick notes. First, you'll be

able to find future episodes of the Urban Warfare Project podcast on the MWI website, but you'll also be able to subscribe to it very soon, wherever you'll be able to be able to be able to find future episodes of the Urban Warfare Project podcast on the MWI website,

but you'll also be able to subscribe to it very soon wherever you get your podcasts.

...